Page 20 - Gertrude Bell

6 GERTRUDE BELL

wide-eyed expression, seated on Hugh’s knee and holding his
hand. The artist has captured both the underlying unhappiness of
the time and the devotion between father and daughter which
was to prevail throughout their lives.
Two years earlier Gertrude had written her first letter to Miss
Olliffe, the daughter of the distinguished Irish physician and a
friend of Hugh’s sisters Maisie and Ada. The letter was sent after
a holiday in Scotland where her father had met Miss Olliffe for
the first time. It contained news of the family’s Persian cat.
My dear Florence,
Mopsa has been very naughty this morning. She has been
scampering all over the dining-room Cilia says. I had a great
chase all over the hall and dining room to catch her and bring
her to Papa. She bit and made one little red mark on my hand.
During breakfast she hissed at Kitty Scott... I forgot to say
Kitty was very frightened ...
Your affectionate little friend Gertrude Bell
The friendship between Hugh and Florence flourished despite
some initial hesitation on his part. Florence described their first
encounter:4 ... he was standing in profile at the end of a path half
roofed over with climbing roses. He had thick curling hair and
his beard was a bright auburn colour. Fie looked beautiful but
very sad.’
Hugh’s sisters repeatedly told Florence that they wished she
would marry their brother, but his first impulse was to ‘fly from
danger’. He had vowed never to marry again after Mary’s death
but he would not be the first widower to reconsider such a
decision. One of the sisters in question, Mary Katherine, or
Maisie as she was called by the family, was married to Edward
Lyulph Stanley, the son of Baron Stanley of Alderley and heir to
the baronies of Alderley and Sheffield. Lyulph was the favourite
uncle of Bertrand Russell, who was four years Gertrude’s junior,
and it was after a gathering at the home of the formidable Lady
Stanley —so ‘keen on enlightenment’ and so ‘contemptuous of
Victorian goody-goody priggery’—that the marital die was cast
for the second time in Hugh Bell’s life, at the age of thirty-two.
Florence Eveleen Eleanore Olliffe was an artist of considerable
virtuosity and the gathering at the Stanley household on June
4th, 1876 was arranged in order to stage an opera she had written
and produced. After the performance Hugh escorted her to her