Page 282 - Life of Gertrude Bell

256 GERTRUDE BELL

the writer specialized. In it she asked: ‘Now where arc you?
With Miss Gertrude Bell, I suppose. I suppose you arc very
happy, seeing things, lovely things. I don’t know what Baghdad
is like so I won’t tell you. Miss Bell has a very long nose: she is
like an Aberdeen terrier; she is a masterful woman, has everyone
under her thumb, and makes you feel a little inefficient. Still, she
is extremely kind, and asks so and so to meet you, and you arc
very grateful to her ... ’
Early in 1925 Gertrude wrote to her stepmother: ‘Darling, this
isn’t going to be a very bright letter for I am suffering from the
shock of a double domestic tragedy with which I am sure you will
sympathise — the death of my darling little spaniel, Peter, and of
his mother, Sally ... My whole household was affected to tears —
they all loved them ... ’In February 1926, when she returned from
a visit to the excavations at Ur, she found a telegram awaiting her
to tell her that her brother Hugo had died. He had been married
for just three years (to Frances Morkill) and was returning from
his living in South Africa when he was taken seriously ill on the
ship with typhoid fever. He died in hospital in England. ‘My
darling Father and Mother, I am writing to you with the heaviest
of hearts. It is so dreadful to think of what you have gone through
and of your sorrow now ... I can’t find words to write ... Poor,
poor, Frances. I don’t yet realise it all clearly, it has been such a
sudden shock.’ To Hugo’s wife she wrote: ‘I know exactly what
you mean when you write of the world loving his beautiful sweet­
ness and goodness.’ Gertrude herself had just recovered from a
severe chill which verged on pneumonia, and she had been rushed
to hospital at the end of 1925. Her parents wanted her to return
home. Strikes and bitter industrial disputes during the Twenties,
culminating in the General Strike of 1926 had further reduced the
family fortunes. She was determined to establish her museum,
however. ‘I can’t leave it now,’ she told them. She completed a
report on Iraq for the League of Nadons, and in April reported
in her weekly summary of events that conscripdon was being con­
sidered in Iraq in order to deal with the troubles in the Mosul
area. In that month too, she reported that the Tigris had burst its
banks and the whole city was flooded; ‘the greatest losses have
been sustained at the King’s Palace and at the Baghdad North
railway station.’ At the end of the month the King opened the
Chamber of Deputies and the President, Rashid Ali Beg, resigned.
On June 5 th Iraq signed a treaty of non-aggression with Turkey.