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BEZIQUE: The Private Life of Gertrude Lowthian Bell: Part 3: The Headland
PART 3 plunges the reader into a psychological maelstrom of obsessions, fantasies and the afterlife set against the backdrop of war.
When Gertrude decides she wants to spend the rest of her life with married man Dick Doughty-Wylie she has been in his presence for only a matter of weeks though having corresponded with him over a number of years. Lilian Doughty-Wylie a wealthy heiress and dedicated director of nursing who had previously supported all her husband’s Red Cross work is the innocent in this particular menage a trois.
Returning to the desert on her most famous journey to remote Arabia, Gertrude was experiencing an acute and unsettling loneliness in the desert – a type of loneliness that had previously given her comfort. The reason? She had returned to this red sand-dune desert of popular imagination for different reasons. She was now motivated not by discovery nor by her usual sense of adventure but by a sense of hopelessness and frustration with the state of her relationship with Doughty-Wylie; the journey is intended to sort things out – one way or another. She thinks the archaeology not worth the candle and professes not to care whether she lives or dies. She returns to England by her own account, with a mind permanently altered.
Brought to the floor of Hell by her war work with the Army’s Wounded and Missing Office in Boulogne, Gertrude is privy to some secret intelligence via her own social circles and constructs her own plans and war strategies. These involve a naval attack on Syria, led by her uncle, and the establishment of Palestine Prima – a revival of an ancient Byzantine province. With remarkable audacity, she knocks on Winston Churchill’s door…
Soaked in English history and imbued with the ever-so familiar Burne-Jones imagery of medieval chivalry, Gertrude has finally found her own modern-day knight in Major Charles Doughty-Wylie. Bestowing her favours on him as he went off to the Dardanelles in 1915, he had been reluctant to take anything from her but her words, words with which to feed his ‘dream ecstasies’. Only when he leaves for battle (for the last time as it turned out) was she able to fully drop her guard – despite not having received the longed-for long-term commitment she craved.
The build-up to the fighting at Gallipoli and the V Beach landings in particular are described in remarkable and striking detail and as experienced by Doughty-Wylie V.C., a man sent out as an intelligence officer (and spy) but who had voluntary ‘jumped-ship’ and joined the fighting troops. With the death-threats of two women ringing in his head, he enters the battle unarmed.
Then comes a stream-of-consciousness letter to Dick – a letter he was destined never to read – in which Gertrude writes lyrically about her tormented state of mind: the Headland constantly in sight but she, always too far out at sea to reach it. 'The Headland’ forms the last chapter of the book.
When Gertrude decides she wants to spend the rest of her life with married man Dick Doughty-Wylie she has been in his presence for only a matter of weeks though having corresponded with him over a number of years. Lilian Doughty-Wylie a wealthy heiress and dedicated director of nursing who had previously supported all her husband’s Red Cross work is the innocent in this particular menage a trois.
Returning to the desert on her most famous journey to remote Arabia, Gertrude was experiencing an acute and unsettling loneliness in the desert – a type of loneliness that had previously given her comfort. The reason? She had returned to this red sand-dune desert of popular imagination for different reasons. She was now motivated not by discovery nor by her usual sense of adventure but by a sense of hopelessness and frustration with the state of her relationship with Doughty-Wylie; the journey is intended to sort things out – one way or another. She thinks the archaeology not worth the candle and professes not to care whether she lives or dies. She returns to England by her own account, with a mind permanently altered.
Brought to the floor of Hell by her war work with the Army’s Wounded and Missing Office in Boulogne, Gertrude is privy to some secret intelligence via her own social circles and constructs her own plans and war strategies. These involve a naval attack on Syria, led by her uncle, and the establishment of Palestine Prima – a revival of an ancient Byzantine province. With remarkable audacity, she knocks on Winston Churchill’s door…
Soaked in English history and imbued with the ever-so familiar Burne-Jones imagery of medieval chivalry, Gertrude has finally found her own modern-day knight in Major Charles Doughty-Wylie. Bestowing her favours on him as he went off to the Dardanelles in 1915, he had been reluctant to take anything from her but her words, words with which to feed his ‘dream ecstasies’. Only when he leaves for battle (for the last time as it turned out) was she able to fully drop her guard – despite not having received the longed-for long-term commitment she craved.
The build-up to the fighting at Gallipoli and the V Beach landings in particular are described in remarkable and striking detail and as experienced by Doughty-Wylie V.C., a man sent out as an intelligence officer (and spy) but who had voluntary ‘jumped-ship’ and joined the fighting troops. With the death-threats of two women ringing in his head, he enters the battle unarmed.
Then comes a stream-of-consciousness letter to Dick – a letter he was destined never to read – in which Gertrude writes lyrically about her tormented state of mind: the Headland constantly in sight but she, always too far out at sea to reach it. 'The Headland’ forms the last chapter of the book.
194 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 9, 2018
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