Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Delaney Chalk reboarding and I'm faired out. And if
Speaker 1: you listen to this podcast regularly, you know we've covered
Speaker 1: our share of explorers and adventure travelers, people like Freya Stark,
Speaker 1: who traveled into uncharted territory with seemingly little regard for
Speaker 1: their own safety and bring back useful info to enlighten
Speaker 1: those of us who are less ambitious to say the least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't made any desert tracks lately. You are, in particular,
Speaker 1: very fond of explorer stories, though I do really love
Speaker 1: explorer stories, and it's interesting sometimes when you when you
Speaker 1: do subjects who are kind of in the in the
Speaker 1: same vein to see what they have in common with
Speaker 1: each other. And Freya Stark you just mentioned her, she
Speaker 1: actually has a lot in common with the subject of
Speaker 1: today's podcast, Who's Gertrude Bell, especially in terms of where
Speaker 1: they traveled specifically, which was the Middle East, and you
Speaker 1: might find a few other little parallels throughout their stories too. However,
Speaker 1: unlike Stark, Bell's involvement in the area she explored went
Speaker 1: far beyond documenting them and publishing works about them. Bell
Speaker 1: also did some archaeological work in there, but was a
Speaker 1: mountain climber too, but she's best known for a loftier
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Working with the British government, she got
Speaker 1: involved in Middle East politics, pitched in on some spy work,
Speaker 1: and is largely credited with the founding of modern Iraq.
Speaker 1: And it said that at one time she was the
Speaker 1: most powerful woman in the British Empire. So that really
Speaker 1: piqued our curiosity and we wanted to find out how
Speaker 1: did this well healed English gal, otherwise expected to become
Speaker 1: a proper Victorian lady, get to go pretty much where
Speaker 1: no lady had gone before and have the sort of
Speaker 1: influence that none other had had. And so that's what
Speaker 1: we're going to look into a little bit today, and
Speaker 1: a lot the answer seems to Lee and how she
Speaker 1: started out. She was born Gertrude Margaret Lothan Bell on
Speaker 1: July fourteenth, eighteen sixty eight, and a really well to
Speaker 1: do family. According to an article in Smithsonian by Janet Walat,
Speaker 1: her family friends included people like Henry James and John
Speaker 1: Singer Sargent. Her father, who was named Isaac Lothan Bell
Speaker 1: was a prominent industrialist and as that she had a
Speaker 1: lot of important connections, and because of those connections, he
Speaker 1: was able to get Gertrude into Oxford at a time
Speaker 1: when not very many young women attended, and she excelled there.
Speaker 1: In in eighteen eighty seven, she became the first woman
Speaker 1: to graduate from there with the first in modern history,
Speaker 1: which was the university's highest honor in modern history. Even
Speaker 1: at that age, though she wasn't shy about voicing her opinions,
Speaker 1: Walack writes that she shocked professors by challenging their ideas,
Speaker 1: maybe because she was so opinionated and outspoken, though she
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of in the love department around
Speaker 1: this time, around the time that she finished school, which
Speaker 1: made her stand out from other women around her age
Speaker 1: because most women married around this time. But because of
Speaker 1: her outspokenness, as we said, because she was sort of
Speaker 1: snobbish almost about her intelligence, she had a hard time
Speaker 1: finding suitors. So at age twenty, she was sent off
Speaker 1: to stay with an aunt and uncle in Romania. Her
Speaker 1: uncle was a British ambassador there and it was in
Speaker 1: the hopes that she would find a husband. I guess
Speaker 1: the Oxford guys just couldn't handle Gertrude right. So she
Speaker 1: didn't find any suitors in her time in Romania, but
Speaker 1: she did realize that she just loved to travel, and
Speaker 1: so in eighteen two she arranged a visit to Tehran
Speaker 1: in modern day Ran it was Persia at the time,
Speaker 1: where her uncle Frank Lassell was British minister. And it's
Speaker 1: there that she got her very first glimpse of the desert,
Speaker 1: and she just loved what she saw. This reminded me
Speaker 1: a little bit of Louise Boy getting her first glimpse
Speaker 1: of ice. Each each explorer has their own passion right.
Speaker 1: But according to an article by Carrie Ellis in History
Speaker 1: Today and a piece about Bell and All Things Considered,
Speaker 1: in her first letter home, she wrote, quote, Oh, the
Speaker 1: desert around Tehran, miles and mild of it, with nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing growing, ringed in with bleak, bare mountains, snow crowned
Speaker 1: and furrowed, with the deep courses of torrents. I never
Speaker 1: knew what desert was till I came here. It is
Speaker 1: a very wonderful thing to see. So I mean that
Speaker 1: speaks clearly how enchanted she was by something so different
Speaker 1: from what she was used to. Right, she was smitten
Speaker 1: with this area of the world, But while she was
Speaker 1: in Persia, she also became smitten with something else, a guy,
Speaker 1: a young British diplomat named Henry Caduggan. According to Walax article,
Speaker 1: Bell described him as quote a very thin, agreeable, intelligent,
Speaker 1: a great tennis player. I like him a men slate.
Speaker 1: So he apparently liked her too, and they spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time together, exploring the desert, going on picnics,
Speaker 1: reading poetry. But there was one problem about their relationship
Speaker 1: continuing any further, and that was that Henry was very poor,
Speaker 1: and again, according to Walax article, Bell's father refused to
Speaker 1: let them get married at all. He didn't think that
Speaker 1: Cadugan earned enough to support his daughter in the manner
Speaker 1: in which she'd become accustomed to. Um Plus, Henry had
Speaker 1: a gambling habit, and so Bell went home to England
Speaker 1: to try to convince her father in person that this
Speaker 1: was the guy for her. But she was not successful,
Speaker 1: and just a few months after she returned home, she
Speaker 1: got worried from Persia that Cadugan had fallen into an
Speaker 1: icy river while fishing and had died of pneumonia, and
Speaker 1: she was just completely heartbroken, uh and devastated to hear
Speaker 1: about the So Bell spent the next ten years or
Speaker 1: so an England writing, including some writings about her experiences
Speaker 1: in Persia, and she also traveled around Europe. She traveled
Speaker 1: to France, Italy and Germany. And this is also around
Speaker 1: the time, in the late eighteen nineties or so that
Speaker 1: she started to earn her chops as a climber by
Speaker 1: climbing unexplored peaks in the Alps. Walax article recounts one
Speaker 1: particularly heroine experience Bell had in the Alps, and which
Speaker 1: she and her guides were trapped by an avalanche, a
Speaker 1: thunderstorm and blinding snow, any one of which would have
Speaker 1: been enough to deter me, but that that all sounds bad.
Speaker 1: They were basically huddled all roped together in a crack
Speaker 1: between some rocks on a peak for more than a day,
Speaker 1: and Bell later said that she thought, quote, it was
Speaker 1: on the cards, we should not get down alive. But
Speaker 1: she kept her cool and they did make it down,
Speaker 1: and that's really something she was known for too as
Speaker 1: a climber. Later one of her guides said that out
Speaker 1: of all the amateur climbers that he had worked with,
Speaker 1: including males as well as females. No one could rival
Speaker 1: Bell in terms of quote, coolness, bravery, and judgment. And
Speaker 1: I mean that seems like something that serves her well
Speaker 1: later in her career too, not just on the mountains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I just loved to picture her doing this, huddling
Speaker 1: in between the crack and the rocks, braving out the storm,
Speaker 1: right and even what you know, what she might have
Speaker 1: looked like at the time, because there weren't any dedicated
Speaker 1: climbing clothes for women at this time, at least when
Speaker 1: she started out climbing, and Bell was doing her climbing
Speaker 1: in a skirt. I mean, she wasn't wearing like decked
Speaker 1: out an ari I gear or whatever that we would
Speaker 1: expect today, obviously polar tech, nothing like that. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: skirt would make things considerably more difficult, it would seem,
Speaker 1: but it didn't. It didn't stop her. I mean, none
Speaker 1: of that released stopped her. And she decided that she
Speaker 1: wanted to start racking up some climbing accomplishments to like
Speaker 1: some real goals. She wanted to be the first person
Speaker 1: to climb all the peaks of the angle herner range
Speaker 1: in the Swiss Alps, and at the accomplished that goal.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o one. One of the mountains Gertrude Spitze
Speaker 1: was named after her. But even with all the adventures
Speaker 1: that Europe had to offer, Gertrude still longed for the desert.
Speaker 1: She was drawn in particular to the mystery of the
Speaker 1: Arabian Desert, and so around the turn of the century
Speaker 1: she moved to Jerusalem to study Arabic and to gather
Speaker 1: as much information as she could about the tribes that
Speaker 1: were roaming around the desert. With her new know how,
Speaker 1: she didn't waste any time in exploring. She rode from
Speaker 1: Jerusalem to Jericho to Damascus, and according to Ellis's article,
Speaker 1: one of her most notable early adventures involved dressing like
Speaker 1: a Bedouin man and writing about hundred miles northeast of
Speaker 1: Jerusalem in search of the Drus, which was a secretive,
Speaker 1: militant Muslim sect that was at odds with the ruling
Speaker 1: Ottoman Turks. And surprisingly, she got along quite well with
Speaker 1: the Drus when she found them. Ellis writes that the
Speaker 1: territory that Drews were living in was at the time
Speaker 1: uncharted by Westerners, but Belle managed to evade the Turkish authorities.
Speaker 1: This part reminds me of phrase Dark a little bit
Speaker 1: a lot um and finally get to the Bell Drew's Mountains,
Speaker 1: where she just charmed the Drew's king entirely. They ate together,
Speaker 1: They talked together, and since m Bell had become fluent
Speaker 1: in Arabic, this was something she could really really do
Speaker 1: with ease. They even became friends, and the king apparently
Speaker 1: asked someone later referring to her, have you seen a
Speaker 1: queen traveling? So she made an impression yeah, And it
Speaker 1: was apparently a good question to ask, because Bell did
Speaker 1: spend the next few years traveling around the Middle East,
Speaker 1: studying Rome, the Roman and Byzantine ruins there, and also
Speaker 1: studying the Drews and various Bedouin tribes more in depth.
Speaker 1: She learned a lot about the Arabs and about the
Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire on her journeys, and she took copious notes
Speaker 1: while she was doing that. A lot of her observations
Speaker 1: made it into her nineteen o seven book The Desert
Speaker 1: and the Zone, and it also seems that she impressed
Speaker 1: more than just the drew Was king. According to Wallach,
Speaker 1: the Arabs pronounced Bell quote a daughter of the desert,
Speaker 1: and made her a quote honorary man. But in addition
Speaker 1: to racking up these great titles and making all these friends,
Speaker 1: she was really learning her future trade too. We mentioned
Speaker 1: her studying the Roman and Byzantine ruins, which is significant
Speaker 1: because it's during these years that Bell started getting more
Speaker 1: and more involved in archaeology. She studied under the French
Speaker 1: archaeologist Solomon Reinick in the early nineteen hundreds, and in
Speaker 1: March of nineteen o seven she went to Turkey to
Speaker 1: work with William Ramsay on some excavations there, and the
Speaker 1: work they did actually resulted in a joint publication in
Speaker 1: nineteen o nine book called A thousand and one Churches, which,
Speaker 1: according to ellis really solidified Bells standing as a quote
Speaker 1: serious archaeologist. So she's not a lady explorer anymore. She's
Speaker 1: somebody who's out there doing real work with well respected
Speaker 1: archaeologist and becoming well respected in her own right. In
Speaker 1: January of nine nine, Grotrude set out from Mesopotamia, which
Speaker 1: included what is today Iraq as well as Syria, Turkey,
Speaker 1: and Iran. Her goal was to map out uncharted territory
Speaker 1: so Wallock outlines a few of the things that Bell
Speaker 1: took along for the ride, and I just have to
Speaker 1: mention this, Yeah, it says so much about the time
Speaker 1: it really doesn't, and so much about what's important to
Speaker 1: the person I think so. So we'll just quote this
Speaker 1: from from Wala's work. She says, her trunks packed with pistols,
Speaker 1: her saddle bags crammed with books. She was accompanied by
Speaker 1: an entourage of male servants, baggage animals, horses, and a
Speaker 1: plethora of equipment cameras, tents, a folding bed, and a
Speaker 1: canvas bath, mosquito netting, rugs, provisions for a month, quinine,
Speaker 1: camphor cigarettes, an entire set of wedgewood china, crystal and
Speaker 1: silver for proper or dining. And this reminded me so
Speaker 1: much of the Champagne Safari that was before you were
Speaker 1: a co host, but before it was a similar packing
Speaker 1: list bringing things that Again, I mean, she may not
Speaker 1: have had the ri I gear for her climbing and
Speaker 1: special high tech fabric for desert wear, but she wasn't
Speaker 1: dining with like tin plates either, was she. So with
Speaker 1: all of this equipment, with all of these luxuries prepared,
Speaker 1: she set off on a journey that lasted about seven months,
Speaker 1: and the land she traveled across was so brutally dry
Speaker 1: that her party often had to stop and seek refuge
Speaker 1: with local tribes and as their guests. Sometimes they would
Speaker 1: eat things that maybe they weren't expecting to see on
Speaker 1: their wedgewood china um really bitter coffee out of the cups,
Speaker 1: smooth they had. Wedgewood comes into sheep's eyes on their plates,
Speaker 1: things that we're probably welcome if they were looking for
Speaker 1: a fuge in the in the desert, but also real
Speaker 1: travelers stuff. In March, she came across an amazing and
Speaker 1: as yet undocumented ruin, a sixth century stone and wood
Speaker 1: castle known to Arabs as Buca Deer. I hope I'm
Speaker 1: saying that correctly. I'm not sure. Bell spent hours and
Speaker 1: hours of painstakingly photographing, measuring, and sketching these ruins. She
Speaker 1: even got down on the ground and her petticoat to
Speaker 1: make sure that she was taking very precise measurements. And
Speaker 1: she was taking this so seriously because since the ruins
Speaker 1: hadn't been documented before, if she were the one to
Speaker 1: come out with this discovery and have it so documented
Speaker 1: and write about it first. It would be this huge,
Speaker 1: big win for her, something that would establish her archaeological
Speaker 1: reputation beyond a shadow of a doubt. She didn't exactly
Speaker 1: rush off quite yet though. With her finding. She went
Speaker 1: on to Babylon and wrote about Babylon thing it was
Speaker 1: quote the most extraordinary place I've seldom felt the ancient
Speaker 1: world comes so close. From there, she went on to Baghdad,
Speaker 1: which was about five hundred miles from her starting point
Speaker 1: just give you a sense of of how far she
Speaker 1: roamed on this. On this trip, there she met the Nikkib,
Speaker 1: which was the city's one of the most important Islamic
Speaker 1: figures in the city who rarely spoke to women, and
Speaker 1: again just sort of like the King of the Drews.
Speaker 1: She really charmed this guy. He ended up inviting her
Speaker 1: to meet his family. So from Baghdad she went on
Speaker 1: to Constantinople and that's where she got some really bad news.
Speaker 1: She found that a French archaeologist had scooped her on
Speaker 1: the Kadir find, and she was upset about this, but
Speaker 1: because she had at least spent so much time documenting
Speaker 1: it in the form of drawings, her name was at
Speaker 1: least going to be associated with the discovery. The French
Speaker 1: archaeologists had written about it first, but she had all
Speaker 1: of this information, all these pictures, to really back up
Speaker 1: the find. Just eighteen months later, she went back to
Speaker 1: the desert again. She wanted to visit a friend, David Hogarth,
Speaker 1: who was working on an excavation in the ancent city
Speaker 1: of Carchomish for the British Museum. When she got there, though,
Speaker 1: Hogarth had left and his two assistants, two young British
Speaker 1: archaeologists were waiting for her instead. They were Campbell, Thompson
Speaker 1: and a twenty three year old graduate student named Thomas
Speaker 1: Edward Lawrence. And that name may sound kind of familiar
Speaker 1: to you, and that's because it's the same Lawrence that
Speaker 1: would later be known as Lawrence of Arabia. And these
Speaker 1: guys were eager to impress Bell with the work they've done.
Speaker 1: It started out rocky for them, though, according to Ellis,
Speaker 1: Bell took a look at their excavations and immediately called
Speaker 1: their methods quote prehistoric. She then proceeded to tell them
Speaker 1: how a dig should be done, but they eventually won
Speaker 1: her over with their conversation, in which they showed off
Speaker 1: substantial local knowledge, something that always appealed to Bell, and
Speaker 1: knowledge of architecture, among other things. She ended up calling
Speaker 1: Lawrence quote an interesting boy. He is going to make
Speaker 1: a traveler very on point. Gertrude just an interesting side
Speaker 1: note because this group, they sort of seemed like an
Speaker 1: odd couple, don't there? Or an odd group of three.
Speaker 1: But apparently the locals who didn't know what to think
Speaker 1: about a woman traveling alone like Gertrude Bell often did,
Speaker 1: and knowing that Lawrence was a bachelor, originally thought that
Speaker 1: Belle had arrived to be his bride, even though she
Speaker 1: was at this point something like twice his age. It
Speaker 1: just seemed like the most logical solution to explain this party. Sure,
Speaker 1: why not? Also interesting to note about this independent lady
Speaker 1: traveling alone, she had been active in the anti suffrage
Speaker 1: movement back home in the early nineteen hundred's. She was
Speaker 1: actually the honorary secretary of the Women's Anti Suffrage League,
Speaker 1: according to Ellis, and apparently she believed that she was
Speaker 1: the equal of any man, but didn't think the same
Speaker 1: was true of all women anyway. We just thought that
Speaker 1: was worth a mention, and for those who look up
Speaker 1: to her as a feminist role model. It's not totally
Speaker 1: black and white here. You can't expect her to to
Speaker 1: be the perfect role model I right, as with any
Speaker 1: historical figure or figure of any kind. But as we'll
Speaker 1: learn in the second part of this podcast, there were
Speaker 1: others who also thought that Bell was a singular kind
Speaker 1: of lady and allowed her to be part of what
Speaker 1: was perhaps the ultimate all boys club right the military
Speaker 1: at a time when it really mattered too, because in
Speaker 1: the next part of this podcast, we're about to go
Speaker 1: to war World War One and talk about Bell's political
Speaker 1: influence in the Middle East, the stuff that she's probably
Speaker 1: best known for. There is a little bit of romance
Speaker 1: in there too, though, because we haven't talked about gertrude
Speaker 1: second notable love affair yet, And we'll also talk a
Speaker 1: bit about how she made a lasting impression on Iraqi culture.
Speaker 1: So all sorts of things to come in our second
Speaker 1: part of this Gertrude Bell story. So a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: we did an episode on the mystery writer Agatha Christie,
Speaker 1: and we heard from a lot of Agatha fans out there,
Speaker 1: But we also heard from a lot of Doctor Who fans.
Speaker 1: And this is not the first time, we have inadvertently
Speaker 1: covered a subject also covered on Doctor Who. Neither of
Speaker 1: us watched the show, so we're not up to date
Speaker 1: with the plot lines. But I think at this point
Speaker 1: we really need to start tuning into Lena. Well. I
Speaker 1: think we're already so in sync. It might be interesting
Speaker 1: if we just don't start watching it and see if
Speaker 1: we continue along this path. Yeah. But we have a
Speaker 1: letter here from our listener Anna from Charlottesville, Virginia, and
Speaker 1: she says, when I checked the podcast and saw the
Speaker 1: mysterious disappearance of Agatha Christie, I got very excited because
Speaker 1: I love Doctor Who. Why because in one episode, the
Speaker 1: doctor meets Agatha and they solve a murder together and
Speaker 1: then she loses her memory. The details about the actual
Speaker 1: situation are a bit off, but the overarching theme is
Speaker 1: the same. I suggest you watch this because even though
Speaker 1: it is mostly wrong, and also the nature of the
Speaker 1: show has some really strange characters, it is a really
Speaker 1: interesting look at what could have happened to Agatha. The
Speaker 1: episode is The Unicorn and the Wasp, starring David Tennant
Speaker 1: as a doctor and Catherine Tate is Donna Noble. So
Speaker 1: again another another recommendation. From a listener. I think there was.
Speaker 1: We got a lot of mail around the Madame da
Speaker 1: Pompadour episode, so I wonder now that we have the
Speaker 1: Chevalier deal coming out to people will be writing again
Speaker 1: about Doctor Who and Madame da Pompadour. They probably will,
Speaker 1: but this one sounded sounded fun. I'd like to see
Speaker 1: a take on what Agatha does during her her mysterious disappearance. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm intrigued to know that I've read this better than
Speaker 1: than just the spa explanation, right, yeah, absolutely So if
Speaker 1: you guys ever have something fun like that to share,
Speaker 1: we're always interested. We are a history podcast at discover
Speaker 1: dot com. We're also on Twitter, that's where a lot
Speaker 1: of people share their television show connections. We're at Misston History,
Speaker 1: and we are on Facebook. Um and of course if
Speaker 1: you just have suggestions to non television related we're always
Speaker 1: happy to get this as well. And if you want
Speaker 1: to learn a little bit more about some of the
Speaker 1: topics that we talked about in part one of this episode,
Speaker 1: you can look at an article called how archaeology works
Speaker 1: on our website and it is written by the great
Speaker 1: Sarahdality herself. I'm blessing to be and it's a great article,
Speaker 1: so you should check it out. You can look that
Speaker 1: up by visiting our homepage at www. Dot how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Do
Speaker 1: do do