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.
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.”
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.
A portrait of Rosita Forbes, from her 1921 book ‘The Secret of the Sahara: Kufara’; BHL25263784 (Wikipedia).
It’s always a pleasure on these pages to present a great lady traveller and writer from the era of Mabel Bent… so, here we introduce Rosita Forbes, F.R.G.S. (16 January 1890 – 30 June 1967), a wonderful character, controversial at times – easily springing from between the covers of Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, even Agatha Christie – and, by huge coincidence, for a time she was also a close neighbour of Mrs Theodore Bent,
Riseholm Hall, near Lincoln, UK, birthplace of Rosita Forbes in January 1890 (Wikipedia).
What interests us are Rosita’s links to the Bents. On the day of her birth, Thursday, 16 January 1890, at swanky Riseholme Hall, near Lincoln, the Bents were sitting on their packed trunks to get them closed before embarking that Saturday for the western shores of Turkey and their imminent discovery of Olba. Here is Mabel’s diary at the time: “We left England on Saturday night, January 18th [1890], the waves dashing over the steamer from the other side of Dover pier, and neither stopped not stayed, till we stopped for the night at Lucerne at the Hôtel St. Gothard, close to the station and very comfortable…” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs. J. Theodore Bent, vol 1, Oxford, 2006, p.269).
After driving ambulances (Hemingway again) in the Great War the rural lanes of Lincolnshire were too solitary for Rosita and she began an extensive sequence of travels in Asia and Africa culminating in her first book Unconducted Wanderers (1919).
We don’t know, but in her reading and preparation for her travels it is very likely that she hit upon the Bents (although Theodore was dead by the time she was eight). Her great 1925 book From Red Sea to Blue Nile – Abyssinian Adventure opens in Aden, a base the Bents used frequently for their expeditions in the area. (Both pioneers, Mabel was the first European woman to venture voluntarily into the Wadi Hadramaut, and Rosita the first to the Kufra Oasis in Libya.) It is hard to believe that the latter did not pack Mabel’s Southern Arabia in her saddlebags to read in Aden – the scene, of course, of Theodore’s final adventure.
Theodore’s map of Ethiopia (photo: The Bent Archive)
And more directly, in From Red Sea to Blue Nile (opening with its wonderful dedication, ‘To Abyssinia And Her Heir-Apparent, H.I.H., Ras Tafari’, we get specific references to the Bents’ trek to fabled Aksum in Ethiopia in 1893, writing, page 348, that Theodore ‘commemorated his journey in a most interesting book, The Sacred City of the Ethiopians‘. Again, it seems most unlikely that she would not have had a copy with her as she sailed across the Red Sea to Somalia to begin her ride north, and write, this from her Foreword, ‘the record of three months on muleback, the story of what happened… during an eleven hundred mile trek through mountains and forests, rivers and deserts in search of photographic material. It is a tale of adventures, serious and frivolous, of what we saw and heard and did between the Red Sea and the Blue Nile, but it is only an impression of Abyssinia as she appeared from tent and saddle.’ And during her time in Ethiopia she was never far from the routes followed by the Bents.
In any event was born at Riseholme Hall, near Lincoln, England, th . Even if not before 1925, we know the adventuress consulted Bent in the course of her trip to Ethiopia in … and there a several references to Theodore’s classic… in her own account….1923/4
Dedicated “i”
And then there is the serendipitous role of Great Cumberland Place – the thoroughfare in London linking Marble Arch to
she would know south arabia for her Aden etc stuff
other famous residents nelli melba
Dedicated “To Abyssinia And Her Heir-Apparent, H.I.H., Ras Tafari”
She was married again in 1921, to Col. Arthur Thomas McGrath.
Starting from aden
map?
Mabel’s museum
Rosita and her husband moved in to ?? in late ???? and immediately began a renovation project…
Meanwhile, down (or up) the road at No. 13, the by then long-widowed Mabel Bent had been renting her London townhouse (her country residence was Sutton Hall, outside Macclesfield, Cheshire) since ????, prior to that the couple rented No. ?? No. 13 very soon became a cross between a depository and a museum, acting as the point of arrival for most of the Bents’ acquisitions – wonderful things from Aksum to Zimbabwe.
But did Rosita and Mabel ever meet? The two travellers only overlapped as it were in Great Cumberland Place for half a year or so, the latter months of 192? and the Spring and Summer of 1929, and by then Mabel was elderly and perhaps not receiving callers – she died on ???, with her nieces in attendance (in 1926 they had already begun the process of clearing out and selling off the more precious things – the British Museum being the major benefactor).
Rosita, well aware of the Bents and their twenty years of incredible travel, must have known that Mabel was living a few metres from her. Firm evidence of a meeting might one day surface, but for now we can image the two formidable explorers, taking no nonsense from men, sharing tea (or a whiskey) in one of Mabel’s drawing-room and discussing the contents of it, perhaps the Ethiopian chair Mabel returned with in 1893, the style of which Rosita was familiar with from her own ???? adventure.
One topic Mabel might not have raised, or not without a good few Irish curses, was Rosita’s Fellowship of London’s Royal Geographical Society. Mabel was on the list for the second tranche of women Fellows in the early 1890s, until the Admirals who ran the show scuppered the rights of women to join. The process was not reopened for them until ???, with Rosita getting her Fellowship in ???
Some …. would make a diverting and curious documentary … h both women travelled many thousands of miles, but that mere 100 metres or so that separated them may well have been steps too far… down Great Cumberland Place, W1.
No list of indomitable women travellers would be complete without a reference to the incredible Ida Laura Pfeiffer, in whose footprints Mabel occasionally followed. Although the latter never refers directly to the Austrian globetrotter in her diaries, Mabel would certainly have known of her, and probably read Ida’s travel accounts, several of which were already translated into English in her time. Ida died when Mabel Hall-Dare was just a girl of ten or so in the south of Ireland.
One among many of the locations they both were to visit was the island of Rhodes (then a Turkish province for both Ida and Mabel). Here is Pfeiffer on Rhodes’ famous main harbour in late May 1842 (trans from the German by H.W. Dulcken):
Cover to the English edition ot Ida Pfeiffer’s “A Visit to the Holy Land” (archive.org).
“This morning, shortly after five o’clock, we ran into the superb harbour of Rhodes. Here, for the first time, I obtained a correct notion of a harbour. That of Rhodes is shut in on all sides by walls and masses of rock, leaving only a gap of a hundred and fifty to two hundred paces in width for the ships to enter. Here every vessel can lie in perfect safety, be the sea outside the bar as stormy as it may; the only drawback is, that the entering of this harbour, a task of some difficulty in calm weather, becomes totally impracticable during a storm. A round tower stands as a protection on either side of the entrance to the harbour.” (Visit to the Holy Land, Egypt, and Italy, London, 1853, p.86)
And here is Mabel Bent (she married Theodore in 1877) putting up with some tricky February weather in the same harbour region some thirty years later, in 1885, endorsing Ida’s observation about bad weather:
A view of Rhodes’ great harbour from C.T. Newton’s “Travels & Discoveries in the Levant” (London, 1865). The folly that is ‘Naillac’s Tower’ (left) would have been enjoyed by Ida, but was toppled by the time Mabel was in the offing in 1885 (archive.org).
“The day seems quite over, it is half past six, and a most anxious day we have passed with the yellow flag waving us. We got to Rhodes about 3 but did not settle till 5 and the health officers did not come till 7. The Captain asked leave to go to a bay to shelter if storm came on, or the open sea, but they said no, if we wanted pratigue he must remain there. But the Captain told us that sooner than lose or damage the ship he would go off with us and the two guardians to Smyrna. Great therefore was our horror at 3.30 p.m. to hear all the noises of a start, after having observed that it was getting rougher, but we only went round the corner of the island to shelter on the eastern side and hope to be returned to the capital tomorrow morning. In the mean time no one has been able to communicate in any way with the shore. It has been pouring most of the day.” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J Theodore Bent, vol 1, Oxford, 2006, p.68)
Bent’s map from the first edition of his 1885 book, “The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks” (archive.org)
The Bents’ first significant field of studies was the Aegean, beginning with a ‘tourist’ visit in early 1883, taking in such sites as Delphi and Mycenae. This trip inspired a decade-long passion for these celebrity explorers (with a tour more or less every year), generating Bent’s classic guide to the Cyclades (perhaps he is partly to blame for the islands’ current over-tourism in the summer months today), and a substantial corpus of popular and more ‘academic’ articles (historical, ‘archaeological’ and ‘ethnographic’ in content). Along the way they acquired artefacts, ancient and modern, that they would seek to sell or retain for their private London collection. The British Museum, for example, has a large collection of their material.
Bent’s writings on Greece (today’s boundaries) by year of publication:
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