Gertrude Bell by Georgina Howell

day was not negotiable. Gertrude must accept it, explained Mrs. Croudace, as a condition of her increased freedom and independence. Florence responded to Gertrude’s complaint only that shewished the child would not use abbreviations such as “National” for National Gallery. A ruffled Gertrude replied angrily:
    I waded through [your letter] which I consider a great act of self-discipline—but I avenged myself by burning [it] promptly . . . The next letter I write to you, when I am not too cross to bother myself with finding words, my adjectives shall be as numerous as Carlyle’s own . . . Would you have me say when talking of the sovereign: The Queen of England, Scotland, Ireland, Empress of India, Defender of the Faith? My life is not long enough to give everything its full title.
    Receiving this somewhat smart letter, Florence may well have sighed. Hugh would have found it hard to suppress a smile at his daughter’s spirit and powers of argument.
    These outbursts would soon be followed by contrite messages to her parents that she had made new resolutions, and hoped that Florence would find her a better and more obedient daughter in future.
    It had probably never occurred to Gertrude before to wonder whether people liked her or not. Now she had to acknowledge that she was not very popular at the school, and in response began to betray what might be a reciprocal emotion, the start of a lifelong haughtiness and aversion to the company of “ordinary” women. Florence counselled her, as tactfully as she could, against her tendency to boastfulness, which brought another outburst. Her schoolmates, she said, were “uninteresting” and then, finding a more diplomatic way to express her discomfiture, added: “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 since I came to College and I don’t like it at all.”
    For the second year at Queen’s College she became a boarder, and got on better with her peers. She was asked to stay for the weekend by a friend from Florence’s youth, Thackeray’s daughter Anne, Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, and by the widow of the historian whose books she had devoured before breakfast, Mrs. J. R. Green. But approaches from her new schoolfriends were heavily censored from Redcar. Invitations, she had to learn, were not to be accepted before Florence and Hugh had checked the suitability of the family through Mrs. Croudace. Three invitations, already accepted, had to be turned down as a result, which didnot help to make her better liked. It has been assumed that these families were “not good enough” for the Bells because they were not important enough. This is unlikely. The homes that Florence would not allow Gertrude to visit were those where alcohol was consumed, where house parties were the excuse for extramarital activities, where girls were not strictly chaperoned—in other words, homes belonging to the often dissolute aristocracy, circles that might even include that of the Prince of Wales.
    In the classroom, Gertrude shone. She was welcomed as an exceptional student who would volunteer for a higher class whenever she found the work easy. In her first year, in a class of some forty girls, she had come first in English history, her favourite subject, with marks of 88 out of 88. She had come second in English grammar, third in geography, and fourth in French and ancient history. She had not done at all well in scripture. When the master had asked her why she had not done better when she was doing so well in all her other subjects, her response was robust: “I don’t believe a
word
of it!” Hugh and Florence only occasionally attended church, and no one could ever convince Gertrude that there was a God. She began to call herself an atheist.
    She was just as resilient to criticism of her history work. When Mr. de Soyres argued