Page 38 - Life of Gertrude Bell

zG GERTRUDE BELL

French satirically dubbed la porte sublime, and she was fascinated
by the thought of what lay beyond in the Asiatic dominions of
Turkey. For the moment, however, she had to draw back from
the tantalising mysteries of the East and return to London with
Billy Lascelles. There was a good deal of tut-tutting from her
stepmother about their open and unchapcroned association.
‘Billy and I sat in the garden and had a long talk ... he wanted to
take me with him to Paddington and send me back in a hansom,
don’t be afraid, I didn’t go—what would have happened if I had,
it was ten o’clock?’ She stayed on at Sloane Street for a week or
two, visiting her friend Mary Talbot who was then working with
the Whitechapel Mission, attending French literature classes at
Caroline Grosvenor’s home and spending much of her time with
the Russells of Audley Square and die Dover Street fraternity,
before making her way to Redcar where she rejoined her younger
sisters and Hugo.
The children of Hugh’s second marriage by now ranged from
eight to eleven years in age and Hugo, the eldest, was away at
boarding school. Gertrude took their education in hand whenever
they were together at Red Barns, though she had some difficulty
with Molly. On one occasion she asked her younger sister if she
could tell her the religion of the inhabitants of Rome. Molly
looked round the room for inspiration and in the end answered
desperately —‘Quakers’. Her stepmother—whose delight in her
family, in which she included Gertrude as one of her own, was
unceasing — devoted herself mainly to Hugo’s musical develop­
ment. Perhaps she saw in him an outlet for her own frustrated
talent for she noted every stage of his precocious progress. At
ten months, she recorded, he could sing Rubinstein’s Melody in
F; at fourteen months he was giving voice to ‘Men of Harlech’,
‘Rule, Britannia I’ and ‘John Peel’; at sixteen months to ‘God Save
the Queen’ and at twenty months to ‘London Bridge’ and ‘Sur le
Pont d’Avignon’. At six the young prodigy was taken to London
to hear Rubinstein play and after the recital he was introduced to
the great man who lifted him up, kissed him and said, ‘Mind you
are never a musician.’ ‘A stupid thing to say,’ remarked Florence.
In fact, the sensitive Hugo was to go on to Eton where much
of his musical talent was thwarted by masters who told him that
he must drive away the tunes which came constantly into his
mind by ‘thinking of something else’ and he went on to Oxford
and was eventually ordained, though on the way he formed a