The very rare portrait of Theodore Bent from his obituary in ‘St. James’s Budget’, 14 May 1897 (Bent died on 5 May 1897). The studio of J. Russell & Sons, pre 1895. (From the British Library Collection, shelfmark MFM.MLD32, 14/05/1897, page 15, reproduced with permission).
That invaluable resource The British Newspaper Archive regularly adds new and arcane material. Recently (Summer 2025), they included in their collection the St James’s Budget (a weekly digest of the St James’s Gazette, a London evening newspaper for the middle classes), and the issue of 14 May 1897 (p. 15) carried an obituary of Theodore Bent, who had died on 5 May.
The obituary (see our anthology) includes a very rare photograph of Bent, from the studio of J. Russell & Sons, the establishment’s photographer of choice: a photograph that in all likelihood has not been reproduced since 1897.
We don’t know for the moment the date of the photograph, but it probably comes from a session in the Baker Street branch of Russell’s, shot, possibly, as late as the Spring of 1895 – a session that might also have resulted in some other iconic images we have of the Bents, including the one of Theodore – with whip and topee – that Mabel selected for her husband’s obituary in the Illustrated London News of 15 May 1897 (p. 669), which is well known.
Also from the Russell studio (pre 1895), Theodore, with whip and topee, an image Mabel selected for her husband’s obituary in the ‘Illustrated London News’ of 15 May 1897 (p. 669).
Accordingly, we now have four images of the Bents from Russell’s, two of Theodore and two of Mabel, probably taken at the same time. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of a Russell photograph showing the couple together. The Bents’ travel schedule, and commitments in Britain, would have made arranging a studio session complicated.
Mabel Bent dressed for travel. (Photo taken (pre 1895) in the studios of society-photographers, J. Russell & Sons).
The fourth Russell image is of Mabel, standing confidently by the side of one of her own cameras – she had become expedition photographer as early as 1885.
Dr Marielle Risse now lives in Cambridge, MA. She taught cultural studies, literature and pedagogy for 21 years on the Arabian Peninsula at the American University of Sharjah (UAE), the University of Sharjah-Woman’s (UAE) and Dhofar University (Oman). Her research areas are Arabian Peninsula cultures and intercultural communication. Her previous books are Community and Autonomy in Southern Oman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Foodways in Southern Oman (Routledge, 2021) and Houseways in Southern Oman (Routledge, 2023). Her most recent book is Researching and Working on the Arabian Peninsula: Creating Effective Interactions (2025, Palgrave Macmillan).
General map of Arabia marked with the areas of interest to the Bents in the 1890s (‘Southern Arabia’ 1900).
Theodore and Mabel Bent journeyed to Oman in the winter of 1894/5, and, having seen many references to the explorers in Marielle’s work, we asked her if she would care to write something for us, of her choice, weaving the Bents into the landscape she loves…
Cite from this article, please, as: Marielle Risse, ‘Ya Mabel’ and the Duchess: A Victorian but Modern, Female Traveller and a Modern but Victorian, Female Traveller in Southern Oman. An article in The Bent Archive website, August 2025 [http://tambent.com/2025/08/07/ya-mabel-and-the-duchess-by-marielle-risse/]
‘Ya Mabel’ and the Duchess: A Victorian but Modern, Female Traveller and a Modern but Victorian, Female Traveller in Southern Oman
By Marielle Risse, August 2025
Abstract
Wadi Dabat, eastern sector of Jabal al Qara, Dhofar highlands (Wikipedia, credit: Shifabeg, Sept. 2018).
Has travel writing moved with the times, shedding racism, colonialism, ‘othering,’ and metro-centric points of view? What are the conditions in which ‘imagination and humility necessary to climb into the head of people who live by a very different set of assumptions’ is created? Later travellers to southern Oman have seen and reported only what was most unusual, most foreign and more recent books about the Dhofar region show less understanding of the culture than articles and books written in the 1800s. We will discuss two specific examples of this odd juxtaposition: a Victorian, female traveller who is more accurate about Dhofaris than a modern, female traveller.
Keywords: Dhofar, Mabel Bent, Oman, Qara Mountains, Theodore Bent, travel writing; Jan Morris, Suzanna St. Albans, Wilfred Thesiger
Introduction
My starting question for this research is: has travel writing moved with the times, shedding racism, colonialism, ‘othering,’ and metro-centric points of view? Thinking specifically about southern Arabia, why would Thesiger, now described as ‘a fond old blimp in cavalry-twills’ write about inhabitants of the southern Dhofar region with understanding and respect while writers from the late 20th and early 21st centuries stay stuck in the ‘exoticizing’ mode? note 1
Thesiger’s Arabian Sands is widely acclaimed as a great travel book; it is also an accurate travel book. note 2 He not only wrote what he observed, he wrote the explanations for the actions and attitudes he observed. He had the rare advantage of time, but even if his work is set aside, the earlier explorers/surveyors of the Dhofar had, within the blinkers of their ‘imperial gaze’, an ability to observe and report accurately. note 3
Many later travellers to southern Oman saw and reported only what was most unusual, most foreign. These more recent books about the Dhofar region show less understanding of the culture than articles and books written in the 1800s. I will discuss two specific examples of this odd juxtaposition: a Victorian, female traveller who is more accurate about Dhofaris than a modern, female traveller.
Theodore (1852-1897) and Mabel (1847-1929) Bent, quintessential Victorians, explored the coast and the mountains of southern Oman in 1894. A few years later, Theodore having died four days after their return to England from Aden in 1897, an account of their travels in the wider region feature in Southern Arabia (1900), compiled by Mabel. note 4 With reference to Oman, although there are plenty of acidic comments [‘Merbat [Mirbat] is uncongenial’ with ‘no points of interest’], Mabel also includes careful documentation of the tribespeople living in the Qara Mountains (232). She was not pleased that the Qara men addressed her only as ‘Ya Mabel’ instead of ‘Mrs. Bent’ but she was capable of insights such as ‘Travelers like ourselves must be a great nuisance drinking up the scanty supply of water’.
I will compare her work to another Western woman who has written about the same area, including the Qara mountains, the Duchess of St. Albans, who was, surprisingly, less perceptive. In Where Time Stood Still: A Portrait of Oman (1980) St. Albans writes of the ‘primitive’ tribespeople who ‘have never worked with their hands’. How would ‘primitive’ people living in caves and herding flocks have survived if they had ‘never worked with their hands’?
The Bents
Theodore and Mabel had already explored in Italy, Greece, Bahrain, South Africa, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen when they arrived in Oman. Their trip to Dhofar began when they left ‘Maskat’ (Muscat) 17 December 1894 and travelled by ship south along the coast, arriving in Mirbat on 20 December. After travelling along the coast and up into the mountains, they left the Dhofar region from Al Hafa (part of modern-day Salalah) on 23 January 1894. I believe they are the first Westerners to visit the Dhofar mountains to write a description of it.
Although the Bents were not in the employ of the British government, they were quintessential Victorian-age travellers who, in their writing, specifically support British imperialism in their Southern Arabia (1900/2005). The book, as mentioned above, written by Mabel after Theodore died soon after returning to England from Yemen in 1897, viewed all landscapes through the perspective of how the land might be useful to the Empire:
‘If this tract of country comes into the hands of a civilizing nation, it will be capable of great and useful development… and a health resort for the inhabitants [i.e. British inhabitants] of the burnt-up centres of Arabian commerce, Aden and Maskat (274).
Southern Arabia is a book with plenty of spleen – it’s impossible to say how much is caused by Mabel Bent’s mourning for her dead spouse or her natural disposition. In either case, it is amusing to come across her acid opinions: Mirbat has a ‘malarious-looking swamp’ and ‘Our boat was one of the dirtiest I have ever travelled on’ (232). She is clearly a forerunner to the Theroux/Naipaul/Granta/ ‘I hate the natives’ school of travel writing: ‘The Bedouin are rather clever at impromptu verses, and when we were in Wadi Ser they made night hideous by dancing in our camp’; ‘There is no law, order, authority, honor, honesty, or hospitality, and as to the people, I can only describe them as hateful and hating each other’; ‘it appears that a very wicked branch of the Hamoumi tribe hold a portion of this valley’; and she refers to one of the men she travelled with as ‘that horrid little Saleh Hassan’ (128, 175, 177, 217).
The Qara men she travelled with always addressed her, to her anger, only as ‘Mabel’ (258), with the local prefix when calling a person ‘ya’ – as in ‘Ya Mabel!’ They informed the Bents that ‘they did not wish us to give them orders of any kind as they were sheikhs’ and ‘We are gentlemen’ (258, 266). The mountain people of Dhofar, Mabel Bent writes, are:
‘… endowed with a spirit of independence which makes him resent the slightest approach to legal supervision… They would not march longer than they liked; they would only take us where they wished… and if we asked them not to sing at night and disturb our rest, they always set to work with greater vigour (248).
But she always includes a fair amount of real information, taking the time, for example, to explain how indigo is used to dye clothes (145). She also kindly gives hints to future travellers, i.e. warning future geologists that they must tell the camel men ahead of time they will carry rocks and that anthropologists should investigate the religion of the mountains (212, 261). She describes the scenery with careful attention to plants, rock formations, distances, etc. (e.g. Wadi Ghersid, 256; Wadi Nahast, 265) and, noticing that the language spoken in the ‘Gara’ [Qara] mountains was not a dialect, she includes a few words (275). Some of her information is still current. She mentions, for example, that oaths ‘to divorce a favourite wife, are really good’ (180) and the technique of cooking on stones (250), which I have seen practised several times.
The Bents eventually stop struggling to control and ‘we gave up any attempt to guide our own footsteps, but left ourselves entirely in his [Sheik Sehel] hands, to take us whether he would and spend as long about it as he liked’ (257).
Her summation is typical of British Victorian-era travellers: ‘We had discovered a real Paradise in the wilderness, which will be a rich prize for the civilized nation which is enterprising enough to appropriate it’ (276). Within the limited, imperialistic, point-of-view, a reader gets a clear sense of the place and the people. The Bents have a diamond-hard sense of self self-assurance, but they are able to describe accurately and write in a way which effectively gives you the information you need: as you understand the author’s prejudices, you can understand the places and people described and you can thus make your own judgment about both.
Morris
It is rather a surprise, after the gradually lowering racist/condescending tone seen in the arc from the Bents through Thesiger, to read Jan Morris’ Sultan in Oman (2008/1957) a smug, complacent, and judgmental book. note 5 She begins by widely overstating her achievement, declaring that she undertook the ‘… last classic journeys of the Arabian peninsula’, as if being driven in a jeep from Salalah to Muscat in 1956 was on par with Dougherty or Philby (1). To drive home the (moribund) English tradition, she notes that ‘Curzon and Gertrude Bell rose with us approvingly’ (2).
The descriptions illuminate more about Morris’ travels than Oman, i.e. Risut is like ‘… a bay in Cornwall or northern California’ (20); ‘The deeper we penetrated into these Qara foothills, the more lifeless and unearthly the country seemed… It was like an empty Lebanon’; the ‘abyss of Dahaq’ is compared to ‘Boulder or Grand Coulee’; and the Qara mountains ‘felt like England without the churches, or Kentucky without the white palings’ (27, 27, 38). A small lake is ‘“Better than the Backs”, said my companion, “not so many undergraduates”’, which only makes sense if the reader knows this is a term referring to the place where several Cambridge colleges back onto the River Cam (30).
The people have ‘obscure rituals, taboos, and prejudices’ (31). In keeping with the general tone of relegating the inhabitants to prehistoric times, there is no mention of guns. The people ‘hurl in the general direction of their neighbours the heavy throwing sticks (less scientific than boomerangs) with which they were sometimes quaintly armed’ (40). It is clear even in Thesiger’s texts that the men of this region had access to and knowledge of guns. In fact, the cover of one edition is one of Thesiger’s photos showing Bin Ghabaisha holding a rifle.
The Dhofar War
I need to segue to briefly describe the war, from 1965-1975, in order to make my critique of St. Albans. The Dhofar War began as a result of widespread dissatisfaction with the rule of Said bin Taimur, which has been ‘characterized as a desperate attempt to keep the Fifteenth century from being contaminated by the Twentieth’. note 6
Various groups of Dhofaris, primarily from the mountains, and angry at the lack of schools, clinics, electricity, etc., began to attack Oman’s small military forces, the Sultan’s Armed Forces (SAF). These groups coalesced into the Dhofar Liberation Front in 1964, which was then re-named, in 1968, People’s Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf, and ‘a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary program was adopted for the rebellion’. note 7 Its goals included: ‘the liberation of slaves’; ‘the equality of women’ (which included the elimination of polygamy); ‘demolition of the tribal system’; and ‘the unity of all revolutionary forces in the Gulf’. note 8
The SAF did not have enough men or equipment to cope with the insurgency, but the Sultan refused to spend money for the army, nor did he show any understanding or mercy towards the rebels’ demands. The result was that by 1970, the rebels controlled almost all of the Dhofar region. In the same year, in a bloodless coup d’etat, Sultan Qaboos took over control of his father’s government and immediately started a two-front counterattack. He increased the military presence and initiated a hearts and minds campaign to assure the rebels that he intended to meet their demands for modernization.
Soldiers who left the rebels were treated as ‘returning sons’; they were interviewed and immediately released, not jailed. note 9 Sultan Qaboos also ‘emphasized that the past practices of indiscriminate reprisals against civilians on the Jebel had to end.’ note 10
The military who fought the rebels held them in respect as fighters; the enemy was ‘extremely good at seizing the initiative and had a wonderful eye for ground… once outflanked, they tended to melt away’. note 11 Their praise of the rebels is all the clearer when comparing the rebels to fighters from other countries who fought for the Sultan; Iranian and Jordanian soldiers are not accorded the same respect.
As firqat (civil militia) units were created, British soldiers then had the experience of fighting with men who had previously fought with the rebels. Although Jeapes, who wrote one of the first books about the war, often shows his impatience with Dhofaris, he and the other foreign writers have an overall positive impression. Gardiner writes: ‘Omanis were wonderful people to live with. They were superbly honest… They were generous to a fault and… they didn’t take themselves too seriously… [they] wished to be at peace with any man who was ready to be at peace with them.’ note 12
St. Albans
St. Albans’ travel book recounts her extended visit to Oman in the late 1970s. She was clearly no average tourist; her first ‘thank you’ in her Acknowledgements section is to Brigadier Peter Thwaites. The second is ‘The Sultan’s Armed Forces provided transport where I wanted to go’ (ix). Most of the other people mentioned are also British and military. She has done some reading about the history of Oman, but her opinions reflect no ability to understand the reality of the people. One example, of many, is her assertion that:
‘There is a company in England which manufactures florescent braces to make camels visible in the dark, but no Bedu in his right mind will go to the expense and trouble of importing this equipment for his animals. It is very much to his advantage anyway to get them killed on the roads, as the compensation for such a casualty is £500 each.’ (146)
How would desert-dwellers in Oman in the late 1970s have access to information about companies in England? How would they have access to things such as post-office boxes and credit cards to enable such a transaction? It is not to a camel owner’s ‘advantage’ to have his livestock killed by a car, the meat cannot be eaten, and as camels wander far afield, the owner may never know which vehicle killed the camel, not to mention the fact that camel owners grow attached to their animals.
When she arrives in Salalah, her statements become quite difficult to understand. She states that there are ‘nine illiterate tribes of primitive aborigines in the Qara [Mountains]’ (152). note 13 These ‘primitive aborigines’ had just waged a ten-year war with the Omani government in which they had close contact with not only the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, but Russia, China, Cuba, and various Arab countries.
Musallim bin Nafl, the first leader of this revolution, is dismissed by the Duchess as ‘a useless loafer’ and a ‘shiftless, bitter, dissatisfied layabout’, but when she visits mountain villages she is appalled at the conditions (155, 156).
She never connects the revolution encouraged by Musallim and the desperate poverty endured by his people. She writes that the ‘entire population of the Jebel were forced to co-operate’ in the war (157), without understanding that the disease and lack of food she sees in the late 1970s would have been worse in the late 1960s. The difficulties of daily life she herself witnessed encouraged the mountain people to fight against their government – which denied them the basic amenities of modern life such as schools and electricity. note 14
In reading her autobiography Mango and Mimosa (2000), which recounts her work for the British military in World War Two, you might explain that her apathy towards the mountain fighters was generated (maybe sub-consciously) because they fought the British – but even the British who fought the Dhofaris were more realistic/understanding of their situation.
St. Albans describes the Bait Kathiri tribe as ‘nimble as goats’ and says that ‘like our own distant ancestors, they frequently paint themselves blue all over’ (168). Comparing men to animals is grossly insulting in Dhofar and the men do not paint themselves blue. Men and women traditionally wore indigo-dyed fabric which turned the skin blue, an important difference.
These small mistakes create a vision of an ancient, primitive people which erases the reality of the Dhofar region in the late 1970s. St. Albans only carefully describes the life of a small percentage of the inhabitants, living in caves and rough dwellings in the mountains. She discusses ‘witch doctors’ but not the many mosques or daily religious practices of Dhofaris (154). In Salalah at this time there was an airport, Holiday Inn, ‘shops and offices and ultra-modern television centre’, and a hospital (180), but she never shows Omanis interacting in/working in these modern surroundings. The ‘comfortable seaside bungalow’ she stays in is owned by British ex-pats, who are described, but when visiting the ‘model farm’, there is no reference to Omanis who work there (163, 164).
Discussion
In the modern books, the emphasis is firmly placed on the ‘exotic’; where both the Bents and Haines (1845) are able to discern that the people’s ‘skins are discoloured by the dye from their dress, which is composed of blue cotton’ (112), St. Albans sees people who paint themselves.
Evelyn Waugh wrote, ‘It was fun thirty-five years ago to travel far and in great discomfort to meet people whose entire conception of life and manner of expression were alien. Now one has only to leave one’s gate. All fates are worse than death.’ note 15 I think that ‘leaving one’s gate’ is no longer ‘alien’ enough – modern travel writers have an up-hill battle trying to show that they are doing/discovering something new, hence the emphasis on the unusual.
Mabel Bent and her husband were looking for land that would be of benefit for their country; St. Albans was looking for bizarre stories to tell. It is striking how the more recent writers show less understanding and less respect than British writers for the imperialistic era, given the modern emphasis on equality and multi-cultural education. note 16 Gardiner writes that:
‘The patience and tolerance to live harmoniously in an unfamiliar culture; the fortitude to be content with less than comfortable circumstances for prolonged periods; an understanding of and sympathy with a foreign history and religion; a willingness to learn a new language; the flexibility, imagination and humility necessary to climb into the head of people who live by a very different set of assumptions; none of these are found automatically in our modern developed Euro-Atlantic culture.’ note 17
The question remains: What are the conditions in which ‘imagination and humility necessary to climb into the head of people who live by a very different set of assumptions’ is created?
References
Belanger, Kelly 1997. ‘James Theodore Bent and Mabel Virginia Anna Bent’. British Travel Writers: 1876-1909: 31-40. Detroit: Gale Research.
Bent, James Theodore 1895. ‘Exploration of the Frankincense Country, Southern Arabia’. The Geographical Journal 6.2: 109-33.
Bent, James Thedore and Mabel Bent 2005 [1900]. Southern Arabia. London: Elibron.
Bent, Mabel 2010. The Travel Chronicles of Mrs. J. Theodore Bent, Volume III: Deserts of Vast Eternity, Southern Arabia and Persia. Gerald Brisch (ed.). Oxford: Archaeopress.
Haines, Stafford 1845. ‘Memoir of the South and East Coasts of Arabia: Part II’. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 15: 104-160.
Morris, Jan 2008 [1957]. Sultan in Oman. London: Eland.
St. Albans, Suzanne (Duchess) 2000. Mango and Mimosa. London: Virago.
— 1980. Where Time Stood Still: A Portrait of Oman. London: Quartet Books Ltd.
Thesiger, Wilfred 1991 [1959]. Arabian Sands. New York: Penguin.
— 1950. ‘The Badu of Southern Arabia’. Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 37: 53-61.
— 1950. ‘Desert Borderlands of Oman’. Geographical Journal 116: 137-171.
— 1949. ‘A Further Journey across the Empty Quarter’. Geographical Journal 113: 21-46.
— 1948. ‘Across the Empty Quarter’. Geographical Journal 111: 1-21.
— 1946. ‘A New Journey in Southern Arabia’. Geographical Journal 108: 129-145.
Endnotes
Note 1: Ian Thomson, ‘Continental – Books’, The Times (23 Oct. 1994). Return from Note 1
Note 2: Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands. I lived in Salalah for 19 years and am using my personal experiences, extensive research on the culture/history of the region and countless wide-ranging discussions with Dhofar men and women (friends, colleagues and members of my research group) to judge ‘accuracy’. Return from Note 2
Note 3: I am using Mary Louise Pratt’s concept from Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (2nd edn, London: Routledge, 2007). Return from Note 3
Note 6: Fawwaz Trabulsi, ‘The Liberation of Dhofar’, MERIP Reports 6 (1972): 3-11. 5. Return from Note 6
Note 7: J.B. Kelly, ‘Hadramaut, Oman, Dhufar: The Experience Of Revolution’, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 12.2 (1976): 213-30. 224. Return from Note 7
Note 9: Tony Jeapes, SAS: Operation Oman (Nashville: The Battery Press, 1980). 37. Return from Note 9
Note 10: Walter Ladwig, ‘Supporting Allies In Counterinsurgency: Britain and the Dhofar Rebellion’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 19.1 (2008). 71, 72. Return from Note 10
Note 11: Ian Gardiner, In the Service of the Sultan: A First-hand Account of the Dhofar Insurgency (South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Military, 2007). 50. Return from Note 11
Note 13: These comments are representative of her attitude towards Dhofaris; she frequently writes sentences which highlight the ‘foreignness’ of the region but are not accurate. For example she states that the ‘Bait Kathi’ ‘employ as slaves the last three hundred aborigines of the eastern range’ (152). The term ‘slaves’ in Dhofar referred to Africans/African-Omanis from Africa, never people from Omani mountain tribes. In the past, some tribes were classified as ‘weak’: the men were not allowed to carry weapons or marry women from the ‘strong’ tribes. These weak tribes were seen as ‘clients’ to stronger tribes and were protected in return for services such as herding animals, but the people were in no way owned or indentured, see Salim Bakhit Tabook, Tribal Practices and Folklore of Dhofar, Sultanate of Oman. Unpublished PhD thesis, Faculty of Arts, Exeter University, 1997. 44, 55-60, 77-82. Return from Note 13
Note 14: The only other writer who shares St Albans’ point of view is Tremayne, who visited the area during the war and later wrote: ‘The Dhofar War as not a revolution; it was an insurgency and it was foreign; that is, it was sustained from outside Oman, from the PDRY, and paid for by China and USSR. Its objectives were not those of the population. Its hard-core men were mostly Dhofaris removed from Dhofar as children, education in the PDRY as revolutionary Marxists and trained in the Soviet Union, China and elsewhere as guerrilla fighters. They were in fact not in the least representative of the people whom they sought to lead, nor concerned with the country’s own welfare.’ Penelope Tremayne, ‘End of A Ten Years War’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies 122.1 (1977): 44-8. 47.
This attitude is not shared by any of the soldiers who fought in the war, or other researchers. The alternate view can be seen in Trabulsi: ‘He [Sultan Said] introduced oil companies into the Sultanate and he wanted to obliterate any social, political, or cultural effect they might incur. Furthermore, he wanted to monopolize the oil revenue and retain the old economic basis of his system: extortion of the economic surplus through taxation and levies. He was determined not to share a penny with a hungry, undernourished and unemployed population what was discovering, through emigration, the fabulous economic possibilities of the oil economy.’ ‘The Liberation of Dhofar’, 8. Return from Note 14
Note 15: Evelyn Waugh, Diaries of Evelyn Waugh. Michael Davie, ed. (Boston: Little Brown, 1976). 791. Return from Note 15
Note 16: ‘Students in most English-speaking countries are asked to read against the grain of what they are now regularly taught to see, at least at the post-secondary level, as situated and ideological texts, and they are also enabled to study a wider range of texts, produced by a wider range of authors and “cultures” than they had before.’ May Bain Campbell, ‘Travel Writing and its Theory’, in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2002): 262-78. 262. Return from Note 16
While we wait for an audiobook of Theodore Bent’s “The Cyclades, or Life Among the InsularGreeks“, to mark its 140th anniversary (2025) we are asking ‘Cycladists’, those with affinities to the islands, to read memorable extracts for us.
Santorini [Bent’s Ch. 6: Monday 7 January – Wednesday 23 January 1884]
Travel writer Jennifer Barclay reads the Bents on Santorini (photo = Ian smith).
Travel writer and Tilos resident Jennifer Barclay first got to know the Bents a few years back when they went with her some of the way on her breezy Dodecanese travelogue Wild Abandon (Bradt Guides 2020); she wrote an article for us about the adventure too (In the Footsteps of Theodore and Mabel). Needless to say, we’re now very happy she has sailed a little west for us, from Tilos, into the Cyclades to read a few of her favourite extracts from Bent’s visit to awe-inspiring Santorini (no introduction required there, of course), where she spent a summer in the early 1990s. And if you think you can hear cicadas in the background now and then, you can; Jennifer has her window open as she reads…
For an accompanying slideshow, click the start ikon below:
PLEASE be aware that the following article by Theodore Bent transcribed here contains references and descriptions from the start reflecting the attitudes and language of the time that we find offensive and unacceptable today. The article, nevertheless, is a little-known and important addition to Bent’s bibliography, as much as possible of which we aim to make available to those interested in 19th-century travel and exploration.
Bent’s article “An Excavator’s Camp” [Great Zimbabwe] appeared in the Pall Mall Budget (Christmas Edition, No. 1264), of Thursday, 15 December 1892. The periodical was an illustrated, up-scale, general-interest weekly mainly for the British establishment, and well reflecting this milieu; its cover price was 6d, c. £7.50 today. The Bents, as celebrity-explorers, often featured on its pages.
The excavator’s theories on the Great Zimbabwe ruins were, of course, controversial and now generally disproved. Bent himself was unsure at first as to what date to put on the monuments but by 1892, the time of this article, for various reasons and pressures, he was publishing that they were very early, perhaps even dating from his perception of ‘Phoenician’ times, and were not built by local populations. His interpretation led to 100 years of controversy over the ruins – it also made Theodore and Mabel Bent the celebrity explorers of the decade.
§ § §
WHEN MY WIFE AND I started on our excavating trip to the Zimbabwe ruins in the centre of Mashonaland we thought we were about to enter upon the most hazardous undertaking of our lives; we had dug in Persia, Arabia, Asia Minor, and Greece; we had braved the dangers of Kourdish brigands and Turkish officials; but we had never as yet encountered naked black men, about whom scarcely anybody knew anything. When we made our preparatory wills the thought of Matabele impis, war dances, deadly fevers, snakes, lions, and tsetse flies flitted before our eyes, but now that it is all over, and we are safe home again with our treasure trove, we smile at our former fears, wonder where the lions came from which seem to have molested other people’s journeys who never left the beaten track, and recommend a trip to Mashonaland to all our friends. note 1
Our camp at Zimbabwe was in the heart of the wilderness, some fifteen miles from the up-country road; on all the neighbouring peaks were Mashona villages, where the timid inhabitants had built their huts to be out of the way of Matabele raids; every day crowds of them came to see us and sell us food, and Umgabe, the great, fat naked chief who rules over this district, professed to love us dearly. This was all very different to what we had expected; hunters and traders had told us of the superstitious awe with which the natives guarded the massive ruins, of the hairbreadth escapes they had had in viewing them and in carrying off a few stones, but fat old Umgabe grinned at us complacently, and gave us permission to do exactly what we liked with them, on one condition, and that was that we should leave his women alone. These dusky daughters of Africa have evidently, like many of their fairer sisters, a tendency to over-rate their charms; they avoided us at first, deputing the withered hags to bring their commodities to exchange for beads and cloth; but by degrees we inspired confidence, and daily we were invaded by the naked ladies with stomachs decorated with lines or cicatures like furrows, beads and bangles round their legs and arms, and a simple loin cloth round their waists, their personal attractions being very much on a par with those of the female monkeys at the Zoo.
Umgabe had a younger brother called Ikomo, who governs the small village on the hill amongst the ruins, and from his close proximity to our camp we saw a good deal more of him than we wanted; if he could, he prevented our work. On more than one occasion he succeeded in frightening our Mashona workmen from other villages away. He was always begging for something – generally for salt, the rarest and most prized commodity in these parts, large lumps of which he would put into his mouth, and suck as complacently as we might a chocolate cream. He would instantly introduce his unsavoury body into our tent, and surreptitiously insert his unsavoury fingers into our honey-pot, thereby obliging us to throw away what he left; he was undoubtedly the thorn in our existence at Zimbabwe, and one day he nearly succeeded in bringing about an open rupture between us and our natives.
This occurred when we were engaged in excavating on the hill, and our work led us to prosecute a trench beneath a certain boulder rock, on the top of which was erected one of the mud granaries in which they store their grain. Suddenly the boulder slipped, to the infinite peril of the men who were engaged beneath it; down came the granary with its contents of grain and “monkey” nuts, and we had hardly recovered from the shock, and were congratulating ourselves on our escape, when up rushed Ikomo in a towering rage, followed by all the villagers; women shrieked, men brandished assegais, and the affair looked as it it would become serious.
I called together all our men from outlying posts. I seized an assegai myself, which chanced to be lying near: each man stuck tight to his spade, his pick, or his crowbar, and quietly we awaited events. It was in vain that we attempted a parley, and gave Ikomo to understand that what damage had been done should be made good. The screams of fury grew louder and louder, until one of Ikomo’s men gave the signal of battle by suddenly falling on one of our black workmen from a neighbouring village, knocking him to the ground. Consequently in self-defence we had to retaliate, for had we maintained our quiet demeanour our turn to be knocked down would doubtless have come next, so we rushed as hard as we could on the black mass of humanity opposed to us, belabouring them with our weapons to the right and to the left. Never was a British victory more easily won. Almost before we touched them the enemy fled, and an odd flight it was, and no mistake. They clambered like cats up the granite boulders, keeping up a perpetual jabber all the time, just as monkeys do in their cage when more than usually perturbed in their shallow minds. Ikomo himself retired sullenly to his hut, and that evening was summoned to our camp for a palaver, where, before an officer of the Chartered Company, he was solemnly told that is such a event occurred again his village would be burnt, his cattle confiscated, and Zimbabwe Hill would know him no more, and, under the circumstances, nothing would be paid for the damage we had done. Thus ended our one and only conflict with the natives. note 2
Living as we did for two months near this village during our work, we naturally became familiar with all its features. Whenever there was a beer-drink, a dance, or a funeral, we had special facilities for witnessing the same; and on all these occasions the Mashonas do dance with a vengeance: for hours together they will revolve in a monotonous circle to the tune of the everlasting tomtom and their metal-keyed piano; now and again they indulge in the more energetic war-dance, when assegais and spears are brandished, scouts will be sent out to reconnoitre imaginary enemies, and so fierce do they look on these occasions that had it not been for our previous knowledge of their cowardice we might almost have quaked for our own safety.
Women dance, too, by themselves; they occasionally enjoy a frenzied war-dance immensely, but they are apt to get too excited, and either end in hurting themselves or going into hysterics, and these Amazonian orgies generally come to an untimely conclusion. The women are best at a peaceful, rather sensuous dance of their own, in which they smack their furrowed stomachs and long hanging breasts with their hands in measured cadence with their feet: the noise they manage to make in so doing is most surprising.
Zimbabwe village is a lovely spot, high above the swampy, feverish plain. The views from it are simply exquisite over the rich blue granite mountains and wooded, park-like, undulating country. The daub huts are hidden, like birds’ nests in a tree, among the rugged granite boulders; festoons of bignonia were rich with flowers when we were there; fiery-coloured aloes appeared in splendid masses on the rocks, and from the trees in the village hung long pendants, like magnified sausages, in which the natives kept their stores, tying them up tightly with grass until required for consumption: in these they store sweet potatoes, ground nuts, caterpillars, and other dainties in which they rejoice; on either side are the great storejars for grain, made of mud; in the centre is the fire, and around in the smoky rafters they hang their wooden pillows, their assegais, their bows and arrows, their musical instruments, and their pipes, having no other form of cupboard known to them, and rats career around.
Our camp was unfortunately on the plain below, for it was impossible to drag our waggons up the hill, and in our waggons we slept and kept all our things. On either side of us were swamps, consequently during our stay at Zimbabwe our most formidable enemy was fever. We had fourteen cases in all, and every morning, when well enough myself I had to trot round with the quinine bottle and examine my patients’ tongues. When these were not to my liking I administered a simple emetic consisting of salt and mustard mixed in warm water into the consistency of a thick soup. This was generally effective; but on one memorable occasion the horrible concoction stayed down, and, agreeing capitally, settled the patient’s stomach, and no more was heard of it. Our cook’s favourite remedy was an onion porridge, a dish so loathsome in its consistency that the sick dreaded it more than the fever. Whenever there was a wet day – and we had nine drizzling days of Scotch mist during our stay at Zimbabwe – new cases of fever were sure to present themselves, so that in the end only two of our whites escaped scot-free – one was a burly Englishman, the other was my wife. note 3
Around our camp was huge, wavy grass, towering high above our heads, in many places twelve or thirteen feet. This, it proved, was dangerous, for when ripe the rain and the sun combined in rotting it. It was not till we had been five weeks encamped there that it was dry enough to burn, and in a rash moment we set fire to it not far from our camp, with the result that for an hour or two we were in mortal dread that we and everything that belonged to us would be consumed in the flames. On they came, roaring, hissing, crackling; in vain we arranged an army of beaters to try and ward off the enemy, more formidable than any force Ikomo or Umgabe himself could muster. Soon all the grass huts which our native workmen had erected for themselves were ablaze; our grass hedge or “skerm”, which we had erected around our camp, was torn down in hot haste, and we discussed in hurried tones what we should save and what we should abandon. Luckily this terrible sacrifice in the midst of a wilderness was not required of us. The enemy was vanquished just in time. Our poor Mashonas had to shiver in a cave that night, and we had to do without our hedge. This was all the material damage we suffered, and for the rest of our stay at Zimbabwe we had much less fever, though instead of a picturesque cornfield around us our camp might have been pitched on the edge of a coal pit.
Our camp was very picturesque in its way; and “Indian terrace”, as our men called it, was constructed of grass and served as a dining-room. Our waggons were our bedrooms and our tents our drawing-rooms; and our white men built apartments for themselves within the hedge. Every morning at eight o’clock an improvised gong, consisting of a hammer and a waggon wheel-tire, assembled our men. Every evening at sunset we returned home to our well-earned dinner. Around the camp fires nearly every night our men sang all the latest music-hall ditties, which came fast and furious when a consignment of “dop” (as that rank poison Cape Brandy is called up country) came from Fort Victoria. Luckily, as yet, the Mashonas know not the potency of fire-water; they only get mildly muddled with their own porridge-like beer. May they long remain thus innocent! We ourselves generally passed the evening in discussing our work, speculating on our finds, and building up castles in the air for the morrow. note 4
I can hardly conceive of a more exciting life than that of an excavator’s, especially when he is brought face to face with a prehistoric mystery like Zimbabwe. Searching after gold and hunting after wild beasts seems sordid and tame to my mind in comparison to the intense delight of relics of a bygone and utterly forgotten race of mankind; and when that race lived in the centre of the dark, mysterious continent, themselves a gold-searching race, long centuries ago, no element is wanting to add to the keenness of the sport.
When the time for our departure drew nigh, we packed our curios in the waggons for their long journey to the Cape note 5 , and, bidding adieu to comforts – that is to say, of a comparative nature – we mounted our horses and loaded a donkey with our necessaries, and set off for an independent trip among the neighbouring villages or kraals, for we wished to acquaint ourselves with the life of the Mashonas at home, and thought that a few nights in their huts and in the centre of their villages would be the most satisfactory way of attaining this object. A Mashona sleeps naked on a grass mat, with his head resting on a carved wooden pillow, so we could hardly depend on them for bed-clothes. A Mashona lives chiefly on millet meal porridge, caterpillars, mice, and other vermin, so we could hardly depend on them for food. Consequently our requirements were such that our donkey had to be supplemented with two or three native bearers.
We honoured Umgabe first with a visit. note 6 His kraal lies in a valley, a perfect paradise of verdure, about six miles from Zimbabwe; the potentate himself had been indulging freely in beer before we arrived, and looked fatter and more sodden than ever; still, he managed to gather himself together, and received us graciously enough in his round mud palace.
Umgabe at home is a curious sight; he sat on the floor at one end of his almost stifling hut, his indunas sat on either side of him. After the customary hand-clapping had been gone through, a ceremony indulged in at every meeting amongst them, the inevitable bowl of beer was brought in. The chief’s wives make it, and the head wife brings it in on bended knee, first tasting it herself, to prove that she had introduced no poison therein. Then Umgabe drank, then each induna had a sip, and by the time our turn came it was almost impossible to find a clean corner from which to drink. These are the occasions on which it is absolutely fatal to think; if once we had allowed ourselves to dwell on the dirty hands which had stirred it, and the revolting ingredients which gave it a flavour, I fear me we should rarely have been polite; for it is a great breach of savage etiquette to refuse to drink on these festive occasions.
We wanted very much to see a celebrated cave near Umgabe’s kraal, where the natives take refuge in time of danger. This cave had been formed by the stream, which runs down the valley, eating its way through a mass of granite boulders. The approach to it is difficult to find, and the labyrinthine intricacies of the interior are most remarkable. Umgabe flatly refused to show us the way, neither would he allow any of his men to do so, and was exceedingly angry with us for wishing to explore his tribal secret. Nothing daunted, we wandered about till we found it, and penetrated into its recesses with the aid of candles. Inside, it is full of granaries, where they store their grain and broken pots, and when the Matabele threaten them they somehow manage to drive their cattle in too, and so intricate are its passages that no enemy could ever approach them, and beneath them they have the boiling stream with an ever-flowing supply of water.
Poor Umgabe has often been raided by the Matabele, for his village is low and very fertile. We annexed here an admirable servant called Mashah, who stayed with us on our journeyings for some weeks. He had been captured, together with his father, his mother, and his wife, who was a sister of Umgabe’s, by the Matabele, and had been a slave for many years; his father and his mother died in captivity, but he and his wife had contrived to escape. He is an excellent fellow, perfectly indefatigable; he effects European costume – that is to say, a hat with an ostrich feather in it, and an old shirt, but nothing more. We gave him an old pair of trousers, but after he and all his friends tried them on and found them uncomfortable he tied them as a mantle round his neck. We gave another man an old pair of boots, but he only annexed the brass tags to make himself a necklace of, and threw the leather away.
Umgabe gave us for our night’s lodging what looked externally an ideal residence beneath a shady cork-tree but oh ! the horrors of those rats which careered over us during those nights in the native huts, and the persistency of those cocks and hens; which never would take any hint to absent themselves. We did not live long enough in native huts to get accustomed to these intruders. For the rest of our journeyings in Mashonaland, we, like the children of Israel, got us to our tents. note 7
Notes
Note 1: For the Bents’ expeditions click here. Bent exaggerates rather in terms of ‘Persia’. They did arrange certain licences to excavate and were even thinking of some spadework at Persepolis. In the end they spent just a few hours digging superficially at Takht-e Soleymān. Before embarking for Africa on 29/30 January 1891, Theodore did indeed make a will (dated 21 January 1891). The couple were home in London by 1 February 1892. For details of their journeys, see The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 2, 2012: pp. 46ff. Cecil Rhodes, Bent’s major sponsor, would welcome the author’s concluding remark, being hungry for settlers. Return from Note 1
Note 2: Mabel’s diary reveals that, although there was something to this incident, Theodores’ braggadocio is fictitious, merely some sensationalist froth for the benefit of his readers. Mabel writes “On Monday last, the 22nd [June 1891], we came in for a very amusing scene. We all went up to begin work on the ruins of the fort where the village is situated. Before we got up we heard loud shouts and screams from [Ikomo] who strongly objected to our digging in his cattle kraal, which was the place fixed on. Our workmen (the blacks) ran away saying they were afraid they would be poisoned if they dug. We presented a bold front and laughed at him. He rushed to his round cottage, [fetched?] shield, iron, sceptre, and brandished them, but at last was induced by our laughter to lay them down and sink into a sitting posture to listen to reason from… our interpreter, while the barricade was quietly demolished behind his back by our men.” (The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 2, 2012: p. 91.) Return from Note 2
Note 3: There is always the sound of muffled bells when Bent speaks of fever. He first fell victim to it (as recorded in Mabel’s diaries at least) in the Cyclades in 1883/4, and ultimately succumbed to its complications in May 1897, aged 45, just five years or so after the expedition to Great Zimbabwe Bent writes about above. Mabel’s fortitude was legendary. Return from Note 3
Note 4: The ‘morning gong’ is not recorded by Mabel. Her husband probably includes it to impress his readers by suggesting the disciplined, military nature of his camp and his leadership. His friendship with Rider Haggard dates from around this time. One of the three illustrations (not by Bent) accompanying the original article shows a rousing fireside scene and Bent’s book on Mashonaland does refer to the entertainment: “Most of our white men were musical, and beguiled the monotony of the evening hours by a series of camp concerts, which made us intimately acquainted with all the latest music-hall ditties” (The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, 1892: p. 65). Return from Note 4
Note 5: Bent’s ‘curios’ amounted to hundreds of artefacts, now mostly in the British Museum, click for his collection there. Some of the famous soapstone birds from the Great Zimbabwe ‘Acropolis’ were among this ‘treasure trove’ Bent mentions in his opening paragraph – Rhodes coveted them and they soon flew back to Cape Town, though a cast of one remains in the BM. Return from Note 5
Note 7: “’We always travel with green fly tents with double flaps, the whole made of Willesden canvas, which does not get mouldy when folded up wet.’ – Theodore Bent, Esq., in the Album. Beware of imitations. Samples and prices from Willesden Paper and Canvas Works, Willesden Junction, N.W.” (Field, Saturday, 10 April 1897). Return from Note 7
By way of Bibliography
Bent’s own watercolour of their camp at Great Zimbabwe below the ‘Acropolis’. His signature is just visible lower left. The original is in the National Archives, Harare.
Bent published many articles on the couple’s epic adventures in Southern Africa – they are available via our Bibliography (starting from 1891). See especially:
J. Theodore Bent, The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (Longmans, London, 1892) – Bent’s bestseller by far, containing maps, plans, his sketches, Mabel Bent’s photographs, etc.
Mabel Bent, The Travel Chronicles of Mrs. J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 2, The African Journeys (Archaeopress, Oxford, 2012, pp. 17ff.) – an edition of Mabel Bent’s diaries recording Great Zimbabwe, from the Archive of the Hellenic Society (kept at Univ. London, Senate House). Facsimiles of Mabel Bent’s originals are available at:
Title page from the first edition (1885) of Bent’s “The Cyclades; or Life Among the Insular Greeks”.
“Though Mr. Bent is an Oxford man, he knows some Greek, and has managed somehow to retain or acquire a profound interest in things Hellenic. That is always something, for Greece is a country towards which, in spite of our education, we all possess somewhat of a filial affection: but Mr. Bent does more than this – he takes an active interest in the living Greeks, his ways and modes of thinking, largely tempered by the modern anthropological and sociological point of view, too often wholly wanting or absolutely repellent to the confirmed Hellenist. If there is one form of savant left on earth upon whose ears the echo of the sociological revolution falls dull and muffled, it is your old-fashioned classical scholar, hermetically sealed in his own sturdy with his grammar and his lexicon, his editions and manuscripts. For him, Lubbock and Tylor are not: the Folk-lore Society sings to him like a siren, all in vain: no savage myth rises vague upon his narrow horizon: no dim memory of forgotten barbarism shines faintly on him from the storied pages of Plato or Pausanias. His world begins with the First Olympiad: his history finishes with the death of Odoacer. Not of such as these is Mr. Bent. A folk-lorist to the backbone, eager to discover and compare while yet they survive the lingering relics of native Hellenic popular mythology, he has spent two winters hard at work among the almost unbroken ground of the Cyclades, and has finally recorded his net results for us in this pleasant, amusing, and instructive volume.
A detail from Bent’s map of the Cyclades from his 1885 edition.
“[Bernhard] Schmidt had been beforehand with him, it is true, on the Greek mainland; but then, the Greek mainland is largely Albanian, and its folk-lore is largely tinctured with alien elements. The islands, on the other hand, have been always Greek, and, practically speaking, always free. So hither Mr. Bent went with his wife, in search of habits and manners, and dwelling among the people in their own hamlets, collected a goodly store of facts and fancies, which he knows how to detail for us with a cunning pen. At first he studied his human subjects with the aid of a dragoman; but as time went on, and as he began to acquire fluency in the language which we are all supposed to have learned at school, he went direct to the fountain head, and extorted from the not unwilling lips of demarchs and priests and hostesses and pretty Greek maidens innumerable tales of Fates and Nereids, of Boreas and St. Demetrius, of ancient god and Christian martyr, in the picturesque confusion of medieval Europe. The nymphs of the fountain take the place, among the Cyclades, of our northern fairies; Dionysus has got himself thinly Christianized as St. Dionysius; and Charon, properly baptised no doubt for the occasion, still ferries over orthodox Greeks to their last resting-place, as he used to do rightminded Pagans of old to the realms of Hades. Nowhere does the thin veneer of the new religion lie more lightly over the solid and enduring substructure of the old than among the Greek Islands. Essentially pagan still in all his underlying mythological conceptions, the insular Hellene remains a living relic of ages far earlier than even those of the Attic dramatists – he goes back in part to the most primitive stratum of European belief and philosophy. We could have wished that Mr. Bent had given us a little more of actual description of these beautiful and barren islands, but we recognize at the same time how much his book gains from its unique devotion to a difficult, elusive, and fascinating pursuit.
Detail from the front page of the “Pall Mall Budget” for 17 April 1885.
“Sometimes, indeed, as in the episode of the ardent collector waiting patiently at Myconos till somebody should die, and inquiring with sinister anxiety after the health of the various failing invalids, in order that he might be present at one of the death-wails which form the staple product and pride of the island – the eagerness of the folk-lorist becomes positively weird and gruesome in its intensity. A modern story-teller might improve upon the position by making the single-hearted inquirer poison his host so as to provide a victim for the wailing women in the interests of science. We present the hint gratuitously as a valuable property to Mr. Wilkie Collins. If we have repeated none of Mr. Bent’s own good stories, it is only in order that we may send our readers direct to his amusing pages in search of them at first hand. There is matter enough in this little volume to stock half a dozen ordinary bookmakers’ fat notebooks.”
* “The Cyclades.” By J. Theodore Bent. 12s. 6d. (London: Longmans.)
……………………..
Anonymous review of Bent’s The Cyclades; or Life Among the Insular Greeks, from the Pall Mall Budget – 17 April 1885, page 28.
While we wait for an audiobook of Theodore Bent’s “The Cyclades, or Life Among the InsularGreeks“, to mark its 140th anniversary (2025) we are asking ‘Cycladists’, those with affinities to the islands, to read memorable extracts for us. Who better to read from Bent’s Anafi chapter than Professor Emerita Margaret Kenna who carried out her fieldwork there for a doctorate in 1966-1967.
Anafi [Bent’s Ch. 5: Wednesday, 9 January 1884 – Friday, January 11 1884 or Saturday, 12 January 1884]
A photo from the early 1940s giving some idea of what Anafi’s harbour jetty might have looked like 100 years after the Bents sailed from the island (Margaret Kenna).
Bent’s entire chapter read by social anthropologist and Anafi specialist Margaret Kenna (Professor Emerita, Swansea University), who has spent 50 years researching in Greece, most of it focussed on the islanders and migrants of Anafi, spending a year on the island doing fieldwork for her doctorate in 1966 (Greek Island Life: Fieldwork on Anafi, Sean Kingston Publishing, 2017).
The very short-lived Eastern and Western Review launched itself into highly competitive waters and sank without much trace – a lifebuoy or two – after a few issues, in 1892/3.
Theodore Bent published a long article with them, divided over two issues, in 1892. For availability, see at the end of this page.
Here is the journal’s initial editorial puff:
“The Eastern and Western Review. The Best Sixpenny Monthly. Diversified–Interesting–Amusing–Instructive”
“The Eastern and Western Review, whilst supplying high-class matter, endeavours to present it in a popular style: it is, in short, instructive, but not dictatorial; interesting, but not heavy; amusing, but not vulgar.
“It contains articles of national and international importance by well-known writers; History of the Churches, Eastern Affairs and Western Reviewers, History of the Nineteenth Century, Sketches of Travel, Political Events and Continental Opinions, Serial Fiction, Short Stories, Reviews, Jottings, Notes of the Month, and Religious, Literary, Scientific, Military, Naval, and Financial Notes. In fact, the public will find in the REVIEW all they expect in any other monthly, with the addition of special and novel features. One of its objects is to make the East and Eastern Affairs more widely and better known in this country. An intelligent view of Foreign Politics, of which Eastern Affairs really form the keystone, is of vital importance to every inhabitant of Great and Greater Britain.
“To British Manufacturers and other large Advertisers the REVIEW offers exceptional advantages, inasmuch as it will enable them to bring their goods under the notice of an influential class of readers in India, Egypt, Syria, and other Oriental countries, who cannot be reached through the medium of ordinary publications.”
“Born at Beyrout, Sep. 1, 1860 : son of a naturalized British subject and distinguished scholar : member of the R.A.S., 1884 : wrote On the Importance to Great Britain of the Study of Arabic : Lecturer on Arabic at University College, London : published, 1890, an Arabic-English lexicon, Honorary Professor of Arabic at King’s College : travelled through Turkey, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Persia, India, 1891–2 : founded in 1892 the Eastern and Western Review, in Arabic and English, of Oriental and Imperial affairs, but it came to an end in 2 years : engaged in journalism : brought out The Imperial Souvenir, a metrical translation of part of the National Anthem into 50 of the languages spoken in the British Empire : died Oct. 1904.” (Wikipedia)
The British Library offers a little more:
“Habib Anthony Salmoné published what was described by A.G. Ellis (who catalogued the Arabic books now at the British Library in his Catalogue of Arabic books in the British Museum) as ‘a monthly magazine of politics, literature, and science’. Salmoné chose at first to publish two editions simultaneously; one in Arabic called Ḍiyāʾ al-khāfiqayn, and one in English called ‘The Eastern and Western Review.’ According to Ellis, however, the Arabic edition appeared to stop after the second number.” (From the ‘Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library’, a digital archive, via Gale)
Bent’s lengthy article for the journal was published in two parts:
E.J. Davis’ sketch of the fortress at Sis, from Life in Asiatic Turkey, 1979, London (Wikipedia).
‘The Two Capitals of Armenia: I – The Patriarch of Sis’. The Eastern and Western Review, Vol. 1(4), May 1892, pp. 137-140.
Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the administrative headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church (Wikipedia).
‘The Two Capitals of Armenia: II – The Patriarchate of Etchmiazin’. The Eastern and Western Review, Vol. 2(1), June 1892, pp. 6-13.
His text was based on two tours to the region, north, via the Turkish port of Mersin in 1890; and during the last leg of the couple’s remarkable ride, south–north, through Persia in 1889.
Theodore Bent referenced some of the material from the two parts of the article in three other papers:
Contact us for more information on the content of Bent’s article. It is not currently available online, only in the UK from the British Library or, presumably, the six legal deposit libraries.
The Bents’ route through Persia, March–May 1889. Many of the sites were also visited by Isabella Bird the following year (Map: Glyn Griffiths, the Bent Archive).
19th-century explorers in Persia, or anywhere else come to that, needed someone local – part Sancho Panza, part Passepartout – to ease things along: a translator, fixer, door-opener, guard, chaperone, cook, medic, accommodation officer, transport manager, therapist, whatever was required. The best could expect generous remuneration, the worst, summary dismissal!
Good or bad, these men (women dragomans please make yourselves known), would base themselves around ports of entry, where they might expect foreigners (themselves, of course, good or bad) in need of their services.
The British Residency at Bushire at the turn of the 19th century, a hotel for the Bents in 1889 when they stayed with the Ross family (Wikipedia).
One such port at the time of interest to us was Bushire, Persia (Iran, eastern shores of the Persian Gulf), administered by British officials – and let’s single out in particular (until 1891) the affable and highly respected Resident, Irishman Edward Charles Ross (1836-1913), who would open the Residency (with its tennis court, billiard room, and other facilities) to explorers (he was a keen antiquarian himself), arrange sight-seeing, lend his private yacht, and generally, with his wife and family, entertain.
Naturally enough, when celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent, after excavating the ‘Mounds of Ali‘ in Bahrain in early 1889, decided ‘then and there‘ to ride south-north through Persia as the first leg of their return to London, they promptly crossed the Gulf to Bushire and the ‘hospitable roof’ of the Ross family, arriving early February 1889. Mabel, as ever, surprised her hosts: “They were all amazed indeed when they heard of our resolution to ride those 1300 miles or more ‘with a lady’, for not more than 3 ladies have done this before, and 2, Mme. Dieulafoy and Mrs. Phelps, a very fat American, in man’s attire, and as the days go on they are still more amazed at seeing me sitting serenely wondering what saddle I shall have.” (Travel Chronicles of Mrs Theodore Bent, Vol. 3, 2010, pp.28-9) note 1
Ross was also able to provide a dragoman, of sorts, for the Bents: “We had as our personal servant and interpreter combined … Hadji Abdullah, half Persian, half Arab. He was the best to be obtained, and his English was decidedly faulty… He had been a great deal on our men-of-war; he also took a present of horses from the Sultan of Maskat to the Queen [Victoria, in 1886], so that he could boast ‘I been to Home,’ and alluded to his stay in England as ‘when I was in Home’.” (Mabel Bent, Southern Arabia, 1900, p.2)
Isabella Bird-Bishop (Wikipedia).
Serendipitously, this dragoman, Hadji Abdullah, whom the Bents employed to guide them on their way through Persia, leaving him over 1000 km away in Tabriz, was also hired (almost exactly a year later, early 1890) by that other great lady explorer Isabella Bishop (née Bird, 1831-1904), whom the Bents will have met frequently at the Royal Geographical Society and other gatherings of worthies. (Isabella was famously elected a Fellow in the first pick of lady travellers; Mabel was put forward for the second pick in 1893/4, just when the RGS voted to accept no more.)
The celebrated painter of horses, John Charlton (1849-1917) was on the scene to record the presentation of the Sultan of Muscat’s five Arab horses to Queen Victoria at Windsor in December 1886. It is possible that the dragoman Hadji Abdullah, employed by the Bents in 1889 and Isabella Bird in 1890, is represented in one of the faces we see. (‘The Graphic’, 18 December, 1886 (detail)).
The formidable Isabella Bird writes: “I lost no time in interviewing Hadji, — a Gulf Arab, who has served various travellers, has been ten times to Mecca, went to Windsor with the horses presented to the Queen by the Sultan of Muscat, speaks more or less of six languages, knows English fairly, has some recommendations, and professes that he is ‘up to’ all the requirements of camp life. The next morning I engaged him as ‘man of all work’, and though a big, wild-looking Arab in a rough abba and a big turban, with a long knife and a revolver in his girdle, scarcely looks like a lady’s servant, I hope he may suit me, though with these antecedents he is more likely to be a scamp than a treasure.” (Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Vol. 1, 1891, p. 5)
Bird, it seems, dispensed with Hadji’s services near Hamadan (August 1890), 200 km south of Tabriz, so his journey home to Bushire, assuming that was where he was based, was a good deal shorter than his trip back the previous year after his ride with the Bents! Interestingly, Bird makes no reference to the Bents in the letters home she eventually turned into her Persian book. It seems unlikely that Hadji made no mention at all of the British husband and wife explorers.
Jane Dieulafoy (1851-1916) French archaeologist, of whom Mabel Bent was, perhaps, a little envious (Wikipedia).
Note 1: Jane Dieulafoy (1851-1916) brilliant French archaeologist, excavator of Susa, had visited some of the Persian sites enjoyed by the Bents a few years earlier and had written several bestsellers about her travels in the region overall. Mabel was always ready, keen even, to criticise her! Mrs. Phelps remains untraced and it would be very good to know more about her. See also the Bents devoted Greek dragoman from Anafi in the Cyclades, Mathew Simos. Return from Note 1
“DWELLERS IN TENTS – Every man, says a philosopher, is a wanderer at heart. Alas! I fear the axiom would be truer if he had confined himself to stating that every man loves to fancy himself a wanderer, for when it comes to the point there is not one in a thousand who can throw off the ties of civilized existence – the ties and the comforts of habits which have become easy to him by long use, of the life whose security is ample compensation for its monotony. Yet there are moments when the cabined spirit longs for liberty.” (Gertrude Bell, Safar Nameh. Persian Pictures – A Book of Travel, London, 1894, p. 83)
While travel for some in ‘Persia’ is still clearly so precarious, why not ride instead, south-north through Iran, with the Bents – on mules, ponies, camels, oxen, and in assorted carts and carriages?
Announcing: “‘Then and there’ – Theodore and Mabel Bent in Persia, 1889″ (forthcoming 2026)
Extracts will appear from time to time on this page
Mabel’s pond at Manzaria/Manzarieh, 30 km north of Qom, Iran (Google Maps).
Mabel writes in her Chronicle: Tuesday, 9 April 1889, Manzaria/ Manzarieh, 30 km north of Qom [34.89018460145364, 50.82060309976168]: “After this, let me say that we had a very pleasant afternoon of peace and contemplation of a round pond with a stone coping on which numerous travellers sat on their heels for hours and hours like so many big frogs just got out of the water…”
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