The famous soapstone bird the Bents discovered at Great Zimbabwe (From “The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland” (1892).
The three major fields of research (between 1880 and 1900) for celebrity British explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent were the Eastern Mediterranean, Arabia, and Africa. We recently asked Mike Tucker, author behind zimfieldguide.com (delivering historic, cultural and wildlife information for Zimbabwe), if he had an angle on the Bents’ 1891 explorations of Great Zimbabwe and other sites, and he very kindly provided the following essay. Thank you Mike.
James Theodore Bent and Mabel Virginia Anna Bent gave many artefacts to the British Museum from Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) collected during and after their excavation at Great Zimbabwe in 1891.
Introduction
A section of Theodore’s map in southern Africa (The Bent Archive).
The story of the Bents’ excavation at Great Zimbabwe is told in the article ‘The Bent’s archaeological expedition to Great Zimbabwe in 1891 and the prominent part played by Mabel Bent’ under ‘Masvingo Province’ on the www.zimfieldguide.com website. Theodore Bent wrote over 150 articles, papers and lectures, comprehensively listed in the Bibliography section of the website devoted to the couple. Both Theodore and Mabel Bent were prolific authors and their books are also listed on the website. Other information and details of their journey come from Theodore Bent’s book The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892), written very rapidly on their return home to 13 Great Cumberland Place, London – it proved very popular and ran to five editions. Finally, I used facsimile copies of Mabel’s notebooks housed at the Hellenic Society Archive, University College London.
The Bents’ excavations at Great Zimbabwe
In 1877, Theodore Bent married Mabel (née Hall-Dare, 1847-1929) who became his constant companion, photographer, illustrator and diarist on all his travels and from the time of their marriage they went abroad nearly every year.
Peter Garlake (1973) gives a number of quotes that are relevant to these first excavations carried out at Great Zimbabwe and are repeated below. Bent approached the question of Great Zimbabwe believing, like almost everyone, that its origins must lie with a civilised and ancient people from outside Africa and he had in fact been chosen to undertake the project because of his prior archaeological work on the Phoenicians.
But as far as the Phoenicians were concerned the excavations were showing little evidence of their presence. “Now, of course it is a great temptation to talk of Phoenician ruins when there is anything like gold to be found in connection with them, but from my own personal experience of Phoenician ruins I cannot say that [the Great Zimbabwe ruins] bear the slightest resemblance whatsoever” (Garlake 1973: 66). Every local resident they met was keen to perpetuate the Phoenician myth as was their patron, the British South Africa Company, and the Bents soon saw that the archaeological evidence was contrary to this idea, “the names of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba were on everybody’s lips and have become so distasteful to us that we never expect to hear them again without an involuntary shudder”.
In June 1891 their excavation work around the Conical Tower within the Great Enclosure soon disproved the theories that Great Zimbabwe was ancient and of foreign origin. “We found but little depth of soil, very little debris, and indications of a native occupation of the place up to a very recent date” and Bent is quoted by his local guide C.C. Meredith as saying, “I have not much faith in the antiquity of these ruins, I think they are native. Everything we have so far is native.”
Great Zimbabwe – Aerial view of Great Enclosure and Valley Complex, looking west (Wikipedia, with site locations added).
To quote directly from Peter Garlake, “Work in the elliptical building [Great Enclosure] was abandoned within a fortnight and excavations started in the eastern enclosure of the Hill Ruin [Hill Complex] ‘because it occurred to us that a spot situated on the shady side of the hill might possibly be free from native desecration.’ This was not to be. Throughout the deposits there were great numbers of household objects: sherds from hand built vessels, pottery spindle whorls, iron, bronze and copper spearheads, arrowheads, axes, adzes and hoes and gold working equipment such as tuyères and crucibles. Most of these still seemed indistinguishable from contemporary Karanga articles.” (Garlake 1973: 67)
Yet Bent still continued to be focussed on Phoenician origins. In the Great Enclosure were found four birds carved in soapstone on monoliths and flat soapstone dishes with abstract patterns or animals carved around the edges, small carved cylinders that looked like phalli and an ingot mould: objects unique to the site. Had similar objects been found elsewhere? Bent theorised the birds might copy stelae from Assyria, Mycenae, Phoenician Cyprus, Egypt and Sudan: the patterns on some of the objects resembled Phoenician motifs, the mould resembled one found in Cornwall and thought to be Phoenician.
Similarly with the architecture. The shape of the Great Enclosure resembled the temple of Marib in Southern Arabia, the Conical Tower looked like a Phoenician temple on a Byblos coin as well as structures in Assyria, Malta and Sardinia. The birds might symbolize gods or goddesses, the disc patterns indicate sun worship, the soapstone monoliths and phalli were “grosser forms of nature-worship” (Garlake 1973: 68) and so on.
From his above muddled ideas Bent decided there was, “little room for doubt that the builders and workers of the Great Zimbabwe came from the Arabian Peninsula… a prehistoric race built the ruins… which eventually became influenced and perhaps absorbed in the… organisations of the Semite…a northern race coming from Arabia…closely akin to the Phoenician and Egyptian…and eventually developing into the more civilised races of the ancient world.”
His final conclusions, “that the ruins and the things in them are not in any way connected with any known African race” seem extraordinary in view of all the artefacts excavated by the Bents in 1891.
The Collection of Bent artefacts from Great Zimbabwe at the British Museum
The numbers of objects donated below represent only those listed on the British Museum’s online collection, there may well be others in storage and not yet listed.
In all, the British Museum lists on their online collection 583 objects given by Theodore Bent. Those from present-day Zimbabwe number 272 objects (i.e. 47%) the remainder come from their archaeological excavations in Greece, the Turkish coast, Ethiopia, Arabia, etc.
Mabel Bent gave a further 155 objects. Those from present-day Zimbabwe number 26 objects with the remainder from Iran, Yemen, Arabia, Greece, etc. Her final donation to the museum was in 1926, three years before her death, suggesting that the artefacts possessed great sentimental value, reminding her of her twenty years of travel with her husband, who died at the early age of 45 in 1897.
For the purposes of this essay, I have only shown below a representative sample of the objects that the Bents collected or excavated on their 1891 expedition to present-day Zimbabwe.
Plate 1: A selection from the 100s of artefacts acquired by the British Museum from the Bents following their expedition to present-day Zimbabwe in 1891 (The Trustees of the British Museum).Plate 2: A selection from the 100s of artefacts acquired by the British Museum from the Bents following their expedition to present-day Zimbabwe in 1891 (The Trustees of the British Museum).Plate 3: A selection from the 100s of artefacts acquired by the British Museum from the Bents following their expedition to present-day Zimbabwe in 1891 (The Trustees of the British Museum).Plate 4: A selection from the 100s of artefacts acquired by the British Museum from the Bents following their expedition to present-day Zimbabwe in 1891 (The Trustees of the British Museum).Plate 5: A selection from the 100s of artefacts acquired by the British Museum from the Bents following their expedition to present-day Zimbabwe in 1891 (The Trustees of the British Museum).
References:
Garlake, Peter S. 1973. Great Zimbabwe. London: Thames and Hudson.
Bent, J. Theodore 1969. The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland. Bulawayo: Books of Rhodesia, Gold Series, Vol. 5 [first edition 1892, Longman, Green & Co., London].
… and one further curio from Mashonaland:
Cane snuff-box with incised line design (Af1892,0714.99) (Trustees of the British Museum).
“After leaving Chipunza’s kraal, and crossing the River Rusapi, a ride of two hours brought us to Makoni’s kraal… Most of the men had very large holes pierced in the lobes of their ears, into which they would insert snuff-boxes of reeds, decorated with black geometric patterns, and other articles” (The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, 1892, pp. 354-5). Bent acquires one and it is now in the British Museum (Af1892,0714.99.a), with its original label from 14 July 1892.
J. Theodore Bent in field attire. A favourite studio portrait of his wife’s and the one selected for several of his obituary notices in 1897.
“Mr. Theodore Bent possessed a singular charm of manner, and an eager intelligence. His own object in travel was mainly archæological, but he was keenly anxious to assist any other branch of science to which he could be of use.” (From an obituary, possibly by Bent’s friend and Kew Director, William Thiselton-Dyer himself, in Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information [Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew], Vol. 1897, No. 125/126 (May – Jun., 1897), p. 206).
Starting in the 1890s with their trips to Africa and Arabia, celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent, either formally (with the assistance of RBG Kew and the Natural History section of the British Museum, inter alia), or informally (collecting at random themselves), started to make botanical and zoological collections to return to England with, very much in the tradition of contemporary scientific enquiry: their acquisitions would then be passed on to interested institutions, or go on show in their London townhouse at 13 Great Cumberland Place, a stone’s throw from Marble Arch.
Occasionally they would encounter some plant or creature ‘new to science’, and a search online for ‘bentii’ will reveal a handful of species named after the couple, hence the theme of this article!
Botanical Finds
The Old Wing of the Kew Herbarium. Many botanical specimens collected by the Bents are kept there (Wikipedia).
No better place to start than the famous Herbarium at Kew Gardens, London, where the atmospherically controlled cabinets are the repositories of several plant species bearing the Bent name – often in the original pressing medium undertaken in the field, and still with the contemporary labelling – thrilling objects still.
A quick search on the Kew site will reveal these exotic names, and clicking the links will bring up photographs of the actual examples (or similar) that returned with the explorers to London from Southern Arabia (helped by the skills of Kew botanist William Lunt (1871-1904) who adventured with the Bents).
The species of interest to us include: Justicia bentii; Ceropegia bentii, Echidnopsis bentii, Pentatropsis bentii; Strobopetalum bentii; Trichodesma bentii; Anogeissus bentii; Terminalia bentii; Kalanchoe bentii; Kalanchoe bentii subsp. bentii; Kalanchoe bentii subs. somalica; Kickxia bentii; Linaria bentii; Nanorrhinum bentii; Andropogon bentii.
Of these discoveries, perhaps the Kalanchoe is the most often referred to, particularly due to the account, perhaps apocryphal, that seeds from the Bent expedition plant eventually flowered at Kew (in June 1900).
“Kalanchoe Bentii is a fine new species from the Hadramaut district of Southern Arabia, where seeds were collected [1893/4] by the late Mr. J. Theodore Bent.” (Wikipedia)“Kalanchoe Bentii is a fine new species from the Hadramaut district of Southern Arabia, where seeds were collected by the late Mr. J. Theodore Bent. Its flowers are an inch and a half long, white, with pink on the unexpanded corolla-lobes. The Kew plant has a stem three feet high. Its leaves are thick, dagger-shaped, spreading and recurved, in form differing from all other species.” (Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information [Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew], Vol. 1901, No. 172/174 (Apr. – May, 1901), p. 114)
In his touching obituary, Kew director William Thiselton-Dyer outlines the scope of Bent’s collecting for the institution: “The interesting botanical results of their memorable journey to the Hadramaut (in 1893-4), on which they were accompanied by Mr. William Lunt, a member of the staff of the Royal Gardens, are given in the Kew Bulletin for 1894 (pp. 328-343). Those of their second journey in Arabia Felix in 1894-5, were published in the Kew Bulletin for 1895 (pp. 180-1860. The materials they obtained brought out clearly the relations of the Flora of Southern Arabia to Africa on the one hand, and to Western Asia on the other. They returned last winter to the same region, visiting in addition the island of Sokotra. But the plants they obtained have not yet been worked up.” (Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information [Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew], Vol. 1897, No. 125/126 (May – Jun., 1897), p. 206)
Having left Sokotra towards the end of January 1897, Bent wrote to Thiselton-Dyer at Kew from their base in Aden:
“My dear Dyer… I got your letter on our return from Socotra where we passed two months. I botanized for you as I thought we might be able to add some trifle to Balfour’s and Schweinfurth’s collections but I felt diffident in my work having 2 experts before me and moreover I had to throw a good many specimens away owing to mould after excessive damp. However we have a fair number and a few seeds as well and Mrs Bent photo’d a good many of the quaint trees… We start on Saturday for an expedition to the Yaffi country from here. It is reported one of the most fertile districts of Yemen. I hope to continue collecting. We shall hope to be back in England for the end of April if the plague does not cut Aden off from steamer communication before then, which is just now the topic engrossing everyone here. Mrs Bent joins me in kind regards…Yours sincerely, J. Theodore Bent” (23 January 1897; Kew Archives: Directors’ Correspondence, Vol. 179/7, KADC0308)
Bent’s friend, Kew Director Sir William Turner Thiselton-Dyer (1843-1928) (Wikipedia).
This letter is worth a few quick notes: 1) Balfour and Schweinfurth were the two great contemporary botanists for the area (Bent was amateur of course); 2) We learn from Bent of the problems of keeping the botanical specimens in good condition; 3) Bent makes a reference to Mabel’s photography – sadly very little of her work survives; 4) Warning bells go off for us in terms of Bent’s references to what is to prove his final trip into the field: his obsession with South Arabia is his undoing – not the ‘plague’, but malaria.
Full accounts of the botanizing Bents are to be found in Mabel Bent’s Southern Arabia (London, 1900) and volume three of her “Travel Chronicles” (Oxford, 2010).
Molluscs
“The British Museum is much indebted to Mrs. Bent for the donation of this valuable collection.”
On their final trip together, to Sokotra and east of Aden, in early 1897, the Bents made efforts to bring back to London, inter alia, various marine and land snails. Although faced with having to handle all her melancholy duties following Theodore’s death in May 1897, Mabel was determined to fulfil her obligations to those institutions interested in their collections as swiftly as possible. One such was the Zoology Department of the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum).
The Bents’ map of Sokotra (‘Southern Arabia’, 1900).
And yet, just a matter of months before, the couple were happily embarking on their exploration of the remote island off the Horn of Africa. In her notebook covering Sokotra, Mabel records (Tuesday, 22 December 1896) that the “Butterfly, Botanical, Shell, and Beetle collections have been started”, and on Christmas Eve (Thursday, 24 December 1896): “We shall have been here a week this evening. The camels are roving round and it is said that the baggage shall be bound in bundles this evening and that we shall start tomorrow after prayers, even a little way. Yesterday we had a delightful day. We started after breakfast with luncheon, gun, butterfly net, photography, shell box, beetle box and flower basket.” (The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 3, pp. 288-9, Oxford, 2010)
Later, in her 1900 book Southern Arabia (Appendix II) there is a reference to this collection (‘A LIST OF THE LAND AND FRESHWATER SHELLS COLLECTED IN SOKOTRA BY MR. AND MRS. THEODORE BENT’) by Edgar A. Smith, F.Z.S., Assistant Keeper of Zoology, British Museum:
“Previous to the researches of Mr. and Mrs. Bent, only forty-eight land and freshwater molluscs had been recorded from Sokotra. In addition to twenty-three of these species, they were fortunate in obtaining eleven new forms, some of them very remarkable. These have been described and figured by the writer in the ‘Journal of Malacology,’ vol. vi., pp. 33-38, plate v., figs. 1-9. and in the ‘Bulletin of the Liverpool Museum,’ vol. ii. No. 1, p. 12. The British Museum is much indebted to Mrs. Bent for the donation of this valuable collection.”
“An illustration of several views of ‘Lithidion bentii’ from ‘The Natural History of Sokotra and Abd-el-Kuri’.” One of the Socotran molluscs donated by Mabel Bent in 1897 (W.R. Ogilvie-Grant and H.O. Forbes, ‘The Natural History of Sokotra and Abdel-Kuri’, Liverpool, 1903, p.148 (archive.org)).
More specifically, Smith writes: “The most recent account of the terrestrial and freshwater Mollusca of the island of Socotra is that published by Mr. Crosse in the Journal de Conchyliologie, 1894, pp. 341-375… Since this catalogue appeared, nothing has been added to our knowledge of the island. During the present year [1897] the British Museum has received from Mrs. Theodore Bent a series of land and freshwater shells collected by herself and her late husband whose devotion to exploration was unfortunately terminated by death. This collection contains the majority of the known species and several others new to science. The fact that as many as nine new forms were discovered by Mr. and Mrs. Bent would appear to indicate that many new species have yet to be found in unexplored parts of the island.” (Journal of Malacology, 1897, vol. vi. pp. 33-38, plate v., figs. 1-9)
Smith allocated two new shell species to the Bents: Buliminus bentiiand Lithidion bentii (unclick ‘marine only’ top right on this WoRMS site).
Edgar Albert Smith (1847-1916), British zoologist and a malacologist (Wikipedia).
Under the entry (3) for Buliminus (Passamaiella) bentii, n. sp., Edgar Smith writes: “The only two specimens collected by Mr. and Mrs. Bent are in a bleached condition, exhibiting traces of horny or brownish colour only towards the apex. The form of this very interesting species is very remarkable and at once distinguishes it from other allied species. The great contraction of the aperture is very peculiar, it is also remarkable in that the parietal callus does not actually join the extremities of the peristome, but is separated both above and below by a slight notch of channel. It is a melancholy pleasure that one feels in associating this very curious species with the name of the late Mr. Bent.” (Journal of Malacology, 1897, vol. vi. pp. 33-38, plate v., figs. 1-9)
The Bents’ molluscs are still neatly arranged and labelled in their cabinets and drawers within the Natural History Museum, and available for consultation by researchers on request (if you ever see them, let us know). The NHM collections can be searched and their online page for Lithidion bentiireveals a wonderful dataset, including an image of the NHM accession log (page 61, dated 21 July 1897) in which all the Mabel Bent Sokotran collection is inventoried.
Arachnids
Scorpions
Map of the Bents’ 1894 expedition to the Wadi Hadramaut, Yemen (from their book ‘Southern Arabia’, 1900).
Scorpions are tricky things, best handled with care, including when it comes to classification.
In a letter to her family, posted from the Hadramaut, Mabel intends to shock: ‘I had a scorpion in my glove the other day. I dragged it out of the finger with my nail and shook it into my hand. Fancy the horror of seeing a black scorpion 1½ inches long.’ (Mabel’s family letter, 13 January 1894, archived (rgs243954) at the Royal Geographical Society, London)
‘Scorpions are tricky things, best handled with care, including when it comes to classification.’ A plate of scorpions (‘Journal of the Linnaean Society 25’: 292-316, 1895; archive.org).
When it came to telling the story for her book Southern Arabia (1900, p. 107), she goes into more detail: “As we were leaving Haura [Hawra], just standing about waiting to mount, I felt something hard in one finger of my glove which I was putting on. I thought it was a dry leaf and hooked it down with my nail and shook it into my hand. Imagine my terror on lifting my glove at seeing a scorpion wriggling there. I dropped it quickly, shouting for Mahmoud [the expedition’s zoological collector, see below] and the collecting-bottle, and then caught it in a handkerchief. This was the way that Buthia Bentii introduced himself to the scientific world, for he was of a new species.”
Zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock (1863-1947), the scientist who first classified Mabel Bent’s Hadramaut scorpion as a new species in 1895. It has since been reclassified (Wikipedia).
Or so Mabel thought when she was writing. Her scorpion had indeed been classified as new species in 1895 by the respected British zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock (1863-1947) at the reading of his paper to the Linnaean Society in London on 7 March 1895 (and subsequently published the same year as: ‘On the Arachnida and Myriapoda obtained by Dr. Anderson`s collector during Mr. T. Bent’s expedition to the Hadramaut, South Arabia; with a supplement upon the scorpions obtained by Dr. Anderson in Egypt and the Eastern Soudan’. Journal of the Linnaean Society 25: 292-316.
In his paper, Pocock makes two references to Mabel’s specimen (p. 316), although ‘B. Benti’ never seems to have been published directly: “Butheolus thalassinus is new to the British Museum”, he writes “and the acquisition of seven specimens has filled up an important gap in our series of Scorpions. Moreover, it has enabled me to compare the species both with Buthus Benti and with Nanobuthus Andersoni.” This suggests that Mabel’s scorpion was part of the British Museum’s collection at the time, but it was subsequently not accepted as a new species, being reclassified as the known Butheolus anthracinus. (There seems to be no record of Mabel’s find now in the NHM; it was probably discarded, or it rests with the museum’s grouping of B. anthracinus, or Mabel might even have wanted to keep it herself as a memento of her ‘horror’ in 1894. Those curious to see an image of B. anthracinus, and thus how Mabel’s specimen might have looked, can click here.)
Insects
There are two insects especially closely associated with the Bents in relation to their 1893/4 expedition to the Hadramaut; they were published in 1895.
Polyclada is a genus of beetles belonging to the family group Leaf beetles, but for more on this creature we turn to C.J. Gahan, who read a paper to the Linnean Society in London on 7 March 1895, about a year after the Bents returned from Southern Arabia, in which he spoke ‘On the Coleoptera obtained by Dr. Anderson’s Collector during Mr. T. Bent’s Expedition to the Hadramaut, South Arabia’, his paper was subsequently published (Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology, 1895, Vol. 15, pp. 285-291).
An example of ‘Polyclada benti’ (Gahan 1895), named after the Bents, who returned from the Hadramaut with the original specimen (Wikipedia).
Gahan’s description of Bent’s beetle (p. 291) is rather difficult to follow as it is written in Insect, e.g.: “Head almost entirely reddish testaceous in colour; somewhat finely and closely aciculate-punctate above. Prothorax pale testaceous, marked above with six black spots, of which two are close to the anterior margin, while the remaining four are arranged in an arcuately transverse series close alongside the basal margin…”
Ectrichodia Andersoni (Hemiptera) – but we prefer Ectrichodia Benti
Before Gahan’s paper (7 March 1895, see above), W.F. Kirby read his ‘On the Insects other than Coleoptera obtained by Dr. Anderson’s Collector during Mr. T. Bent’s Expedition to the Hadramaut, South Arabia’, and this paper, too, appears in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology, 1895, Vol. 25, 279-285.
Kirby (p. 279) begins by being critical of the way some of these insects from the Bent expedition were collected: “Many of the specimens, too, were bleached by spirit, which ought never to be used for collecting any insects except hard-shelled and smooth Coleoptera, Hemiptera, etc., which are not liable to be discoloured by it, and have no hair to be matted or delicate exposed wings to be torn.”
“I have named this new species after Dr. Anderson, to whom we are indebted for its discovery.”
Of the large collection of essentially non-beetles brought back by the Bents, Kirby writes that “[one] species I have ventured to describe as new to science; and two or three I am at present unable to determine with certainty, from want of sufficient material” (p. 279). This new species he arbitrarily decides (p. 284) to name after John Anderson (see below) rather than the Bents, whose expedition it was, not Anderson’s. Thus we are reclaiming it for the Bents – Ectrichodia Benti.
The lizard named after Theodore Bent, classified as ‘Uromastyx bentii’ (Agamidae) (Wikipedia).
There is a Yemeni lizard named after Theodore Bent, classified as Uromastyx bentii. To trace it, we should consult Mabel’s diary:- “In the little directions provided for the zoological collection we read, ‘Little is known of the reproduction of lizards, so special attention, etc.’ Well, Mahmoud [assistant for zoological collection] brought me 2 lizards’ eggs, quite white and very fragile. I put them in a matchbox with tow, packed them in a box and one day found a live and a dead lizard, and as we have two more eggs, now all in a bottle, we feel pleased.” This is a quote from Mabel Bent’s Travel Chronicles (1894, Vol. 3, p. 174), and Mabel drew a small circle in her text here to suggest the lizards’ eggs, and then left a space between two points with the word ‘length’, perhaps suggesting that the dead lizard was measured on her page.
Original page from Mabel’s Yemeni chronicle (late Jan, 1894). The circle suggests a lizard’s egg, followed by a space between points with the word ‘length’, perhaps suggesting that the dead baby lizard was measured on the page (Hellenic Society Archive, SAS, University of London)
When, after Theodore’s death, she was compiling Southern Arabia (p. 138) she used her notebook at this point to write: “In the little book of directions for zoological collectors we saw, that ‘little is known of the reproduction of lizards, so special attention is to be paid,’ &c. Mahmoud had brought me two little fragile eggs to keep, about half an inch long, and I had put them in a match-box with tow and packed them in my trunk, and on my return to Al Koton I found two little lizards about 1¼ inch long, one alive and the other dead. Both had to be pickled, as we did not understand how to bring so small a lizard up by hand. They proved to be new to science, as was also a large lizard we had found near Haura, whose peculiarity is that he has no holes along his legs to breathe by, like other lizards. His name is Aporosceles Bentii. The first lizard’s egg I had I was determined should not slip through my fingers; but alack! and well-a-day! my fingers slipped through it.” (Mabel might be confusing this lizard with the creature found actually near Al-Mukalla.)
Today, Aporosceles Bentii (Aporoscelis Bentii) does not produce much online but the Yemeni lizard named after Theodore Bent is classified variously now within the Agamidae family as Uromastyx bentii (it has a CITIES reference incidentally). (See also the Reptile Database entry.)
Colleague of the Bents, Scottish anatomist and zoologist John Anderson (1833-1900):
The Bents’ reptiles from the Hadramaut (1894-6) were later published by the eminent Scottish anatomist and zoologist John Anderson (1833-1900): “Six examples of [a] handsome lizard, three males and three females, were captured on Mr. Bent’s expedition to the Hadramut by my collector, who, owing to the courtesy of Mr. Bent, was permitted to accompany him throughout his journey. They were obtained near Makulla, below the plateau.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Bent, however, started [their 1894 Hadramaut expedition] accompanied by a qualified botanical collector [see ‘Botanical Finds’ above], Mr. Lunt, from the Kew Gardens; and by an Arab zoological collector provided by myself, and to whom I had given full instructions regarding the importance of keeping an accurate record of the locality in which each specimen was collected; but unfortunately he failed to attend to this, and I am therefore not in a position, except in one or two cases, to say more than that the specimens were collected between Makallah and the Hadramut Valley, and between that and the coast as far east as Shehr.” (Anderson 1896: 14-15)
The Bents’ actual lizards (1946.8.11.68-72) from the Hadramaut are still preserved in the Natural History Museum, London, and there is an image available as well as full NHM classification data.
On her husband’s death, John Anderson’s widow presented all his zoological collection to the British Museum (later spun off into the famous Natural History Museum), including “the series of specimens obtained by the late Mr. Theodore Bent in the Hadramaut district of Arabia”. Although indeed acquired on Bent’s exploration in 1893/4, the specimens were collected on Anderson’s behalf, who financed the assistant responsible, and thus they were published and retained by Anderson. (The Philatelic West and Camera News, August 1903, Superior, Nebraska, USA (no page numbers). That this journal is published in Nebraska indicates the interest in, and awareness of, Bent’s many expeditions.)
The recent death of Ratan Tata (28 December 1937 – 9 October 202) has prompted this reposting of an article (Jan 2021) linking this famous family to Mabel Bent. Ratan was the son of Naval Tata, who was adopted by Ratanji Tata, the son of Jamshedji Tata; the latter, of course, was the founder of the Tata Group. Mabel attended Jamshedji’s funeral in Surrey (UK) on 24 May 1904; her association with the family remains unknown.
“And now I think we are among the most remarkable people in this world. Fancy going all the way to Bombay and departing thence without ever landing!” (from Mabel Bent’s Chronicleof 1889)
The tomb of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1904), Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey (wikipedia).
We begin our essay on Theodore and Mabel Bent and India not at the Taj Mahal, nor the Ellora Caves, but in leafy Brookwood Cemetery (Surrey, UK), an hour from London, on May 24, 1904:
“And why, it may be asked, were so many Indian and English friends gathered… in such a place on a dismal day in a downpour of rain? The day was dismal, and rightly so, for the obsequies were being performed of Mr. Jamsetdjee Nusserwanjee Tata, the foremost citizen, taken all round, that India has produced during the long period of British rule over the most cultured and civilised people east of Suez…”
For it seems, indeed, that Mabel Bent, and perhaps Theodore too, although dead and buried himself these seven years, was a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of the extraordinary Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1904), the pioneer Indian industrialist who founded the Tata Group, India’s largest conglomerate company (as at 2021).
And in the same periodical that reports the industrialist’s funeral – the Voice of India, Saturday, 18 June 1904 (p. 583) – we have an image of Mabel, bearing flowers, her long red hair tucked under a black hat:
“From Mr. N.J. Moola I have received the following list of inscriptions attached to the wonderfully beautiful and choice flowers that were an eloquent expression of the affection in which Mr. Tata was held…”
And included in this list we find: ‘With deep sympathy, from Mrs. Theodore Bent,’ and Mabel remained friends with the family, as a cutting from the Belfast Evening Telegraph of Monday, June 28, 1913, indicates: “Mrs. Theodore Bent’s recent evening party was as great a success as her other functions have always been, and was particularly noticeable for the number of distinguished foreign and Colonial guests present. The suite of beautiful rooms, which form a perfect museum of curios from all parts of the world, were looking their best, and were crowded with guests of many nationalities, many of the ladies wearing diamonds in the form of tiaras and other ornaments, some of the handsomest being displayed by a Parsee lady, Mrs. Ratan Tata, who had splendid sapphires set into diamond frames as a necklace, and also for securing her white saree.”
To be able to associate Mabel, the archetypal Victorian, with the legendary ‘Father of Indian Industry’ seems somehow an unusual but fanfaring introduction to the Bents and India, with all the dynamics and symbolism in play between the nations at the end of the 19th century. India meant something, and meant adventures in and around the region for the Bents.
A little scene-setting: one of Edward Lear’s “Indian Trees, Palms and Bamboos” from his 1873/5 journey. Ten years later Lear was to receive a copy of Theodore Bent’s book on the Cyclades (from ‘A Blog of Bosh’).
In all, our couple made three trips to India – not the London, ten-hour flight to Mumbai of today, but then, of course, traversing several seas (the Suez Canal was opened to navigation on 17 November, 1869). Let it be known, Theodore never expressed any sustained interest in exploring or excavating regionally in India, nor to travel and write about its culture; it seems the idea of the land was just too big for him to provide any focus or purchase, and there was something, too, in his psychology, that did not fit. And yet, such was the meaning of India, it would have been extraordinary indeed were he never to have set foot on the Asian continent. Thus, concisely, we can condense their trips to India into: one business meeting (1895), two transit stops (1889 and 1894), and one brief tourist excursion (1895).
But it was India nevertheless.
Theodore wrote no articles directly relating to these visits, the name ‘India’ appearing in just one title. For Mabel, her diary entries are strangely muted (as we shall read in a moment): there is no colour, no sensory Indian overload, as if British control of the ports they landed at and left from, without much exploration, had thrown an odd English and subfusc wash over everything.
P.&O.’s ad from ‘A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon’ (J. Murray 1911, archive.org).
Their first Asian visit was in December 1889 – in a dramatic volte face and characteristic burst of energy and enthusiasm from Theodore that was to launch the couple out of their Eastern-Mediterranean orbit – having been denied further rights to ‘explore’ in either Greece or Turkey – and project them thousands of kilometres eastwards, for Bahrain, then under British and India Office protection, and with Theodore at relative liberty therefore to shovel-and-pick his way there through the ‘Mounds of Ali’. His fuel for this foray was an interest he had by the end of the 1890s in various long-standing theories and Classical references that seemed to link Bahrain with the Phoenicians, and in turn to the movement of early peoples around the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond – perhaps the theme that could be said to be the pivot of his short life’s work; his means of taking himself and his wife to Bahrain was via a slow boat from Karachi, then in India and under the British Raj. But their first port of call was to be Bombay.
Map from “A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon” (J. Murray 1911, archive.org).
The summer of 1888 was taken up, as usual, with Theodore conducting a busy schedule of talks and lectures in England and Scotland, as well as a non-stop programme of article-writing and publishing. Late summer was the time for extended holidays in Ireland and northern England, seeing family and friends, and so it was not until after Christmas 1888 that Theodore and Mabel had everything in place to leave London. Through Suez, and changing at Aden, they reached Mumbai (then Bombay) after three weeks, and immediately left for Karachi and a cruise up the eastern side of the Persian Gulf; making a brief halt at Muscat, before crossing to Bushire, arriving there on 1 February 1889. From there they crossed the Gulf once more to reach Bahrain. (Their finds there, now in the British Museum, were modest and the couple spent only two weeks on the island.) By the end of February 1889 the couple are leaving again for Bushire, Mabel adding in her diary: ‘having passed 40 days and 40 nights of our precious time on the sea, we then and there made up our minds to return over land…’ And with this throwaway remark, Mabel announces the couple’s epic ride of some 2000 km through Persia, the first leg of their journey home to Marble Arch.
But let us now peer over Mabel’s shoulder and read her ‘Chronicle’ while she writes on the “British India S.S. Pemba, January 21st 1889, Monday. Passing Gujarat, India”
P&O’s SS ‘Rosetta’ in 1884 (photo taken by Walter Cunningham Hume). The Bents travelled on her from England to Aden in early 1889, where they changed to the P.&O. ‘Assam’ and then the B.I. ‘Pemba’ (courtesy of Nicholas Messinger).
“I now for the first time [Monday, 21st January 1889] feel tempted to bring forth this book, as I am so soon to get off the beaten track. Theodore and I left London on December 28th (Friday) in the P.&O.S.S. Rosetta, not a very comfortable or clean ship and landed at Naples (Saturday) on the way and changed at Aden (Monday), with no time to land, to the P.&O. Assam, which, though smaller, is wider and has much better passenger accommodation and was very clean.
A plan of Bombay from “A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon” ( J. Murray 1911, archive.org).
“We reached Bombay on Sunday 20th [January 1889] after a roughish time in the Indian Ocean, passing on Saturday the American racing yacht Coronet going round the world. There were few passengers on the ‘Assam’. And now I think we are among the most remarkable people in this world. Fancy going all the way to Bombay and departing thence without ever landing! We found the tender of the British India waiting hungrily for us and were carried off with the mails at once. This [i.e. the ‘Pemba’] is a very small ship and only one passenger for Kurrachi 1st class, but quantities of odd deck passengers dressed and the reverse. We have a cabin next to the little ladies’ cabin and their bath and all in communication, so Theodore has a dressing room and we are most comfortable. We are to call at several places on our way to Bushire. The sea is very calm and it is nice and cool and we are passing a coast like Holland with palms, or rather coconut trees.
Karachi and its environs. From “A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon” (J. Murray 1911, archive.org).
“We reached Kurrachi on Wednesday 23rd [January 1889] about 2 o’clock, and being tempted by the thought of 2 nights ashore, landed. We were surprised at the immense fleet of huge sailing boats which surrounded the ship instead of the usual little ones, but we were a good way out. They are building a new lighthouse further back and on lower ground but higher in itself, as the present one is being shaken by the guns on Manora Point.
Manora Point from “Kurrachee Past, Present And Future” by Alexander F Baillie, p. 62, 1890, Calcutta (archive.org).
“On landing on the bunder, or quay, we took a carriage for Reynold’s Hotel. After leaving the bunder, where various shipping buildings are, we drove for a mile or more along the bund, or embankment, across water and in about 6 miles we reached our destination. All around is arid and sandy but they are making a fierce fight to rear up some dusty plantains, palms, pepper trees, etc. The hotel was a great disappointment as the establishment is just a one-storeyed bungalow with a veranda all round and everyone’s door opening on to it and most with no kind of blind to prevent the inmates being beheld by outsiders. We found ourselves, when night came, in this case and so without ceremony flitted to a suite next door with imitation coloured glass. There was a dressing room behind and a built bath cemented in a bathroom beyond. All was very untidy and wretched and when night came we wished ourselves on board the ‘Pemba’.
Empress Market from “Kurrachee Past, Present And Future” by Alexander F Baillie, frontispiece, 1890, Calcutta (archive.org).
“The cantonment road was near, also many others intersecting the sandy plain all 40 feet wide and one with footpaths fully 20. This led past the bungalows of officers, each in a compound, which made the road very long and dull, and it was very hot too. On Thursday [24th January 1889] we drove to the city about 4 miles off and nearer the sea and discovered the native town and wandered up and down narrow streets full of people intermixed with cows and passed several baths where people were washing themselves outside the buildings.
“We departed at dawn on Friday [25th January 1889] and drove down to the bunder and were off after breakfast, now the only 1st class. Friday night we stopped 3 miles out from Gwadar in Beloochistan, so of course saw nothing, and on Sunday morning, 27th [January 1889] early, found ourselves at Muscat in Arabia.”
Five years on – Karachi revisited: Bound for India a second time
The MM SS ‘Ava’ at Port Said on her way to Aden. The Bents changed to the MM SS ‘La Seyne’ there for Karachi in the winter of 1894 (courtesy: P. Romona).
For 1895, the Bents have decided to make a second attempt to penetrate regions of Yemeni Hadramaut, this time approaching from the south-east, via Muscat again and the coast of modern Oman. Their first trek into the Wadi Hadramaut, in 1894, was only partially successful, and on their return they soon made plans to try again. Mabel’s previous Chronicle had ended in an upbeat tone with ‘and if we possibly can we’ll go back’. In any event they only had a few months (and, as said before, they normally took a break in mid-summer to visit family and friends in England and Ireland) to seek backing and make all the necessary preparations, including informing the ‘media’. Ultimately Theodore was ready to issue a ‘press release’ to The Times (31 October 1894): “Mr. Theodore Bent informs Reuter’s Agency that he and Mrs. Bent are about to start another scientific expedition to Southern Arabia. Leaving Marseilles by Messageries steamer on November 12, they will proceed to Kurrachee, whence they will tranship to Muscat.”
For a first-hand account, we have an extract from Mabel’s classic book on their Arabian adventures – Southern Arabia (1900) – in which she explains (p. 228 ff):
“My husband again, to our great satisfaction, had Imam Sharif, Khan Bahadur [expedition cartographer of note on their last trip], placed at his disposal; and, as the longest way round was the quickest and best, we determined to make our final preparations in India, and meet him and his men at Karachi.”
The MM SS “La Seyne”. The Bents sailed on her to Karachi in the winter of 1894/5 (courtesy: P. Romona).
But let’s at this point switch back to Mabel’s diaries, and her entry for: “Saturday 15th December, 1894. The Residency, Muscat. As it is now nearly a fortnight since I have seen a white woman, I think it time to start my writing. We left England [Friday] Nov. 9th [1894] and after 2 nights at Boulogne embarked at Marseilles on [Monday] the 12th [November 1894] on board the M.M.S.S. ‘Ava’. We had a good passage and warm, seeing Etna smoking on the way, and about 2 days after had a great white squall; I daresay in connection with the earthquakes. We transshipped at Aden to ‘La Seyne’, Theodore going ashore to see about the camp furniture left there 7 months ago.
Government House, where the Bents stayed in Karachi in November 1894. From “Kurrachee Past, Present And Future” by Alexander F Baillie, p. 146, 1890, Calcutta (archive.org).
“We reached Kurrachee on the morning of [Thursday] the 29th [November 1894] and a letter came on board from Mr. James, the Commissioner, asking us to stay at Government House, saying he was going to the Durbar at Lahore, but his sister, Mrs. Pottinger, would entertain us – and so she did, most kindly. She is so pretty and charming, I do not know which of us was most in love with her…
The Sind Club and Frere Hall, Karachi. From “Kurrachee Past, Present And Future” by Alexander F. Baillie, p. 148, 1890, Calcutta (archive.org).
“We remained at Kurrachee till Monday night after dinner. We drove out every evening and one morning went to the bazaars. I bought a lot of toe rings of various shapes, silver with blue and green enamel. They were weighed against rupees and 2 annas added to each rupee. One day we went to call on 2 brides and bridegrooms, Mr. and Mrs. McIver Campbell and Mr. and Mrs. Thornton. The ladies, Miss Grimes and Miss Moody, had come out to our steamer, been married that day, and were passing their honeymoon together at Reynold’s Hotel, amid the pity of all beholders. We embarked [Monday 3rd/Tuesday 4th December 1894] on the B.I.S.N.S.S. Chanda with a little plum pudding Mrs. Pottinger had had made and mixed and stirred by herself and us, and Mr. Ireland, a young invalid officer who was being taken care of at Government House, and her young nephew, Mr. A. James. We were 3 days on the Chanda, a clean little ship with a very clever nice Captain Whitehead, and on Thursday morning [6th December 1894] we reached Muscat…”
A third and final return to India
Theodore’s own watercolour sketch of Muscat from his paper ‘Exploration of the Frankincense Country, Southern Arabia’. The Geographical Journal, 1895, Vol. 6 (2) (Aug), 109-33.
Alas, this expedition along the Oman coast also turns out to be less than successful – although the couple made some remarkable discoveries. The fastness that was the ‘Wadi Hadhramout’ again resisted the Bents’ advances and the party found itself stranded at Sheher, on Yemen’s south coast, in late January 1895, in vain hoping to strike northwards into the Wadi area, or, failing that, to return to Muscat to explore further there.
Mabel’s expedition Chronicle of around this date is haphazard and, understandably, rather depressed. Something happens, and, as in nowhere else in her twenty years of diary-keeping, the detailed notes of the couple’s travels disappear. We get a few lines from the Yemeni south coast before moving with her on board the Imperator for Mumbai:
“[About Wednesday, 30th January 1895, Sheher] … The next 2 days there were great negotiations and plannings as to our future course. One plan was to go hence to Inat in the Wadi Hadhramout, down to Kabre Hud and Bir Borhut and thence to the Mosila Wadi; eastward and back by the coast to this place and then try to go westward. But the other is to us preferable; to go along the coast, first up Mosila and into the Hadhramout and then try to go west, without coming here again. Of course there are so many delays of all sorts that we shall be here some days yet. The one pleasure we can enjoy is a quiet walk along the shore covered with pretty shells and birds…
A Bombay street, from ‘A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon’ (J. Murray 1911, p.203 archive.org).
“A good long time has elapsed since I wrote and I resume my Chronicle. Sunday, February 17th [1895]. And hardly can I write for the shaking of the very empty Austrian Lloyd S.S. ‘Imperator’ bound for Bombay. After a good deal of illusory delay, the Sultan Hussein declared he could not answer in any way for our safety if we went anywhere and so we at first thought of going to Muscat in a dhow and going to the Jebel Akhdar, as we had intended if it had not been for Imam Sheriff’s illness, but with the wind blowing N.E. it would have taken fully a month. We then must have gone round by India to get home and all our steamer clothes were at Aden. So as soon as we could we hired a dhow and embarked thereupon at about 1 o’clock for Aden…”
Back on dry land, we know the Bents were in Aden again by Wednesday, 13 February 1895. On that date Theodore wrote a ‘press release’ via the Royal Geographical Society, which was published in The Times of 1 March, announcing that ‘The party… went on to Sheher… Last year the people were very friendly to Mr. Bent’s party and promised to take them on a tour into the interior, but the season was too far advanced. To Mr. Bent’s surprise, however they received him and his party very coldly, absolutely refused to let them go outside the town, and told them that for the future no European would be allowed to enter the Hadramaut… Although it is evident Mr. Bent has not been able to carry out what would have been an expedition of the first magnitude, still it would seem that his journey will not be without interesting and novel results. His latest letter is dated from Aden, February 13, and he expects to be home about the middle of April.’
The Austrian Lloyd ‘Imperator’. The Bents travelled on her from Aden to Mumbai in early 1895 (B. Ivancovich, wikipedia).
And they will come home via India; and Mabel’s few lines above are all we have of the Bents’ last trip there. Why did Mabel not keep up her diary? They would have reached Bombay on the Imperator (a lovely ship of 4140 tons, launched in September 1886 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Austrian Lloyd Shipping Company) by the end of February 1895, and we know the two of them were back in London by the end of April.
The Manchester Guardian of 25 April 1895 carried another report: ‘Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bent have returned to London after spending the winter in exploring some of the little known or entirely unknown valleys of Southeastern Arabia. The flying trip which Mr. Bent made to India to see Colonel Holdich, the head of the Indian Survey, as to some unexpected difficulties, presumably of official origin, thrown in the way of the realisation of his plans for visiting the Eastern Hadramaut Valley, was unfortunately unsuccessful, as Colonel Holdich was absent on frontier business…’
Superintendent of Frontier Surveys in British India, Theodore’s friend, Colonel Sir Thomas H. Holdich (wikipedia).
Allowing for a two- or three-week journey back to England, Theodore and Mabel would have remained three or four weeks in India. As we have read above, one mission Theodore had in the country was to try and find his friend the great ‘Superintendent of Frontier Surveys in British India’, Colonel Sir Thomas H. Holdich, intending to elicit his support for one further expedition to the Hadramaut.
But Mabel’s above note, about needing Aden again to collect their personal effects, including ‘steamer clothes’ prior to making for Bombay, leads indirectly to one last bit of classic tourism and sightseeing – the fabled Ellora Caves. It looks, however, as if Mabel never went along; indeed, the only reference we have to the trip comes after Mabel’s death in 1929; prompted by her obituary in the Times, a letter appears in the same newspaper a few days later. This letter, of 6 July 1929, is from Mrs Julia Marie Tate, of 76 Queensborough Terrace, Hyde Park, London, widow of William Jacob Tate, in which she wistfully recalls:
Steamer Point, Aden around 1900.
“… a vivid picture of a moonlit night as clear as day off Aden, watching Arabian ‘sampans’ unloading tents and quantities of camp ‘saman’ [personal effects]. Presently their owners climbed up, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bent. A few months before [i.e. the winter of 1894/5] we had called at their [London] house in Great Cumberland-place to learn their whereabouts, but the *butler knew nothing, only that they were ‘somewhere in the Indian Ocean.’ This improvised meeting brought about the fulfilment of a cherished desire of theirs when my husband took his old schoolfellow to see the wonder caves of Ellora. This was their last reunion on earth.”
Part of the ‘Carpenter’s Cave’, Buddhist Cave 10 at Ellora, and visited by Theodore Bent in 1895 (wikipedia).
It is remarkably odd that Mabel makes no mention of this trip to the ‘wonder caves’ – was she ill? Or prevented somehow from going? Did it cause such resentment that she refused to chronicle the stay in Mumbai, and the long journey home by sea? Her regret at missing out on this excursion – then as now one of India’s greatest tourist attractions – can be imagined, for she was not easily denied. Also unusual is the fact that Theodore also wrote nothing about the visit to the caves (a trip that would have necessitated several nights away from his wife) – he did have much else on his mind, but perhaps also he had no desire to bring up the matter again and avoid any breakfast-table ill will!
The Ellora Caves for tourists. ‘Thomas Cook: India Burma and Ceylon : information for travellers and residents’ (1898, p. 79) (archive.org)
And his companion? William Jacob Tate (1853-1899) was at Repton School with Theodore in the late 1860s. He joined the Indian Civil Service but had to retire early on account of his health and died just two years after Theodore in December 1899, at the age of 46. Mabel and Mrs Tate perhaps remained in town while Theodore and his old school friend visited the Ellora cave complex of monasteries and temples carved in the basalt cliffs north of Aurangabad (Maharashtra State), some 300 km north-east of Mumbai – “Reached from Nandgaon (G.I.P. Railway) by tonga, holding three passengers… Visitors are advised to take a sufficient supply of provisions and liquors for the trip.’ (Thomas Cook: India Burma and Ceylon : information for travellers and residents (1898, p. 79)
As for Mrs Tate, she can be forgiven her unseen tears in her letter to the Times. A stone in the Kemmel Chateau Military Cemetery Heuvelland, Belgium, is inscribed: ‘Tate, Lieutenant, William Louis, 3rd Bn., Royal Fusiliers. Killed in action 13 March 1915. Age 24. Eldest son of the late William Jacob Tate, I.C.S., and of Mrs. Julia Marie Tate.’ And the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial has this: ‘Tate, Captain, Frederick Herman, Mentioned in Despatches, 10th Bn., King’s Royal Rifle Corps. 11 August 1917. Age 22. Son of Mrs. Tate… the late W.J. Tate.’
The old steamer on her westward bearing leaves Bombay in her wake. No amount of meditation in the Ellora Caves, or anywhere else, will ease such wounds, be it for Tate or Tata: ‘With deep sympathy, from Mrs. Theodore Bent.’
* The ‘butler’ here is Mr. A. Lovett, and it is a pleasure to reference him; how nice it would be to trace his descendants (if any). Sadly, he was to lose his job on Bent’s demise in May 1897. The Morning Post of 13 May prints this notice: “Mrs. Theodore Bent can recommend A. Lovett as Butler: four years’ character; leaving through death. – A.L., 13 Great Cumberland-place, W.”
Thomas Norton Longman (1849–1930), at the helm of his firm at the time Bent was contributing to their list. They would have been acquaintances, if not friends. (Wikipedia).
Through the stories of Bent’s books we have a panorama of the best of British publishing flourishing in the late 19th century – a roll call of famous imprints and their founders. These pages provide some background to Bent’s seven published books, before delving in greater detail into the archive of Longmans, Green & Co., the publisher of five of Bent’s monographs, fortuitously surviving today in the care of ‘University of Reading, Special Collections’ (housed in the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL), Reading University, Berkshire, UK.
As mentioned above, of the seven monographs associated with celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent, five were published by the prestigious London enterprise embodying Longmans, Green & Co., between 1879 and 1893. It’s pleasurable to think of the Bents taking a carriage from Marble Arch to Paternoster Row, by St Paul’s, at the famous ‘Sign of the Ship’, to discuss contracts and royalties with their publishers. The offices (at No. 39) remained there until bombed in the Blitz in December 1940, explaining, perhaps, why no copies of correspondence between the parties has survived in terms of the following five books:
Preface dated: December 25, 1878, Florence. (The Bents were celebrating Christmas 1878 in Florence: after marrying in August 1877, they enjoyed effectively a three-year honeymoon, Theodore researching his three Italian books the while.)
Preface dated: November 1884, 13 Great Cumberland Place, W. (Phenomenally quickly, Bent had this classic account ready for his editors within months of returning to England. The Bents had moved from 43 to 13 GCP, c. 1 km closer to Marble Arch; the site has been ‘redeveloped’.)
“The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland”, 1892, Longmans (archive.org)
(1st edn, 1892) Preface dated: none (Again, rather oddly for such an important work, Bent included no Preface. This controversial book was far and away his bestseller.)
(2nd edn, 1893) Preface dated: May 26, 1893, 13 Great Cumberland Place.
(3rd edn, 1895) Preface dated: October 1894, 13 Great Cumberland Place.
Many of Mabel Bent’s photographs from the Great Zimbabwe area were processed for inclusion in Bent’s Mashonaland articles and volume by the singular illustrator and mountaineer Edward Whymper (St Martin’s House, 29 Ludgate Hill, London, E.C.). The archive of the Royal Geographical Society has an interesting memo from Whymper to RGS Secretary J.S. Keltie (4 March 1892) indicating the costs “will not exceed £18” (pers. comm).
(1st edn, 1893) Preface dated: November 1893, 13 Great Cumberland Place. (Again, produced within months of the couple’s return from Ethiopia (and, importantly, out in time for the Christmas market in England), although their stay around Axsum was aborted due to conflict between warring factions and the Italian occupiers.)
(2dn edn, 1896) Preface dated: April 17, 1896, 13 Great Cumberland Place.
An interesting aside
Map and title page of Bent’s bestseller on the Cyclades (1885) (archive.org)
An interesting aside right away is why Bent, as tireless a writer as traveller, left a gap of some five years between his famous guide to the Greek Cyclades (1885) and his departure for Great Zimbabwe (late 1890). Had he wanted to, he could effortlessly have compiled a volume on the researches by him and Mabel, his wife, in the Eastern Mediterranean in the mid 1880s, based on his scores of articles, lectures, etc. (see his bibliography).
The two Bent books not published by Longmans
Leaving the above open for the moment, the two books not bearing the Longmans imprint are:
Genoa, how the Republic rose and fell, published in 1881 by the London firm of C. Kegan Paul & Co. (This was the second of Bent’s books to appear, but it may well have been the first he began writing.)
Preface dated: May 1880, 43 Great Cumberland Place. W. (This was the Bents’ first (rented) London townhouse, c. 2 km from Marble Arch; it still stands.)
Southern Arabia (edited by Mabel Bent), published in 1900 by the London firm of Smith, Elder & Co.
Title page of “Southern Arabia”, featuring Bent’s iconic portrait, Smith, Elder & Co., 1900 (archive.org)
Preface dated: October 13, 1899, 13 Great Cumberland Place, W. (Mabel had the painful task of editing this work alone; she had spent two years over it since Theodore’s death in 1897. The result was a tour de force and the book a milestone in researches, in any language, covering this region. Mabel’s inexperience in many aspects of this book’s complexities makes her achievement even more remarkable. Seeing the title page for the first time, with its iconic portrait of her partner, must have brought as much pain as pleasure, if not more.)
The young historian
General Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi (1866) (Wikipedia). The subject of Bent’s third book (1881), the General’s family took issue with some of the author’s test, obliging Longmans to apologise and make corrections in a subsequent edition.
From the little evidence we have, it is likely that, although published second, Bent’s volume on the Genoese Empire (1881) was begun much earlier – probably stemming enthusiastically from his history studies at Oxford (and then encountering this mercantile nation again during his brief tour of the Eastern Mediterranean in the early 1880s). The young historian (all his early articles were historical in topic) was probably contracted to Kegan Paul & Co. early for Genoa, and it was ready for publication by them in the spring of 1881. By then his relationship with Longmans had started (San Marino) and we get the unusual occurrence of two books by him appearing that year – Garibaldi (with Longmans) reached booksellers in time for Christmas 1881. The Kegan Paul editors, prudently, would have thought twice before signing up for two books with an unproven young author, well explaining, perhaps, Bent’s feet in both houses. (Prudence pays, as it happens – Garibaldi’s family took issue with the author, obliging Longmans to apologise and hastily reprint in early 1882.)
Page 200 from Bent’s “San Marino”, with an illustration based on one of his watercolours (1877/8)(archive.org).
As for the publication history of San Marino, Bent had been working on the text quickly over the spring and summer of 1878, and by the latter months of that year was approaching potential publishers for it. Longmans were not the only candidates, i.e. there is a letter (date unclear, possibly 6 December) note 1 from the young historian to William Blackwood & Sons offering them his manuscript (with the option, too, of a portfolio of watercolours done on the spot). He gives his address as accommodation overlooking the Arno, Florence, adding that he and Mabel will remain there until Christmas 1878. His Preface in the final volume (Longmans) is dated 25 December, Florence; publication date was 10 May 1879. All done very quickly – and typical of the author.
Charles Kegan Paul (1828-1902) founder of the publishers C. Kegan Paul & Co. (1877).
It seems very likely that Bent would have had dealings in some way with Charles Kegan Paul (1828-1902) himself over the Genoa book. The latter’s business was a successful one across the Empire, merging with George Routledge in 1912. The company continues today as part of the Taylor & Francis Group (itself also with 18th-/19th-century roots). Kegan Paul was ordained as a young man as an Anglican clergyman, as were many of Bent’s closest friends, and this may explain in some way the connection between the latter and the firm.
Bent’s first three books being historical in theme, Longmans would also have been a logical choice for him. Sadly, their archive, today managed (ref: GB 6 RUL MS 1393) by University of Reading, Special Collections (Berkshire, UK), does not contain actual correspondence between the two parties, and Bent’s own copies of any letters and contracts have long since disappeared. However, one contract (ref: MS 1393/3/1974) has survived within the Longmans archive – Bent’s agreement to publish in 1893 The sacred city of the Ethiopians.. The old document arguably being something of an archaeological treasure now in its own right.
It would not be too unfair to say that Bent’s three ‘historical’ works are unmemorable -with San Marino whimsical, Genoa badly reviewed (“No one who cares even a little for the dignity of their own country can tolerate seeing its history traduced by foreigners, with disgraces like this, which are certainly not redeemable by the fantastic designs and symbols printed in gold on the cover.” – Giornale Ligustico Di Archeologia, Storia E Letteratura 1882:74-7), and Garibaldi ending up in the hands of lawyers.
However, with his forthcoming travel/exploration writing, Bent is to find his true voice, and fame…
The young explorer
George Murray Smith (1824-1901), running the firm of Smith, Elder & Co. at the time Mabel Bent’s “Southern Arabia” was published in 1900. Theodore Bent having died in 1897, it must have been his widow’s choice to select Smith’s company in preference to Longmans. It seems unlikely that the latter would have turned down the offer for the book, but no correspondence has surfaced to date. (Wikipedia).
We might have thought, perhaps, that when looking to place his Cyclades manuscript (1885), a more obvious firm for Bent’s travel/exploration books might have been that lion of publishers, John Murray – Byron’s publisher, and Patrick Leigh Fermor’s incidentally, 125 years and more later – but presumably our young author was happy with, or contracted to, Messrs. Longmans, or his approaches to other firms were declined.
Several years later, arriving back from South Africa in early 1892, Bent had still no publisher lined up for his extensive Mashonaland researches and his year of travels in the region. In February of that year, he wrote first to William Blackwood and Sons and then to John Murray for their potential interest, but nothing came of his enquiries note 2 . In the end he went with Longmans and they did an excellent job for him in terms of the sales and marketing of his notorious account of the ruins of Great Zimbabwe (1892), and, subsequently, his work at Aksum in Ethiopia (1893). Incidentally, via a little (and typical) publishing promiscuity, a link with Murray’s was to follow.
Continuing, Bent’s Great Zimbabwe study went on generating royalties for his widow after 1897. Following Theodore’s early death that year (aged just 45), Mabel spent almost three years preparing the material she needed to complete the manuscript of Southern Arabia (1900). (Had Bent lived, there might well have been a volume beforehand on his obsession, i.e. the cultures and people both sides of the Red Sea, and the Queen of Sheba – the quest for whom might be said to have cost him his life.)
No. 15 Waterloo Place in London, the offices of Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. (Wikipedia).
For whatever reason, Mabel’s choice of publisher for what is now this classic (most academic studies on the peninsular even today will cite it) was Smith, Elder & Co, another of the Empire’s highly regarded publishers. The man in charge when Mabel’s Southern Arabia appeared in 1900 was George Murray Smith (1824-1901), son of one of the founders, George Smith (1789-1846), who started the business with Alexander Elder (1790-1876). Their stable of brands included the highly popular Cornhill Magazine, in whose pages five of Bent’s (non-scholarly) articles appeared in the 1880s and ’90s. Perhaps a clue lies here as to why Mabel opted for this firm.
A pleasing coda rounds off the story – Smith, Elder & Co were actually acquired later by John Murray in 1917 (and Mabel might even possibly have had dealings with them over royalties, etc.), and thus Bent gets his link with Byron in the end – which would have amused our adventurer, no end.
The archive of Longmans, Green & Co., University of Reading, Special Collections (GB 6 RUL MS 1393)
Notes on Books… works published by Messrs. Longmans and Co. (archive.org)
Before exploring the heavy Bent files and ledgers within the Longmans archive (University of Reading, Special Collections) in some detail, a valuable point of departure is provided by a series of catalogues Messrs. Longmans produced on a regular basis (every five years) and which provided bibliographical information for the works they produced, i.e. Notes on Books, being a Quarterly Analysis of the works published by Messrs. Longmans and Co.
These records provide the company’s contemporary data on publication dates, extent, binding, price, etc.
The Longmans archive (University of Reading, Special Collections) reference is provided, in square brackets, e.g. [GB 6 RUL MS 1393/L5,306] – see ‘Index to the archives of the House of Longman, 1794-1914‘ below)
Published May 10, 1879. [GB 6 RUL MS 1393/L5,306] A Freak of Freedom, or the Republic of San Marino. By J. Theodore Bent, Honorary Citizen of the same. Pp. 288, with a Map of the Republic and 15 Illustrations engraved on Wood from Sketches taken on the spot by the Author. Crown 8vo. Price 7s. 6d. cloth [c. £20 today]
“During a hurried visit to San Marino in the spring of 1877, the Author felt so much interested in the simplicity of the inhabitants, and their attachment to their freedom, that he determined when an opportunity occurred to investigate more thoroughly the story of this liberty of fifteen centuries’ standing, and to ascertain whether it was bonâ fide or not …”
Volume VI. From May 1880 – February 1885, pp. 99 ff., 302 ff.
October 10, 1881. [GB 6 RUL MS 1393/L6,99] The Life of Giuseppe Garibaldi. By J. Theodore Bent, B.A. Oxon. Author of ‘A Freak of Freedom, or the Republic of San Marino,’ ‘Genoa, how the Republic Rose and Fell,’ &c. Pp. 320, with a Portrait from a Photograph engraved on Steel by H. Adlard. Crown 8vo. price 7s. 6d. cloth [c. £20 today] [NB Bent now decides to add his Oxford degree (Wadham College). For some reason he was never to take his MA.]
“The primary object of the present work is to discuss the character and life of General Garibaldi from a thoroughly impartial point of view. In the first place it is shewn how from the commencement of his career up to the present date his actions have almost invariably been influenced by those around him. Politically he is shewn to be as helpless as a child, whilst in warlike manœuvres of his own peculiar kind no one of the present century can equal him …”
February 28, 1885. [GB 6 RUL MS 1393/L6,302] The Cyclades; or Life among the Insular Greeks. By J. Theodore Bent, B.A. Oxon. Author of ‘Genoa: How the Republic Rose and Fell’ &c. With Map. Crown 8vo. pp. 528, price 12s. 6s. [c. £30 today] [Is Bent, in part, to blame for today’s undeniable over-tourism in these islands?]
“The islands of the Ægean Sea offer plenty of scope for the study of Hellenic archæology, but they are more particularly rich in the preservation of manners and customs which have survived the lapse of years. This work is the result of a special study of both these points, made during two winters passed by the Author amongst the islanders in their distant hamlets, and in their towns by the sea-coast …”
Volume VIII. From May 1891 – February 1896, pp. 106 ff; 167 ff.
Printing history of Bent’s “The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland”, 3rd edn, 1895, Longmans (archive.org).
November 17, 1892. [GB 6 RUL MS 1393/L8,106; L12,106] The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland: being a Record of Excavation and Exploration in 1891. By J. Theodore Bent, F.S.A. F.R.G.S. With a Chapter on the Orientation and Mensuration of the Temples by R.M.W. Swan. With 5 Maps and Plans, 13 Plates, and 104 Illustrations in the Text. 8vo. pp. 388, price 18s. [c. £45 today] [Bent’s inaccurate conclusions, steered by Cecil Rhodes, on Great Zimbabwe were to begin a controversy that was to last some 40 years; some would say longer. By this publication date Bent was both a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (1 July 1886) and the Royal Geographical Society (16 June 1890).]
“The object of this work is, firstly, to give a description of the various ruins existing in Mashonaland, and the results of excavations undertaken by the author at Zimbabwe, which was once the capital of this country. It was a strong garrison town in the centre of the gold-producing reefs, and was obviously built for the protection of the gold workers …”
“The Sacred City of the Ethiopians”, 1893, Longmans (archive.org)
November 24, 1893. [GB 6 RUL MS 1393/L8,167; L12,167] The Sacred City of the Ethiopians: being a Record of Travel and Research in Abyssinia in 1893. By J. Theodore Bent, F.S.A. F.R.G.S. With a Chapter by Professor H.D. Müller on the Inscriptions from Yeha and Axsum, and an Appendix on the Morphological Character of the Abyssinians by T.G. Garson, M.D. V.P.A.I. With 8 Plates and 65 Illustrations in the Text. 8vo. pp. 326, price 18s. [c. £45 today] [This was to be Bent’s last completed work – he was dead within four years. In the blurb provided by Longmans (or Bent) we see the first reference to Mabel Bent, although she accompanied her husband through every page he ever wrote.]
“This work has a twofold object. Firstly, to relate the experiences of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bent on their journey to and from Axsum in Abyssinia. Special attention has been paid to the manners and customs of the inhabitants, the nature of the primitive form of Christianity which they practise, the marriage ceremonies, the festivals, and every-day life of the Abyssinians. The latter portion of the book is more particularly devoted to the sacred city, its present condition, and its past history …”
At the “Sign of the Ship”, i.e. the long-established offices of Longmans, Green, & Co., 39, Paternoster Row, London.
Index to the archives of the House of Longman, 1794-1914
The key to the surviving records relating to Bent’s publications with Messrs. Longmans (as they styled themselves) held within the archives of University of Reading, Special Collections, is the Index to the archives of the House of Longman, 1794-1914 (restricted availability), meticulously compiled by Alison Ingram (1981, Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey).
The Ledgers
As mentioned above, the archive seems to hold no correspondence between Bent and the company (presumably lost in the Blitz in 1940), but what we have is a series of bulky ledgers, in which there is a numbered and dated page entry for each title. Labouriously, batteries of clerks (witness to commercial employment practices, until computerisation changed everything) then entered by hand every transaction, expense/credit, production detail, sales & marketing information, stock balances, and other data, so as to provide an accurate ‘balance sheet’, as it were, for each book. From these pages the officers of the company could receive profit and loss information for the books in press, and, importantly for Bent, and for his widow after his death in 1897, any royalties owing their authors.
Missing Ledger ‘N’ ?
On a visit to the Longmans archive (8 August 2024), ledger/item ‘N’ (Law) seemed to have gone astray, a great pity as it will have included legal correspondence relating to certain textual inaccuracies in Bent’s volume on Garibaldi (1881). In her study Jessie White Mario: Risorgimento Revolutionary (Ohio University Press, 1972, pp. 112, 142-3), Elizabeth Adams Daniels makes reference to two letters from Longmans to Garibaldi’s family, apologising for any unintended errors by their author: it is clear that lawyers would have been consulted (and, indeed, a note of legal expenses is entered against Bent’s account in the corresponding ledger).
Index contents
Page number 30 (although the pages themselves are unnumbered) of Alison Ingram’s Index lists Bent’s Longmans titles (in alphabetical order) and provides the relevant ledger volume (i.e. A, B, C, etc.) and page number(s), i.e. H24, 188 261 (with the page numbers not separated by commas. (NB ‘L’ references are not to ledgers but to the individual volumes of Notes on Books, being a Quarterly Analysis of the works published by Messrs. Longmans and Co. that have already been referred to above.) Thus, to consult the ledgers we have these references:
‘The Cyclades’ – E2, 263-4; H25, 475; L6, 302
‘A Freak of Freedom’ – A12, 285; H24, 3; L5, 306
‘The Life of Garibaldi’ – H24, 188 261; H25, 20; L6, 99; N132 (Law.), 10
‘The Sacred City of the Ethiopians’ – A15, 27-8 36; C6, 113; H30, 50; L8, 167; L12, 167
Contracts
The only contemporary contract that seems to have survived in the archive, as already referred to above, is for Bent’s The sacred city of the Ethiopians (1893), with the archive reference MS 1393/3/1974.
(Details and notes from the ledgers will follow in a later continuation of this article.)
Acknowledgements: Grateful thanks to Emma Farmer, Project Archive Assistant, The Museum of English Rural Life and University of Reading Special Collections, University of Reading, for providing access and kind assistance with the material relating to Theodore Bent within the Longmans archive (July 2024).
Notes:
Note 1: Letter from Theodore Bent dated 6 Dec 1879 (?) in the William Blackwood & Son archive, National Library of Scotland (MS.4368 ff.149-150). Return from Note 1
Note 2: (He may well, of course, have approached other firms too.) Letter from Theodore Bent dated 6 Feb 1892 in the William Blackwood & Son archive, National Library of Scotland (MS.4584 ff.156-157); Letter from Theodore Bent dated 19 Feb 1892 in the John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland (MS.40087 folio 101). Return from Note 2
Mabel in her “princesse dress of rich white silk, trimmed with a flounce of Carrickmacross lace, with veil to match, and a set of pearls, the gift of the bridegroom.” From a newspaper article (newspaper not recorded), August 1887. An undated studio photo, probably taken after her marriage (photo: The Bent Archive).
Happy anniversary. August 2nd is Theodore and Mabel’s wedding anniversary – they married (he 26, she 31) near Mabel’s family seat (Co. Wexford) on this day in 1877, in the little church of Staplestown, Co. Carlow.
Staplestown Church, Co. Carlow.
The couple were perfectly matched and formed a happy, childless partnership, spent exploring for nearly the next 20 years the Eastern Mediterranean, Africa and Arabia, until Theodore’s untimely death in May 1897, returning from east of Aden – as fatal then as now.
The announcement of the engagement of Theodore and Mabel in ‘The Morning Post’, of May 23, 1877.
We know the couple met in Norway, probably c. 1876, but the date/place has yet to be discovered. By May 23 the engagement was announced (e.g. The Morning Post, May 23, 1877. The wedding, as noted above, was August 2 – not very long to organize the event on both sides of the Irish Sea. It was clear that Theodore had no intention of residing in his native Baildon, Yorkshire. Both his parents were dead and within weeks of the wedding he was selling off parcels of his land there, e.g. at the Bradford Finance and Local Purposes Committee meeting of Tuesday, 14 August 1877, one of the items reports that it was agreed “to accept the offer of Mr. James Theodore Bent to sell to the Corporation certain lands and hereditaments situate in the township of Baildon, containing 25 acres, 2 roods and 18 perches, for the sum of £4,000… With regards to the purchase from Mr. Bent, it was of land lying on this side of Esholt, at a tolerably level portion near the river. The purchase was recommended with a view to using the land for sewage defœcation purposes, should it be required.” (Leeds Times, Saturday 18 August 1877). The sum is the equivalent of £250,000 or so today – a nice wedding present.
Mabel was brusque, pragmatic, robust, fearless, obsessive and totally dedicated to Theodore’s work – their work – as expedition quartermaster, photographer, and chronicler. She was also to the right of fanatical. Theodore died in days, and Mabel found herself equally abruptly adrift – she turned to her faith and spent several years rootling around Palestine, soon becoming embroiled in the early doings of the Anglo-Israeli Association (various aliases) and remained a member for 30 years until her death in 1929. (One of the many archaeological ironies is that co-adherents desecrated the ‘Hill of Tara’ (Co. Meath, and just a few kms south-east of Mabel’s birthplace) in the early 1900s, looking for the ‘Ark of the Covenant’; and there is the on-going controversy about ‘The Bethel Seal’ – did Mabel plant it as a love-token for her dead spouse?)
“May I lend your magazine to the Reverend Commander Roberts RN – Rector of Ardley, Bicester – our Secretary – I think he would write to that man? Mabel Virginia Anna Bent, 13 Great Cumberland Place, London, W. [Mabel’s London home], 28 April 1909” [A rare example of Mabel’s signature]Arguably, none of this detracts, in the end, from Mabel’s Herculean (Amazonian?) efforts to support Theodore, and contribute to the many successes of their adventures in the field, from Aksum to Zimbabwe.
And the reason for the anniversary nod to her, anyway, is just to point out this aspect of Mabel’s nature (and he that is without, etc.), and note the arrival at the Bent Archive (thanks to Anna Cook) of a signed and incompletely dated card from Mabel to Charlotte Bellingham Wrench (addressed to her fine house, Killacoona, Ballybrack, Co. Dublin), asking if she (Mabel) could forward a magazine (presumably anti-AIA) to Lawrence Roberts, ‘our secretary’ (and committed AIAist), and write to ‘that man’ (Mabel could be a dogged and ruthless adversary).
Mabel’s correspondent: Mrs Charlotte Bellingham Wrench, Killacoona, Ballybrack [Co. Dublin]The year is hard to make out from the postmark, but thanks to John Enfield, President and Journal Editor of the British Postmark Society (pers. comm., July 2019), we have it catalogued as 1909. Mabel was in full voice and causing trouble in Jerusalem; unswerving in her views, she had just published her ‘Anglo-Saxons from Palestine; or, The imperial mystery of the lost tribes’ (1908, London: Sherratt & Hughes), based on her interests in British Israelism.
Never mind, ‘Ní bheidh a leithéid ann arís – Her like will not be seen again’ (as goes the Irish epitaph later selected for one of Mabel’s great-nieces). She is buried with Theodore in St Mary’s, Theydon Bois, outside London, go visit her…
Poster for the first modern Olympic Games, held in Athens in April 1896 (Wikipedia).
A recent article covered the Bents at tennis but now it’s the Olympics – not the extravagant, chauvinist affair that is Paris today (July 2024), but a much happier time, 6th – 15th April 1896, in Athens, Greece, and the first Games staged in the modern era – for there were to be no tiddlywinks, table-football, cat’s cradle, or wife carrying, no scooter racing, just classic events – athletics, cycling (the Bents were very keen), fencing, swimming, no-nonsense, that sort of wholesome thing. (Incidentally, tennis, a sport much enjoyed on the front lawns of Mabel Bent’s Wexford family home, was also included, the Olympics’ singles being won, fittingly enough for us, by Dublin-born John Boland.)
And, needless to say, Theodore and Mabel can cry out – “We too! We were there!”
Constitution Square, in the era of the Bents, and their base in Athens. Their hotel was located here (private collection).
But let’s travel back a few weeks and months first. On 2nd December 1895, the Bents had set off to explore along the Sudanese coast, reaching as far as Suakin, and en route finding traces of old gold mines. By the end of March 1896 the couple are more than ready to return, leaving Alexandria to spend a few days in Athens – a city much loved by the pair since the early 1880s – before their journey back to their London townhouse near Marble Arch. In the Greek capital, by the way, Theodore is serendipitously recruited by the British School to supervise archaeological excavations at the ancient gymnasium (Kynosarges), before he and Mabel joined the crowds to go watch some events on the opening day of the above-mentioned first modern Olympics, 6th April 1896.
Here is Mabel’s diary for the end of March 1896, abridged somewhat:-
“We remained in Cairo till Friday 26th [March]… and embarked on the Khedival steamer for the Pireas… The steamer was most crowded. Theodore had a cabin with 5 Greeks and I was one of 5, for 2 nights. We arrived at the Grand Hotel, Athens, Sunday 28th March. Iannis, the proprietor, Spiro, and the other waiters were warm in their welcome. The town was gayer than I have ever seen a town in Holy Week, as it was being all beflagged and illuminated for the Olympic Games, which were to take place on Easter Monday… We left on April 7th, via Corfu, having seen the first day of the Olympic Games.” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, p. 325, 2006, Archaeopress, Oxford)
Calendar of events at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens 1896. The Bents attended Day 1, 6th April (Wikipedia).
The Wikipedia entry for the 1896 Games in Athens has an informative calendar/table detailing all the events over the ten days they were staged. The chart shows us that Day 1 (April 6th) witnessed an exciting, if short, programme of athletics. There seems to have been a brief opening ceremony before George I, the Greek king, at 3 in the afternoon. Two first-place medals were awarded that Monday – the 1500 metres, won by Australian Edwin Flack, and the discus, an American winning, Robert Garrett. (They both received silver medals, the iconic gold not appearing until later Games apparently.)
An artist’s impression of the 100 m at the 1896 Games in Athens (Wikipedia).
Mabel, sadly, gives very little away in her account, she can’t have been much impressed and obviously knew no one there – not even the debonair Dubliner John Boland. Perhaps in the crowds she could see little: as well as the discus and the 1500 metres, there were also the heats of the 100, 400, and 800 metres to be savoured.
It seems most unlikely, therefore, that Mabel would have bothered much when the Games ultimately reached London for the first time in April 1908, Theodore having died in May 1897, a year after the events in Athens referred to above – Citius, Altius, Fortius… indeed.
General Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi, 1866 (wikipedia).
There is a backstory to Bent’s The Life of Giuseppe Garibaldi(1881). Theodore Bent had left Oxford with an undistinguished history degree in the mid 1870s, met and married a distant Irish cousin, Mabel Hall-Dare, in 1877, and then promptly took his new bride off to Italy, where he was to practise ‘history’, i.e. travel, write, and research, until 1882; the couple, wealthy enough, would use their London townhouse at 43 Great Cumberland Place as an occasional retreat the while.
The heady years of the couple’s status as celebrity explorers were a decade away; as yet, Bent had no career, but he did have a devoted wife, with whom he was lucky enough to share the traveller’s gene – that labelled ‘the need to be somewhere else’; thus he and Mabel were perfectly happy, and no thoughts of children ever appear in her diaries. Plus, as said, they were wealthy enough.
Page 200 from Bent’s “San Marino”. We see his sketch of Garibaldi’s billet in 1849 (archive.org).
For Theodore, the fruits of these (non-fully unified) ‘Italian’ years ripened into a trilogy of books, two of which he managed to get the very solid London firm of Longmans, Green & Co. to publish. The first (1879, Kegan Paul & Co.) was a lightweight, but well received, account of the tiny Republic of San Marino, illustrated by its author – Theodore’s sketches pepper nearly all his books, with Mabel adding the photos on occasion. This modest work, besides getting the couple citizenship of the little state, obviously did well enough for Bent’s second publishers, Longmans, to agree to issue next (in 1881) an indigestible tome on the great port-city of Genoa, a study only really memorable as an example of Bent’s energy and speed of output – qualities he retained all his short life, producing hundreds (see his bibliography) of articles, papers, and lectures, in addition to his six books (a seventh was to be completed by Mabel after his death in 1897).
Garibaldi as he appears in the frontispiece of Bent’s 1881 biography (archive.org).
In the same year as Genoa (1881), Bent completed his biography on Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882), the hero-revolutionary. We don’t yet know why exactly took on the project, although clearly the great man was nearing the end of his life and there was always interest in him, i.e. a market for one more leather-bound volume to add to library shelves. On a personal level, the boy Bent might have read of Garibaldi’s visit to the UK in 1864 – Theodore would have been 12; the young Oxford student would have studied the exploits of the man during his historical researches, no doubt; Chapter 11 of Bent’s guide to San Marino is taken up with the General’s entry to, and escape from, its capital in the summer of 1849.
Although Garibaldi, of course, was deeply associated with Genoa, he only appears by name on one page (412) in all the 420 of Bent’s book on how the Republic rose and fell. But, inescapably, the General must have been on the young Bent’s mind (he was born in 1852) ever since his ‘honeymoon’ in San Marino, if not before. As for the author’s material and sources – well, hardly anything is referenced and there are no detailed bibliographies in any of his three ‘Italian’ books, nor even indices. We may safely assume he would have consulted what biographical information he could find, including the autobiography of his warrior hero, edited by Alexandre Dumas père and translated into English two decades previously (1860, London: Routledge & Co.).
How did Bent get his data and was it accurate? He certainly did tour the locations (often with Mabel to take notes no doubt), perhaps making earlier visits as undergraduate; he talked to witnesses, and there would have been newspapers, articles, and published accounts, but ultimately Bent gives very little away in terms of sources (a serious oversight for an academic of course). Nevertheless, his Garibaldi appears in London at the end of 1881, just months after Genoa – no little achievement when one thinks of the proofing and printing processes of the time.
The tireless champion of the Garibaldi family, Jessie White Mario (1832-1906)(wikpedia).
And immediately there are problems. The young historian finds himself under attack – the Garibaldi lion has been poked. Enter the family’s champion, the unquenchable Englishwoman Jessie White Mario (1832-1906). Needless to say, this present article isn’t nearly robust enough to accommodate her, and readers are directed elsewhere; suffice it to say that she had been devoted to, obsessed with, Garibaldi and his cause for decades – one of the hundreds of women drawn to the romantic warrior (think Che Guevara here). Evidently planning a biography herself, she was pipped to the post by Bent, and, swiftly acquiring a copy, went through it with a fine-tooth comb looking for issues, of which there was no shortage. From her villa in Lendinara (Rovigo, Veneto, northern Italy), blood up, she immediately wrote to Garibaldi’s son Ricciotti (1847-1924) – his father now infirm and passing his time on the family’s private island of Caprera, off, Sardinia – listing the inaccuracies, slanderous and actionable, as she saw them (Ricciotti, in Rome, had not yet seen a copy). She offered to enter the fray on the family’s defence and remonstrate directly with Longmans in London, insisting that they withdraw Bent’s book. Ricciotti’s reply to White Mario picks up on some of her points, accepts her offer, and asks to be sent a copy. From the list of offending passages, two examples illustrate Bent’s clear suggestions of corruption: one referencing a contract for granite from Caprera, the other a luxury yacht (some things don’t change). note 1 Garibaldi’s son, Ricciotti (1847-1924)(wikipedia).
The accusations by Bent are unambiguous. Good as her word, White Mario, assisted by her brother, writes angrily to Longmans, who reply promptly (and anxiously), sensing a diplomatic misunderstanding of some scale, and possibly expense. On 31 January 1882, just a few months into sales of Bent’s book, a representative of his publishers replies to White Mario, saying that Mr Bent’s (for some reason they give his name as William) “only wish has been to give an unbiased view of Garibaldi’s life: that if he had been led by false information into making any statements that are not true he much regrets it…” Additionally, Bent would be pleased to make any corrections requested, and the letter ends: “[We] shall be glad to get the matter settled with as little delay as possible, as the suspension of the sale of the book so soon after publication involves us in inconvenience and pecuniary loss.” In a further letter dated 12 April 1882, Longman’s declare the first edition of Garibaldi, a Life as being formally ‘withdrawn’.
Our guide through this above maelstrom is Elizabeth Adams Daniels, via her swashbuckling study Jessie White Mario: Risorgimento Revolutionary, published by Ohio University Press in 1972 (see pages 112, 142-3). (The author refers, generously, to Theodore Bent as ‘one of Longman’s popular writers on Italian subjects’, mining the publishers’ archives and other sources for evidence of White Mario’s interventions on behalf of the Garibaldi family.) note 2 Title page of the 2nd edition of Bent’s “Garibaldi” (1882)(archive.org).
Notwithstanding this retreat before the General, a second edition of the biography does appear just a few months later, in 1882 (there was by now an eager market for it, its subject, sick and verging on bankruptcy, having been led away to fight in pastures new on 2 June of that year). Adams Daniels infers that this new iteration contained errata sheets, but these do not seem to have surfaced online. As we shall see later, when comparing extracts from the two versions, alterations were made to Bent’s text directly.
The life and times of Garibaldi drew a line under Bent’s attempts at ‘Italian’ historical memoires and there is to be no Italian ‘quartet’. (We need only look at lines from one of the reviews: “Mr. Bent should have abstained from sneering at the evening of a life which has certainly been useful to mankind.” – The Graphic, 19 November 1881, p. 519.) The couple’s next phase of travels was to take them into the Aegean and the Levantine littoral, possibly in the wake of the merchant vessels of the Genoese Empire, eastwards, over the winter of 1882/3. The end of 1883 sees the Bents blown into the Greek islands, and the traveller’s next book, on the Cyclades, was to establish his change of locale and literary style – essentially the exploits of explorer and travel writer, themes much more suited to his nature. After the Levant, the Bents tackled Africa, and then Arabia, in 20 extraordinary years of explorations.
Thomas Norton Longman (1849–1930), one of the partners of Bent’s publishers during his association with the firm (wikipedia).
Despite the obvious loss caused to Longmans over the Garibaldi issue, the firm was, it seems, prepared to remain Bent’s publisher for his next three books (Cyclades– 1885; Mashonaland– 1892; Aksum– 1893); their investment in the travel writer paid off, all three were bestsellers and ran to several editions. These can be acquired today either as originals, from antiquarian sources, or as new reprints, or via online versions.
Bent has been in print since 1877, and well merits it.
Note 1:
Textual comparisons
Page 96 of Bent’s Garibaldi (1st edn, 1881): “Caprera is rich in granite; the Pantheon at Rome was built of stone fetched from thence, and so was part of the Pisan Cathedral, and other celebrated buildings. In 1870, a contract was entered into for supplying Rome with some of it, for the improvements going on in the Eternal City. Ricciotti Garibaldi managed the affair, and put a little money into his pockets by the transaction.”
Page 96 of Bent’s Garibaldi (2nd edn, 1882): “Caprera is rich in granite ; the Pantheon at Rome was built of stone fetched from thence, and so was part of the Pisan Cathedral, and other celebrated buildings. In 1870, a contract was entered into for supplying Rome with some of it, for the improvements going on in the Eternal City, but the negotiations to a great measure fell through, and the Garibaldi family got but little money therefrom.”
Pages 234/5 of Bent’s Garibaldi (1st edn, 1881): “Garibaldi would not receive a purse from his English friends. They wished to subscribe a sum of money, which, if invested, would secure him from want for the rest of his days. As yet his sons and his son-in-law were not so deeply involved as to oblige him to take it; but he gladly accepted the yacht Osprey [Princess Olga], which they offered him, for the old General loved to skim along the blue waters of the inland sea, and there it lay for awhile at Caprera, until, as is the fate with most toys, the General got tired of it, and went out to sea in it less and less. Ricciotti Garibaldi looked on with covetous eyes at so much wealth lying idle in the harbour of Caprera, so he asked his father’s permission to go a cruise one day in the Osprey, which was readily granted, and since then the Osprey has not been seen in the waters of Caprera.”
Pages 234/5 of Bent’s Garibaldi (2st edn, 1882): Garibaldi would not receive a purse from his English friends. They wished to subscribe a sum of money, which, if invested, would secure him from want for the rest of his days; yet, notwithstanding, he gladly accepted the yacht Osprey [Princess Olga], which they offered him, for the old General loved to skim along the blue waters of the inland sea, and there it lay for awhile at Caprera, until, as is the fate with most toys, the General got tired of it, and went out to sea in it less and less; it was eventually sold to the Italian Government, and Prince Amadeo, Duca d’Aosta, went several trips of pleasure therein.”
Garibaldi’s Yacht
Crown Princess Olga Nikolaevna (1822-1892), by the greatest of contemporary portraitists, Franz Xaver Winterhalter (wikipedia).
Bent got this wrong. There was indeed some gossip (Liverpool Mercury, 2 August 1864) that Lord Burghley’s beautiful yawl the Osprey(built in Renfrew in 1854) would find her way to Garibaldi at Caprera, but the deal foundered, probably because she was too small at under 20 tons. The idea at all that a yacht should be purchased via a British subscription fund (‘The Garibaldi Yacht Fund’) took to the water in Liverpool in the early 1860s (the General knew the famous port powerhouse well). In the end it was not the Osprey but the schooner Princess Olga (built 1846) that was acquired and crewed out to him: “General Garibaldi has accepted the yacht Princess Olga, presented to him by various friends in England and Scotland. The Princess Olga sailed from Cowes on the 24th of October [1864], and arrived all safe at St. Roques, eight miles from Gibraltar, on the 8th inst. She sailed the next morning for Caprera” (The Illustrated London News, 19 November 1864, p. 519).
The sleek-rigged vessel was named after the famed beauty Olga Nikolaevna of Russia (1822-1892), who would still have been Princess Olga in 1846 when her eponymous yacht was launched off Cowes, Isle of Wight. As wife of Charles I of Württemberg from 1864, she took the title of Queen.
As beautiful as the woman lending her her name, the ‘Princess Olga’ (foreground) rounding the Nore Light in a race on 7 July 1847, the year after her launch (hand-coloured print (detail), Thomas Goldsworthy Dutton, NMM Greenwich/Wikipedia c.c.).
The story was wired all over the Empire, e.g.: “The Princess Olga, schooner, 50 tons, has been bought by the committee of the Garibaldi fund to be presented to General Garibaldi, for his use at Caprera. This vessel was built by Mr. Joseph White, of East Cowes for Mr. Rutherford, of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, who himself furnished the design. She is built of the best India teak; copper bolted and fastened. Her internal fittings are commodious and elegant. Her saloon and ladies cabin were painted by Sang and his assistants, the fruit and flowers by Benson, the figures by Bendixen. Her head, a likeness of the Princess Olga, of Russia, was carved by [Hellyer], of Portsmouth. She is very fast, and has won many prizes, and has been long recognised as the show yacht of her class.” [Reprinted in the Launceston Examiner [Tasmania], Thursday, 15 December 1864]
And her fate? This must await another researcher: “The fact is that by 1874… people were becoming increasingly aware of the Garibaldi’s misfortunes and precarious financial condition. In 1869 he sold the yacht donated by British admirers, the Princess Olga, to the state for 80,000 lira, but the proceeds were stolen by the intermediary.” (Alfonso Scirocco: Garibaldi. Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 395) Return from Note 1
Note 2: The remaining archives of Longman, Green & Co. are now kept at Reading University, UK (GB 6 RUL MS 1393), and a summary of Bent’s dealings can be found here. Return from Note 2
Ethel Hall-Dare, 1848-1930, later Bagenal, Mabel’s sister, as a young woman. Possibly at Newtonbarry House (The Bent Archive).
The Irish are grand on court, always have been, ever since lawn tennis took off within the Emerald Isle in the late 19th century (think John McEnroe, eligible to have played Davis Cup for Ireland, were he that way inclined, with grandparents from Co Westmeath and Co Cavan – a decent forehand away only from Co Meath and Mabel Bent’s place of birth in 1847).
Limerick Lawn Tennis Club (“There was a young man called Dennis / who took on Hall-Dare at tennis / who can forget / his dash to the net / and subsequent trip to the dentist.”), proudly staged the first Open championships in Ireland in August 1877, coincidentally, or not, the same year as the first Wimbledon. Simon Eaves and Robert Lake (2020) paint a rosy picture of the sport’s acme (and a decline a little later): “For a time in the 1880s and early 1890s, lawn tennis in Ireland was at its peak, and a leading nation in the sport, globally. Its players were among the world’s best, the only rival to its national championships in terms of prestige and quality of entries was Wimbledon, and its coaching professionals ranked among the world’s most sought after.”
The Irishman John Boland, winner of the the men’s singles at the first modern Olympic games, held in Athens in April 1896 (Wikipedia).
Tennis was also one of the limited number of sporting events selected for the first modern Olympics held in Athens, Greece, from 6th – 15th April, 1896, and, as chance, or not, would have it, the men’s singles was won by Dublin-born John Boland. Of course, the Bents were in Athens at the time; they attended the first day of the Games only – the tennis started a few days later.
The game was an immediate hit with Mabel’s family, the Hall-Dares, who installed grass courts on the lawns of their estate near Bunclody, Co Wexford. Among the several sports and pastimes mentioned in Mabel’s travel diaries, colonial tennis (biking was another interest) never failed to excite her, and one reference may stand for them all:
“We did not do much that day, but about 4 sat out in wintry wind to watch the tennis [Theodore and Mabel are in Bushire in the Persian Gulf]. There are 2 courts in earth [at] the Residency and a club, and they have a cricket club. With consuls, telegraph people, etc., there are about 20 Europeans. I asked one of the young ladies if she knew any Persian ladies. ‘No. I’ve never seen any. I never do like Natives.’ Once you get to Egypt anyone… is a Native – no one cares to discriminate of what country.” (1 February 1889, The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 3, Oxford, 2010)
Lawn Tennis Tournament, ‘The Gorey Correspondent and Arklow Standard’ – Saturday, August 26, 1882.
Mabel and Theodore were again travelling a few years before, in August 1882, when Mabel’s sister-in-law Caroline Hall-Dare organised a spectacular tennis tournament within the grounds of the family home, Newtonbarry House, sleepy on the banks of the brown Slaney River. We have a reporter from the The Gorey Correspondent and Arklow Standard (Saturday, August 26, 1882) to thank for a white-flannel and parasol account of it all:
“On Wednesday, 16th inst., a Lawn Tennis Tournament was given by Mrs Hall-Dare, at Newtonbarry House, to the ardent players of the County Wexford, who all arrived on the ground at twelve o’clock, when the drawing for partners took place. This was admirably conducted by the Rev. Canon Blacker and Mr. P.C. Newton. The games began immediately after on eight of the courts which are situated so beautifully upon the even sward which faces the mansion. After the first rounds had been played the company assembled for luncheon. In the afternoon the numbers were swelled to nearly two hundred, who witnessed, with much interest, the final rounds of this exiting Tournament.”
The fine lawns of Newtonbarry House, eminently suited to tennis, from a recent Google image.
There is nothing like keeping it in the family, and ultimately the mixed doubles winners were ‘Miss Hall Dare’ (possibly the eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Frances Hall-Dare, Caroline’s daughter, and thus one of Mabel’s nieces, but there are other candidates) and Mr R. Donovan, who beat Miss Boyd and Mr C. Donovan. There was a ‘Consolation Prize’ for those knocked out in round one, and the winners of this were Miss E. Newton and Major Knox Browne (later a distinguished soldier), who beat Caroline Hall-Dare and Mr E. Donovan (the Donovan family, perhaps of Ballymore Townland, Co Wexford, not far east of Newtonbarry, obviously also took their tennis very seriously. There is note of a Mr Richard Donovan apparently meeting his future wife at a Kilkenny tennis party).
Caroline Hall-Dare, née Newton (1842-1918), Mabel’s sister-in-law. Perhaps taken in the late 1870s at the height of her tennis prowess (The Bent Archive).
Like us, you might think it rather a shame that the event’s organizer, host, and provider of courts, won nothing. Perhaps Caroline had yet to adjust to the 1880 changes to the tennis rules, when “the hand-stitched ball was replaced by the Ayres ball, the net was lowered to 4ft at the post. The service line was brought in a distance of 21 feet from the net. A service ball touching the net was deemed to be a let and a player was forbidden to volley until it had crossed the net.” No problem at all for John McEnroe of course.
Irish Tennis Championships, Dublin, before 1903 (Robinson – Arthur Wallis Myers (1903): Lawn Tennis at Home and Abroad. Scribner’s Sons, New York. (online), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21618417).
Those interested in the history of Irish tennis will enjoy the three-volume study by Tom Higgins of Sligo Tennis Club. (This is mentioned really as a nod to Mabel Bent’s childhood home, Temple House, Sligo, although it is unlikely the house then had courts, in the 1850s.)
(We are delighted to post here a translation (by the author) of an article on some traditional musical instruments enjoyed so much by celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent when they visited the Cycladic island of Tinos in March 1884. Dr Chiou’s article originally appeared (March 2024) in the newsletter of the Society for Tinian Studies.)
Tinos, the villages of Dío Choriá and Triandáros. A postcard, photographer unknown, printed by Krikelli – ‘Bibliohartemboriki’, c. early 20th century (some 20 years only after the Bents’ visit in March 1884). Reproduced in A. Kontogeorgis (2000), ‘Tinos of Yesterday and Today’, p. 30 (PIIET/Sillogos Ysternioton Tinou).
Theodore Bent and his wife Mabel Virginia Anna Bent were 19th-century British explorers who travelled the Cyclades. On a sunny Saturday afternoon in March 1884, they found themselves in the port of the island of Tinos (or Tenos), coming from Mykonos. It was the Saturday before Carnival Sunday. On the evening of the same day, koukouyiéroi (masqueraders) roamed around the narrow streets of Agios Nikolaos, as the present-day Chóra was called at that time. For the next three days, the Bents mounted mules and toured the Tinian hinterland. On Carnival Sunday they visited Xómbourgo and Loutrá and returned to Chóra. On ‘Kathará Deftéra’ (the first Monday in Lent, literally ‘Clean Monday’), 1884, they climbed up to Kechrovoúni, visiting the Monastery of Kechrovoúni, Arnádos village, and ending up in the village of Dío Choriá. On Tuesday they reached the village of Pýrgos, after making a stop at the villages of Kardianí and Ystérnia, in the north-western part of the island. Mabel writes in her diary that on Wednesday, 5th March, they returned to the bay of Ystérnia, where they boarded the steamer that would take them to the nearby island of Andros.
The above information comes from what Bent himself recorded in his classic travelogue The Cyclades, or Life among Insular Greeks, published in 1885, and which is still in print today, and from the account in Mabel’s ‘Chronicles’. Thanks to Bent’s observant and meticulous descriptions, we have the following account of how the inhabitants of the village of Dío Choriá spent their ‘Kathará Deftéra’ at the end of 19th century:
Close to Arnades are two villages, called δύοχωριά, or the two places, being quite close together; and here we came in for some of the gaiety incident on the first day of Lent; the sound of music and revelry filled the valley, and from afar off we descried the cause. All the villagers had turned out on the roofs, and on this flat surface were dancing away vigorously. As no other flat space occurs in or near the village they are driven to make a ballroom on their roof. […]
The dancers had put a flag up, and spread a white cloth on the roof for their repast, which consisted of olives, onions, bread, and wine in a large amphora. They were dancing to the tune of a sabouna, and what to us was a new instrument, called a monosampilos, and consisting of a small gourd fixed at one end of two reeds and a cow’s horn at the other. The music produced by this instrument was quaint and shrill, like that of a bagpipe or the sabouna, which in this case was made of the skin of a goat, with all the hair left on, so that when the musician put it down it looked quite alive, and palpitated visibly.
For a long time they continued to dance the inevitable syrtos, until they had had lusty and long pulls at their amphora of wine – and the wine of Tenos is by no means light, for here they made, and make still, the far-famed Malvasianor, or, as we know it better, Malmsey wine. […] Then they started a dance called by them ‘the carnival dance’ (ἀποκρεωτικός), which they said they were privileged to dance on the first day of Lent. It was a very amusing one: eight men took part in it with arms crossed, and moved slowly in a semicircle, with a sort of bounding step, resembling a mazurka. Occasionally the leader took a long stride, by way of adding point to the dance, but they never indulged in the acrobatic features of the syrtos, and never went so very fast; the singing as they danced was the chief feature and fascination of this carnival dance, and their voices, as they moved round and round, to the shrill accompanying music, had a remarkable effect. The words of their song, which I took down afterwards, formed a sort of rhyming alphabetical love song. It is needless to say that A stood for love (ἀγάπη). Θ spoke of the death (θάνατος) which would be courted if that M or apple (μῆλος) of Paradise was obdurate. P stood for ῥόδον, the rose, like which she smelt. Ψ was the lucky flea (ψύλλος) which could crawl over her adorable frame, and so on, till Ω closed the song and the dance with great emphasis, imploring for a favourable answer to the suit.
This vivid description is a valuable document in terms of the history of the bagpipe (tsaboúna) on Tinos. It confirms the use of the tsaboúna (pronounced there as ‘saboúna’) as an instrument played at feasts during the Carnival period, and with which they performed not only tunes to the rhythm of the syrtós, but also to the tune of the ‘ἀποκρεωτικός’ (apokreotikós) dance. The latter can be associated with the ‘apokrianós’ dance, also performed, until the middle of the 20th century, in the nearby village of Triantáros. Bent also gives us information about the morphology of the tsaboúna (a goatskin bag with the hair on the outside), and conveys an important account of a rare folk hornpipe, which the 19th-century revellers from Dío Choriá, who sold it to Bent, called ‘monotsábouno’ (while villagers from Ystérnia called it ‘kelkéza’). We are fortunate that this very same instrument survives intact to the present day in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
However, if one has to choose the most important contribution of Bent’s testimony above, then it must be that it offers us the earliest starting point – a terminus ante quem – for research into the tsaboúna on Tinos. Of course, it can be reasonably assumed that the tradition of the tsaboúna on the island is much older, being a manifestation of the wider, older spread of the bagpipe (áskavlos) in the Aegean Sea area. However, thanks to Bent, the tsaboúna is now undoubtedly and tangibly recorded as part of the Tinian musical tradition.
The thread of this tradition connects the unknown tsaboúna player (tsabouniéris) of Dío Choriá of 1884 with the tsaboúna players of the 1970s, who played the ‘saboúnia persistently in Carnival season’ in the village of Arnados, and also reaches back to the last tsabouniéris of the 20th-century generation of musicians, for example Yiórgos Tzanoulínos, or ‘Krínos’, from Falatádos. The thread of this tradition goes ahead with the reappearance of the tsaboúna on Tinos in the second decade of the 21st century, in the context of, among others, events such as the Tinos World Music Festival 2021; The 18th Aegean Folk Wind Instruments Meeting (28-30 September 2022, Kea Island); and during New Year’s carols on Tinos at Chóra and Falatádos (2022 and 2023).
So, what more enjoyable occasion than to continue the revival of the Tinian tsaboúna, from the place where Bent first records for us, at a ‘Kathará Deftéra’ celebration in March 1884, with a tsaboúna party and ‘apokrianós’ dance in the square of Dío Choriá, more than a century and a half later!
7th Tinos World Music Festival, Tinos, 2-4 July 2021, Sunday, 4 July 2021, Part B: Tsambouna – The Askavlos of the Cyclades (https://itip.gr/events/twmf2021/).
Apergis, Savas 2007. The ‘Apokrianos’ of Triantaros, newspaper ed. by the Association of Triandarites Mandata, vol. 28, Dec-Feb 2007: 6-7.
Baines, Anthony 1960. Bagpipes: 45. Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.
Danousis, Konstantinos (ed.) 2005. Tradition and Memory. With the bow and the pen of Kostas Panorios, publication of the Society for Tinian Studies and the Brotherhood of Tinian Cardianiotes, The Holy Trinity: 30-31.
Moschona, Styliani 1975. Collection of folklore material from the village of Arnados, on the island of Tinos, in the prefecture of Cyclades. Archive of primary folklore material – Collection of manuscripts (NKUA), no. 2413.
Two other Bent Archive articles that might interest you:
the island bagpipes (tsabouna) played by Yannis Pantazis of Santorini.
Irish republican, revolutionary, suffragette, and actress – Maud Gonne (1866-1953)(wikipedia).
With our Irish connections, we always ferret about looking for Joycean links on 16 June. There aren’t any, as far as we know, other than that Theodore and Mabel once sat to dinner with Maud Gonne (1866-1953) in Constantinople – “a tall and handsome damsel dressed in white Broussa gauze, who says she means to go on the stage” (April 1888, Vol 1, Mabel Bent’s Travel Chronicles, Oxford, 2006, p.255). Yeats provided Gonne with contact information to Joyce before he left for Paris in 1902, but they never hooked up. Of course, there is always a chance that Mabel and Joyce (or Nora Joyce) once breathe the same Dublin air. Bloomsday greetings James, from the Bents…
A watercolour of Syros in the mid 19th century by Edward Lear; ‘the old sparkly pile’ he called it (diary entry for Wednesday, 6 April 1864).
Maud confirms her visit to Constantinople at that date in a later autobiography, and recounts various doings there; but there is no mention of dining with the Bents in particular. Clearly they left no deep impression on the theatrical Gonne, who surely didn’t feel it was appropriate telling Mabel about her amatory incident, at pistol point, on Syra – a favourite Cycladic island for Theodore and Mabel. If she had, then Mabel would certainly have jotted it down in her diary that night. Here is Maud’s adventure ashore, worth telling in some detail. Potentially, of course, it could have been serious and dangerous, but Maud, characteristically, makes light of it (Mabel would have done the same – but chances are she would have let off a round or two for good measure.) Let’s give the stage to Maud Gonne, and remember she’s barely more than 20:
“[At] dinner I asked the Captain when we should arrive at Syra in Greece which was our first stopping place. ‘To-morrow, but the storm has made us late; we shall only stay for coaling.’ And, seeing my eagerness, he added: ‘You mustn’t go ashore. It isn’t at all safe for ladies. Some very unpleasant things have happened at Syra and I have been obliged to forbid all lady passengers going ashore there.’
“The second in command was a bearded Corsican who looked like a brigand, had fine eyes and was very attentive to me. Leaning over the rail in the darkness we discussed Napoleon, whose memory he worshipped and I ventured to ask him about landing at Syra; for the one thing I longed for was to be on land. People talk of the glorious sense of freedom on the sea. I always feel in prison on a ship, even in fine weather. He shook his head: ‘’No, no, Mademoiselle, the captain’s orders are absolute and he is right; no ladies may land, and you are too beautiful. If I could take you . . . But that is impossible; we are all too busy, no one may go ashore.’ There was no help to be got even from a bearded Corsican who looked like a brigand and was so ready to make love that I retired early to my cabin with my chaperone and the little girl who was an Armenian orphan brought up by French nuns and was going out to another convent of the Order to teach French. She had never been outside the convent before. She was not more than fifteen years of age.
Bent’s map of the Cyclades from the first edition of his 1885 book (archive.org). Click here for a modern Google map showing Syros.
“Next morning the sun was shining brightly, but no land in sight. I was longing for land, longing for it with all my might. An old Turk with a long grey beard was strolling on the deck. He was a person of consequence, and on the deck a large canvas awning had been arranged behind which the ladies of his harem were sheltered from indiscreet gaze. I didn’t think he would help me to land, but I thought it would be amusing to meet the ladies of his harem. He looked at me gravely, even kindly, as he passed and we spoke a little and I told him I was going on a visit to the daughter of the British Ambassador; but I didn’t ask him about landing at Syra or about visiting his wives; for this last enterprise I thought the stewardess would be the best approach and it seemed to me that the advance should come from the ladies themselves. That could wait; there were still four days before we were to arrive at Constantinople and we were just approaching Syra.
“It was five o’clock when the ship stopped and was at once surrounded by crowds of boats and chattering Levantines selling all sorts of things to the passengers who were all on deck. The coaling barge was busy at one end. I heard it would take about two or three hours before the ship would start again. A Greek selling various trinkets and souvenirs smiled at me ingratiatingly and offered me his wares. He spoke a little Italian, I showed him a fifty-franc note and pointed to the shore and managed to strike a bargain with him to row me there and back for it, and, in the crowd, unnoticed, I slipped down the ladder into his boat and was soon on shore. My little chaperone* was sitting on my shoulder sheltered in my veil and my revolver was in my pocket.
The Grand Hôtel D’Angleterre, Ermoúpoli, Sýros, where the Bents liked to stay. Maud Gonne would have strolled by it during her risky shore leave.
“It was great to be on land again. I went to the post office and sent off postcards and wandered happily among the shops in dark, narrow streets, bought Turkish delight and pots of rose-leaf jam and cigarettes and flowers, the Greek acting as cicerone; I was glad to get rid of him at last at a cafe on the harbour where I could keep an eye on our ship and on the time while I drank coffee and ate strange cakes.
“The boats were getting thin round our ship and I had been two hours on land. My Greek guide had not returned. I thought he must be drinking wine somewhere and I tried to enquire of the waiter as I paid my bill, but he spoke only Greek and was of no help; so I decided to go down to the place where I had landed and the Greek had left his boat. He was not paid; so I felt he was sure to turn up. He was there all right with two other sailor-men sitting in the boat. I got in and told him to start. He seemed in no hurry and said there was lots of time. I told him to start at once and he said something to the sailors who lazily began rowing. It was a marvellous evening. The lights on the sea were enchanting and the town looked white and fairy-like. I was very happy. Then I noticed the sailors were rowing in an opposite direction from that of the ship. My guide was not rowing this time, but sitting on the seat facing me; I pointed to the ship and told him to tell them to go there. He smiled and explained they were going to show me a beautiful point of view. I got angry and told him to turn the boat at once. He only laughed and the men rowed quicker.
Maud Gonne, the frontispiece from “A Servant Of The Queen: Reminiscences”, 1938 (archive.org).
“Suddenly I stood up with my revolver pointed straight at him and said: ‘Obey, or I fire.’ The men stopped rowing and there was some quick talk in Greek and the boat turned and rowed to the ship. I sat down, but I kept my revolver pointed but as much hidden as I could. I never took my eyes off my guide till we were at the ship’s side and I tossed him the fifty-franc note and scrambled up the ladder while the sailors passed up my many parcels. My Corsican friend was at the ladder. ‘Mademoiselle, you almost missed the boat. The Captain knows; he is very angry.’ I thought it wiser to say nothing about the difficulty I had had in catching it, and when, at dinner, the Captain was coldly severe about my disregard of his orders. I pleaded that I, not being a sailor like himself, had such a terrible nostalgia to be on land that I could not expect men who were used to the sea to understand; it was my first voyage, and I was all alone and he must forgive; which he did with good grace, for he could do nothing else, merely remarking I was very young and didn’t understand the danger, but he hoped I would not try it again at Smyrna which was our next place of call, or if I did land, for we would make a longer stop there as he had cargo to discharge, I would find a proper escort. ‘None of these ports are safe for young women alone.’”
* A marmoset Maud bought in Marseilles a few days before leaving for Constantinople.
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