Jean Wilson Murray

Ani Pachen – Brave Tibetan Buddhist nun and warrior

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Ani Pachen | Nicolehood [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
Ani Pachen wanted to spend her life in simplicity and quiet contemplation in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet. Instead, she became a resistance fighter against the Chinese invaders in the 1950s, was captured and spent over 20 years in prison. But she was finally able to fulfill her lifelong dream. Her story is one of great courage and steadfast endurance.

Ani’s Commitment

Ani Pachen was born in 1933 and she grew up as a privileged daughter of a chieftain in eastern Tibet, in the town of Lemdha in the Kham province. Buddhism was the religion of Tibet, and she had an early calling to be a nun.

At 17, she overheard her parents discussing a man they were going to force her to marry. She was NOT going to marry, she decided. She got help from one of her parents’ servants when she threatened to jump off the roof, and she went to a monastery. Her father finally relented and said she didn’t have to marry; only then did she agree to come home.

When she came back, she settled into her life of contemplation. Then, in 1950 everything began to change. The Chinese invaded Tibet.

Ani as Rebel Leader

Her father was a chief and he and others began resisting as they saw the Chinese takeovers of villages and the humiliations and torture of Buddhist monks. The Chinese first promised a lot of things, but gradually things got worse, and it was obvious the Chinese were going to wipe out the Tibetans and their Buddhist heritage. “We have to make plans,” her father said.

In 1958, her father’s health began to decline and he died. He had groomed her to take over for him, even training her how to shoot if necessary. She wasn’t sure she could do it, but she knew she had to fight for Tibet.

Tibet’s culture at the time was one of equality; women and men worked side by side and women were fighters. As soon as her father died, the resistance fighters turned to her as a leader.

“That day I passed from my childhood. In a moment, I knew that my dream of a life devoted to meditation and prayer was no longer possible. Unable to follow my heart, I was bound by duty to carry on my father’s work. With my country threatened and my family in danger, I set about making preparations for war. From that time forward, my life was never the same.” (SM, p. 123)

Ani Pachen had to make decisions on where and when to fight. She was responsible for many lives and she had to keep encouraging them to fight. She had to be tough with her “troops;” at one point she ordered a man whipped who disrespected her. She hated doing that; it went against all that her non-violent Buddhist training had instilled in her. Even though she had a gun, she wasn’t sure she could kill.

More and more Chinese troops were pouring into eastern Tibet. The resistance fighters were able to buy weapons and the American CIA began to help them, mostly training resistance fighters. Ani’s troops headed for Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, but then they learned it had already fallen to the Chinese. They learned later that the Dalai Lama had already fled to India.

Tibetan monks in captivity | unknown. Public Domain.

Capture and Prison – For Over 20 Years

“Fear always followed us: fear of being captured, fear of being killed. At times the fear had no object, but floated like a vapor around us.” (SM, p. 163)

The Tibetan resistance fighters and their families lived scattered about Kham province, waiting for food and weapon drops by the Americans. Then the Chinese attacked from all directions. Ani and her fellow resisters tried escaping over the Himalaya mountain passes to India, but Ani and about 100 others were captured and marched away.

Ani Pachen spent the next 20+ years in various prisons and work camps. Each one was terrible, some more so than others. Her autobiography Sorrow Mountain tells of her life during those years. She was interrogated, beaten, starved, tortured, lived in squalor, held in isolation, and denied the ability to worship. Her treatment was worse than for other women because of her “crimes” (resistance) and her status as a “commander in chief.”

Many times she was told to give up and confess to receive special treatment. She didn’t believe the Chinese and she said she would never confess.

In one prison she worked in a laundry washing the clothing of Chinese soldiers; the clothing was full of lice. In keeping with her belief in no-violence, she would brush off the lice and seep them onto the ground so they wouldn’t be boiled and killed. She had to be careful not to let the guards see her.

For several years she was in a prison close to her mother and she was able to see her occasionally; after she was moved from that prison, she never saw her mother again.

During the Cultural Revolution in 1966, she was forbidden to speak Tibetan, wear Tibetan clothing, or practice Tibetan customs. The sacred texts were burned all over the country and any monasteries still left were destroyed.

“Seeing the smoke rise up from the direction of Sera [monastery] was more painful to me than being beaten.” (SM, p. 220).

She had a special turquoise bead that she had kept hidden in her clothes for many years. She hit it in a chink in a wall above a toilet. The guards tried to find it but didn’t. When she went back for it, it was gone.

After Her Release – a Dream Come True

Someone asked her many years after she came to Dharamsala, “What kept you going?”

“The wish to see His Holiness….”

Dharamsala, India  | Gayatri Priyadarshini [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
The 14th Dalai Lama is a special person to Tibetan Buddhists. They call him “The Precious One” and believe he is the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion. He was the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet and he is still a symbol of Tibetan freedom. The Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet in 1959 freed the Tibetans to continue their resistance.

Since his escape, the Dalai Lama has been living in Dharamsala, India, as head of the Tibetan government-in-exile. Thousands of escaped Tibetans have come to this city to be near him.

After her release, Ani Pachen spent several years on pilgrimage throughout Tibet, including several years in solitude in a cave. Then she came to Lhasa to participate in the continuing resistance there. Finally, in  January 1981, with the Chinese watching her again, she was persuaded to escape to India.

It was shortly after her arrival in Dharamsala that she was able to meet with the Dalai Lama. They talked for a long time and cried when they spoke of their sorrow at what was happening to Tibetans.

Ani Pachen continued to live in Dharamsala in a nunnery. She died in 2002, at the age of 69. At the end of Sorrow Mountain, she said,

“As for me, the story will go like this: She led her people to fight against the Chinese. She was present at the protest in Lhasa. She worked to save the ancient spiritual teachings. When I die, just my story will be left. “ (SM, p 282)

Ani- Pachen’s life, her resistance, and her 20-year endurance were a testament to her faith. Could any of us endure as long as she did, continuing to fight for what we believe in?

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Sources: 

Most of my information and the quotes above are from this book:

SM: Sorrow Mountain: The Journey of a Tibetan Warrior Nun. Ani Pachen and Adelaide Donnelly. Kodansha International. 2000. It’s part autobiography and part reflections. Although the accounts of her ordeals in prison were disturbing, I found the book interesting and inspiring.

I also got information from Buddha’s Warriors about the last days of Lhasa, the escape of the Dalai Lama, and the CIA’s involvement in aiding the Tibetan resistance.

You might also be interested in another book called Escape from the Land of Snows, which tells more of the dramatic story of the fall of Lhasa and the young Dalai Lama’s “harrowing flight to freedom.” I found this book at a library book sale and it has started a multi-year study of Tibet, Tibetan adventurers (like Alexandra David-Neel), and the history of Buddhism.

 

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Disclosure: The books featured in my posts have links to Amazon.com, and I receive (a little) money if you buy a book from one of these links.

Annie Edson Taylor – Daredevil Who Went Over Niagara Falls – At 63!

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Not all women adventurers did it just for the adventure. Some, like Ada Blackjack and Annie Edson Taylor, did it for money. And maybe fame.

Annie was the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. And she survived!

She also wins the “shortest adventure” award in the Women Adventurers Club with her 17-minute adventure.

Before She Climbed into that Barrel

October 24, 1838 (remember this date), Annie Edson was born in Auburn, New York, one of 8 children. It was said that she was a tomboy, preferring to play outdoor sports with the boys.

Her family had money and she got pretty much whatever she wanted. Even after her father’s death, the family had enough to live on…and more.

She became a schoolteacher and met her husband, David Taylor. They had a son who died in infancy and her husband died soon after.

Annie had to work hard to find jobs. She learned to teach dance and became an instructor. She wandered around the Midwest teaching dancing, music, and manners. She had a dance school in Bay City Michigan.

It sounds like a tough life for a widow in the late 19th century. She had some money from her parents, but her inheritance dwindled each year and she was always needing money. She worried about how she would live when she couldn’t work anymore. I’m not sure they talked about “retirement” back then. Who could afford to retire? Maybe, as my mother used to say, they feared ending up in the “poorhouse.”

Annie’s Brave Adventure

At 63, Annie was living in Bay City, Michigan, and feeling the pain of having run out of money.

“For a woman who had had money all her life and been used to refinded [sic] surroundings and the society of cultured people, it is horrible to be poor.” *

She read about Niagara Falls and she claims the answer – “Go over Niagara Falls in a barrel!” – came to her in a flash of light.

Annie began by learning how to make barrels and she came up with a barrel design for her trip. Then she found a promoter, Frank Russell, and they signed a contract. Gotta have a promoter! The event was promoted in Bay City, and the barrel was displayed in a window; he initially didn’t give out her name, to keep up the suspense, I guess.

A reporter met them at the train depot and asked her questions. She said she was not contemplating suicide. Her answer shows some interesting facts that she had learned:

“I entertain the utmost confidence that I shall succeed in going over the Falls without any harm resulting to me. The barrel is good and strong and the inside will be cushioned so that the rolling movement will do me no harm. Besides, I shall have straps to hold fast to. There will be a weight in one end of the barrel so that air can be admitted through a valve in the upper end where my head will be located.”

In case you wondered what would happen if too much water came in through the hole (I did), she said the valve would be open until she came to the falls when it would be closed. That means she would have limited air for the time she was going over the falls.

She estimated she could live for about an hour in the barrel and she figured it wouldn’t take anywhere near that much time.  The barrel, she said, would have to start more than a mile above the falls.

Then they headed to Niagara Falls. Annie wanted her death-defying feat to take place on her birthday (remember the date? October 24).

Just to make sure the barrel was falls-worthy, they tested it the day before her trip, with a cat. (I know, some of you are cringing at that. I just tell ’em as I see ’em.) Both cat and barrel came out just fine from the experience.

Annie Over the Falls

Annie Before Her Trip | Niagara Falls Heritage Foundation Collection [Public domain]
And all was ready. Russell put a mattress inside and filled the barrel with air from a bicycle pump. She entered it clutching her lucky pillow. (She would have been better off if she had worn a lucky football helmet.)

By 3:50 p.m. on October 24, as reported in the New York Times, Annie-in-the-barrel was being towed to a specific place in Canada. At 4:05 the barrel was set adrift and she was on her own.

Weighted with a 200-pound anvil, the boat was said to have “floated nicely” in the water, in spite of, or maybe because of, the swift current. It passed over Horseshoe Falls on the Candian side.

Over she went at 4:23, and in less than a minute she was at the base of the falls and going downstream. Finally at 4;40 (17 minutes later!) the barrel was captured.

After her trip over the falls | M. H. Zahner [Public domain]
Annie got out alive and conscious, but she was in shock. She had a cut on the back of her scalp and complained of pain between her shoulders, but she was remarkably well. Her first words:

“I prayed every second I was in the barrel except for a few seconds after the fall when I went unconscious.” And, “Nobody ought ever to do that again.”

Of course, they didn’t listen. Many others went over the fall after her. But she was the first.

A Legacy of Fame – But Little Money

For the moment, she was triumphant, looking forward to fame and fortune. She went around for a while promoting herself by selling memorabilia and her signature. Her manager ran away with her barrel and she used most of her savings to try to find him. “But, she lingered for the rest of her life as an impoverished victor.”**

She died in 1921 in an infirmary. Her grave is in the “Stunters Rest” section of Oakwood Cemetery in Niagara Falls, New York.

They called her the “Queen of the Mist.” Among the acclaims for her feat was a poem written by Joan Murray, as if they were Annie’s words. Here’s a sample:

“I rode low, scraped the bottom stones,
clipped a rock, caught the current.
In a moment I was at the brink, 
thudding on the cusp–
pitching forward, breathless, blind–
from a womb
of my own making. 

Niagara! — over me! –under me!–
I spilled into it from every pore,
lost myself
in the blackness of its roar.

You might also be interested in Queen of the Falls, a children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg. (If the art work looks vaguely familiar, it’s because he also wrote Jumanji). The images are lovely, warm and funny.

A poetic video about Annie and her adventure is available at panix.com, with poetry by Joan Murray.

 

 

 

Sources:

*The Lady Who Conquered Niagara: The Annie Edson Taylor Story. Dwight Whalen, Edson Genealogical Association, 1990.

**Annie Edson Taylor (1839-1921). Bay-Journal, Bay City, Michigan.

The Niagara Falls Public Library has more photos of Annie and her trip over the falls.

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If you enjoyed this post and want to learn about more amazing women, you can Join the Women Adventurers Club and receive a Timeline of Women Adventurers and updates when I publish new articles.

Disclosure: The books featured in my posts have links to Amazon.com, and I receive (a little) money if you buy a book from one of these links.

 

Anne Spoerry – A Life of Atonement for a Dark Secret

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Anne Spoerry, humanitarian and doctor to many in Kenya for over 40 years, died in 1999. Many thousands of people walked, drove, and flew in to attend her funeral. But her obituary in the Independent (U.K.) didn’t mention the central event of her life, the one she refused to talk about and that would haunt her until her death.

This story about an adventurous woman is significant because Anne Spoerry’s life and what happened to her was revealing and it made me think about my life and the choices I’ve made. 

What would you do to survive ultimate evil and almost-certain death? Would you resist? Would you fight and probably die? Or would you do what you had to, no matter how awful? 

I found John Heminway’s book In Full Flight on a library shelf and I was intrigued. It’s the book that started me on my journey to learn about Women Adventurers.

Heminway doesn’t tell Anne’s story in a chronological sequence. Instead he saves the details of what went on when she was in Ravensbrück concentration camp until the very end. I’m including these details in the story where they happened because it helps explain a lot of what she was going through and what she wouldn’t talk about the rest of her life. 

Who Was Anne Spoerry?

Anne Spoerry’s life was lived in two distinct parts and places. The first part was in Europe until after the end of World War II. The second part of her life was in Kenya, where she lived from 1948 until her death.

Anne Spoerry was born in 1918 in Cannes, France, of wealthy parents. She was very attached to her older brother Francois who treated her like a brother. They had a close loving relationship throughout their lives. After attending school in London and medical school in Paris, she and Francoise joined the French resistance movement when World War II broke out (she would have been 22 at that time).

What happened at Ravensbrück Prison

Female prisoners at Ravensbrück camp. Chalk marks show they are prisoners. [public domain]
Anne was captured and taken to a series of prisons, ending up in Ravensbrück women’s prison. Anne had trained to be a doctor because she wanted to help people and when she first got there she was able to treat patients, giving them medicine and vaccines.

Carmen Mory|member of Army Film & Photographic Unit [Public domain]
Then she fell under the spell of a woman named Carmen Mory. Mory was probably a sociopath. She cozied up to the guards and did terrible things to other inmates, including deliberately torturing them and murdering them. (Look at her eyes; scary.)

There is some question about exactly what Anne did under Mory’s influence, but it seems she participated in torture and maybe murder.

Anne was called “Dr. Claude” by the other inmates, and Mory had some kind of control over her. After Mory left the camp in January 1945, Anne went back to being helpful and courageous. One inmate remembers that she hid other prisons and helped others escape the gas chamber. (Mory was tried and executed.)

After the war, Anne was tried for her activities at Ravsbruck. One French court found her guilty of impersonating a doctor (she hadn’t finished her medical studies), being a traitor, and “bringing shame on France through inhumane behaviour.” She was exiled from France for 25 years.

Anne’s Life in Kenya

Anne quickly finished her medical studies and left for Africa, settling in Kenya. With some family money, she bought a small farm and started being a doctor and becoming involved in the life of the area, playing polo and hunting. The Kenyans called her Kali Daktari (ferocious doctor) or Mama Daktari.

During her time living in Kenya, Anne stayed by herself much of the time and never would talk about her past, telling everyone who asked, “I won’t talk about that.” She dressed as a man most of the time, only wearing a dress when she had to.

Anne played a small part in the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s, mostly in protecting her property and her workers. She refused to leave when other women were ordered to go to safety, and she went on patrols with the men. They felt she was a liability and in one encounter she almost got someone killed.

In the late 1950s, Anne became interested in flying and she saw it as a way to help Kenyans in more remote areas and east African coastal islands. She bought a plane and learned to fly it. The natives started calling her Zulu Tango after the call letters of her plane. In 1963 she was instrumental in forming AMREF “Flying Doctors,” a non-profit that is still active today, providing air ambulance and medical services from East Africa to other locations.

She was deeply loved and many thousands of people walked and rode to her funerals (there were four!) in 1999, at 80. Her beloved brother Francoise had died only a few weeks before her.

Tributes to her work are many. Anthropologist Richard Leakey said,

“She probably saved more lives than any other individual in east Africa – if not the whole continent,”

And Dr. Tom Rees, a founder of the Flying Doctors, said,

“she personally eliminated polio from nearly 100 miles of the Kenyan coast.”

Anne Spoerry: Culprit or Victim?

After Anne’s death, John Heminway met her nephew Bernard Spoerry, who spoke of a strange document, dated 1946, in which Anne was “cited for crimes against humanity, including ‘torture.'” (from an interview in Powell’s book blog). Heminway started investigating and talking to survivors of Ravensbrück.

When Heminway published his findings (detailed in his book), he received hate mail from people who said that only Anne’s life in Africa mattered. He also received the support and encouragement to publish his findings.

There seem to be varying accounts of what Anne did inRavensbrück. The people he talked to were remembering events of that time, but most still had vivid memories. Some aid she participated in several cases of abuse, murder, and attempted murder and that she “became brutal and lived without conscience from the minute she fell under the influence of Carmen Mory.”

One Ravensbrück survivor “publicly applauded Anne’s behavior outside Carmen Mory’s influence” and “strongly condemned her activities in Block 10.” 

Another survivor said of Anne:

 “Sixty years ago if I had met [Spoerry] in the street, I would have turned my back on her, walked away, and never talked. … [but] if I were to meet Anne now, taking her life into account, I would forgive her. I would embrace her. I would not have done this sixty years ago.”

Heminway, in his Powells interview, says he wanted to complete the book about Anne:

to document the complexity of human character, the lengths one individual took to survive, serving as her own private jury, handing down her own sentence.

In the last chapter of his book, Heminway says,

Even a year after Anne’s death, some of her desert patients continued to gather under thorn trees in hopes Zulu Tango would emerge from a cloud and alight nearby.” 

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Sources:

Most of the information for this article came from John Heminway’s book In Full Flight.

I also used several articles, cited in the text.

I wasn’t able to get a free photo of Anne Spoerry, but you can see a tribute to her on the AMREF Flying Doctors Facebook page (October 22, 2015.)

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If you enjoyed this post and want to learn about more amazing women, you can Join the Women Adventurers Club and receive a Timeline of Women Adventurers and updates when I publish new articles.

Disclosure: The books featured in my posts have links to Amazon.com, and I receive (a little) money if you buy a book from one of these links.

Marthe McKenna: Codename Laura – A Brave World War I Spy

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Are spies adventurers? I’d say yes. Case in point: Marthe McKenna, a brave young woman who spied against the Germans in World War I.

Life in Belgium in the first part of the 20th century must have been idyllic. In 1892, when Marthe Mathilde Cnockaert was born in the village of Westrozebeke in the Belgian province of West Flanders, it would have been quiet countryside. But then came World War I, and the German army barrelled through on their way to Paris. And, worse, they stayed.

German troops invading Belgium. Deutscher Sturmwagen in Roye/Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-P1013-316 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)]

Life Under German Rule

Life was bad for the people of Belgium. The Germans took all the good food and supplies and left the people with almost nothing. There was bacon, putrid stuff nicknamed “Wilson” (after U.S. President Woodrow Wilson) and a kind of maize (corn) called “Hoover” (chair of the U.S. Relief Committee and later U.S. president) by the residents.

The Germans took their clothing to make sandbags, so they had to use blankets, tablecloths, curtains, and sheets for clothing.

Animals were also hard to find because the Germans took them too. One of Marthe’s neighbors had a goat that she loved and that gave good milk. She trained the goat to hide every time someone came into her house, by climbing into a hole between two houses!

How Marthe Got Started Spying

Marthe and her family were burned out of their home and had to move to a different town. She had been enrolled in a medical school, but it closed because of the war, so she found the only work she could do – as a nurse in a German hospital.

Like Rose Zar in World War II, Marthe was for a while living “in the mouth of the wolf” by working alongside the Germans. It was ironic that the Germans valued her services so much she was awarded their Iron Cross for distinguished service.

The dilemma for Marthe, like many people in Europe during wartime, was whether to help the hated Boche, as they were called to keep her family alive and get privileges or to resist and possibly be killed. Marthe found an uneasy balance – she worked with the Germans but she also spied on them. It was a dangerous life for a young woman with almost no training. She was even asked by one German officer to spy for the Germans and get more privileges! If she had said no, she would have been under his suspicion. She did some spying, but very little, toward the end of the war.

Marthe’s spying began when an acquaintance noted her liked Marthe’s cool, calm personality and intelligence and she persuaded her to spy for British Intelligence. She learned how to recognize fellow resistance fighters by the “two safety pins” they wore under their coat lapels. in the Philippines in World War II, Marthe worked in her father’s café in the evenings, where she passed on information she overheard. Like Joey Guerrero in World War II in the Philippines, she delivered messages and noted troop movements. Later she was asked to get information, which involved getting into restricted areas, a more dangerous task.

It’s ironic that women in Belgium during World War I were not able to vote or hold political office, but they could serve – and die for – their country by spying. 

How Marthe’s Dilemma Played Out

The central dilemma of all spying is whether or not to act on the information you have found. If you find out about something by spying, and you act on it, you might be able to stop the enemy temporarily, but the other side knows you were spying on them and they find new ways to communicate. If you don’t act on the information, you take the risk that your own troops or civilians will be killed.

Several times Marthe’s spying cost Allied lives. At one point, she notified the Allies of a big German ceremony in another town. The doctor at the German hospital wanted her to take some of the wounded German soldiers to the parade. Marthe had already told the Allies about the parade and she knew they were planning on disrupting it, possibly with bombs.

When she found out that she would have to be there, she tried to get word to the Allies, but it was too late. She was lucky that she wasn’t in the area where the bombs went off – it could have cost her her own life.

Mata Hari | Lucien Walery [Public domain]

Marthe  Was Not a Mata Hari

One part of the spying business that Marthe didn’t like was having to deal with German soldiers and officers. According to Tammy Proctor,* “Women, particularly working-class women, were seen as sexually available by many soldiers.” Woméen who ran boarding homes or cafés were particularly vulnerable and Marthe’s family ran a boarding house with a restaurant attached.

She had to pretend to be the girlfriend of a German officer and even spend a night with him, in order to get information. She always managed to avoid becoming intimate (or so she reports in her autobiography), but it was difficult.

The Most Terrible Secret Marthe Found

Marthe and another spy were digging in a yard when they found some suspicious cylinders.

Gas attack. United States. Army. Signal Corps. |[Public domain]
They reported the cylinders to the British authorities, who didn’t think they were important and called Marthe’s suspicions “highly speculative.” The true purpose of the cylinders became obvious on April 23, 1915, when the first choline gas attack was launched against the French at Ypres, Belgium. This was after the tear gas attacks and before mustard gas was used. Terrible way to kill people.

Marthe’s Life after the War

Marthe managed to survive the war without being captured. She was awarded honors by Britain, France, and Belgium for her espionage work. She married a British army officer named John “Jock McKenna.

During World War II, she was living in Machester, England, but she was still under suspicion by the Nazis and listed in Hitler’s “Black Book”  to be arrested if they invaded Britain. She died in 1966.

In his Foreword to her autobiography, Winston Churchill said,

“[She] fulfilled in every respect the conditions which make the terrible professional of a spy dignified and honorable. She reported the movement of troops; she destroyed, or endeavored to destroy, ammunition dumps; she assisted the escape of British prisoners; she directed the British airplanes where to strike at the billets, camps, and assemblies of the German troops, and thus brought death upon hundreds of the enemies and oppressors of her country.”

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Sources: Most of the information for this article came from Marthe’s autobiography, I Was a Spy. The New York Times, in its article on Marthe McKenna in its Overlooked series, said, “Much of the account was later determined to be invented….”

*I also used information from the section on Marthe in Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War. Tammy Proctor. NY University Press 2003

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Disclosure: The books featured in my posts have links to Amazon.com, and I receive (a little) money if you buy a book from one of these links.

Hester Stanhope – The First Great Queen of the Desert

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Lady Hester Stanhope on Horseback /Wellcome Collection [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)]
Three women have been given the title “Queen of the Desert” for their adventurous travels in the Middle East.* The first one, Hester Stanhope, began her travels in the early 1800s when she left England. She was the first person to run a modern archeological dig in the Holy Land. She never returned from her travels, ending her days in a mountain hideaway in Lebanon.

I originally put off writing about Lady Hester because I didn’t like her; she could be rude and dismissive to people she didn’t like.  Then I read more about her and I came to admire her determination and her audacious, exuberant attitude to life.

Hester’s Early Life

She was Lady Hester, born into a wealthy aristocratic family in 1776 in Kent, England. Her mother died when she was 4 and her father remarried. Her father was quite a character. He wouldn’t wear a wig at court, was a fan of the revolutionaries in France, called himself “Citizen,” and renamed his ancestral home Chevening “Democratic Hall.” Hester was his favorite, probably because she was as unorthodox as he. But she was definitely an aristocrat.

William Beechey [Public domain]
In 1803, she went to live with her uncle William Pitt, the British Prime Minister at the time. She ran his household and was his hostess, being presented at court, and talking with high-ranking people in England.

But she was also a student of war and fighting; she loved weapons and carried a dagger and mace when she traveled. Pitt said she would have made a fine military commander. Not quite as she is pictured here.

After Pitt’s death, restless and unattached, she began traveling.

Meeting Michael Bruce

Michael Bruce, probably the “love of her life,” was 11 years younger than she was, but they quickly fell in love. They met briefly in Gibraltar in 1810 and started their love affair in Malta a few months later.

Bruce had to get his father’s permission to the affair because his father controlled the purse-strings. Both Hester and Michael sent him letters, and he approved, but would always try to get Hester to give him up.

Hester never considered marriage and there’s evidence that she sensed their separation was inevitable, because of their difference in age and his father’s influence to get him to come back to England to have a political career. They would be together on their journeys for five years until Hester finally convinced him to go home to England. The break-up was traumatic for both of them.

In Athens, later that first year, she and Bruce met the poet Lord Byron, who said she was a “dangerous female wit” and a “she-thing.” *…

Changing Her Style

Mameluk. Louis Dupré lithograph [Public domain]
In her travels, Hester started experimenting with new styles of clothing– daring and unconventional like her father. In Rhodes, she began to dress as a Turk with “mannish layers of silk and cotton shirts…a coat and long breeches, tucking a pistol and knife in her sash.” She topped this outfit off with “a large bunch of natural flowers on one side.” I wish I had a picture of this outfit. I love her daring!

In Egypt, she mimicked the dress of a Mameluk (an Arab slave/soldier), dressing in “cinched-in waists and pantaloon style trousers” with, of course, a turban and a sword or scimitar, like this young fighter.

Riding side-saddle was considered the only way decent women could ride at the time, but Hester (again the unorthodox) started riding astride, and she liked it so much she never rode side-saddle again. She also made secret trips to mosques to observe their prayers, always disguised and discreet, because women were banned.

Druze woman. Félix Bonfils (d. 1885) [Public domain]
During her travels in 1812, she and Bruce traveled to Lebanon, where she met the Druze people (an eclectic sect). She fell in love with the Druze, saying they were “savage and extraordinary,” and she especially liked the dress of the women.

Hester’s Grand Entrance

Hester went to Damascus in September 1812, where her reputation proceeded her. “The Universe is My Country!” she proclaimed as she made her grand entrance into the city. She rode through the entrance gate unveiled (something women were NEVER supposed to do), with a Turkish scimitar at her side.

The people cheered – some of them probably wondered who she was, but everyone loves a parade. She was allowed to go into the mosque to look at ancient books, again something forbidden to “infidel” (Christians) and women, and she was feted at banquets.

She wanted to go to Palmyra, the home of Zenobia, a fifth-century warrior queen of Palmyra. (I’ll be writing about some warrior queens soon and I’ll give you more details on this amazing woman then.)

In November 1814, Hester, her doctor, and two maids became very ill, with high fevers. Hester was near death for three weeks and when she recovered, she had changed. She was no longer the free, unconventional gypsy. Dr. Meryon said she had “a mind severe indeed but powerfully vigorous. ” Friends noted “a certain bitterness and reserve.” She looked her age, and she had to cut her hair short because it had fallen out in clumps.

Despite her weak condition, Hester wasn’t hesitant to go off the beaten track to get to places she wanted to see. She went to Palmyra, Baalbek, and then Ashkelon.

Hester’s Archeological Digs

Men sitting to smoke with a panoramic view of the coast by Ashkelon, Israel. Colored lithograph by L. Haghe, c. 1843, after D. Roberts. Credit: Wellcome Collection.

Hester went to Ashkelon ^ searching for buried treasure. She had received an anonymous note that 3 million gold coins had been buried in the Middle Ages in the ruins of the mosque. She believed it was genuine because it was specific about where in the city the treasure was located.

She persuaded Sultan Mahmud that she would give the gold to the Ottoman government if he would give her permission to search for it. Her sense of adventure, as usual, outweighed her interest in money. This expedition was “singular and surprising,” according to Dr. Meryon because they had never given anyone, let alone a woman, permission to excavate in Palestine.

Hester and Meryon uncovered two “small earthen phials,” and a marble statue. The statue was missing its head but was still almost seven feet tall. They realized that the site was stratified by the remains of different cultures. (This was a new idea in the infant field of archeology at this time.)

Part of the east pediment. Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 3 December 2005. CC 2.0 Wikicommons.

Although they never found the gold, Hester and Dr. Meryon recognized the value of the marble statue. But they were in a quandary about what to do with it. Part of the problem was the Elgin Marbles. No, these weren’t marbles as in the game played with small balls.

The Elgin Marbles were a set of marble sculptures at the Parthenon in Greece. Lord Elgin went to Greece in 1801 and took these sculptures back to England, as he said, to preserve them from being looted and destroyed. (They reside in the British Museum to this day.) The public outcry was quite loud and many accused him of theft.

Hester was concerned about bringing back the statue and being accused of theft or of being out for her own gain. She also didn’t want it to give the statue to the Ottoman governor, who had been taking treasures for himself. So she had the statue destroyed. This caused a lot of people to be horrified. But she was only doing what she thought was right. (It sounds like a case of “darned if you do; darned if you don’t” to me.)

A Home in the Mountains of Lebanon

Djouni, mountain home of Hester Stanhope/John Carne [Public domain]
Remember I said Hester had fallen in love with the Druze people and the area around the mountains of Lebanon. In 1831, she decided to settle down, and she was able to get some land from Sheikh Jumblatt. On the top of a mountain, she built a home where she stayed until she died in 1877 at age 94, in her garden.

She wanted her papers burned but Dr. Meryon had made copies and he wrote a six-volume memoir.

Lady Hester Stanhope’s Importance

Hester really opened up the Middle East for travelers, especially women travelers. She also was the first person to do serious archeology in the desert. Historian Gad Sobol said,  “She examined the area’s geographic data and collected material from local residents,” and [s]he proved to the Ottomans that it wasn’t dangerous to dig.” Before her, there were grave robbers and wealthy people who carted off objects and there was much superstition about digging. She proved it was worthwhile to dig and to do it the right way, for scientific purposes.

Lady Hester he was quite an object of celebrity and many in the Middle East still recognize her name today.

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*The other two Queens of the Desert are Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark. I’ll be adding articles about each of them soon. 

Sources:

**Most of the quotes in this article are from Star of the Morning, the best and most complete biography of Hester Stanhope. There is much more to tell about Hester Stanhope and I’m sure you would enjoy her biography.

^The source for this section is an article from the Biblical Archeology Review (this article is a copy).

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