Page 221 - Life of Gertrude Bell

IRAQ 203
four days three years ago almost minute by minute ... this sorrow
at the back of everything deadens me in a way to all else, to
whether I go home or whether I stay here in the East, or what
happens. And yet in a curious way it quickens the inner life and
makes me live more on thought and memory ... ’
To Chirol there was mention of another sadness, the death of
Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, husband of the Lasceiles daughter, her
cousin Florence; ‘My mind is full of Springy and of Florence and
her children — they are old enough to sorrow too—poor little
souls ... Dear Springy, kind and sympathetic friend! I grieve so
much for him, but it’s always the living I think of most.’
In March 1918, as news came of the big German offensive on
the western front, which was only partially offset by General
Brooking’s annihilation of the Turkish army on the Euphrates
and Allenby’s progress in Syria, Gertrude learnt that she had been
awarded the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society
i
‘Oh, dear, I wish I could feel that I really deserved such an
honour! How puffed up I should be ... I made two interesting
journeys down the Euphrates and compiled a tribal geography of
which I’ll send you a copy ... ’, she told the director. Her father
stood in for her at the presentation ceremony.
One result of Cox’s visit to London was that he was asked to
take over as Charge d’Affaires in Tehran in succession to Sir
Charles Marling, to negotiate an Anglo-Persian treaty to which
Curzon was committed. It was a bad time to leave Iraq (the
British began to drop the term Mesopotamia after the capture of
Baghdad), and for A. T. Wilson, his deputy, to have to take over.
A rising at Najaf in April, encouraged by the religious leaders of
the holy city of the Shia, was a portent of things to come.
Gertrude’s optimism received an early rebuff. A Political Officer
was murdered. Writing home in April 1918 about the Najaf affair,
she told her father: ‘Dry rot has set in among the rebels ... already
a good number of the murderers of Captain Marshall have been
handed over to us. I expect and hope we’ll hang them. The whole
business has been very successfully managed thanks to Captain
Wilson and Captain Balfour.’
The latter had arrived in 1917, and he was followed by others.
‘I like having these Egyptians — Sudanese rather,’ she said of the
new Judicial Officer, Sir Edgar Bonham-Carter. Of Wilson, she
wrote: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever told you about Captain Wilson, a
very remarkable creature. He began by regarding me as “a born