Page 19 - Life of Gertrude Bell

EARLY DAYS 7
home in Sloane Street in a hansom cab and they arrived an engaged
couple. ‘Lady Olliffe, I have brought your daughter home, and I
have come to ask if I may take her away again/ was said to be
Hugh’s urbane proposal. Lady Olliffe burst into tears.
The couple were married on August ioth at the litde Trinity
church which then stood in Sloane Street. For the first time in her
life Gertrude became aware of a mother. She and Florence had
already formed a bond of friendship and soon a happy and
dutiful stepdaughter began to address letters to ‘My dear Mamy’
and ‘Dearest Mother’. In September 1877 she went on holiday to
Dulverton with Maurice and the Marshalls.
My dear Mamy,
We are having such fun here. Yesterday we caught an alive eel.
Horace caught it. Yesterday evening Horace and Maurice
caught two fish in the harbour and Horace caught such a big
one. Every morning we go to the rocks in our wading suits,
our game is to jump off the rocks into the pool, we call it
taking headers, it is such fun. Give my love to Papa. From your
loving child, Gertrude. Horace sends his love to you and Papa.
In the following year she spent a great deal of time with her grand­
parents at Rounton Grange, a tall stone house built according to
that principle of a softer, early-English style which Morris and
his followers advocated in response to some of the harsher
architectural experiments of the time. Interior decoration was the
combined work of Morris and Burne-Jones. While there, in
August 1878, she wrote again to Florence in the innocent vein of
childhood:
My dear mother,
You have sent me all the things I wanted. I liked my letter so
much. I had a lovely ride, Prince had not forgotten me. It
is a nasty raw day. Auntie Masie comes up to us in the evenings,
she is so kind. Grandmamma wants you to send my best dress
she gave me. Dear Mother I have not forgotten the promise I
made to you and all the sugar I give to Prince. Give my love to
Papa. From your loving child, Gertrude.
But the enchantment of childhood was slowly ebbing and a young
lady began to emerge from the letters she continued to write,
lovingly and dutifully, to her parents and her friends.
By about 1879 her neat and careful script and her ingenuous