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.