You don’t mess with a goddess like Lumley
The saviour of the Gurkhas is just the latest in a line of women explorers who have won adulation in far-flung lands
Magnus Linklater
Editor: Scottish Edition, The Times
Filed 30 Jul 09
©Magnus Linklater
This article was originally published in The Times on 29th July 2009.
It is reproduced here with the kind permission of its author and of the newspaper.
Of course, for some of us, Joanna Lumley is a goddess already. That combination of flawless beauty and let’s-get- stuck-in attitude is in the great tradition of feminine power. It’s the kind that held empires together, saw off native uprisings with a flash of those fierce blue eyes, kept upper lips resolutely stiff, and still served a perfect pink gin on the veranda as the sun went behind the yardarm.
So it was no surprise when she so elegantly stormed the portals of Downing Street and saved the Gurkhas. To see her garlanded with flowers and accorded celestial status by the adoring Nepalese is, one feels, her just reward. Like most goddesses, she appears entirely at home.
Ms Lumley joins a long and distinguished line of strong women abroad who have won the respect and even adulation of the natives.
Unlike their male counterparts — explorers or gold-diggers bent on discovering the source of the Nile or gaining membership of the Royal Geographical Society — women travellers took more interest in people than trophies.
They adopted their habits and costumes, gained entry to the inner sanctums of power, became lovers of pashas and dragomen, and, in the course of their amazing adventures learnt a great deal more about the lands they visited than many contemporary male travellers, who may have given their names to rivers and mountains, but never saw the inside of a harem or sat down to talk about mysticism with the Dalai Lama.
Ms Lumley, head covered, hands clasped together in the Buddhist style, and deep in conversation with the Nepalese Prime Minister, is the natural descendant of Lady Hester Stanhope, who travelled through the Middle East in the early 19th century, swathed in Turkish costume, and greeted with awe by sheikhs and emirs alike.
She was accorded honours a mere man could never have won. When she entered Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was ordered to be closed, then reopened entirely for her benefit; her decision to travel through hostile Beduin country with a caravan of 22 camels won so much respect from the tribesmen that she was known as “Queen Hester”; and when she settled in what is now Lebanon, her influence became so great that when Ibrahim Pasha decided to invade Syria in 1832, he first established that Lady Hester would remain neutral in the conflict.
That she was clearly more than a trifle deranged is neither here nor there. What she demonstrated was that, by embracing local customs and accepting the traditions of those she travelled among, she gained infinitely more respect than by assuming that Western civilisation was superior.
Fifty years later, Lady Anne Blunt, Byron’s granddaughter, rode into the secretive kingdoms of central Arabia, rarely penetrated by any Westerner, learning the language and the customs of the people so well that she was able to translate pre-Islamic verse, draw pictures of tribal warriors, and save a rare breed of Arabian horse from extinction.
Meanwhile, Mary Kingsley was surviving the jungles of Angola, paddling her canoe up unexplored rivers, climbing Mount Cameroon the hard way, and warning her fellow Victorians that it was harmful and counter- productive for Christian missionaries to attempt to convert the natives, who should be allowed to stick to their tribal beliefs, even if it included polygamy.
Wise beyond the prejudices of the time, she wrote that it was offensive to consider the native way of life as “low” or “inferior.” Instead, “as a form of mind [it is] of a different sort to white men’s — a very good form of mind too, in its way”.
Perhaps the most extraordinary of all was Alexandra David-Néel, the French-Belgian explorer, who travelled to the closed city of Lhasa, and became a Buddhist mystic in the early 20th century. She met the 13th Dalai Lama twice, became the confidante and maybe even lover of the Crown Prince of Sikkim, crossed China from east to west, and entered Tibet in 1924 disguised as a pilgrim, earning such respect from the local monks that she was considered to have holy status. She returned to Europe to write more than 30 books about Eastern philosophy, and lived to the age of 100.
And that is one other thing that links these women. Their vigour means that they lived to a great age. The only one I personally encountered was the formidable Scottish writer, traveller and feminist, Lady Naomi Mitchison, who became an African tribal chief. In the early 1960s she let out her attic bedroom in Edinburgh to a young African man destined to become Lynchwe II, Chief of the Bakgatla tribe, whose people lived in Botswana and South Africa. When — in 1966 — Botswana emerged as an independent republic, Lynchwe succeeded to the title and turned for advice to the woman who had made such an impact on him as a student.
Mitchison was given the title of Mmarona — honorary grandmother of the tribe. She remained close to her adopted people until her death at the age of 101.
This may suggest to the present Government that it would be unwise to pick another fight with Ms Lumley. She will, if the precedents are right, be around for a long time to come and, while the Gurkha campaign may be over for the time being, there are surely other causes to be embraced.
There is nothing quite to match that powerful combination of single-minded determination and a perfect complexion. These goddesses are not to be trifled with.
©Magnus Linklater
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