[Music]
the play
a life in bloom was inspired by the
beautiful gardens
created by the bell family during their
time at mount grace priory
and designed to be played there gertrude
bell and her mother corresponded
regularly
throughout gertrude's incredible career
as a scholar
mountaineer explorer travel writer
translator archaeologist spy
and diplomat gardens flowers
and the beauty of the natural and
created world were a recurring theme
and an inspiration to them both these
extracts from the full version of the
play
tell us something of gertrude's
formative years and how she took her
love of gardens
from mount grace to the east
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it is a source of constant wonder to me
how the simple act of planting can
transform a
wilderness into an oasis i remember my
daughter gertrude telling me
that in the persian language the word
for garden
is the same as the word for paradise
i think that when we create a garden we
do make ourselves a sort of earthly
paradise
to bring a measure of calm in the chaos
my daughter gertrude went into the
wilderness
so that she could be free to be herself
do forgive me i have not introduced
myself
i am lady florence bell wife to sir hugh
bell
mother to gertrude stepmother if you
wish to be precise
people who have not met my daughter are
always
curious to know all about her i am under
the strictest instructions from her
to avoid
any communication with the press at all
and
certainly do not provide them with any
photographs
my daughter can be insistent and some
might call it obstinacy
even as a child she was independent
outspoken sure of herself and
entirely without fear
one time i remember running the garden
hose down one of the laundry chimneys to
put the fire out
mother was not best pleased when i
responded to her remonstrations
by throwing every hat i could find in
the hall at her
she must have despaired of me ever
entering polite society
when gertrude was not outdoors her head
was always
buried in a book her passion for
learning
expressed itself frequently in the
questions she asked her father
such as why does the tide come in or
why is the sky blue to which her father
always endeavoured to provide
a suitable and scientific answer
gertrude was a girl of spirit and
initiative
willful gifted but also
impatient of anything or anyone
who inhibited her quest to know
and experience everything however
valuable the intellectual wares you may
have to offer
it is obvious that if your method of
calling your fellow man's attention to
them
is to give him a slap in the face at the
same time
you will probably not succeed in
enlisting his kindly interest
in your future achievements i don't
remember when my mother offered me this
advice
had she had the opportunity when i was
younger it would have been daily
although the value of education to a
girl of her class
was considered to be unnecessary by some
and downright dangerous by others
so hugh and i decided she should go to
school
at queen's college in harley street it's
a very disagreeable process finding out
that one is no better than the common
run
i've gone through rather a hard course
of it at college
and i don't like it at all after two
years of school
her teachers asked her father and me if
she could be enrolled at oxford
university
well we were not at first convinced but
we allowed ourselves to be persuaded
the question was i suppose what else to
do with her
in 1886 gertrude went to lady margaret
hall
oxford as an undergraduate to study
modern history oxford university
was rather like a club for the sons of
the well to do
they did not know what to do with women
students for our first history lecture
we were sent to bale college
and we were put on the platform with the
professor mr lodge
because the men would not make space for
us in the benches
when he had finished mr lodge asked
rather patronisingly i felt
well i wonder what the young ladies made
of that to which i replied
i don't think you added anything to that
which you've written in your book
gertrude completed her studies in two
years instead of the more usual three
the question with gertrude that everyone
was secretly asking
was what now
when auntie mary wrote to say that uncle
frank was to go to persia as british
ambassador in tehran
i enrolled in a course in persian
at the london school of oriental studies
six months later i was on my way east
gertrude wrote home frequently as the
old century came to an end
and the new one began oh the desert
around
tehran miles and miles with nothing
nothing growing ringed in with bleak
bare mountains
snow covered and furrowed with deep
courses of torrents
i never knew what desert was till i came
here
it is a very wonderful thing to see and
suddenly
in the middle of it all out of nothing
out of a little cold water
springs up a garden such a garden
trees fountains tanks of roses and a
house
inlaid with tiny slabs of looking glass
in a
lovely pattern blue tiled carpeted
echoing with the sound of running water
and fountains
in persia gertrude had entered a world
of
revelation here that
which is me which is an
empty jar that the passer-by fills
at pleasure is filled with such wine
as in england i have never heard of
how big the world is how big
and wonderful when gertrude wrote to us
from far away places
frequently she wrote of the landscape i
pitched my tent in a grove of apricot
trees
snowing with flowers and a hum with bees
the grass was set
thickly with anemones and ranunculus
or on the plains of jordan it was the
most
unforgettable sight waist deep
in flowers i found the loveliest iris i
have ever yet seen
big and sweet scented and so dark purple
that the hanging down petals were almost
black
or the swiss alps whole hillsides were
white
as if snow had fallen on them white with
the big single narcissus
i never saw anything so beautiful or
japan
father you are the lord of 110
trees japanese cherries and plums
i think we shall have to induce our
respectful father and grandfather
to let us make a plantation at ralton
and mount grace
wouldn't it be nice to have a japanese
cherry grove
wherever she went in whatever landscape
flowers were like a celestial map for
gertrude senses
at the age of 32 fluent in german
french italian and persian and
progressing in hebrew and arabic
she embarked upon her first desert
adventure
after a stay in jerusalem and a visit to
the dead sea
i decided to embark on a 10-day
expedition into the moab hills
i got a delightful arab stallion and
started to ride a stride
i bought a gray felt hat with black
ribbons
and the sisters of a nearby convent made
me a divided skirt for riding
when i wrote home i undressed my letters
from my tent and so a pattern was
established
using funds her grandfather had
bequeathed her
she would set off on expeditions across
the desert and into the mountains
with a caravan of two or three servants
the weather would change from burning
hot to
freezing driving snow in a moment i
traversed
unmapped terrains and studied the
customs and manners of the arab tribes i
encountered
days of 10 or 12 hours in the saddle
became the norm
it's the greatest relief after you have
been riding a horse for eight or nine
hours
to feel the long comfy swing and the
wide
soft saddle of a camel beneath you
the big soft saddle the she-dad is so
easy and comfortable and you never tire
you can
lull about and eat your lunch and
observe the landscape through your
glasses
my camel is the most charming of animals
as my confidence in my arabic grew so i
undertook more lengthy expeditions
but when i was not in the east i
attended courses in chart making
archaeology and photography i learned
surveying and astronomical observation
i studied ancient inscriptions and
discussed ancient history with
experts in the field but this was
knowledge
to bring back one never keeps away from
the east
when one is this far into it
gertrude published papers travel books
accounts of her archaeological work and
more
the desert had seized her imagination
standing on a mesopotamian hilltop in
1911
she pondered the whole world shone
like a jewel green crops and blue waters
and far away the gleaming snows of the
mountains
that bound mesopotamia to the north
i considered that the history of asia
was spread out before me
nimrod stood out among the cornfields at
my feet
a little further and i could see the
plane of arabella
where alexander conquered asia
we people of the west can always conquer
but we can never hold asia
that seemed to me to be the legend
written
on the landscape the land she looked
down
on would become iraq and her life would
be
intertwined in its creation
but first a shadow would fall across
not just the desert but the world
in 1914 i was at ralton resting and
recovering from my most
arduous expedition to date i received a
request from the war office
to write a report on the latest
situation in the east
which i did the bell report
demonstrated gertrude's formidable
knowledge to the government
and the value that knowledge would have
in the future
was clear i found work eventually
in the red cross office of wounded and
missing
trying to penetrate the fog of war to
discover the fates of soldiers whose
families
no longer had news of them i went to
bologn
and set to trying to create a system in
the chaos of letters and telegrams
lists reports newspaper articles
it used all my energy
i think i've inherited a love of office
work
as the war progressed the lists grew
and gertrude's house got longer and
longer
the letters i receive and answer daily
are heart rending
at any rate even if we give these people
little news
that is good it comforts them i think
that something is being done
to find out what has happened to their
beloveds
often i know myself that there is no
chance for them
and have to answer as gently as i can
and
carefully keep from them the horrible
details which i have learnt
that is my daily job
i received word that i was to go to
cairo with the rank of a major
to assist the work of the bureau of arab
affairs the arab question
was complex and intricate but
essentially
boiled down to this would the arab
tribes support the british
and french against our enemy the turkish
empire
in mesopotamia and what would they want
in return the amount i've written during
the last year
is appalling some of it is botched
together out of reports
some spun out of my own mind and former
knowledge
and some an attempt to fix the far
corners of the new world
it's sometimes exasperating to be
obliged to sit in an office
when i longed to be out in the desert
seeing the places i hear of
and finding out about them for myself
in april of 1917 i moved to baghdad
and i found accommodation in a summer
house with a beautiful garden
thick with pink roses i planted iris
verbena chrysanthemums and violets in
pots
i grew hollyhocks and daffodils from
seeds
nurtured in darlington oh my dearest
ones
it's so wonderful here i can't tell you
how much i'm loving it
i have grown to love this land its
sights and its sounds
i never weary of the east just as i
never feel
it to be alien i cannot feel
exiled here it is a second
native country if my family were not in
england
i should have no wish to return
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you