of Lebanon. “Shall we try and make them grow at Rounton?” she asked. She had been looking forward to a respite in England. “But you know, dearest Father,” she continued, “I shall be back here before long! One doesn’t keep away from the East when one has got into it this far.” By June she was planting the pine seeds on the lawn at Rounton.
C HAPTER S IX
A Different Challenge
I n Yorkshire during the summer of 1900, and for most of the following twelve months, Gertrude spent time with her sisters Elsa and Molly and her brothers Hugo and Maurice, and cared for her father, ill with rheumatism. From time to time she took the train to London, lunched and shopped with various friends, and dined when she could with Domnul Chirol. Recently made the director of the Foreign Department at The Times , Domnul was devoted to her and always willing to lend her a fatherly ear. His concern and compassion, along with his dry wit and convivial attitude, made him her favorite companion. He shared her interests in languages, literature and art, understood her loneliness (he too was lonely) and cherished her friendship. He guided her in political affairs, gave her introductions to important people and encouraged her travels, and as she traveled, she reported back to him; he used the information in his editorials and as background for officials. The reports she made from wherever she went—Europe, the East—were highly detailed. Details almost obsessed her, and in her diaries and correspondence with family and friends, she rarely left out a color or a food or a flower or a description of an experience or a person.
But, except for confiding in Domnul, she avoided discussing how she felt about herself, the way her life was turning out or the loneliness that drove her. In the Victorian setting in which she was raised, she was taught not to brood over sadness but to push it away, to busy herself. And thus, in addition to reading history and literature, she wrote letters, articles and books, studied languages, learned about art, architecture and archaeology, took up photography, played tennis and golf, swam, went riding and played bridge, filling every vacant moment by doing something. She had proceeded thus after the loss of Cadogan, and so she continued to do, rushing from one exercise to the next, filling in whatever empty moments remained by writing things down in all their minutiae, intentionally leaving no time for introspection or self-analysis.
S he found desert travel alluring, but the mountains gnawed at her too, their very existence summoning her to climb them. In 1899, at the age of thirty-one, she had climbed the Meije; the following summer, after her return from Jerusalem and Damascus, she set off for the Swiss Alps and Chamonix to climb peaks that had not yet been scaled. Arriving at her Swiss hotel at the beginning of August 1900, Gertrude settled into her room, unpacked her suitcase and wrote at once to her father: “I don’t think there is a more delightful sensation than that of opening an Alpine campaign—meeting one’s guide, talking over the great ascents that look so easy on the map; and laying out one’s clean new mountain clothes.”
After a few days of practice runs, she climbed Chamonix and then made the ascent up the Mer de Glacé, explaining in her letter home that the Sea of Ice was really a great mass of broken ice that continued to break and crack. The tougher the conditions, the more she enjoyed them, and within a week she wired home, “ GREPONT TRAVERSED ” and, a week later, “ DRU TRAVERSED .” The weather turned foul, however, and the bigger peaks would have to wait for another visit.
In August 1901, she was off again to Switzerland, stopping first in London for dinner with Domnul, who cast a wary eye on her dangerous mountain climbing. She shrugged off his concerns and arrived at her Alpine hotel; from the window of her room she could see “the great rock of the Engelhorn opposite,
C HAPTER S IX
A Different Challenge
I n Yorkshire during the summer of 1900, and for most of the following twelve months, Gertrude spent time with her sisters Elsa and Molly and her brothers Hugo and Maurice, and cared for her father, ill with rheumatism. From time to time she took the train to London, lunched and shopped with various friends, and dined when she could with Domnul Chirol. Recently made the director of the Foreign Department at The Times , Domnul was devoted to her and always willing to lend her a fatherly ear. His concern and compassion, along with his dry wit and convivial attitude, made him her favorite companion. He shared her interests in languages, literature and art, understood her loneliness (he too was lonely) and cherished her friendship. He guided her in political affairs, gave her introductions to important people and encouraged her travels, and as she traveled, she reported back to him; he used the information in his editorials and as background for officials. The reports she made from wherever she went—Europe, the East—were highly detailed. Details almost obsessed her, and in her diaries and correspondence with family and friends, she rarely left out a color or a food or a flower or a description of an experience or a person.
But, except for confiding in Domnul, she avoided discussing how she felt about herself, the way her life was turning out or the loneliness that drove her. In the Victorian setting in which she was raised, she was taught not to brood over sadness but to push it away, to busy herself. And thus, in addition to reading history and literature, she wrote letters, articles and books, studied languages, learned about art, architecture and archaeology, took up photography, played tennis and golf, swam, went riding and played bridge, filling every vacant moment by doing something. She had proceeded thus after the loss of Cadogan, and so she continued to do, rushing from one exercise to the next, filling in whatever empty moments remained by writing things down in all their minutiae, intentionally leaving no time for introspection or self-analysis.
S he found desert travel alluring, but the mountains gnawed at her too, their very existence summoning her to climb them. In 1899, at the age of thirty-one, she had climbed the Meije; the following summer, after her return from Jerusalem and Damascus, she set off for the Swiss Alps and Chamonix to climb peaks that had not yet been scaled. Arriving at her Swiss hotel at the beginning of August 1900, Gertrude settled into her room, unpacked her suitcase and wrote at once to her father: “I don’t think there is a more delightful sensation than that of opening an Alpine campaign—meeting one’s guide, talking over the great ascents that look so easy on the map; and laying out one’s clean new mountain clothes.”
After a few days of practice runs, she climbed Chamonix and then made the ascent up the Mer de Glacé, explaining in her letter home that the Sea of Ice was really a great mass of broken ice that continued to break and crack. The tougher the conditions, the more she enjoyed them, and within a week she wired home, “ GREPONT TRAVERSED ” and, a week later, “ DRU TRAVERSED .” The weather turned foul, however, and the bigger peaks would have to wait for another visit.
In August 1901, she was off again to Switzerland, stopping first in London for dinner with Domnul, who cast a wary eye on her dangerous mountain climbing. She shrugged off his concerns and arrived at her Alpine hotel; from the window of her room she could see “the great rock of the Engelhorn opposite,
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