Page 24 - Life of Gertrude Bell

12 GERTRUDE BELL
beautiful little burn. Aunty Florence is learning galic, she says
that it is very difficult.’ The redoubtable Miss Klug still gave
Gertrude instruction and fought a losing battle with her spelling
and her high spirits: ‘The other day when I was playing with
Arthur and Bunting [Aunt Ada’s children] in the garden, Arthur
was swinging the swing, and, before I could catch him, Bunting
rushed across and the swing knocked him on the eyelid and made
it swell very much.’ By the summer of 1881 her antics were
becoming alarming. To Florence she writes: ‘Dearest Mother,
when are you coming home? We shall be so glad to see you. I
throw Fay [the dog] into the pool every day, he does hate it so
much.’ Again: ‘I’m having such fun with the dirt... I am learning
Euclid with Horace.’
By now two children of Hugh’s second marriage had been
born, a son Hugh Lowthian who, in the family tradition, was
known by another name altogether, Hugo; and Florence Elsa
who was known by her second name. It was with Elsa and Hugo,
two and diree years old respectively, that Gertrude was ‘having
such fun with the dirt’. In the summer of 1881 the third and last
child of the marriage, Mary Katherine (Molly), was on the way.
In 1882 Horace Marshall went away to Eton while Maurice was
at preparatory school. Gertrude kept in touch with them, telling
them of her own boisterous activities which in that year consisted
mainly of leading her young brother and sister, Hugo and Elsa,
in climbing expeditions up and over the scaffolding at Red
Barns where Hugh was making additions to the building. She
spent much of the summer with aunt Katie at Leeds and she went
to her first political meeting at which the Liberal Prime Minister
and his son Herbert were the chief speakers. She wrote to her
mother:

I saw Mr Gladstone as he was driving away from the Great
Mass Meeting. Of course he was very tired when I saw him,
but he struck me as looking so very old and grey. Aunty
Katie went 3 times to hear him speak and he only spoke 4
times. She said she had never heard anything like it. At the
great mass meeting there were 30,000 people. Gladstone was
very tired so they tried to put on some other people to speak for
half an hour, but the people would hear nobody but Gladstone.
At last Herbert Gladstone rose, the people were delighted and
listened to him for half an hour. Every time he said he was