Page 15 - Life of Gertrude Bell

EARLY DAYS 3
the friend and collaborator of William Morris who had himself
undertaken to look after the interior decoration of Lowthian’s
residence, Rounton Grange.
Although Washington Hall was a spacious house, with attic
rooms for ten or more domestic servants and an inner courtyard,
there were usually several friends or relatives in residence; the
wooded outskirts and high walls were poor barriers against the
busy world of the ironmaster’s making. Hugh and Mary must
have looked forward to the relative seclusion of their own home,
especially when they learnt that another child was expected. ‘Red
Barns’, as they called the new house at Redcar, was ready for
occupation in the autumn of 1870. Gertrude’s brother was born
there on March 29th, 1871. Mary, exhausted by her second
pregnancy and the effort of childbirth, never arose from her bed.
She contracted a fatal pneumonia and died on April 19th at the
age of twenty-seven. Her son, a healthy but not particularly robust
child, was named Maurice Hugh Lowthian.
Hugh led a lonely life at Redcar in the desolate years that
followed his wife’s death. A wet-nurse had to be found to rear
Maurice, and Gertrude, now four years old and a high-spirited
handful by all accounts, was put in the care of a governess, Miss
Ogle, but that lady does not seem to have been able to dampen
the child’s spirit. She and her brother as he got older were in­
evitably drawn to the sea, which lapped almost to their garden
gate at high tide, and the unfortunate Miss Ogle spent much of
her time rescuing them from the beach and the boats moored on
it. She eventually gave way to a middle-aged German lady, Miss
Klug, who appears to have had more success in handling Gertrude
and her young brother. The earliest surviving letters speak well
of Miss Klug’s instruction in handwriting and composition. In
March 1874 when the children were staying at the family’s London
home, 10 Belgrave Terrace, the five-year-old Gertrude wrote to
her grandmother Margaret in a large, competent and confident
hand: ‘My dear Grandmama, My dolls have given me great
amusement you were very good to get them done for me. We are
very happy here. We like our riding lessons very much. We went
to a Circus yesterday we saw a horse march in time to the music
it was very pretty. I shall like to be with you in London ...
Maurice and I send love to Gdpapa and Auntie Ada, from your
affectionate grandchild, Gertrude M. L. Bell.’
There were fleeting memories of Gertrude’s mother in the
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