Page 25 - Life of Gertrude Bell

SOCIETY AND OXFORD T3
going to stop they said ‘go it ’Erbert’. Auntie Katie said he
spoke very well and very like his father ...

In the same year she passed her first local Cambridge examination.
In May 1882 she wrote to her ‘Most dear cousin’, Horace.
‘ ... Have you seen Browning’s new book? I suppose not. There
is only one thing in it that we poor mortals can understand.’
She listed her week’s reading for Horace’s approval: ‘Monday
(evening) Mrs Carlisle’s Letters 1st volume; Tuesday Mrs C’s
letters finished, began Life of Macaulay; Wednesday 1 Vol. Life of
M finished, began 11 vol; Thursday 11 Vol. of Life of M. finished,
I Vol. Mozart’s Letters began; Friday 11 Vol. M’s Letters finished.
That is not bad is it? as all these books are great fat ones ... Our
collection of eggs is getting on splendidly.’ She was fourteen
years of age. It was almost time for her to begin her formal
education.

Gertrude continued to live at Red Barns and to receive the tuition
of Florence and Miss Klug until the spring of 1884 when she was
sent to live at the Olliffe home at 95 Sloane Street. She went as a
day scholar to Queen’s College in Harley Street, where a school
friend of her mother, Camilla Croudace, was Lady President. She
cannot have been disappointed in Gertrude to whom learning
came so easily and who was to declare in later years, ‘I believe I
can learn anything’. In her first year she came first in a class of
some forty girls in English history with marks of 88 out of 88.
She was second in English grammar, third in geography and
fourth in French and ancient history. Only in Scripture, a subject
she could never cope with because, as she told her teachers, she
‘simply didn’t believe it’, and in German, did she do ‘badly’; she
came sixth and seventh in them. Her history master at Queen’s,
where she became a boarder in her second year, was Mr Cramb,
whose unfortunate name did nothing to conceal his outstanding
ability as a teacher. To him Gertrude owed her early enthusiasm
for history and the encouragement to pursue that subject at
university.
Maurice had now joined his cousin at Eton and Gertrude made
frequent journeys from London to Windsor to be with them. In
June 1884 she was planning to visit them along with Florence and
she wrote asking for cotton dresses —‘I am dreadfully hot’—and
protesting that her masters had had ‘another fit of giving papers,