2025 brings the 25th anniversary of our researches into the lives and travels of celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent, studies that began with a reprint (Oxford, 2002) of Bent’s The Cyclades (now 140 years old in 2025).
Over these twenty-five years of following the Bents (five more than they were granted for their travels together) in the Levant, Africa, and Arabia, a number of questions remain unanswered – awaiting the discoveries of future explorers. Our want list in fact:
No. 1) The Missing Chronicle – Ethiopia 1893?
“When I returned, after inspecting the convent, to my dismay [Mabel] was gone, and what happened she thus tells in her Chronicle…”
Where is Mabel Bent’s missing travel diary (‘Chronicle’) covering the couple’s journey to ‘Abyssinia’ in 1893? We know from Bent that it provided material for his book on the area – The Sacred City of the Ethiopians (1893, see especially pp. 45, 47 for the quote above; and see Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 3 (Oxford, 2012, pp. 175-207)). It consists, probably, of a single notebook as the couple’s trip there was curtailed; it is the only one apparently not with the others in the archives of the Hellenic Society, London (presented before or after Mabel’s death (1929) by her niece Violet Ethel folliott (1882-1932)). Its interest to students of the region cannot be overstated, but the chances are as slim as Mabel’s notebooks themselves that it will ever turn up, but who knows?
No. 2) The fabled clay ‘Bethel Seal/Stamp’?
Where is the fabled clay seal/stamp bought by the Bents in the Wadi Hadramaut in 1894, and which possibly Mabel later concealed at ‘Bethel’ (Beitin, West Bank, 5 km northeast of Ramallah) in the early 1900s in Theodore’s honour? For Mabel, Bethel represented the terminus of one of the frankincense trails from Yemen and Oman, via the Wadi Hadramaut, regions that inspired the couple from 1894 until Bent’s death in 1897. What more appropriate gesture by his grieving widow than to bury the seal (presumably a trader’s mark on a consignment of resin) as a tribute and private memorial (see their Southern Arabia (1900, London, Chapters VI-XXII) and Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 3 (2010, Oxford, pp. 129-237)). Found (or its double), by archaeologists in the 1950s, where is it now?
No. 3) When Mabel met Theodore?
“Before she was married she travelled in many countries including Spain and Italy, and met her husband in the Arctic region – i.e., Norway; from her earliest years having a wish to see those distant lands where the ordinary traveller fears to tread, ‘And how fortunate that my husband’s tastes should be exactly the same as my own,’ said Mrs. Bent, as we talked of the days when she had no idea her wishes would be so fully gratified.” (The Gentlewoman – The Illustrated Weekly Journal for Gentlewomen, No. 175, Vol. VII, Saturday, 11 November 1893, pp. 621-622)
How, when, and where exactly in Norway did the young Theodore and Mabel meet? They were distant cousins via the Lambarts of Yorkshire and County Meath. No documentation has surfaced, we only have a throwaway line from Mabel saying that’s where they set eyes on each other first. It would have been in the early 1870s, Theodore having come down from Oxford. They were married fairly soon thereafter in the little church of Staplestown, Co. Carlow, Ireland, on 2 August 1877, and began their 20 years of travel together (Levant, Africa, Arabia) with a honeymoon in Italy.
No. 4) Bent’s unpublished watercolours?
How can the known, but unpublished, Bent watercolours (of ‘Mashonaland’, the Greek Islands, Arabia, etc.) be preserved and exhibited? Important historical records, they should be made accessible to the scholar-traveller. They do turn up from time to time. One, of a scene from Socotra, was auctioned recently and is now in a private collection.
No. 5) Mabel’s photographs?
Where are all Mabel’s photographs? Beginning in 1885, Mabel was the expedition photographer on the couple’s adventures. Of the thousands of plates/prints, all that remain are the images reproduced in Bent’s three monographs (1892, 1893, 1900) and some few of his published articles. Mabel’s work did get transferred to lantern slides for Bent’s lectures and they were stored in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society, London, before being discarded in the 1950s, being (then) beyond the powers of conservation – a huge loss. Tantalizingly, there is a paper print of a monument from Turkey’s western coastal area, tucked inside one of Mabel’s notebooks.
No. 6) ‘The Bent Turkish Embroidery Bequest’?
The Bents were great collectors of costumes, fabrics, and embroideries (to keep or sell). A mystery today is the provenance of the ‘Bent Turkish Embroidery Bequest‘ (more modest than it sounds) in the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston (UK). It would be fascinating to discover how the items found their way from the Eastern Mediterranean to Lancashire. (Only 80 km southeast of Preston is the Bents’ country house – Sutton Hall, Sutton; perhaps an answer lies in this direction.)
No. 7) Robert McNair Wilson Swan (1858-1904)?
Tuesday, 18 December 1883: “Met Mr. Swan who more than fulfilled our warmest hopes.” (Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 1 (p. 21; Oxford, 2006). Is there a photograph anywhere of the Bents’ great friend Robert M.W. Swan? The couple met the latter when he was a mining engineer on the Cycladic island of Antiparos in 1883. In 1891 he joined the travellers for their investigations at Great Zimbabwe, where he undertook surveying duties, contributing a chapter to Bent’s Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892) (and see Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 2 (2012, Oxford, pp. 17-175)). A decade later he was working for various mining companies on the Malay Peninsular, only to die of complications following liver surgery in Kuala Lumpur in 1904 (c. 45 years, the same age as Bent on his death coincidentally). No archive seems to have a likeness of this driven, capable Scotsman and we would like very much to see him, or learn of his final resting place.
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