Page 105 - Life of Gertrude Bell

INHERITANCE 91

and Elizabeth Robins, but her incursions into these passive
debating circles were almost always attenuated by a desire to rush
off to her mountains, or see friends in the country, to walk, cycle
or ride by horse across the dales and moors of her northern
homeland; to read and study. Bertrand Russell recalled Gertrude
telling him at this time that she would not wish to live in a
university town because its inhabitants ‘knew nothing of the
great world without*.
She had by her own exacting light achieved little to date. Now
she sought some tangible objective beyond the ordinary limits of
travel and writing. She despised the idea of writing books or
articles for the Press in order to see her name in print. When she
was prevailed on to produce a book or an article she preferred
anonymity and only agreed to use her name under insistent
editorial pressure. Her mind turned more and more to the
largely unexplored deserts of central Arabia, and to the work in
archaeology that had been going on with much-publicised vigour
for some thirty years on the peripheries of those deserts, in Syria
and Mesopotamia.

Before she left on her world cruise with Hugo, negotiations were
in progress regarding the family businesses, the outcome of
which was to have an important bearing on the Bell family’s
future. In 1901 Gertrude’s grandfather decided to amalgamate
the Bell companies with other concerns in an effort to provide
the financial, managerial and —above all —the technical resources
necessary to their survival. He was now eighty-five and in failing
health. The strikes and lockouts of the 1880s in the north-east
of England had come as a warning that drastic changes were
necessary. Even more importantly, Britain’s lead in the manu­
facture of iron and steel had been eroded to the point where she
was already a poor fourth behind the United States of America,
Germany and Japan. Like his own father Thomas, Sir Lowthian
Bell had been a life-long advocate of technical education, but by
the turn of the century he was the only technologist of any real
merit among the ironmasters of the north, and perhaps of the
whole country. His domestic competitors were mostly entre­
preneurs. As an historian of the industry has written: ‘He was an
outstanding scientist and he had a fine head for that business to
which he directed his scientific talent... But to these he added
other gifts. He was a first-rate statistician and one of the com-