Page 47 - Life of Gertrude Bell

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flow of affectionate correspondence, and her father was worried.
I-Ic decided that it would be a good thing if he and Florence went
out to Tehran to take Gertrude home with them. On June 20th,
1892 she wrote artfully to her father: 1 think you must let me
know as soon as you get this letter what you intend to do. I have
two or three plans in my head ... but first I think Mother ought
seriously to consider whether it would be wise for her to come.
Of course when we came everything was perfectly easy; Mr
Churchill [Harry Churchill, first secretary of the Legation] was
with us who knows the country thoroughly, trains of servants
were sent down and we had every comfort. But the simple
particular can’t travel like that... it is impossible not to be in a
draught because the doors don’t shut; I can’t help thinking that
the journey would knock Mother up and after much thought I
really don’t advise her to come ... ’ She went on to suggest that
he, her father, might come out the following March and that
meanwhile she should winter in Tehran. It is unlikely that Hugh
failed to see the stratagem, but Gertrude was saved from the
threatened parental visit by the dissolution of Parliament in
London and the decision of Lord Salisbury to appeal to the
country. Hugh, a lifelong Liberal as was his father before him,
felt unable to support Gladstone on the Irish question and so
decided to stand for election, unsuccessfully as it proved, as a
Unionist candidate.
And so Gertrude was able to enjoy four more months in the
company of Henry Cadogan. Eventually a stay which she would
gladly have extended into eternity was cut short by a sudden
outbreak of cholera. One of the worst-affected areas was around
Dehsashoub where the Rosens lived, and Frau Rosen caught the
disease, though she eventually recovered from it. There was
panic among the servants, and in the fearful atmosphere that
prevailed tempers became frayed; Gertrude even quarrelled with
her beloved Henry. ‘Mr Cadogan and I had a serious difference of
opinion and I sent him away goodnightless!’ But she saw that the
sun might ‘go down on her wrath and rise — on nothing’, and she
quickly repaired the breach. Persians and Europeans were dying
all around them, ‘the long lines of new mounds in the graveyard
gave one a sudden shiver’. Curiously, or perhaps predictably, the
most urgent concern of most of the British colony was that the
servants might desert them. Gertrude’s special concern at the time
however was the long-awaited reply to a letter she had written to
D