Page 55 - Life of Gertrude Bell

FAMILY MATTERS 43
and claw’. Life presents us occasionally with cases of unspeak­
able calamity for which there can be no compensation; wrongs
that can never be righted; hopeless, heartless, odious things
which put the glib commonplaces of the pulpit and the copy­
book to rout, and leave poor, mocked mankind shaking their
fists in impotent rage at the sky ... a case without consolation
or redress. It is the case which has been represented at the
Independent Theatre by the anonymous author of Alan's Wife,
and presented with no attenuation, but rather persistent
aggravation of its horrible circumstances ...

Gertrude returned at the height of the storm and she, like her
stepmother and the rest of the family, kept a resolute silence about
Alan's Wife. There is something very revealing about the episode.
The parents Gertrude so admired, whose precepts she so readily
embraced, exhibited in an unusual degree the classical Victorian
dilemma of trying to uphold outmoded social proprieties in an
age addicted to reason and rationality. Gertrude sensed the incon­
sistency just after Oxford. She wrote to her stepmother from
London in July 1889: ‘We drove in a hansom to the exhibition
and Captain brought me home, I hope that doesn’t shock
you; I discussed religious beliefs all the way there and very meta­
physical conceptions of truth all die way back ... I love talking
to people when they really will talk sensibly and about things
which one wants to discuss. I am rather inclined to think however
that it is a dangerous amusement, for one’s so ready to make
oneself believe that the tilings one says and the theories one
makes are really guiding principles of one’s life whereas as a
matter of fact they are not at all.’
The Bells, civic and industrial leaders and local benefactors
through three generations, looked upon a changing world from
a position of free thought and social insulation. As Florence
shied away from the stage that was her real mtier, so Hugh looked
at industry with academic detachment. He spent a fortune building
offices and local monuments which became showpieces of the
Gothic revival. He travelled up and down the country addressing
his meticulously marshalled arguments to meetings of the
Liberal Party, businessmen’s gatherings and ‘free’ trades unions,
in a piping, professorial voice. He often went to local engage­
ments in his first motor car, a ‘baby’ Austin, and he wore a top
hat on important occasions, especially during his period of office