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  • Travels with someone's aunt

    Travels with someone's aunt; Art: Preview

    Time Out
    September 01, 2004


    'Off the Beaten Track': women bitten by the travel bug.

    When British traveller Mark Sykes met Gertrude Bell in Jerusalem in
    1906 he described the archaeologist as a 'conceited, gushing,
    flat-chested, man-woman, globe-trotting, rumpwagging, blethering
    ass'. Bell had been foolish enough to share with him her passion for
    the Middle East where she flouted convention byriding on a masculine
    saddle and, in her divided skirt, frequently passed as a man. When at
    home, though, she was careful not to challenge masculine pride by
    behaving as a dutiful daughter, refusing to walk unchaperoned along
    Piccadilly and helping to found the AntiSuffrage League.

    Mary Kingsley even wore the restrictive dress of a Victorian spinster
    on her travels in West Africa, which began in 1892 after the death of
    her parents. 'Youhave no right', she wrote in her book 'Travels in
    West Africa', 'to go about Africa in things you would be ashamed to
    be seen in at home.' And when lecturingon her findings back home, she
    would ask her audience whether or not she reminded them of a maiden
    aunt. In Arthur King's photograph, which was taken in 1900 as a
    publicity shot, she looks every inch the tight-lipped matron who
    wouldn't dream of stepping an inch out of line.

    Despite celebrating the many women who escaped the tedium of the
    limited lives offered their sex in nineteenth- and early
    twentieth-century British society by hoofing it to foreign parts, the
    National Portrait Gallery's 'Off the Beaten Track' conveys the
    stifling atmosphere that they left behind rather than the freedom
    which they attained abroad. So keen were these middle- and
    upper-class women not to appear disreputable to their families,
    friends and audiences that, when sitting for paintings or
    photographs, they presented themselves as the embodiment of
    respectability. You would be hard pressed to spot the spirit of
    adventure in any of the images on display.

    Isabella Bird travelled the world to the US, Australia, Hawaii,
    Japan, India, Persia, Korea, China and Morocco gathering material for
    innumerable books. Photographed by Sir Benjamin Stone outside the
    Houses of Parliament in 1899, wearing a white lace shawl over a long
    black dress, her hair hidden beneath a high bonnet and her face by a
    tight veil, this diminutive figure (under five feet tall) looks as
    though she would scarcely contemplate crossing the road, letalone
    sailing the world's oceans or regaling the House on 'the Armenian
    question' the status of Armenian Christians in the Turkish Empire, of
    which she had first-hand knowledge.

    Like several of these travellers, Bird first went abroad for health
    reasons.

    Free from the suffocating atmosphere of British society, her spinal
    problems andnumerous other complaints miraculously disappeared, only
    to return when she did.'I am well', she wrote to a friend, 'as long
    as I live on horseback, go to bed at eight, sleep out of doors or in
    a log cabin, and lead in all respects a completely unconventional
    life.' The captions and accompanying book downplay theachievements of
    these remarkable women. There is no mention, for instance, that Dame
    Freya Stark was the first person to make detailed maps of many areas
    of theMiddle East. Little distinction is made between the courageous
    women who, havingcreated opportunities for themselves, set off alone
    in search of adventure, health or knowledge and those who simply
    followed diplomat husbands or brothers overseas. The result is to put
    the achievements of women such as the renowned anthropologist Mary
    Douglas, the botanists Maria Graham and Marianne North or
    archaeologists Gertrude Bell and Dame Kathleen Kenyon on a par with
    the watercolours of dilettantes such as Jane Digby, who married an
    Arab sheik, and Lady Canning, whose husband was Governor General of
    India. A fascinating if somewhat frustrating journey, none the less.

    Sarah Kent For details see National Portrait Gallery.
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