Page 7 - Life of Gertrude Bell

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Introduction

No life could ever have been better documented than that of
Gertrude Bell. From early childhood to the end of her days she
recorded every step, every significant event, in letters to her
family and friends. That rich vein of source material has been
well and truly mined. There have been several studies based on
the letters, most of them written by women, and one of them has
been widely and deservedly praised, Miss Elizabeth Burgoyne’s
Gertrude Bell; from her Personal Papers, a two-volume work cover­
ing the years 1889-1914 and 1914-26, the first part of which was
published in 1958.
When Lady Bell, Gertrude’s stepmother, published the selected
Letters of Gertrude Bell in 1927 there was an immediate complaint
that important correspondence had been omitted, and the same
accusation was levelled at Miss Burgoyne’s work when it ap­
peared. It must be supposed that reviewers were referring to the
letters exchanged between Gertrude and the man who came into
her life just before the First World War, Lt-Colonel Doughty-
Wylie, but if that were the case they must have known that Mrs
Doughty-Wylie was still alive and that the Bell family had quite
properly concealed the correspondence from public view in
order to protect her from the embarrassment and distress which
would have been caused by its publication. Apart from that
batch of letters I can find no evidence among the papers kept by
Gertrude’s parents and sisters, now in the keeping of the Univer­
sity Library at Newcastle upon Tyne, to suggest that there has
ever been sinful omission of salient facts or documents, apart
from a somewhat incomplete account of her death.
Nevertheless we are presented with a one-sided account. It is
in relation to her most important work, her roles in the war-time