Page 58 - Life of Gertrude Bell

46 GERTRUDE BELL

Michelangelo’s David and Botticelli’s V run aver a in the Accadcmia:
‘There is a Virgin enthroned with saints which seemed to me
almost too waniire— and the dear Botticelli can be mantirt/’ To
the Uflizi where she discovered Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, ‘he is
indescribably lovely when he’s pagan.’ And all the while taking
lessons, studying her grammar, Persian, Arabic, Italian, German.
‘Spent the morning reading and writing. After lunch came
Professor Falarsi who galloped us through the Inferno in a thrilling
manner—and in two hours!’ And then the sudden, emphatic
assertion, even in her personal diary, letting it be known that it is
no ordinary eye that glimpses the wonders of the world: ‘Fra
Angelico is the one person who ever succeeded in giving bodily
form to the spiritual—witness the Transfiguration.’
In the summer of 1894 she was back at Redcar helping Hugo,
Elsa and Molly with their school work and cycling to the Bell
ironworks at Port Clarence for tea with the womenfolk of the
steelworkers, and reading whenever there was a spare moment.
Later, in London, she sat in the park with Billy Lascelles and
helped him with his racing accounts. ‘We walked and I was
comforted,’ she recorded. She went back to Switzerland, this
time with her family, where they met up with the Rosens and
memories of Persia flooded back. She read the letters between
Jonathan Swift and Vanessa and observed: ‘I wonder if any man,
beginning with the man to whom these letters were first addressed,
has ever understood how much they meant, and if any woman
has failed to understand. Swift did not care for her — that’s how a
man writes who does not care. And how it maims and hurts the
woman!’ She thought of Henry Cadogan: ‘ ... and today a year
ago the shadow fell very near me. I thought of him much last
night, and of all he had been to me and still is.’
There was another family holiday in Switzerland in 1895, and
through that year she worked on the Divan of Hafiz, completing
the task early in 1896. Heinemann the publisher took an immediate
liking to it when she showed it him: ‘He is an interesting little
man is Heinemann.’ Her ‘pundit’ (Denison Ross, head of the
London School of Oriental Studies) called on her frequently
when she was in London. He congratulated her on her proficiency
at Arabic. ‘I think his other pupils must be awful duffers. It is
quite extraordinarily interesting to read the Koran with him—and
it is such a magnificent book! He has given me some Arabian
Nights for next time, and I have given him some Hafiz poems to