Page 6 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat
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He explained that Bahrain was an independent Arab state, which had had Work at the School left me with plenty of spare time and I found that
treaty relations with Britain since 1820, and whose rulers had been on London was an amusing place for a presentable if impecunious young
friendly terms with us for several generations. The present ruler, Shaikh man. In one of the Bond Street galleries I had a small picture show,
Hamed bin Isa al Khalifah, had recently visited England for the first time, paintings of Siwa and Tanganyika, which was quite a success.
and had expressed a wish to employ an Englishman as his Adviser. Unintentionally, I got a certain amount of publicity. Kathleen
Because nofcdy had a suitable protege for the post, Daly, the Political Shackleton, a sister of Sir Ernest Shackleton, did a black-and-white por
Agent, had aavirtised in the ‘Personal Column’ .There was nothing ‘fishy’ trait of me which was published in some of the papers and produced a
about the appointment at all.
great deal of nonsense about the ‘young Englishman’ who was going to
There wasjpo time for all the questions that I wanted to ask, but rhe Persian Gulf to be ‘Wazir to a Shaikh’. I was never styled ‘Wazir’
I Prideaux toldi ucKriiat the Shaikh was a man. of about sixty. He had been though it would perhaps have been a more appropriate title than ‘Ad
Heir Apparent >ince\iS93 and assumed control in 1923 when his venerable viser’, The Shaikh and the Arabs in Bahrain invariably called me ‘Al
father, Shaikh sa bill Ali, had, very unwillingly, been ‘persuaded’ by the Mustashar’—‘the Adviser’—they never used my own name. I, for my
British to reri|e from active control of aiTahs after ruling for fifty-five part, always addressed the Shaikh as ‘Your Highness’. Every member of
years. I gathered that the Shaikh’s position was not altogether secure. the Ruling Family was, by right of birth, a ‘Shaikh’, and, except when
There was a strong party in Bahrain which was opposed to the old talking to the young ones, I used to address them as ‘Shaikh So-and-So’.
Shaikh’s forced abdication. The people, too, were beginning to demand In the same way the ladies of the family were styled ‘Shaikha’, which is the
reforms and modernization and the Shaikh, especially after his visit to feminine of ‘Shaikh’. Unfortunately the papers which described me as
England, wanted to make changes. He could not depend permanently on* ’the young English Wazir’ reached Bahrain just before my arrival, so I
the sole advice of the Political Agent, who had guided him during the
had to live that down.
difficult days after his father’s abdication. He wanted someone belonging In January 1926 I became engaged to Marjorie Lepel Barrett-Lennard
to him, whom he could trust and rely upon. This was the post which had —her second name came from the famous Molly Lepel, who married
been advertised. I felt then, and afterwards, that it was very confiding of ‘Handsome Hervey’, Lord Bristol. Her father had lately succeeded to the
the Shaikh to appoint someone whom he had never seen to a post of such baronetcy and they were living in one of the fine old Regency houses in
importance. When I said good-bye to Prideaux and his wife they said Lewes Crescent, Brighton. Her parents were old friends of my parents
that they hoped to see me again. I thought to myself, ‘That’s a good and our families and their various branches had known each other for
omen/ generations. Our own acquaintance, if it can be called that, dated from an
The final interview was at the India Office, which in those days dealt early age; our mothers said that when we were very young they used to
with the affairs of the Gulf. I was looked over by Sir Arthur Banncrman, take us out together, in prams, in Kensington Gardens on the nurses’ day
the Political A.D.C. to the Secretary of State for India. He apparently off. This must have been when my family was visiting England because
approved of me, for shortly afterwards I was offered the post of Adviser I was bom in Switzerland and spent my early boyhood, until I went to
to the Shaikh, with a salary of some .£720 a year and a Provident Fund school in England, on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, where my
of ^15 a month, which seemed to me a handsome salary—in those days. grandmother had a villa.
One of the conditions was that I should take home leave only after com Neither of our families had any particular connection with the East,
pleting four years* service. At the time this did not worry me. I had not from various relations who had served in the Army and the Navy
apart
sampled the summer climate of Bahrain before there were electric fans, in India, Egypt or Africa, the most famous of them being Maijorie’s
running water and refrigerators. Later in my service the Shaikh allowed great-uncle, Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, whose A.D.C., in 1883, 1
! me to take leave every other summer.. was Sir Reginald Wingate. None of our relations had ever heard of
. On Daly’s advice I joined the School of Oriental and African Studies Bahrain, but when my future father-in-law looked it up, in a very old
for a three-month course in Arabic, since the Arabic which I spoke was encyclopaedia, he and the family were horrified to hear that the climate
Egyptian Arabic and my knowledge of the language was not profound. of the Persian Gulf was described as being similar to that of the West
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