Jabez Balfour as caricatured by “Spy” in Vanity Fair, March 1892 (wikipedia).
Mabel Bent, of course, was a Hall-Dare: a very wealthy Essex (London) family with connections to large tracts of land and grand properties. One of these was Ilford Lodge, Barking, which had been carved from the much larger adjoining estate of Valentines; it had passed into the hands of Mabel’s great-grandfather Robert Hall, who was previously a tenant there, before 1810. It remained within the various Hall-Dare families until 1883, before its acquisition by the larger-than-life character, and crook, Jabez Balfour, and his Liberator Building Society – which collapsed in 1892, and saw Balfour imprisoned for embezzlement.
Our great coincidence occurs at Balfour’s second trial: “In the Queen’s Bench yesterday [Thursday, 21 November 1895], before Mr. Justice Bruce and a Special Jury, the second prosecution of Jabez Balfour was commenced. The indictment charged that he, being a Director of the House and Land Investment Trust (Limited), fraudulently applied to uses and purposes other than the uses and purposes of the Company, divers large sums of money, between February 4, 1886, and October 15, 1887.”
Ilford Lodge, Barking, Essex (London), one of the country properties of the Hall-Dares. It was sold to Jabez Balfour in 1883 (from Edward Tuck, ‘A sketch of ancient Barking, its abbey, and Ilford’, Barking, 1899?, pp.52-53).
And who should appear now but Theodore Bent – husband of Mabel, née Hall-Dare, and one, no doubt, acquainted with Balfour’s Barking mansion, the erstwhile family demesne! In court that day an application was made “that no Juryman, interested in any of the Balfour group of Companies should be permitted to serve… Only one Juryman, however, was interested, he being a shareholder in the London and General Bank, and, accordingly, he was excused. Another Juryman was excused because he was a manager of a bicycle Company, and he was the only person to look after the interests of the Company at the Cycle Show.” And, now for our surprise, “Mr. J.T. Bent was also excused in consequence of being about to start upon an expedition to Africa on behalf of the Geographical Society…”
What Balfour’s legal team would have made of it had they discovered that juryman Bent was the husband of a Hall-Dare, whose relatives had sold their client his Ilford estate in 1883, we will never know!
Mr. Paul Blouet, aka Max O’Rell (wikipedia).
The above newspaper quotations are from the London Standard of Friday, 22 November 1895. The Westminster Gazette of the same day was slightly less po-faced: “The number of jurors who claimed exemption at the commencement of the second Balfour trial yesterday [Thursday, 21 November 1895] were far less than on the previous occasion. ‘B’ was the fatal letter from which the panel was drawn. Amidst the private individuals came two celebrities, Mr. Paul Blouet [aka Max O’Rell] and Mr. Theodore Bent. The genial Max O’Rell did not appear, as an Irishman would say, to offer any explanation for his absence. Mr. Theodore Bent, however, had more respect for the majesty which Mr. Justice Bruce represents, and expressed his willingness to attend, subject to the necessity imposed upon him of going to Africa on a delimitation commission. In this journey, as in many another, he will be accompanied by his wife. They are sailing in a day or two [The Bents left from Charing Cross station for the Red Sea on 2 December 1895].”
It’s very gratifying to see the Bents labelled ‘celebrities’. The couple are now at the height of their fame – having explored Great Zimbabwe (1891) and regions of Ethiopia (1893) and Yemen (1894-).
In early March 1890, the Bents were exploring the area around ancient Sis, the capital of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, now incorporating Kozan Kalesi. The ancient city and its fortress occupied the long rocky ridge in the centre of the modern city.
With reference to the Bents’ wanderings in the wider region in early March 1890, there is, two years later, a bizarre and unpleasant report in The Morning Leader (London, Monday, 29 August 1892) under the heading ‘The Human Unicorn – Mr. Bent’s Interesting Discovery in Lesser Armenia’ that we, nevertheless, reproduce. It, of course, raises several issues – including an obscure article by Bent in an even obscurer periodical, which we are still yet to see. If the few lines mentioned are indeed by Bent, then they merit an appearance – perhaps the first for over a century, who knows. Here is what The Morning Leader reporter glibly has to say:
‘In all probability the human unicorn who was left destitute in a lodging-house in Whitfield-st., Tottenham-court-rd., and who is now an inmate of the St. Pancras Workhouse and source of perplexity to the guardians, is the man referred to by Mr. Theodore Bent, the well-known archaeologist and traveller. Describing a journey to Sis, the quondam capital of Lesser Armenia, Mr. Bent wrote as follows in a recent number of the Eastern and Western Review [see Bibliography for 1892]: “In the village of Tapan Dere, a little north of Sis, dwells a man with a horn on the top of his head. We did not believe this until we saw him and actually felt the horn, which is curved and about the size of a finger. I hear he is on his way to Europe to exhibit himself, having been inspired by the success of two fair damsels with beards, who also came from this locality, and amassed much gain by exhibition in Europe.” Showmen in search of a genuine novelty should lose no time in calling at St. Pancras Workhouse.’
Just a few days after this scoop, the Manchester Courier (Saturday, 3 September 1892) follows up the story. It seems that all’s well that end’s well for the poor man who Theodore Bent may or may not have seen near Sis two years previously. It should be noted that there is no mention of this sensational encounter (including actually touching the excrescence) in Mabel Bent’s diary of the time (The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol 1, 263-321), and it all may well have been another of Theodore’s fancies – he had a habit of allowing himself a certain licence depending on his readership, from academic/scientific to tabloid.
Back to the Manchester Courier of 3 September 1892 (at the time the Bents are busy preparing for a trip to Ethiopia and publicising their work in Great Zimbabwe of the preceding year):
Dinnertime at St Pancras Workhouse, London, 1911 (wikipedia).
‘A Human Unicorn – Owing to the publicity given to the case of a Turkish subject with an excrescence on his head, who was brought to this country by two men for show, a gentleman from the Turkish Consulate has visited St. Pancras Workhouse for the purpose of discovering the man’s name and antecedents. Directly he was spoken to in his native tongue his joy knew no bounds, as he salaamed and kissed his interviewer’s knees and hands. After some conversation he gave his name as Ahmed Mustapha, aged 38, a mountain peasant of Assyria, where his nearest relative is chief or khan of the village. The horn or bony excrescence is on the top of his head, about the size of a man’s thumb, but he will not allow any of the officers or inmates of the workhouse to see it, as although he wears the workhouse clothes he retains his turban, which he keeps on his head night and day. It is supposed that the reason he was left on his arrival in England was that it was found that instead of letting the horn grow, he used to pare it with a knife. The officials of the Turkish Consulate are in communication with the Distressed Foreigners’ Aid Society to remove him to his native place.’
“The third fragment is perhaps the most tantalising of all; it is a fragment of the lip of another large bowl which must have been more than two feet in diameter, and around which apparently an inscription ran. The lettering is provokingly fragmentary, but still there can be no doubt that it is an attempt at writing in some form: the straight line down the middle, the sloping lines on either side recall some system of tally, and the straightness of the lettering compares curiously with the proto-Arabian type of lettering used in the earlier Sabæan inscriptions…” (J.T. Bent, The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, London 1892, pp. 199-200)
Eduard Glaser (wikipedia)
The chance find of this above-mentioned fragment of an ‘inscription’ among the ruins of Great Zimbabwe in the summer of 1891 provided Theodore Bent with an opportunity to make contact with one of the leading, if not the leading, Orientalists of his day – Eduard Glaser (1855-1908).
Correspondence between Bent and Glaser is in the process of digitisation by the Austrian Academy of Sciences Library, Archive and Collections: Information & Service (Vienna) as part of their fascinatingly important project Glaser Virtual World – All About Eduard Glaser. We are very happy to acknowledge the current owners of the material reproduced: Regionální muzeum K.A. Polánka v Žatci (K.A. Polánek Regional Museum, Žatec, Czech Republic) and Státní okresní archiv Louny (SOkA Louny) (State District Archives, Louny, Czech Republic).
To date (December 2023), five letters from Bent to Glaser have been scanned: they are associated with the former’s travels in present-day Zimbabwe (1891), Ethiopia (1893), and Southern Arabia (1894-97).
Letter 4 (19 July 1892) is of unique interest. In it Bent lists his reasons for his theory that the Great Zimbabwe ruins are of ‘Phoenician’ origin. His opinions are not presented in this exact way in any other known source.
The transcriptions that follow are provided by the editors (and include interpretations). Bent’s phraseology reflects his era. Selected comments are added below each letter (and are likely to be expanded in the future).
Page 1 of Bent’s letter of 1 February 1892 to Glaser, who has made multiple annotations (GlaViWo – Archive: AT-OeAW-BA-3-27-LOAR-232-15-001).
My friend [Dr] Charles Bezold has very kindly given me the enclosed card of introduction to you. I am going therefore to venture on asking you a few questions on the ancient inhabitants of Southern Arabia.
I have just returned from excavating very extensive ruins in Mashoonaland between the Zambesi and the Limpopo rivers about 300 miles inland and in the centre of the gold producing country.
My finds there are decidedly puzzling, they have no relation whatsoever to anything African; the buildings are massive stone walls of small granite blocks, 30 to 40 ft high and 15 ft thick – no mortar. Some are circular and cover a large area of ground.
Some of the ‘phalli’ from Great Zimbabwe that Bent brought back to London. They were exhibited at the British Museum in 1930. It is thought that some of these objects were retained by Cecil Rhodes for his private Cape Town collection (BM no. EPF9883. Trustees of the British Museum).
Of the objects we discovered, the most prominent are a large number of phalli in soapstone; most of them are circumcised and are an almost exact reproduction of the organ. Many birds on pedestals, 5 to 6 ft high, also in soapstone, bowls of the same material with cleverly designed hunting scenes, etc., carved thereon – very good glazed pottery worked on a wheel.
The chief point in the largest circular building is a tower 32 ft high built of small granite blocks and entirely solid, also with a pattern a few courses below the summit.
In looking for a solution to this mystery we naturally turn to Arabia. That it was the capital of a gold producing population is obvious from the furnaces, crucibles, ingot moulds, etc., with traces of gold in them which we found there.
That the ruins are of great age is proved by the records of the early Portuguese travellers, who speak of them in exactly the same condition as now centuries ago, and the nature of our finds point distinctly to archaic art and archaic cult.
If you can give me any points from your knowledge of ancient Arabian art which will throw light on this question I shall be greatly obliged. May I ask for an early reply as I have to give in a report of my work to the Societies which sent me out.
Yours truly
J. Theodore Bent
Four scenes from Great Zimbabwe, based on Mabel’s photographs (photo: The Bent Archive, from a contemporary edition of ‘The Graphic’).
Notes: Bent reveals to Glaser some of his early discoveries and (erroneous) theories about Great Zimbabwe, as well as his developing interests in ancient links between certain African regions and ‘Southern Arabia’. Carl Bezold (1859-1922) was a German orientalist. Known primarily for his research in Akkadian (Babylonian-Assyrian), he also researched other Semitic languages: Syriac, Ge’ez (Ethiopic) and Arabic (source: Wikipedia). A colleague of Glaser’s at the University of Munich, Bezold probably became acquainted with Bent via the British Museum, but no other references to him in Bent’s works have surfaced to date. Interestingly, the letter is not on Bent’s usual headed notepaper. The couple only returned to London by ship at the very end of January 1892; it is possible that Bent drafted this letter at sea. The ‘Societies’ Bent refers to in his last sentence were the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. With typical enthusiasm and hard work, Bent was ready to present his results to the former by the third week of February 1892, and to the latter by the end of March (at which it is said that prime minister Gladstone himself was to attend).
[On Bent’s letterhead, 13 Great Cumberland Place, London, W.]
Dear Sir
Detail from a contemporary map showing part of ‘Mashonaland’ (Zimbabwe) explored by the Bents in 1891.
Thank you very much for your last interesting letter received on the 2nd [July 1892]. In answer to the questions you put me, I beg to state that the ruins we excavated are identical with those described most accurately by Herr Mauch, as far as he could do so without removing the mass of jungle and débris.
This spot Zimbabwe formed the capital of a long series of temple forts stretching up through the gold country from the Limpopo to the Zambesi, and to the west of the Sabi River. We visited six of the sites and they all correspond in structure and design – but we only excavated at Zimbabwe and there only found things in one particular spot, which is in the shade of a large rock, and hence had not been disturbed by the kaffirs, who build only in sunny spots.
All the bowls, ten in all, plain and decorated, of which we found fragments are of the same size, 21 inches in diameter, one represents a procession with offerings being carried, the rest of the patterns are from animal or vegetable life.
One fragment only would appear to have had an inscription round the lip, the few letters of which are so uncertain that I have not yet found anyone who can venture an explanation. I append a copy in hopes that you may be able to give some idea.
Yours sincerely
J. Theodore Bent
Examples of the iconic soapstone birds from Great Zimbabwe (‘The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland’, p.181).
Notes: The hiatus between Bent’s letter of 1 February and this subsequent one is, as yet, unexplained; we await details of Glaser’s observations. Karl Gottlieb Mauch (1837-1875) was a German explorer and geographer of Africa. He reported on the archaeological ruins of Great Zimbabwe in 1871 during his search for the biblical land of Ophir (Wikipedia). For a panoramic (if not breathless) introduction to the region and the countless quests for its riches, see the section on ‘Mashonaland’ in J.M. Stuart,The ancient gold fields of Africa: from the Gold Coast to Mashonaland(London, 1891, p.201 ff; a reference to Bent’s theory p.231 [the link opens the personal copy of another great African adventurer, Hans Sauer]). Many of Bent’s finds, having been exhibited in the UK, were returned to the care of Cecil Rhodes, who gave some of them to the South African Museum, Cape Town (see, e.g., Edward Matenga, The Soapstone Birds Of Great Zimbabwe (2011). See Letter 3 (below) for more on the rim fragment.
[On Bent’s letterhead, 13 Great Cumberland Place, London, W.]
Dear Dr. Glaser
The sketch of the rim-sherd found at Great Zimbabwe that Bent returns to Glaser in his letter of 4 July 1892 (GlaViWo – Archive: AT-OeAW-BA-3-27-LOAR-232-15-003).
Many thanks for your letter of the 18th [?]. In reply to your questions, I beg to state that your sketch B (which I return to guide you) is exactly right. Line ‘a’ is the inner rim of the bowl where it slopes into the centre ‘m n’ is the outer rim; the inscription is on the flat surface between and consists only of this [drawing].
These lines are sharp and clear and evidently extended to the left where the fragment is broken, but not to the right. The fragment is 4 inches long and the flat surface 1½ inches wide. I may add that we have a large plain bowl without any lettering or figures of exactly the same shape which is 2 feet in diameter, and the fragments of the bowl all seem to have had the same radius and were 1 foot 2 inches in diameter.
Yours very truly
J. Theodore Bent
Bent’s own watercolour of Great Zimbabwe (‘The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland’, London 1892).
Notes: See Bent’s initial report (and illustration) of this sherd in his The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland(1892, p.198). Where this rim fragment is today is unclear; it was item 25 in a loan exhibition of antiquities from Zimbabwe held in the British Museum in London in 1930, the year after Mabel Bent’s death (‘Loan exhibition of antiquities from Zimbabwe and other ancient sites in Southern Rhodesia’, London: British Museum, 1930); some of Bent’s finds from Great Zimbabwe are identified in museum collections in Cape Town; hundreds of ethnographical items are in store in the British Museum, London. In a letter (from Lisbon?) to John Scott Keltie at the RGS [13 January 1892, RGS Archives: ar/RGS/CB7/Bent, T&M] Bent writes “My inscription is Himyaritic and the nature of the ruins closely akin to Arabian, and I can prove the Sabæan origins of the ruins now beyond a shadow of a doubt…” The discovery of this sherd is problematic. In her diary, Mabel Bent writes (18 July 1891) of a “dream of an inscription, beginning ‘Iris’, unfulfilled as yet” by one of the excavators, Mr King. A later critic, Franklin White, in ‘Notes On The Great Zimbabwe Elliptical Ruin’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1905, Vol.35, 39-47),writes that he has it from ‘a reliable authority’ that ‘some if not all of these lines are recent scratchings most probably made by some one in Mr. Bent’s escort’. One cannot help being reminded of the later controversy over the ‘Bethel Seal’ recovered from the Hadramaut, in which Glaser also plays a part.
[On Bent’s letterhead, 13 Great Cumberland Place, London, W.]
My dear Sir
A page from Bent’s significant letter to Glaser of 19 July 1892, in which he lists his reasons for associating Great Zimbabwe with the Phoenicians (GlaViWo – Archive: AT-OeAW-BA-3-27-LOAR-232-15-002).
I am extremely obliged to you for the two letters you have written me and the interest you have shown in my South African discoveries.
Curiously enough, before I went out to Mashonaland I was firmly convinced that the ruins were of [Sasanian] origin, and so convinced was I on this subject that I made my theory public at a meeting of our Royal Geographical Society in 1890.
However after the inspection of the ruins and the results of our excavations I was reluctantly driven to abandon this idea, firstly because neither the ruins themselves nor the finds bore any resemblance to what we know of that race, and secondly because the time which elapsed between the possible date for that race to have occupied Mashonaland and the incursion of the present race of barbarians did not seem sufficient for so colossal an empire to have been built up and for such extensive gold workings to have been carried on. The whole country is honeycombed with deep shafts and the output of gold must have been enormous.
After a careful examination of all our finds I have been obliged to admit, though I must say with reluctance, a Semitic influence for the following reasons:
(1) The presence of a winged sun on the shaft of one of the phalli.
(2) The oft recurrence of the rosette in the decorations.
(3) A curious object with knobs left on it in relief is exactly the same as an object found in excavations at Paphos in Cyprus.
(4) An ingot mould for gold is exactly the same in pattern, namely ‘astragoloid’, as an ingot of tin with an Egyptian punch mark on it now in one of our museums.
(5) The Phœnician treatment of the bowl decorations.
(6) The exact orientation to the rising sun of all the buildings and patterns
There are many other points which I cannot enter into here and which compel one to look in that direction for the origin of the race, but I hope to get them into book form in the autumn.
I am happily able to read German and shall be very glad to hear again from you on the subject.
Again thanking you for your very kind reply to my letter.
I remain
Yours very truly
J. Theodore Bent
“A curious object with knobs left on it in relief” (‘The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland’, p.182).
Notes: This letter is a revelation. For Bent’s earlier thoughts on the origins of Great Zimbabwe, see Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, n.s. v.13 (1891), pp. 1-21, following E.A. Maund’s eye-opening presentation to the RGS. Like a weather-vane, Bent was to alter his thinking many times and we may still feel he was ‘bounced’ by Rhodes, who had his own agenda. Ultimately, his published theory was disproved by archaeologists such as Caton-Thompson and others in the 20th century, clearly tarnishing Bent’s reputation. We are reminded of Grant Duff’s (apocryphal) anecdote: “Acton confirmed a story which I had heard, but not from himself, to the effect that Mr. Rhodes had asked him: “Why does not Mr. Theodore Bent say that the Zimbabwe ruins are Phoenician?” Acton replied: “Because he is not quite sure that they are.” “Ah!” said the other, “that is not the way that Empires are founded.” (Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1896-1901, vol I, p. 185; London 1905). Bent indeed, with incredible speed, had his monograph on sale by the end of 1892; The Ruined Cities of Mashonalandproved a bestseller and ran to several editions.
Based on information received from Bent, Glaser drafted an essay in June 1892 on the discovery of Great Zimbabwe, the manuscript of which has survived: (Part 1) and (Part 2).
[Addressed from Bent’s home – 13 Great Cumberland Place, London, W.]
[From a copy in another hand, made 30 April 1893]
Dear Sir
Some of Bent’s actual squeezes from Aksum, reproduced as Plate 4 in D.H. Müller, ‘Epigraphische Denkmäler aus Abessinien Nach Abklatschen von J. Theodore Bent, Esq.’ (Vienna, 1894).
It is now some time since I corresponded with you about [our] finds in Mashonaland at Zimbabwe. Since then I have been in [Abyssinia] to Aksum. Near Adoua, I [illegible] Himyarite inscriptions and a temple, also at Aksum many very early [illegible] inscriptions closely akin to Himyarite. Being now thoroughly interested in this subject I am hoping next winter to go into Arabia and should [much] like to [know] what routes you have followed and what inscriptions you have [copied] so that I may take other [things] and not do your work over again.
If you will kindly give me information on this point I shall be greatly obliged. When the squeezes of my Himyaritic inscriptions arrive I shall have much pleasure [in] sending you copies; they are at present on the sea.
Yours very truly
J. Theodore Bent
A limestone incense-burner with Sabaean inscription (2nd c BCE) from As-Sawda, acquired by the British Museum from Glaser in 1887 after one of his journeys to Yemen. Like the Bents, Glaser would sell items to fund future explorations (BM no. 125141, Trustees of the British Museum).
Notes: Glaser made four ground-breaking field-trips to ‘Southern Arabia’ (Yemen) between 1882 and the spring of 1894. The Bents were planning to make their first visit in the winter of 1893/4 and were keen not to duplicate Glaser’s work. It would have been fascinating were they all to have met up in Aden, the British port (with its eccentric hotels) all the travellers came to know well. Broadly speaking, the Bents were to interest themselves with the western extremes of the Wadi Hadramaut, while Glaser took to the east. Whether Bent ever sent Glaser the ‘squeezes’ to which he refers we are yet to learn (there is still a great deal of Glaser’s archive still to process), but the set he sent to D.H. Müller was published in 1894 (see the illustration above). These few lines by Bent are fateful, if not fatal. It is his pursuit of a dream to link up the early cultures and civilisations of certain African regions and ‘Southern Arabia’ (and we cannot rule out some associations with the mythical Queen of Sheba and the gold of Ophir) that led to his death from malarial complications in 1897 at the age of 45. (In Glaser’s 1895 study Die Abessinier in Arabien und Afrika, auf Grund neuentdeckter Inschriften (Munich), there are several references to Bent’s Aksum inscriptions.)
Acknowledgements and further information
We are extremely grateful to Elisabeth Cerny, Ronald Ruzicka, and George Hatke in Vienna for their invaluable assistance and authorisation to share this material (Copyright CC-BY-4.0 non-commercial, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Library, Archive & Collections, Project IF2019/27 Glaser Virtual World – All About Glaser).
Click for further references to Theodore Bent in the Glaser archive.
‘A Cut’: Caricature of Robert Westley Hall-Dare (1789-1836), Mabel Bent’s grandfather (Trustees of the British Museum; item number 1948,0214.811).
Many thanks to a fan for bringing to our attention (Nov. 2023) a fascinating satirical print/cartoon of Mabel Bent’s paternal grandfather, Robert Westley Hall-Dare (1789-1836), an original of which is in the British Museum. We will never know whether Mabel ever saw a copy – probably not.
Museum number: 1948,0214.811; Title: ‘A Cut’; Description: Caricature of Robert Westley Hall Dare and another man (variously identified as Sir Thomas Barrett-Lennard or John Thompson) slicing a round pudding labelled ‘Ilford to Romford’, cutting along a line marked Ripple to Clements, with a picture on the wall behind of overseer beating a kneeling slave in chains. c. 1818; Producer name: Print made by: J. (or T.) Josephs; School/style: British; Production date: 1815-1820; Materials: Paper; etching with hand-colouring; Dimensions: Height: 248 mm; width: 244 mm.
See: F. and M.D. George, BM Satires: Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum (11 vols, 1870-1954, British Museum Publications, London).
Curator’s comments
The date is suggested [1818] … as relating to ‘New Church’, referenced in the paper held in the left hand of the figure on the right [source provided in the online BM caption].
The reference to ‘Dare’ pretty much confirms that: ‘The character on the left is… Robert Westley Hall who became High Sheriff of Essex in 1821. He married into the Dare family but did not adopt his wife’s name by changing his surname to Hall-Dare until 1823. This satire is likely to be later than 1818 – possibly referring to Hall-Dare’s role as High Sheriff but more likely to his 1832 election campaign for South Essex – in which he was successfully elected after coalescing with the Whig candidate Sir Thomas Barrett-Lennard – who may be the other character in red. The satire shows them carving up the constituency to prevent independent candidate (William Pole Tylney Long Wellesley’s re-election)’ [source provided in the online BM caption].
An alternative, and more likely, suggestion (based on the relatively youthful face of the subject) is that: ‘The satirical cartoon referring to Cranbrook, illustrates Robert Westley Hall Dare (MP for South Essex) and John Thompson landowner of neighbouring Clements. Both men were vociferous in the campaign to separate the Great Ilford ward from Barking to make a separate parish of it. The knife is depicted as slicing through Clements in reference to Thompson’s inclosure in 1814 of part of a highway which bisected his estate. The division of the parish was unpopular with many, particularly south Barking landowners, and the cartoon paints both Dare and Thompson as arrogant new landowners, greedy for land and power in the proposed parish. The cartoon, probably instigated by an opponent of south Barking, portrays Hall Dare’s source of wealth (emanating from his father, a West Indian planter) in order to denigrate his character and stain the campaign for division of the parish’ [source provided in the online BM caption].
A period photograph of Cranbrook Manor, one of several Essex properties associate with the Hall-Dares, taken from Edward Tuck, ‘A sketch of ancient Barking, its abbey, and Ilford’ (Ilford, 1899(?), pp. 36-39).
Detail showing a clear reference to the Hall-Dare slave plantation in British Guyana. From ‘A Cut’: Caricature of Robert Westley Hall-Dare (Trustees of the British Museum; item number 1948,0214.811).
For a detailed account of the Dare/Hall-Dare plantations in British Guyana and the compensation paid to the family on Abolition, see the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery’s website. This compensation in part funded the move of Mabel Bent’s father (Robert Westley Hall Dare, 1817-1866) to Ireland in the mid 19th century.
Detail showing the bill of fare. From ‘A Cut’: Caricature of Robert Westley Hall-Dare (Trustees of the British Museum; item number 1948,0214.811).
The bill of fare pinned up on the left side of the cartoon will have been of caustic relevance at the time (pre 1820s?).
We are to read not ‘Pigeons’, but ‘Gudgeons’ & ‘Yorkshire Cake’. A ‘gudgeon’, as well as a fish, is a credulous or easily fooled person. A ‘Yorkshire Cake’ is a light, fruit cake, and nothing to do with ‘Yorkshire Pudding’. Its significance here is not immediately apparent. The OED has for ‘standing dish’, i.a., ‘standing dish: one that appears each day or at every meal’.
“Lily-white muffins, 0, rare crumpets smoking,/ Hot Yorkshire cakes, hot loaves and charming cakes,/ One-a-penny, two-a-penny, Yorkshire cakes./ What matters to me if great folks run a gadding,/ For politics, fashions, or such botheration;/ Let them drink as they brew, while I merrily bake…” (page 209 from Charles Hindley’s A history of the cries of London. Ancient and modern, 1881, London).
And: “Come buy my gudgeons fine and new…” (page 92 from Charles Hindley’s A history of the cries of London. Ancient and modern, 1881, London).
In 1912, Mabel Bent and her sister Frances Hobson felt there was a gap in the market for concise wall-maps of Palestine for schools and Sunday schools that would clearly show specific themes. Since 1900, Mabel was in the habit of visiting the region in the spring of most years. Her sister, Frances Hobson, was the wife of the Rector of Portadown, Northern Ireland, E.W. Hobson – who was soon to be appointed Chancellor of Armagh Cathedral.
Accordingly, the sisters had a series (possibly 5) of these maps produced by the well-known Edinburgh printers, W. and A.K. Johnson. They were priced at 1/- each (say £2.50 today), thus clearly the venture was not expected to generate a profit.
These maps are publicised in three contemporary newspaper articles: The Portadown News, 17 August 1912; The Belfast News-Letter, 15 August 1912; The Cheltenham Examiner, 26 December 1912. An extract from the latter reads:
The Bent-Hobson maps publicised in ‘The Portadown News’, 17 August 1912.
“These maps are the joint work of Mrs. Theodore Bent, the widow of the distinguished explorer and linguist, and her sister Mrs. Hobson, wife of the Chancellor of Armagh Cathedral, who is also the Rector of Portadown. Both these ladies are enthusiastic students of Biblical history, the former having had unique opportunities for the first-hand study of sites, boundaries, and general topography in Palestine and the surrounding lands. The Rector of Portadown has over a dozen Sunday Schools in his parish, and the practical experience gained therein brought home to his wife the difficulty of explaining Biblical history by aid of the ordinary school maps of the Holy Land, maps wherein, to use her sister’s picturesque description, ‘the boundaries of the Tribes and the Kingdoms are mingled with those of the Roman provinces, with the divisions of the Hivites and the Jehuites thrown in on the same map.’ The sisters accordingly put their heads together, and the result is an excellent series of five inexpensive and very simple maps, each giving the essential boundaries and other salient geographical facts connected with the Bible story at a particular period… The maps have been excellently printed by Messrs. W. and A.K. Johnson. Boundaries, rivers, mountain ranges, and just such names of places as are absolutely essential are presented in bold and striking outlines and letters, and in such a manner as to involve no strain on the eyesight of children in the rear of the class. They are printed in brown, white and black; but the use of coloured chalks for the purposes of special illustration is strongly recommended to the teacher.” [The Cheltenham Examiner, 26 December 1912]
The maps are rare and hard to locate (the one illustrated on this page is an example of the style of maps available in the early 20th century, it is not one of the Bent-Hobson series), however the British Library does list three of them:
Some recognition, after 137 years, for the skeletal material excavated in 1883/4 on the Cycladic island of Antiparos by Theodore Bent.
“The skull from the Greek tombs at Antiparos placed in my hands for examination by Mr. Bent is that of an adult male of middle age.” [J.G. Garson, M.D., Royal College of Surgeons, in J.T. Bent ‘Notes on Prehistoric Remains in Antiparos’. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. XIV (2) (Nov 1884), 134-41] (NHMUK PA HR 12070, RCS 5.3162, FC 531B. Photo courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London, 2022)
Theodore Bent’s first rung on the archaeologist’s ladder, as it were, is represented by his few weeks in late 1883 and early 1884 excavating some prehistoric graves on Antiparos in the Greek Cyclades (see map below). Bent writes “I was induced to dig at Antiparos, because I was shown extensive graveyards there. Of these, I visited no less than four on the island itself, and heard from natives of the existence of others in parts of the island I did not visit…” (Researches Among the Cyclades, 1884, p.47)
As to how this all came about is revealed in his wife’s ‘Chronicle’:
“… we only found, besides bones, 2 very rough marble symbols of men and women, little flat things and some broken pottery.” Mabel Bent’s diary (18/12/1883 ?) recording their first ‘excavation’ at Krassades, Antiparos (Hellenic Society Archive, London)
“Tuesday [1883, December 18th?]. Rode 1½ hour to the nearest point to Antiparos carrying only our night things and a card of introduction from Mr. Binney for Mr. R. Swan who has a calamine mine on this island. Crossed in about 10 minutes [from Paros]. Found the population all enjoying the feast of St. Nikoloas who replaces Neptune. At one house I was obliged to join in the syrtos holding 2 handkerchiefs. We sent a messenger to Mr. Swan and knowing he would take 3 hours to return, rode to meet him. Met Mr. Swan who more than fulfilled our warmest hopes. He took us to his house, and after resting told us that in making a road he had come upon a lot of graves and found a marble cup, broken etc. So, we manifesting a great wish to dig too, he got men and we opened 4. They were lined and paved with slabs of stone and the people must have been doubled up in them, they were so small; we only found, besides bones, 2 very rough marble symbols of men and women, little flat things and some broken pottery.” [The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, vol 1, Oxford 2006, pp 21-2]
What is thought to be the house of Robert Swan at Krassades, Antiparos. The Bents may well have been based there for their excavations in late 1883, early 1884 (photo = Alan King)
The Scottish engineer Robert Swan (1858-1904), and his brother John, were at that time working for a French mining company and were settled on the western coast of Antiparos around the site known today as Krassades – his house, where the Bents spent the night, having excavated some of the famous Cycladic figurines (which he sold to the British Museum) and the skeletal material, can still be seen. The next day (19th December 1883?) the Bents went back to Paros for Christmas and the New Year, not returning to Antiparos to undertake more excavations until 4 February 1884 (for three weeks). Mabel does not provide much information on this second campaign:
Some of the “little marble figures” recovered by the Bents from the area of Krassades, where the skeletal material was uncovered (in Bent, J.T. 1884. Researches among the Cyclades. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 5, 42-59).
“… As I have been very lazy about my Chronicle, I will only say that there I stayed 3 weeks [February 1884], during which time we did lots of fishing, sometimes with dynamite, which is against the law and very dangerous, but the fishermen here did it… A good deal of grave digging was also done and a good many pots of earth and marble found, also knives of volcanic glass, little marble figures and a little silver one also, very rough, and some personal ornaments of brass and silver…” [The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, vol 1, Oxford 2006, pp 45-6]
Altogether, Theodore Bent records having opened around 40 graves at two of the sites they explored, referring to Krassades as the ‘poorer’ (i.e. earlier):
“And now a few words about the graves themselves. In the first place those on the western slope are very irregular in shape: some oblong, some triangular, some square ; they generally had three slabs to form the sides, the fourth being built up with stones and rubbish. There was always a slab on the top, and sometimes at the bottom of the grave. They were on an average 3 feet long, 2 feet wide, and seldom more than 2 feet deep. In every grave here we found bones, chiefly heaped together in confusion, and most of the graves contained the bones of more bodies than one. In one very small grave we found two skulls, so tightly wedged together between the side slabs that they could not be removed whole.” [Notes on Prehistoric Remains in Antiparos, pp. 137-8]
“The skull from the Greek tombs at Antiparos placed in my hands for examination by Mr. Bent is that of an adult male of middle age.” [‘Notes On An Ancient Grecian Skull Obtained By Mr. Theodore Bent From Antiparos, One Of The Cyclades’, by J.G. Garson, M.D., Royal College of Surgeons, in J.T. Bent ‘Notes on Prehistoric Remains in Antiparos’. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. XIV (2) (Nov 1884), 134-41; Biographical note: ‘J.G. Garson, M.D., F.Z.S., Memb. Anthrop. Inst., Anat. Assist. Royal College of Surgeons, and Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy at Charing Cross Medical School’]
And that might have been that for this Early Cycladic individual, but the Bent Archive felt that he deserved more attention, and the Royal College of Surgeons was approached to see if they had any information on the subject. There was good and bad news – Yes, the skull appears in their registers [Register of Accessions or Donations, 1862-1886, Ref: RCS-MUS/3/1/6], but, No, it was probably destroyed in the Blitz, when about a third of their collection was lost. But, their archivist continued, try the Natural History Museum, where some items had been transferred before the war.
Our approach to the Museum revealed that, indeed, the skull was there in South Kensington, and not just a skull, but another skull fragment, a pelvis, and also a considerable assemblage of ribs and assorted long-bones. This was a new discovery. Bent makes no mention of returning with such a large collection – and nor have the bones been catalogued or studied; indeed, without such study there is no way of knowing how many individuals are involved, nor from which site they came. We know that Bent made at least two investigations of burials sites on Antiparos, and Mabel Bent in her diaries also refers to finding bones on Paros and perhaps elsewhere. Without further research it is not possible to say whether all the material is from the significant and early Krassades site.
In the early summer of 2022, the Natural History Museum took the first ever photographs of the skulls and fragments of a pelvis, and have very kindly given their permission for us to reproduce the cranium mentioned by the excavator in his laconic footnote on page 409 of his 1885 monograph – “The skull I presented to the Royal College of Surgeons.” It has not been seen by anyone outside a museum drawer for almost 140 years, and very far from the sunny Cyclades.
Other finds from Krassades in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, possibly dating to the era of the skeletal material recovered by the Bents. (photo= Alan King)
Mabel Bent was to become the expedition photographer on the couple’s subsequent annual journeys to the Levant, Africa and Arabia, but not for the trip to the Cyclades, alas, or we might have been able to see the skull before in some way (it is also rather strange, perhaps, that it seems never to have been drawn for any of Bent’s articles).
In any event, the artefact is respectfully presented here, and it is gratifying to bring this individual from an early Mediterranean culture to a wider audience for the first time (August 2022). Hopefully a project to sort, classify, and catalogue all the Natural History Museum Bent Collection material can be undertaken to see whether further scientific analyses might be appropriate: the last decade or so has seen considerable interest in the prehistoric past of the region (e.g. the work of Colin Renfrew et al. not far away at Keros and Daskalio, off Naxos).
We are delighted to add (January 2024) that the skeletal material recovered by the Bents from Antiparos in the winter of 1883/4 and now in the Natural History Museum, London, has recently been assessed by Laura Ortiz Guerrero in “Osteological analysis of the Early Bronze Age human remains excavated from Antiparos in the 19th century” (Unpublished Master’s Dissertation, University of Sheffield, Department of Archaeology, 2023).
Present whereabouts unknown, but presumably in the former Musée Archéologique De Charleroi, a most interesting group of four vases (two stone, two clay) was removed from Antiparos after 1850 and entered the collection of the industrialist Valère Mabille (1840-1909), who later presented them to the ‘Société paléontologique et archéologique de l’arrondissement judiciaire de Charleroi’. One of the vessels is nearly identical to a jar removed by Bent from the sprawling site at Krassades and sold later to the British Museum (1884,1213.42). It is very possible that the four Charleroi pots are from the site Bent was to explore in 1883/4, and were looted during the French mining operations that were ongoing there before the Bents arrived. One of the pots, it seems, contained some skeletal material, possibly not yet analysed; the bones Bent brought back from the Krassades site are currently being studied. Such examples from Antiparos are very rare. The echo of Mabel in Mabille does not go unheard. (Ch. Delvoye, Quatre vases préhelléniques du musée archéologique de Charleroi, L’Antiquité Classique, 1947, 47-58)
For those interested in a select bibliography on the subject, we can list for you, inter alia:
Map from P. Morant’s ‘The history and antiquities of the County of Essex’ (London, 1768).
The aim of this short series of posts on the Essex homes (essentially northern Greater London, England) of Mabel’s kin – on her father’s side – is to give a quick look at the open spaces and sorts of landscapes that Mabel Bent (née Hall-Dare) would have enjoyed as a young woman on the eastern shores of the Irish Sea, predisposing her to an adventurous, outdoor life – horses everywhere, rivers, forests, walks, new rail links, not to mention the travelling involved in getting up to Dublin from Co. Wexford and then across the sea to London (there were rented properties in ‘Town’ too of course), for stays in Essex before, for example, spending the long summers touring Europe with her siblings. Indeed, she was to meet her husband-to-be, Theodore Bent, in Norway on one such tour (although we still don’t know when, where, how, and why).
The Essex properties, lands, and churches featured include: (1) ‘Fitzwalters‘, (2) ‘East Hall‘, (3) ‘Ilford Lodge‘, (4) ‘Cranbrook‘, (5) ‘Wyfields’, ‘Theydon Bois’, and others, all with links in one way or another with Mabel Bent.
No. 5: Wyfields – Ilford, Essex, UK.
The site of Wyfields, Ilford. Detail from Ordnance Survey, London Sheet IV.SE, revised: 1893 to 1895.
The grand house of Wyfields (also variously Withfield, Wythefeld, Wye Fields; not to mention Widmundes felt, Wyficld, Wyfields, Withheld), like most of the valuable lands in the area, derived from parcels and portions of the extensive estates of Barking Abbey, consolidated and expanded ever since its foundation in Saxon times. Wyfields was the third property with associations to the Hall-Dare family (Hall, Grafton, Dare, Hopkins, and several others) representing the paternal lineage of Mabel Bent, the other two estates being Cranbrook and Ilford Lodge, all within a few miles of each other and each featuring, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, imposing houses reflecting the architectural tastes of wealthy families going back to Tudor times, if not earlier.
Counties of Kent and Essex within twelve miles of London, from ‘Environs of London’, Vol. 4, by Daniel Lysons, London, 1792 (archive.org).
We rely on the History of the County of Essex (Vol.5, pp.190-214) for details: “The manor of Wyfields or Withfields [in Ilford] was a free tenement held of Barking Abbey. Part of it, including the manor house, lay west of Cranbrook Road, adjoining the manor of Cranbrook [conveniently between today’s North Circular and the A123!]. The remainder was to the east of the road, and south of the original Valentines estate. Withefield was an ancient place name, possibly derived from the 7th-century Widmundes felt, but the manor probably took its name from the family of a 13th-century tenant, whose lands were not necessarily in the original Withefield area…
Not ‘Wyfields’, but nearby Eastbury House, showing perfectly the 18th-century style favoured by Mabel Bent’s paternal Essex line, which was to develop into the smaller residences of the ‘stockbroker belt’ of the early 20th c. (to be, in turn, replaced by the ‘footballers’ palaces’ of the 21st. ( ‘Environs of London’, Vol. 4, by Daniel Lysons, London, 1792, p.78).
“The manor house of Wyfields was about 70 yds. north-west of the building known in the 19th century as Cranbrook Farm, but in the 17th century as Highlands… It was an L-shaped building with two stories and attics. The cross-wing, which may have been earlier than the rest of the building, had a lean-to addition at the side and a two-story bay in front. The bay was surmounted by railings, behind which could be seen a large circular window in the gable of the cross-wing. The other windows were rectangular, but above them were traces of filled-in segmental arches. This may have been a medieval house extended or rebuilt in the 16th or early 17th century. It was still in existence in 1818 when the occupier was Robert Westley Hall [later R. W. Hall-Dare (1st), Mabel Bent’s grandfather], whose mother-in-law, Mrs. Grafton Dare, was then the owner of the manor of Cranbrook, including this part of the former Wyfields, and herself lived at Cranbrook House. Hall-Dare and his wife succeeded to Cranbrook in 1823 and by 1829 Wyfields appears to have been demolished.”
Bamber Gascoyne (1935-2022), whose forebears owned Wyfields (photo: Christina Gascoigne, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia).
Notable earlier residents of Wyfields included, it seems, Sir Nicholas Coote, a judge of Essex Quarter Sessions, who, in November 1605 was to interview Richard Franklin about a certain Guy Fawkes. Coote’s widow sold the manor on to the Brewster family, from whom, before 1651, it was purchased by a John Bamber, M.D., whose daughter, and heir to Wyfields, married Sir Crisp Gascoyne, the 18th-century Lord Mayor of London, the son of Bamber Gascoyne (the name Bamber was the surname of the Lord Mayor’s wife, and was given to their son). If the name rings a bell, our contemporary Bamber Gascoyne (1935–2022) was a direct descendant of Sir Crisp Gascoyne.
Did Mabel Bent know much of these great properties? We can’t say for certain, but, perhaps as a young woman, she may have ridden or been driven around these leafy (then) parts of Essex and the sites of these former extensive residences. We have to remember, of course, that she wasn’t born until 1847, and would never slept under their bat-haunted roofs.
If you have any photographs or memories of ‘Wyefields’ we would be delighted to hear from you!
The back story
Of course Mabel was fortunate in that her family (on both sides) were landed (obviously) and comfortably off. Mabel’s paternal grandfather was the first of the Robert Westley Hall-Dares proper, an astute, baronial, figure who sat at the head of a coalition of wealthy and influential Essex families (Halls, Dares, Graftons, Mildmays, Kings, to name but a few), garnering in with him two major estates (Theydon Bois and Wennington) and various other demesnes, farms, and assorted dwellings, large and small. His wealth and assets were based on rents, farming, ventures, deals, and investments – including a sugar plantation in what is today British Guyana. This plantation, ‘Maria’s Pleasure‘, still retains its name, although it was disposed of after Mabel’s father, to whom the sugar estate had been left, received his compensation for the emancipation of around 300 slaves after Abolition (worth the equivalent of several millions of pounds now).
Robert Westley Hall-Dare the first (1789-1836), the Member of Parliament for South Essex from 1832 until his death, rubbed shoulders with the great and the good, not to mention London Society, but it was his son Robert Westley Hall-Dare the second (1817-1866) who actually married into (minor) aristocracy with his marriage to Frances, daughter of Gustavus Lambart of Beauparc, Co. Meath – Mabel (b. 1847) was one of their daughters.
Mabel was thus free to travel; her husband was the perfect fit; they were never slowed down by children. But if anyone should say to you, ‘Ah, but Mabel never worked’, then they don’t know what they are talking about: few women of her class would have sweated more, from Aksum to Great Zimbabwe.
For Theodore Bent’s birthday today (30 March 2023; born 1852) we thought we would present him with his very own (Google) BARD resumé! It was generated from a request for “A short account of the life of the explorer J. Theodore Bent”.
And here it is, experimentally of course, paragraph by paragraph, followed by our corrections: we would not want some of the AI (Artificial Intelligence) data appearing in a school essay!
BARD (for it is he or she, etc.): “James Theodore Bent was an English explorer, archaeologist, and author. He was born in Baildon, Yorkshire, England on March 30, 1852. Bent was educated at Malvern Wells preparatory school, Repton School, and Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1875.”
BENT ARCHIVE (thus this is us): Actually Bent was born in Liverpool (his uncle, a successful brewer, had been Lord Mayor). He was brought up in Baildon (between Bradford and Leeds); that he was born there is a long-perpetuated myth. The educational details are correct; Bent took a History degree from Oxford.
BARD: “After graduating from Oxford, Bent travelled to the Aegean Islands, where he began his archaeological career. He later travelled to Bahrain, Cilicia Trachia, Mashonaland (now in Zimbabwe), Ethiopia, and the Arabian Peninsula. Bent was a prolific writer, and his travels and archaeological research resulted in a number of books, including The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892), The Land of the Sun (1893), and The Southern Arabs (1895).”
BARD: “Bent died in London on May 5, 1897, at the age of 45. He was survived by his wife, Mabel, and their two children.”
BENT ARCHIVE: By all means quote the first sentence, but ignore the second: the Bents had no children.
BARD: “Bent was a pioneer in the field of archaeology, and his work helped to shed light on the ancient cultures of Africa and the Middle East. He was also a gifted writer, and his books continue to be enjoyed by readers today.”
BENT ARCHIVE: Impossible to argue with that. Bravo BARD, nice try, you will get there no doubt. Meanwhile, it will be amusing to see how long it takes for Bent’s two imaginary children, Lionel and Mabel, to appear online! We pressed BARD (29/3/2023) a little more on them: “Did the explorer J. Theodore Bent have any children?”
BARD: “Yes, James Theodore Bent had two children with his wife Mabel Hall-Dare: Lionel Bent (1880-1943) [and] Mabel Hall-Dare Bent (1881-1971). James Theodore Bent died in 1897, when his children were still young.”
BENT ARCHIVE: Fascinating. Happy Birthday Theodore!
Where the Bents celebrated their birthdays: a review based on Mabel Bent’s Chronicles, 1884-1897
The accompanying interactive map below plots these birthdays: Mabel in green, Theodore in blue. (NB: London [13 Great Cumberland Place] stands in for unknown locations in Great Britain; the couple could have been away visiting family and friends in Ireland or England, including at their property ‘Sutton Hall’, outside of Macclesfield.)
Theodore’s last (45th) birthday took place on 30 March 1897 on the island of Sokotra. Within a few months he was dead, back in London, succumbing to a recurrence of malaria, probably initially contracted in the Cyclades in 1883/4.
There were 28 Bent birthday events (2 x 14) between 1884–1897 (the years covered by Mabel Bent’s diaries). Of these 28, only 5 (18%) were not spent in the field, and only 7 times (25%) does Mabel refer to a birthday in her notebooks directly. In the above Table, column 1 gives the year and ages of the Bents on their birthdays; columns 2 and 3 give their birthday locations. Events in red are when Mabel refers directly to their birthdays. ‘London’ is standing in for unknown locations in Great Britain. If not at their main residence (13 Great Cumberland Place), the couple could have been visiting family and friends in Ireland and England, including at their property Sutton Hall, outside of Macclesfield.
The Bents visited the Dodecanese in the E. Med in early 1885, calling at Rhodes, Nisyros, Tilos, and Karpathos (map: Glyn Griffiths).
In early 1885, Theodore and Mabel Bent were travelling in the islands we now refer to as the Dodecanese (in the Eastern Mediterranean), but were then in Turkish hands. Their main interest was Karpathos, but before sailing there the couple spent time on Rhodes, Nisyros, and Tilos, looking for items of interest to them – antiquities, textiles, ceramics – as well as making notes of traditions, folklore, and customs, and taking photographs and sketching.
The red overdress bought by the Bents on Nisyros in 1885 and now in the Victoria & Albert Museum (T.149-1930, (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London).
Avid collectors (and dealers) of textiles, the Bents acquired a number of articles of clothing and domestic embroideries on their journey around the Dodecanese in the first quarter of 1885. It was a competitive field, as illustrated by an (unpleasant) note by Theodore regarding a fellow passenger, the following year, to the nearby island of Asytpalaia: “Another passenger, too, turned up, whom we soon learnt to be a little red-haired Jew from a bazaar in Constantinople, who took this opportunity to make a descent on Astypalaea for embroideries and plates; he was our bête noire in the island: whenever we tried to effect a bargain he was always to be seen hovering around, ready to offer more if our price was low, and to chuckle if we gave too much.” (‘Astypalæa’. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 262 (Mar), 253-65) (NB Mabel never refers to this merchant in her diary and Theodore may well have made it up to pander to the prejudices of the day.)
“We have bought 5 of these underdresses, 1 pair of sleeves, a pillow cover, and a bed valance for £3.15.0.” An extract from Mabel Bent’s ‘Chronicle’ of February 1885 (The Hellenic Society, London).
The Bents explored Nisyros from 21–24 February 1885, and seem to have bought there eight or nine garments/textiles, as Mabel notes in her diary for 23 February: “The women here wear a very pretty dress, and now we know why ‘Turkey red’ is called Turkey red, i.e. because all the women in this Turkish island wear an open sleeveless gown of it with a very full skirt a good deal shorter than the thick cotton shirt with handsome silk embroidery round the tail, 1½ yards round. The sleeves are splendidly embroidered. We have bought 5 of these underdresses, 1 pair of sleeves, a pillow cover, and a bed valance for £3.15.0.” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs. J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, 2006, Oxford, p.73.)
The sterling sum Mabel mentions (taking £1 in 1885 for £150 today) equates to nearly £600. In 1886 Theodore offered three dresses acquired from Karpathos (visited in the same season as Nisyros) to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London for £15 (£2250).
The cushion cover/pillowcase (detail) bought by the Bents on Nisyros in 1885 and now in the Victoria & Albert Museum (T.166-1931, (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London).
Two of the Nisyros items are today in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London – a red overdress (T.149-1930) and a cushion cover/pillowcase (T.166-1931). These were sold to the famous London retailers Liberty & Co. after Mabel’s death (1929), or shortly before, by her nieces (who were her beneficiaries). Liberty’s then made them over to the V&A in the early 1930s.
‘Sleeves’/bodice from Tilos, perhaps similar to those bought by the Bents on Nisyros, no distance north of Tilos, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (CIRC.628-1928, (c)Victoria and Albert Museum, London).
As for the other items Mabel refers to (‘underdresses’, the ‘sleeves’, ‘bed valence’), we can only guess as to which collections they might now be in. A search of the V&A’s online collections reveals several unprovenanced items, including bed valences, and it is possible that some of the Bent textiles were bought and then donated to museums around the world. For instance, the ‘sleeves’ (bodice?) Mabel Bent refers to could easily resemble those illustrated by V&A item CIRC.628-1928, said to have come from Tilos, the next island south from Nisyros, and donated by Professor and Mrs Percy Newberry, whom we know were in contact with Mabel Bent. Did she sell to them perhaps? All pure conjecture of course.
A ‘sindhoni’/bed valence (detail) from Nisyros now in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Such items were treasured family possessions and executed in many sizes and designs. The one the Bents purchased has not been traced so far (T.732-1950, (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London).
At the end of 1885, the Bents gave a lecture to the Anthropological Institute, London, entitled ‘On Insular Greek Customs’, and Mabel Bent curated a small exhibition of her embroideries for it, including the Nisyros valence she referred to above: “A sindhoni of Niseros worked in brown, light yellow, and blue”. Another exhibit featured the red overdress also mentioned and illustrated above: “A figure dressed as a woman of Niseros, in a short narrow dress of white cotton, embroidered round the tail and round the square neck, and with wide sleeves, embroidered in stripes of various coloured silks, and with silver embroidery on the shoulders; over this a very wide dress of turkey-red, half a yard shorter, and sleeveless. A black kerchief across the forehead, and a yellow one over that, hiding the mouth.” (J.T. Bent, ‘Insular Greek Customs’. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 15 (1886), pp. 391-403. [With an Appendix by ‘Mrs. Bent’, p. 401-3])
Mabel Bent appears (third) in the list of lenders to the Burlington 1914 exhibition (‘Catalogue of a collection of old embroideries of the Greek islands and Turkey by Burlington Fine Arts Club’, London, 1914).
Mabel exhibited three of her Nisyros ‘underdresses’ (as well as several other possessions) at an event hosted in 1914 by the Burlington Fine Arts Club (BFAC Catalogue Nos. 44, 66, 83), Exhibit No. 44 included her Nisyros red overdress, the catalogue entry of which begins: “Overskirt of red Turkey twill and Frock embroidered in cross-stitch in coloured silks, of which black is dominant, on linen.” (Catalogue of a collection of old embroideries of the Greek islands and Turkey by Burlington Fine Arts Club (eds A.J.B. Wace et al.), London, 1914, p. 12)
Other items acquired by the Bents on their tours of the Dodecanese and now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, include a ‘stomacher‘ from Astypalaia and dresses from Karpathos.
The website of the Nisyrian Studies’ Society of Athens has a page featuring a slideshow of three embroideries from the island now in the V&A, two from the collectors Dawkins and Wace, and item T.166-1931 coming from Mabel Bent’s collection via Liberty’s, after or shortly before the latter’s death in 1929. The museum now dates the piece to the 18th century – it is no longer on show.
As remote as you like, for her 37th birthday in 1884, Mabel Bent finds herself on the Greek Cycladic island of Sikinos, a dot squashed between Folegandros and Ios, a leap northwest of Santorini. She and her husband, Theodore Bent, no less inquisitive than acquisitive, were hopping around the islands looking for material for a book which was to appear the following year – his celebrated guide The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks. [See below for a summary of Bent birthdays in foreign lands.]
The couple arrived on Sikinos from Ios, a little to the east, on 27 January 1884 and were put up in the house of the demarch, presumably within the medieval, walled chora. They were well looked after, as Mabel notes in her diary:
“Few remains in Greece are more perfect than this temple of Apollo …” Episkopi, Sikinos, before the recent restoration works (Wikipedia).
“[The Sikinos demarch] received us very hospitably. We have a real bedroom and washing table and all. We were soon at dinner and many people came in to see us. When we came out of our bedrooms yesterday morning, 28th, my birthday, we had a tray with a coffee pot and sheep milk and some very hard bread with sesame, all at different times, and very soon after eggs and wine, and then set off with a good many men on mules and foot to the Church of Episkopi, once the temple of Apollo Pythios, about 1½ hour off; of course a steep and rocky way. One could quite well see what it had been in spite of the Christian alterations.” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J.T. Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford, 2006, p.41)
Theodore gives this small but imposing (and important) monument ten out of ten. Its designation as a temple to Apollo comes from an inscription identified by Ludwig Ross in the 1840s, but it is more securely considered a mausoleum from Roman times, subsequently rebuilt in the 3rd century AD as a Byzantine Church. Read about it all in a remarkable article, fully illustrated, at Diocese of Sikinos: A unique monument is dedicated to the public today(accessed 19/01/2023).
[For how the site would have looked at the time of the Bents’ visit, see the wonderful images of the Cyclades and other Greek locations photographed by Baud-Bovy and F. Boissonnas in Des Cyclades En Crète Au Gré Du Vent, Geneva, Boissonnas & Co, 1919.]
Very fortunately, the monument escaped the spades of the Bents. Over the last few years it has been re-excavated and restored by the Ephorate of Antiquities (EFA) of the Cyclades, who were awarded the Europa Nostra Award for their work in 2022. The great find was the high-status tomb of a woman apparently named Neiko; Theodore stood just a few metres above her, and she eluded his attentions (unlike the less lucky Karpathos Lady).
Map of the Cyclades from Bent’s 1885 travelogue, showing Sikinos (archive.org)
Here are his words: “Few remains in Greece are more perfect than this temple of Apollo at Sikinos. Somehow it has escaped observation, and it has been too high above the sea to make it of any use for building material; hence it escaped during the earlier years of Vandalism; and then when it was turned into a place of Christian worship a certain amount of respect was secured for it, which other ruins did not obtain until later years…” (The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks, 1885, London, p.176)
Bent also mentions that they met up with the former mayor, Iakovos Kortesis (Theodore names him Kortes) : “An old man, the former demarch, came in shortly after we were up, and begged for the privilege of taking us about the town. In many respects he seemed a man more respected and looked up to than our jocular host; for we were told that if his age and infirmities had not interfered with the fulfilment of his duties he would still have been in office. Wrapped in a shawl, and stick in hand, he seemed to despise the cold, and trudged on at a good pace to show us his garden. Kortes was the name of the old man, and after showing us his garden he conducted us to his house, a large cold place, without any glass in the windows, just over the town gateway…” (The Cyclades, p.178) There is a splendid Sikinos website with contemporary photographs and references to Bent, and see these other (slightly later) photos of the exterior of the house the Bents visited, and a ‘Sikinos gate‘.
Later in 1885, Bent wrote a bizarre article linked to Sikinos entitled “A Romance of a Greek Statue” (possibly fictitious), on which there is a comment in a Revicto(06/01/2022).
2022
By the way, Mabel was born (see ‘My Baby Blue Eyes‘) in her grandfather’s stately home at Beauparc, Co. Meath, Ireland, a very long way from Sikinos!
A review of Bent birthdays based on Mabel Bent’s Chronicles, 1884-1897
The accompanying interactive map below plots these birthdays: Mabel in green, Theodore in blue. (NB: London [13 Great Cumberland Place] stands in for unknown locations in Great Britain; the couple could have been away visiting family and friends in Ireland or England, including at their property ‘Sutton Hall’, outside of Macclesfield.)
There were 28 Bent birthday events (2 x 14) between 1884–1897 (the years covered by Mabel Bent’s diaries). Of these 28, only 5 (18%) were not spent in the field, and only 7 times (25%) does Mabel refer to a birthday in her notebooks directly. In the above Table, column 1 gives the year and ages of the Bents on their birthdays; columns 2 and 3 give their birthday locations. Events in red are when Mabel refers directly to their birthdays. ‘London’ is standing in for unknown locations in Great Britain. If not at their main residence (13 Great Cumberland Place), the couple could have been visiting family and friends in Ireland and England, including at their property Sutton Hall, outside of Macclesfield.
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