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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Delaney Chalk reboarding and I'm faired out. And if

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Speaker 1: you listen to this podcast regularly, you know we've covered

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Speaker 1: our share of explorers and adventure travelers, people like Freya Stark,

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Speaker 1: who traveled into uncharted territory with seemingly little regard for

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Speaker 1: their own safety and bring back useful info to enlighten

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Speaker 1: those of us who are less ambitious to say the least. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I haven't made any desert tracks lately. You are, in particular,

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Speaker 1: very fond of explorer stories, though I do really love

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Speaker 1: explorer stories, and it's interesting sometimes when you when you

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Speaker 1: do subjects who are kind of in the in the

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Speaker 1: same vein to see what they have in common with

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Speaker 1: each other. And Freya Stark you just mentioned her, she

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Speaker 1: actually has a lot in common with the subject of

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Speaker 1: today's podcast, Who's Gertrude Bell, especially in terms of where

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Speaker 1: they traveled specifically, which was the Middle East, and you

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Speaker 1: might find a few other little parallels throughout their stories too. However,

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Speaker 1: unlike Stark, Bell's involvement in the area she explored went

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Speaker 1: far beyond documenting them and publishing works about them. Bell

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Speaker 1: also did some archaeological work in there, but was a

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Speaker 1: mountain climber too, but she's best known for a loftier

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Speaker 1: sort of thing. Working with the British government, she got

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Speaker 1: involved in Middle East politics, pitched in on some spy work,

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Speaker 1: and is largely credited with the founding of modern Iraq.

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Speaker 1: And it said that at one time she was the

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Speaker 1: most powerful woman in the British Empire. So that really

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Speaker 1: piqued our curiosity and we wanted to find out how

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Speaker 1: did this well healed English gal, otherwise expected to become

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Speaker 1: a proper Victorian lady, get to go pretty much where

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Speaker 1: no lady had gone before and have the sort of

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Speaker 1: influence that none other had had. And so that's what

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Speaker 1: we're going to look into a little bit today, and

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Speaker 1: a lot the answer seems to Lee and how she

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Speaker 1: started out. She was born Gertrude Margaret Lothan Bell on

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Speaker 1: July fourteenth, eighteen sixty eight, and a really well to

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Speaker 1: do family. According to an article in Smithsonian by Janet Walat,

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Speaker 1: her family friends included people like Henry James and John

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Speaker 1: Singer Sargent. Her father, who was named Isaac Lothan Bell

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Speaker 1: was a prominent industrialist and as that she had a

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Speaker 1: lot of important connections, and because of those connections, he

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Speaker 1: was able to get Gertrude into Oxford at a time

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Speaker 1: when not very many young women attended, and she excelled there.

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Speaker 1: In in eighteen eighty seven, she became the first woman

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Speaker 1: to graduate from there with the first in modern history,

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Speaker 1: which was the university's highest honor in modern history. Even

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Speaker 1: at that age, though she wasn't shy about voicing her opinions,

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Speaker 1: Walack writes that she shocked professors by challenging their ideas,

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Speaker 1: maybe because she was so opinionated and outspoken, though she

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Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of in the love department around

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Speaker 1: this time, around the time that she finished school, which

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Speaker 1: made her stand out from other women around her age

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Speaker 1: because most women married around this time. But because of

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Speaker 1: her outspokenness, as we said, because she was sort of

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Speaker 1: snobbish almost about her intelligence, she had a hard time

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Speaker 1: finding suitors. So at age twenty, she was sent off

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Speaker 1: to stay with an aunt and uncle in Romania. Her

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Speaker 1: uncle was a British ambassador there and it was in

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Speaker 1: the hopes that she would find a husband. I guess

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Speaker 1: the Oxford guys just couldn't handle Gertrude right. So she

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Speaker 1: didn't find any suitors in her time in Romania, but

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Speaker 1: she did realize that she just loved to travel, and

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Speaker 1: so in eighteen two she arranged a visit to Tehran

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Speaker 1: in modern day Ran it was Persia at the time,

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Speaker 1: where her uncle Frank Lassell was British minister. And it's

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Speaker 1: there that she got her very first glimpse of the desert,

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Speaker 1: and she just loved what she saw. This reminded me

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Speaker 1: a little bit of Louise Boy getting her first glimpse

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Speaker 1: of ice. Each each explorer has their own passion right.

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Speaker 1: But according to an article by Carrie Ellis in History

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Speaker 1: Today and a piece about Bell and All Things Considered,

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Speaker 1: in her first letter home, she wrote, quote, Oh, the

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Speaker 1: desert around Tehran, miles and mild of it, with nothing,

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Speaker 1: nothing growing, ringed in with bleak, bare mountains, snow crowned

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Speaker 1: and furrowed, with the deep courses of torrents. I never

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Speaker 1: knew what desert was till I came here. It is

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Speaker 1: a very wonderful thing to see. So I mean that

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Speaker 1: speaks clearly how enchanted she was by something so different

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Speaker 1: from what she was used to. Right, she was smitten

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Speaker 1: with this area of the world, But while she was

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Speaker 1: in Persia, she also became smitten with something else, a guy,

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Speaker 1: a young British diplomat named Henry Caduggan. According to Walax article,

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Speaker 1: Bell described him as quote a very thin, agreeable, intelligent,

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Speaker 1: a great tennis player. I like him a men slate.

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Speaker 1: So he apparently liked her too, and they spent a

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Speaker 1: lot of time together, exploring the desert, going on picnics,

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Speaker 1: reading poetry. But there was one problem about their relationship

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Speaker 1: continuing any further, and that was that Henry was very poor,

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Speaker 1: and again, according to Walax article, Bell's father refused to

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Speaker 1: let them get married at all. He didn't think that

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Speaker 1: Cadugan earned enough to support his daughter in the manner

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Speaker 1: in which she'd become accustomed to. Um Plus, Henry had

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Speaker 1: a gambling habit, and so Bell went home to England

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Speaker 1: to try to convince her father in person that this

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Speaker 1: was the guy for her. But she was not successful,

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Speaker 1: and just a few months after she returned home, she

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Speaker 1: got worried from Persia that Cadugan had fallen into an

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Speaker 1: icy river while fishing and had died of pneumonia, and

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Speaker 1: she was just completely heartbroken, uh and devastated to hear

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Speaker 1: about the So Bell spent the next ten years or

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Speaker 1: so an England writing, including some writings about her experiences

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Speaker 1: in Persia, and she also traveled around Europe. She traveled

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Speaker 1: to France, Italy and Germany. And this is also around

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Speaker 1: the time, in the late eighteen nineties or so that

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Speaker 1: she started to earn her chops as a climber by

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Speaker 1: climbing unexplored peaks in the Alps. Walax article recounts one

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Speaker 1: particularly heroine experience Bell had in the Alps, and which

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Speaker 1: she and her guides were trapped by an avalanche, a

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Speaker 1: thunderstorm and blinding snow, any one of which would have

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Speaker 1: been enough to deter me, but that that all sounds bad.

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Speaker 1: They were basically huddled all roped together in a crack

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Speaker 1: between some rocks on a peak for more than a day,

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Speaker 1: and Bell later said that she thought, quote, it was

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Speaker 1: on the cards, we should not get down alive. But

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Speaker 1: she kept her cool and they did make it down,

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Speaker 1: and that's really something she was known for too as

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Speaker 1: a climber. Later one of her guides said that out

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Speaker 1: of all the amateur climbers that he had worked with,

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Speaker 1: including males as well as females. No one could rival

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Speaker 1: Bell in terms of quote, coolness, bravery, and judgment. And

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Speaker 1: I mean that seems like something that serves her well

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Speaker 1: later in her career too, not just on the mountains. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I just loved to picture her doing this, huddling

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Speaker 1: in between the crack and the rocks, braving out the storm,

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Speaker 1: right and even what you know, what she might have

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Speaker 1: looked like at the time, because there weren't any dedicated

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Speaker 1: climbing clothes for women at this time, at least when

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Speaker 1: she started out climbing, and Bell was doing her climbing

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Speaker 1: in a skirt. I mean, she wasn't wearing like decked

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Speaker 1: out an ari I gear or whatever that we would

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Speaker 1: expect today, obviously polar tech, nothing like that. Yeah, a

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Speaker 1: skirt would make things considerably more difficult, it would seem,

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Speaker 1: but it didn't. It didn't stop her. I mean, none

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Speaker 1: of that released stopped her. And she decided that she

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Speaker 1: wanted to start racking up some climbing accomplishments to like

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Speaker 1: some real goals. She wanted to be the first person

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Speaker 1: to climb all the peaks of the angle herner range

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Speaker 1: in the Swiss Alps, and at the accomplished that goal.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen o one. One of the mountains Gertrude Spitze

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Speaker 1: was named after her. But even with all the adventures

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Speaker 1: that Europe had to offer, Gertrude still longed for the desert.

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Speaker 1: She was drawn in particular to the mystery of the

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Speaker 1: Arabian Desert, and so around the turn of the century

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Speaker 1: she moved to Jerusalem to study Arabic and to gather

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Speaker 1: as much information as she could about the tribes that

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Speaker 1: were roaming around the desert. With her new know how,

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Speaker 1: she didn't waste any time in exploring. She rode from

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Speaker 1: Jerusalem to Jericho to Damascus, and according to Ellis's article,

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Speaker 1: one of her most notable early adventures involved dressing like

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Speaker 1: a Bedouin man and writing about hundred miles northeast of

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Speaker 1: Jerusalem in search of the Drus, which was a secretive,

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Speaker 1: militant Muslim sect that was at odds with the ruling

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Speaker 1: Ottoman Turks. And surprisingly, she got along quite well with

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Speaker 1: the Drus when she found them. Ellis writes that the

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Speaker 1: territory that Drews were living in was at the time

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Speaker 1: uncharted by Westerners, but Belle managed to evade the Turkish authorities.

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Speaker 1: This part reminds me of phrase Dark a little bit

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Speaker 1: a lot um and finally get to the Bell Drew's Mountains,

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Speaker 1: where she just charmed the Drew's king entirely. They ate together,

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Speaker 1: They talked together, and since m Bell had become fluent

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Speaker 1: in Arabic, this was something she could really really do

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Speaker 1: with ease. They even became friends, and the king apparently

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Speaker 1: asked someone later referring to her, have you seen a

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Speaker 1: queen traveling? So she made an impression yeah, And it

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Speaker 1: was apparently a good question to ask, because Bell did

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Speaker 1: spend the next few years traveling around the Middle East,

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Speaker 1: studying Rome, the Roman and Byzantine ruins there, and also

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Speaker 1: studying the Drews and various Bedouin tribes more in depth.

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Speaker 1: She learned a lot about the Arabs and about the

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Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire on her journeys, and she took copious notes

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Speaker 1: while she was doing that. A lot of her observations

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Speaker 1: made it into her nineteen o seven book The Desert

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Speaker 1: and the Zone, and it also seems that she impressed

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Speaker 1: more than just the drew Was king. According to Wallach,

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Speaker 1: the Arabs pronounced Bell quote a daughter of the desert,

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Speaker 1: and made her a quote honorary man. But in addition

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Speaker 1: to racking up these great titles and making all these friends,

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Speaker 1: she was really learning her future trade too. We mentioned

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Speaker 1: her studying the Roman and Byzantine ruins, which is significant

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Speaker 1: because it's during these years that Bell started getting more

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Speaker 1: and more involved in archaeology. She studied under the French

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Speaker 1: archaeologist Solomon Reinick in the early nineteen hundreds, and in

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Speaker 1: March of nineteen o seven she went to Turkey to

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Speaker 1: work with William Ramsay on some excavations there, and the

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Speaker 1: work they did actually resulted in a joint publication in

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Speaker 1: nineteen o nine book called A thousand and one Churches, which,

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Speaker 1: according to ellis really solidified Bells standing as a quote

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Speaker 1: serious archaeologist. So she's not a lady explorer anymore. She's

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Speaker 1: somebody who's out there doing real work with well respected

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Speaker 1: archaeologist and becoming well respected in her own right. In

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Speaker 1: January of nine nine, Grotrude set out from Mesopotamia, which

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Speaker 1: included what is today Iraq as well as Syria, Turkey,

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Speaker 1: and Iran. Her goal was to map out uncharted territory

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Speaker 1: so Wallock outlines a few of the things that Bell

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Speaker 1: took along for the ride, and I just have to

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Speaker 1: mention this, Yeah, it says so much about the time

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Speaker 1: it really doesn't, and so much about what's important to

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Speaker 1: the person I think so. So we'll just quote this

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Speaker 1: from from Wala's work. She says, her trunks packed with pistols,

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Speaker 1: her saddle bags crammed with books. She was accompanied by

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Speaker 1: an entourage of male servants, baggage animals, horses, and a

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Speaker 1: plethora of equipment cameras, tents, a folding bed, and a

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Speaker 1: canvas bath, mosquito netting, rugs, provisions for a month, quinine,

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Speaker 1: camphor cigarettes, an entire set of wedgewood china, crystal and

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Speaker 1: silver for proper or dining. And this reminded me so

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Speaker 1: much of the Champagne Safari that was before you were

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Speaker 1: a co host, but before it was a similar packing

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Speaker 1: list bringing things that Again, I mean, she may not

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Speaker 1: have had the ri I gear for her climbing and

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Speaker 1: special high tech fabric for desert wear, but she wasn't

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Speaker 1: dining with like tin plates either, was she. So with

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Speaker 1: all of this equipment, with all of these luxuries prepared,

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Speaker 1: she set off on a journey that lasted about seven months,

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Speaker 1: with local tribes and as their guests. Sometimes they would

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Speaker 1: eat things that maybe they weren't expecting to see on

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Speaker 1: their wedgewood china um really bitter coffee out of the cups,

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Speaker 1: smooth they had. Wedgewood comes into sheep's eyes on their plates,

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Speaker 1: things that we're probably welcome if they were looking for

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Speaker 1: travelers stuff. In March, she came across an amazing and

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Speaker 1: as yet undocumented ruin, a sixth century stone and wood

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Speaker 1: castle known to Arabs as Buca Deer. I hope I'm

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Speaker 1: saying that correctly. I'm not sure. Bell spent hours and

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Speaker 1: hours of painstakingly photographing, measuring, and sketching these ruins. She

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Speaker 1: big win for her, something that would establish her archaeological

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Speaker 1: reputation beyond a shadow of a doubt. She didn't exactly

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Speaker 1: rush off quite yet though. With her finding. She went

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Speaker 1: on to Babylon and wrote about Babylon thing it was

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Speaker 1: quote the most extraordinary place I've seldom felt the ancient

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Speaker 1: world comes so close. From there, she went on to Baghdad,

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Speaker 1: which was about five hundred miles from her starting point

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Speaker 1: roamed on this. On this trip, there she met the Nikkib,

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Speaker 1: which was the city's one of the most important Islamic

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Speaker 1: She really charmed this guy. He ended up inviting her

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Speaker 1: to meet his family. So from Baghdad she went on

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Speaker 1: to Constantinople and that's where she got some really bad news.

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Speaker 1: She found that a French archaeologist had scooped her on

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Speaker 1: the Kadir find, and she was upset about this, but

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Speaker 1: because she had at least spent so much time documenting

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Speaker 1: it in the form of drawings, her name was at

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Speaker 1: least going to be associated with the discovery. The French

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Speaker 1: archaeologists had written about it first, but she had all

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Speaker 1: of this information, all these pictures, to really back up

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Speaker 1: the find. Just eighteen months later, she went back to

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Speaker 1: the desert again. She wanted to visit a friend, David Hogarth,

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Speaker 1: who was working on an excavation in the ancent city

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Speaker 1: of Carchomish for the British Museum. When she got there, though,

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Speaker 1: Hogarth had left and his two assistants, two young British

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Speaker 1: archaeologists were waiting for her instead. They were Campbell, Thompson

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Speaker 1: Edward Lawrence. And that name may sound kind of familiar

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Speaker 1: to you, and that's because it's the same Lawrence that

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Speaker 1: would later be known as Lawrence of Arabia. And these

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Speaker 1: guys were eager to impress Bell with the work they've done.

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Speaker 1: It started out rocky for them, though, according to Ellis,

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Speaker 1: Bell took a look at their excavations and immediately called

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Speaker 1: their methods quote prehistoric. She then proceeded to tell them

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Speaker 1: how a dig should be done, but they eventually won

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Speaker 1: her over with their conversation, in which they showed off

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Speaker 1: substantial local knowledge, something that always appealed to Bell, and

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Speaker 1: knowledge of architecture, among other things. She ended up calling

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Speaker 1: Lawrence quote an interesting boy. He is going to make

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Speaker 1: a traveler very on point. Gertrude just an interesting side

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Speaker 1: note because this group, they sort of seemed like an

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Speaker 1: odd couple, don't there? Or an odd group of three.

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Speaker 1: But apparently the locals who didn't know what to think

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Speaker 1: about a woman traveling alone like Gertrude Bell often did,

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Speaker 1: and knowing that Lawrence was a bachelor, originally thought that

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Speaker 1: Belle had arrived to be his bride, even though she

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Speaker 1: was at this point something like twice his age. It

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Speaker 1: just seemed like the most logical solution to explain this party. Sure,

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Speaker 1: why not? Also interesting to note about this independent lady

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Speaker 1: traveling alone, she had been active in the anti suffrage

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Speaker 1: movement back home in the early nineteen hundred's. She was

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Speaker 1: actually the honorary secretary of the Women's Anti Suffrage League,

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Speaker 1: according to Ellis, and apparently she believed that she was

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Speaker 1: the equal of any man, but didn't think the same

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Speaker 1: was worth a mention, and for those who look up

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Speaker 1: to her as a feminist role model. It's not totally

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Speaker 1: black and white here. You can't expect her to to

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Speaker 1: be the perfect role model I right, as with any

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Speaker 1: historical figure or figure of any kind. But as we'll

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Speaker 1: learn in the second part of this podcast, there were

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Speaker 1: others who also thought that Bell was a singular kind

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Speaker 1: of lady and allowed her to be part of what

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Speaker 1: was perhaps the ultimate all boys club right the military

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Speaker 1: at a time when it really mattered too, because in

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Speaker 1: the next part of this podcast, we're about to go

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Speaker 1: to war World War One and talk about Bell's political

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Speaker 1: influence in the Middle East, the stuff that she's probably

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Speaker 1: best known for. There is a little bit of romance

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Speaker 1: in there too, though, because we haven't talked about gertrude

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Speaker 1: second notable love affair yet, And we'll also talk a

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Speaker 1: bit about how she made a lasting impression on Iraqi culture.

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Speaker 1: So all sorts of things to come in our second

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Speaker 1: part of this Gertrude Bell story. So a few weeks ago,

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Speaker 1: we did an episode on the mystery writer Agatha Christie,

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Speaker 1: and we heard from a lot of Agatha fans out there,

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Speaker 1: But we also heard from a lot of Doctor Who fans.

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Speaker 1: And this is not the first time, we have inadvertently

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Speaker 1: covered a subject also covered on Doctor Who. Neither of

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Speaker 1: us watched the show, so we're not up to date

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Speaker 1: with the plot lines. But I think at this point

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Speaker 1: we really need to start tuning into Lena. Well. I

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Speaker 1: think we're already so in sync. It might be interesting

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Speaker 1: if we just don't start watching it and see if

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Speaker 1: we continue along this path. Yeah. But we have a

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Speaker 1: letter here from our listener Anna from Charlottesville, Virginia, and

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Speaker 1: she says, when I checked the podcast and saw the

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Speaker 1: mysterious disappearance of Agatha Christie, I got very excited because

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Speaker 1: I love Doctor Who. Why because in one episode, the

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Speaker 1: doctor meets Agatha and they solve a murder together and

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Speaker 1: then she loses her memory. The details about the actual

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Speaker 1: situation are a bit off, but the overarching theme is

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Speaker 1: the same. I suggest you watch this because even though

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Speaker 1: it is mostly wrong, and also the nature of the

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Speaker 1: show has some really strange characters, it is a really

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Speaker 1: interesting look at what could have happened to Agatha. The

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Speaker 1: episode is The Unicorn and the Wasp, starring David Tennant

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Speaker 1: as a doctor and Catherine Tate is Donna Noble. So

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Speaker 1: again another another recommendation. From a listener. I think there was.

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Speaker 1: We got a lot of mail around the Madame da

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Speaker 1: Pompadour episode, so I wonder now that we have the

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Speaker 1: Chevalier deal coming out to people will be writing again

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Speaker 1: about Doctor Who and Madame da Pompadour. They probably will,

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Speaker 1: but this one sounded sounded fun. I'd like to see

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Speaker 1: a take on what Agatha does during her her mysterious disappearance. Um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm intrigued to know that I've read this better than

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Speaker 1: than just the spa explanation, right, yeah, absolutely So if

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Speaker 1: you guys ever have something fun like that to share,

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Speaker 1: we're always interested. We are a history podcast at discover

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Speaker 1: dot com. We're also on Twitter, that's where a lot

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Speaker 1: of people share their television show connections. We're at Misston History,

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Speaker 1: and we are on Facebook. Um and of course if

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Speaker 1: you just have suggestions to non television related we're always

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Speaker 1: happy to get this as well. And if you want

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Speaker 1: to learn a little bit more about some of the

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Speaker 1: topics that we talked about in part one of this episode,

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Speaker 1: you can look at an article called how archaeology works

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Speaker 1: on our website and it is written by the great

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Speaker 1: Sarahdality herself. I'm blessing to be and it's a great article,

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Speaker 1: so you should check it out. You can look that

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Speaker 1: up by visiting our homepage at www. Dot how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of

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Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Do

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Speaker 1: do do