Month: April 2022

The previous post about Gertrude Bell asked for her link to Marylebone. The answer is she attended Queen’s College on Harley Street. Approximately 100 years earlier, there lived a woman with similar adventures in the Middle-East. This was Lady Hester Stanhope. (1776-1839).

In her late twenties Hester moved in with her uncle, William Pitt the Younger, at Walmer Castle in Kent where she redesigned the gardens. When William Pitt was re-appointed as Prime Minister in 1804, Hester moved with him into Downing Street where she played the role of social host to Pitt’s visitors and colleagues, and ran the household. Unusually for those times, Hester was nearly six-foot tall with a personality and presence to match, and she acquired high status amongst her uncle’s political friends.

William Pitt died in 1806 but not before he persuaded the government to grant Hester a generous pension for life.

Adjusting to a new life after Downing Street was probably challenging. She was no longer working at the heart of government. Rumours of a romance with Granville Leveson Gower were probably just rumours but she undoubtedly became very close to Sir John Moore, famed for his campaigns in the Peninsular War. His subsequent death at Corunna seems to have left Hester heart-broken and possibly depressed.

She decided to go travelling around the Mediterranean, accompanied by a couple of maids and her physician, Charles Meryon. In Gibraltar she met a much younger man, Michael Bruce, who became her lover and joined her entourage. Michael Bruce was a friend of Lord Byron who greeted Hester’s arrival in Athens by diving into the sea. Byron and Hester subsequently fell out, Byron describing her as ‘that dangerous thing, a female wit’. Perhaps she was simply the funnier of the two.

On the way to Egypt the party was shipwrecked. Hester lost all her possessions and clothes. She subsequently dressed in Turkish men’s attire: trousers, waistcoat and turban (later shaving her head so a turban fitted more snugly). She became legendary for her flouting of convention and her nerve. In Jerusalem, and Damascus she entered holy places on horseback without wearing a veil, both shocking breaches of protocol. She possessed a supreme self-confidence and convinced powerful, and often potentially violent, men that she was their equal. Her ride to Palmyra in 1813 was through territory dominated by a local Bedouin ruler whose reputation suggested he was more likely to stake her out in the boiling sun, but he was won over by her confidence and her amazing horse riding skills. On her entrance into Palmyra she was treated almost like a deity. She acquired mythical, almost divine, status amongst local communities.

A passionate archaeologist, her dig at Ashkelon was possibly the first properly researched and methodical dig in the Holy Land. She failed to find the sought-for millions of gold coins, but did find a massive headless Greco-Roman statue which Hester ordered to be smashed into a thousand pieces to prove she was not digging for treasures to take back to England. All a bit bizarre.

Hester eventually settled in a fortress on the top of a hill at Joun in the Lebanon and her home became the retreat for the persecuted in the area. Her perceived influence and power were such that local rulers were anxious not to make an enemy of her. There is a possibility she became unbalanced following a fever and it seems she started to believe in her divine mission, adopting a strange mule which would eventually carry her into Jerusalem as a Messiah. Her increasing eccentricity alienated the British government who stopped her pension and she fell heavily into debt, eventually living virtually as a hermit. Her servants started stealing from her, and at the age of 63 she finally died alone and unburied until the arrival of a British official who discovered her decomposing body. A sad end to a remarkable life.

The same question for Hester Stanhope as for Gertrude Bell: what is her link to Marylebone? (there are two links in fact). Would be great to receive your comments.

She was described by the diplomat, Mark Sykes, as ‘a silly, chattering windbag; a conceited, gushing, flat-chested man-woman, globe trotting, rump-wagging, blathering ass’. Some diplomat! He was talking about the remarkable scholar and traveller, Gertrude Bell (1868-1926). You may have seen her portrayed by Nicole Kidman in the rather disappointing 2015 movie ‘Queen of the Desert’ directed by Werner Herzog.

An alternative view to Sykes’ was held by T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia’) who said ‘she was born too gifted’. It appeared that, without noticeable effort, Bell excelled at every challenge she accepted. A gifted linguist, she spoke English, Arabic, French, German, Italian and some Ottoman languages. She was a match for the greatest male mountaineers. A peak in the Swiss Alps, Gertrudspitze, is named after her. She took on the toughest of challenges and only survived an attempt on the Finsteraarhorn by clinging desperately for two days to the end of a rope on an icy rock face in extreme weather conditions.

On her travels in Arabia she would ride for up to 12 hours a day in the stifling heat of the desert with only stagnant water to drink, carrying guns under her clothing and cartridges in her boots. (Although she did apparently also carry with her a Wedgwood tea service, a writing desk and the latest in fashionable attire).

The expertise and knowledge acquired on her travels led to Gertrude’s employment in the ‘Arab Bureau’, committed to encouraging Arab opposition to Ottoman rule and, by implication, obtaining their support for Britain in WWI. Like T.E. Lawrence, Bell was enthusiastic about Arab independence and the creation of an Arab state. Shortly after the end of the war, in 1919, she completed her report, ‘Self Determination in Mesopotamia’. The initial post war settlement, however, left the British with influence and power over the local officials and Bell spent time mediating between the two sides. The subsequent Cairo Conference in 1921 adopted her ideas and accepted her recommendation that King Faisal be appointed to take control of the newly created Iraq. Bell became a principal advisor of the new king. As well as influencing the design of the new flag she also founded a National Museum and as an archaeologist she supervised various digs. Working with the new political settlement though was more hard-going. At one point she wrote of the various local tribes involved: “No-one knows exactly what they do want, least of all themselves, except that they don’t want us!”

Bell’s health faded in the 1920s, and in 1926 she died after a drug overdose. It is not known if suicide was intended.

A peer of Gertrude’s, D.G. Hogarth, wrote:

“ No woman in recent time has combined her qualities-her taste for arduous and dangerous adventure with her scientific interest and knowledge, her competence in archaeology and art, her distinguished literary gift, her sympathy for all sorts and condition of men, her political insight and appreciation of human values, her masculine vigour, hard common sense and practical efficiency-all tempered by feminine charm and a most romantic spirit.”

Gertrude Bell was from the north of England and her London base was in Sloane Street, Kensington from where she surprisingly campaigned against extending the vote to women.

Most of my walks are, however, in Westminster, not Kensington, but I mention Gertrude Bell in one of my Marylebone walks.

So, what was her link to Marylebone? To give you a clue, several other notable women share the same link. Your turn to do the research! Post your answers in the comments box!

The building was originally designed as a bazaar for the selling of work by jewellers, blacksmiths, capenters and artists but the enterprise failed, and it essentially became a storage facility or warehouse, used by the wealthy for storing their carriages and other precious items when they retired to their country houses ‘out of season’.

A catastrophic fire in 1874 destroyed not only most of the building but all the possessions stored there. Ironically the building had been touted as virtually fireproof owing to its iron structure but it was the collapse of the iron roof during the fire that caused so much damage. The fire took three days to extinguish. The value of the art and possessions destroyed is unknown, not least because items were under-insured owing to the building’s reputation for safety. It is estimated that, using modern values, up to £220m pounds worth of art and possessions were lost, including paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds and JMW Turner.

The building was designed by a man called Seth Smith and built in the 1830s. It has recently been renovated and has a rooftop restaurant. I’ve not told you its name but the photo below gives you a clue! And you can always leave a comment below to check it out! Would be great to hear from you.

Everyone has heard of Florence Nightingale but was it her cousin, Barbara Bodichon (Barbara Leigh Smith), who had the greater influence on society? Barbara features in my Marylebone walk.

Along with Caroline Norton (also well worth looking up and someone who is included in my Mayfair walk) she fought for changes in the divorce laws and fought for the right of married women to retain their earnings and own property independently of their husband.

Barbara founded the first Women’s Suffrage Committee and organised the first women’s suffrage petition that was handed to John Stuart Mill to present to parliament.

She was a pretty good painter, too!

Sign up for the Marylebone walk to discover more, particularly Barbara’s remarkable set of connections!

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Included in my guided tour of Marylebone is the Medical Society of London, founded in 1773 by the fascinating John Coakley Lettsom. Exactly 100 years after its foundation, the Society moved into its current wonderful building in Chandos Street, just off Cavendish Square.

Clearly a man with a sense of humour, John Coakley Lettsom penned this ditty:

I, John Lettsom,
Blisters, bleeds and sweats ’em.
If, after that, they please to die,
I, John, Lettsom.

Lettsom produced ‘hints’, pamphlets, and letters on a range of subjects including Sunday schools, female industry, soup kitchens, provision for the blind, and a bee society. He condemned quackery, card parties, intemperance and tea drinking, which he felt made society effeminate.

He also tried to popularise the ‘mangel-wurzel’, but only succeeded in inspiring a ‘scrumpy and western’ band in Somerset.

Find out more on the ‘Meander arond Marylebone’ walk.

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