Britain and the Arab Middle East by Cooper Lisa;

Author:Cooper, Lisa;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4644111
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2017-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

Italy and the Dalmatian Coast, 1910

‘Dearest Mother. I have begun life as a student [if you do not recall me] and have been working all day long at a palace, partly at the German Institute and partly in the Palatine. It has been delightful beyond words.’13 Such were Bell's sentiments upon writing home from Rome in February 1910. Never content to travel for pure, unfocused pleasure, even in a place which offered as many varied cultural delights as the Eternal City, Bell set herself to learn as much as she could about the Roman architectural remains and absorb what she could from the cadre of eminent Classical scholars residing there.

Although none of Bell's extant letters indicate specific reasons for coming to Italy, her archaeological interests at the time – which primarily concerned the palace of Ukhaidir in Mesopotamia and its architectural elements that derived inspiration from Greco-Roman traditions – must have been her primary motivation. Bell had by this time just recently completed her article on the vaulting systems of Ukhaidir, which she had submitted to the Journal of Hellenic Studies,14 and she still had foremost in her mind the vaults’ possible connection to Rome and the West, something she had only cursorily explored thus far.

It is evident that while in Rome, Bell wished to spend more of her time with archaeologists than with any other friends or acquaintances, for the former are frequently mentioned in her letters both before and after the departure of her father, who had been her travelling companion in Rome for at least ten days in February.15 When Bell remained on her own in Rome for the rest of February and into March, her education in Roman-period architecture and ornament seems to have intensified, particularly after a lecture that she gave, probably at the British School at Rome. She reports that it was attended by ‘a very distinguished audience of professors’.16 It is likely that on this occasion Bell lectured about her findings at Ukhaidir, and that she received helpful and enthusiastic feedback from the attendees.

Present at Bell's lecture, and probably the person who had organized the talk, was a long-time friend of Bell, Eugénie Strong, at that time the assistant director of the British School at Rome (Fig. 5.1). Working in that capacity until 1925, Strong helping to transform the institution into a major scholarly and cultural centre.17 Strong was a well-connected individual in Britain, having moved in London high society in her youth, and then having benefitted from her marriage to Sanford Arthur Strong, a scholar of Oriental languages and literature and an art historian, who served as Librarian to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire.18 Eugénie herself would assume this post for four years upon her husband's death in 1904. She was also a well-trained and skilled scholar of Classical art and archaeology. She had been educated at Cambridge, the British School at Athens, and Munich, where she studied under the Classical archaeologist Adolf Fürtwangler and the philologist Ludwig Traube.

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