Page 107 - Life of Gertrude Bell

INHERITANCE 93
amalgamated with the North East Railway which in turn became
part of the London and North Eastern Railway. It was a condition
of the new arrangement that Hugh Bell became a director of all
the companies concerned. As a result, the Bells became exceedingly
rich in terms of liquid cash overnight. Part of the money was
invested in new family estates. Part was distributed to grand­
children, nephews and nieces, all of whom received £5,000. The
residue went to Gertrude’s father. An incidental consequence of
the arrangement was that Hugh, in becoming a director of the
London and North Eastern Railway, found himself at board
meetings sitting alongside Sir Edward Grey, soon to become
Britain’s Foreign Secretary.
Three years later, five days before Christmas in 1904, Sir
Lowthian died at his London home at the age of eighty-eight. His
passing went virtually unnoticed. In November of that year
Gertrude had visited him at Belgrave Terrace, and wrote to her
stepmother: ‘I called on Grandpapa ... He was very doddery I
thought, poor old dear.’ It was the last surviving comment on
him, apart from an obituary in The Tims. When he died Gertrude
was in Paris on her way once more to the Middle East. Her father
had inherited the baronetcy and the residue of his estate, three-
quarters of a million pounds. The new Lady Bell, in the collected
letters of Gertrude which she published years later, mentioned
that 1904 was the year in which her daughter Molly married
Charles Trevelyan, thus establishing another link with a family of
many talents, but she does not refer to the death of Sir Lowthian.