Historical Heroines
Page 7
Hedy Lamarr (9 November 1914–19 January 2000)
Hedy Lamarr was the archetypal sex siren of the golden screen. She was famously described as the most beautiful woman in the world and this often seemed to be the sole reason for her featuring in Hollywood films. Her acting ability was not as promising as her face but in tinsel town as long as the tinsel sparkles, who cares that it’s only ornamental. And so Hedy has often been dismissed as just another gorgeous gal. But there was so much more to her than that.
Hedy’s real life was far more interesting and action-packed than many of her films. She had a controversial career in Germany where she appeared nude in the film Ecstasy in 1933. That was bad enough but she was also filmed enjoying an orgasm – surely orgasms were not invented until the 1970s? Nevertheless, behind her artificially enhanced chest lay the sole of a science nerd. Being a good Jewish girl (OK, she was brought up Catholic) Hedy married a Jewish boy but he was far from good and not very happy about being Jewish. They lived in Vienna and his munitions business led him to cosy up with Hitler, Mussolini and their ilk, including doing the Fuhrer quick step at extravagant parties in their home.
Hedy complained that he controlled every aspect of her life and kept her in a gilded cage. However his insistence on bringing her to business meetings where munitions and warfare were the headline on the agenda armed her with some serious tech know-how. She ran away from him and ended up in Paris where she met Louis B. Goldmayer and was swept off to La La Land.
She was cast in famous yet less intellectually challenging roles that required little more than sexy smouldering. Not so surprisingly she found this all a bit tedious and turned her brain to inventions behind the scenes. It was during this time that she met the famous pianist and composer George Antheil at a dinner party. She went on to collaborate with him in making a secret, jam-proof radio-guidance system for the Allies to use in the Second World War. For fellow science buffs the system used spread spectrum and frequency hopping in a method similar to how piano rolls operate. However, and you will be shocked by this, the US Navy didn’t want to know and dismissed her work until the 1960s when the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted. Hedy was persuaded she would be more useful to the Allies by using her star status to sell war bonds, raising $7 million.
This technology has become the basis of the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology we know today. It took years for her contribution to be recognised, a fact that may have contributed to her later feelings of bitterness. She was arrested for shoplifting several times – one can only imagine the psychological background to those actions. However in 1997 she and George Antheil were finally presented with prestigious awards to mark their vital scientific contributions. But it was not until 2014 that they were added to the national Inventors Hall of Fame.
Hester Stanhope (12 March 1776–23 June 1839)
British eccentrics don’t come better than Hester. An adventuress with a deluded sense of grandeur which would prove her downfall, Hester was one hell of a woman. Byron once famously referred to her as ‘that dangerous thing, a female wit’.
Being an aristocrat was not her bag. Instead, in 1810 at the age of 33, this granddaughter of William Pitt the Elder and niece of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (she acted as his official hostess for a while at Downing Street) decided to embark on a mind-boggling, frankly awesome expedition across the Middle East. Enriched, thanks to her uncle, with a generous pension of £1,200 from the British government, she would never return home again.
She visited Turkey, Greece and the Middle East. She learned Arabic and Turkish, adopted Turkish man’s clothes and rode on horseback into the city of Damascus bare-headed. Unthinkable. Yet her chutzpah, arrogance and self-belief were so intense that she was treated as a queen.
Her life was literally a whirlwind of shipwrecks, younger lovers (Michael Bruce, twelve years her junior), public executions (not her own, obviously, but watching others), investments in archaeological digs (Ashkelon, Israel) and meeting with sultans, sheiks, emirs and downright bloodthirsty tyrants and criminals.
In her later years she developed a messianic, megalamaniac, Trump-esque zeal and conviction that she had been chosen for greatness to be ‘Queen of the Jews’. And not just because a former inmate of Bedlam had told her so. Let’s take one of her quotes: ‘I have nothing to fear … I am the sun, the stars, the pearl, the lion, the light from heaven’.
Decades before ISIS would desecrate it, she became the first white woman to enter the incredible Syrian city of Palmrya, once ruled by the mighty Zenobia. And she got there by traversing 60 miles of desert with a tribe of Bedouin. Always spending above her means, she borrowed huge amounts of money to open her home in Joun to the many refugees fleeing a brutal civil war.
She ended her days alone in a mountainous Lebanese fortress, which she’d adapted into her own personal kingdom (she’d also boarded it shut against the many moneylenders looking for payback), completely broke, very likely addicted to a local drug, completely out of her mind and an embarrassment to the British government, who’d had to cancel her pension in order to calm an irate Turkish creditor. Still, what a way to go.
Huda Shaarawi (23 June 1879–12 December 1947)
As Egypt’s first recognised feminist Huda was responsible for literally lifting the veil from the eyes of her fellow country women.
Nur al-Huda Sultan was born into a wealthy and politically important family in Cairo, raised in a secluded harem guarded by eunuchs. The harem, whilst not the opulent den of sexual iniquity often portrayed in Western literature, was more a patriarchal demonstration of wealth. Only the very rich could afford to run a completely separate household just for the women of the family. Their education was restricted (although Huda would learn Arabic, French and Turkish at home and how to play the piano) and there was a strong line of separation between what the men and women of the household were allowed to do.
She was married off in 1892 when she was just 13 to an older cousin, Ali Shaarawi. That Huda didn’t want to get married was irrelevant. She had no choice. It was just the way things were done and refusal would mean shame for her family. She would also only be her husband’s second wife; he was already married with children. A woman’s sphere was the home or the harem and their lives were insufferably restricted. The men were in charge. Even when they did leave the harem, they had to wear a veil.
After fifteen months of marriage, having been banned from piano playing by her new husband or visiting her family, Huda went home; she and Ali would live separate lives for seven years of their marriage. During those years of independence, probably available to her because of her family’s wealth and social standing, Huda educated herself thoroughly and attended cultural salons headed by prominent feminists.
Her marriage to Ali would resume as a partnership when Huda was 21. He took her to Paris where her eyes were opened to the freedoms of European women. They would have two children, daughter Bathna (born in 1903) and son Muhammad (born in 1905).
Starting as she most definitely meant to go on, and with the support of Egyptian Princess Ain al-Hayat, Huda set up a women’s charity in 1908, the first Egyptian Philanthropic Society. She followed this by opening a school two years later. Standing alongside her fellow Egyptian women, Huda would go on to campaign vociferously against British occupation, on one occasion facing armed British soldiers in a 3-hour stand-off, with a gun literally held to her head as she dared them to shoot her and make her the Egyptian version of English heroine and spy Edith Cavell.
Ali served as treasurer of the Egyptian nationalist Wafd Party whilst Huda was elected president of the Wafdist Women’s Central Committee in 1920. Their joint political interests created a strong and mutually respectful partnership. He would die in February 1922.
Huda went on to travel across the globe to campaign at international women’s congresses. It was on her return from one of these meetings, the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance, in 1923 that she dramatically removed her veil in public at Cairo train
station. The move was equally shocking and inspirational in its two-fingered salute to tradition. Many other women at the station applauded and followed suit; Huda would never wear the veil again.
That same year she founded and became president of the Egyptian Feminist Union; it published its own feminist magazine, l’Egyptienne (el-Masreyya) and fought passionately to change how women in Egypt lived. Keenly aware of Huda’s forced marriage at 13, the Union campaigned against polygamy, for the minimum age of marriage for women to increase to 16 and for improved education and welfare reform. Huda died in 1947, having been awarded Egypt’s highest honour, the Nishan al-Kamal, in 1945.
Hypatia (c. 350/370–415/416)
The first female mathematician and astronomer in recorded history travelled to school by horse and chariot. Highly respected, an inventor and philosopher, her name was Hypatia.
She was Egyptian, lived in Alexandria in the fifth century AD and was probably one of the last scientists to have access to the books of the famous Library of Alexandria. She never married, dedicating her life to study and her students. A tenth-century encyclopaedia refers to her as: ‘exceedingly beautiful and fair of form … in speech articulate and logical, in her actions prudent and public-spirited, and the rest of the city gave her suitable welcome and accorded her special respect’.
None of her work survived. No notebooks. Nothing. There’s no information on her mother – because the women of the time weren’t seen as important enough to preserve in history. We only know about her father Theon, who was her teacher. Legend has it that he was determined to mould her into a perfect human being and encouraged her to stay fit through sport and physical activity. He was also the last recorded member of the Museum of Alexandria – which was very much like a modern-day university, with schools and public auditoriums. Students came from as far afield as Ethiopia and India to hear lectures on science and philosophy.
Hypatia’s books on mathematics include the thirteen-volume Commentary on the Arithmetica of Diophantus (generally regarded as the father of algebra) as well as a book on astronomy, The Astronomical Canon. Much of what we know of Hypatia is from letters written by her most famous student Synesius of Cyrene, who later became the Bishop of Ptolemy. One suggests that her lectures included instructions on how to design an astrolabe, a type of portable astronomical calculator that would be used until the nineteenth century.
Too modern for the ancient world, Hypatia was murdered on the steps of a church in March 415. She was 45. She was stripped naked, brutally butchered with roofing tiles and then burnt by a mob of religious fanatics led by Peter the Lector, convinced that her way of thinking, Neo-Platonism, was heresy and a danger to Christianity.
She was probably also killed for being a friend of the governor of Alexandria, a man called Orestes, who was at odds with Cyril, the city’s Archbishop. Rumours were spread that Hypatia was to blame for the two men fighting with each other. And for being a woman – a female teacher who encouraged her students to think about science and the wider world, the stars, the planets, the sun and the moon. (A huge asteroid in space is named after her.)
Some historians say that she was the first famous ‘witch’ to be punished for her beliefs. Many women of science were seen as witches. Men didn’t like it. They didn’t like women thinking for themselves.
Ida (24 August 1904–22 December 1986) and Louise Cook (19 June 1901–27 March 1991)
Ida and Louise Cook were two unassuming English women, ordinary clerical workers in London’s grey rat race. But after their 9-to-5 day their lives turned Technicolour – alive with intrigue, danger and, above all, opera. Whilst this is a story about two intrepid heroines who saved the lives of twenty-nine families from Nazi Germany, their tales of derring-do cannot be separated from their obsession with the flamboyant world of opera.
It was opera that alerted them to the abhorrent crisis facing Germany’s Jews in the 1930s and opera that gave them the means to fool German officials and save lives. They are now honoured as Righteous Gentiles by Yad Vashem.
And, oh my, did those gals love their opera – they were the 1920s’ giddiest groupies! They scrimped and saved to raise money to buy a gramophone. Then they scrimped some more to pay their passage to New York and hear Amelita Galli-Curci sing live – oh, the thrill of it all. Dressed in homemade clothes and Woolworths accessories, they charmed their way into their idols’ lives. Using her beloved Brownie camera, Ida captured them all for their own private pin-up collection.
During one trip to Salzburg in 1934, when the girls went to see their famous opera friends Clemen Kraus and his wife Viorica Ursuleac, they unwittingly brought their first refugee home. Kraus and Ursuelac brought Mitia Mayer-Lismann to the station to meet Ida and Louise. And the girls suspected nothing when they were asked to accompany her back to Britain. It was only later that they realised the danger Mitia had escaped.
The girls were not immune to the horrific atmosphere permeating Austria and Germany but now they were up close and personal. The ingenuity and self-sacrifice that had taken them to New York helped them navigate Hitler’s horrifying world. Luckily Ida would soon assume the persona of Mary Burchell, one of the most prolific writers for Mills & Boon, and use the money she earned from that to finance their rescue missions. She still ended up in terrible debt, pouring all her money into the refugee situation.
Pretending to be dotty, opera-mad spinsters, they slipped past guards regularly. To smuggle the refugees’ only means of raising money they would sew English labels on the escapees’ fur coats and pretend their diamond jewels were paste gems from Woolworths whilst wearing them over the border. Kraus and Ursuelac, now working for the Berlin opera, played a crucial role. They let Ida and Louise know which operas were playing and when so their stories sounded completely plausible.
It was opera that got them through the dark days. When they were at their lowest, unable to save so many desperate people, when they had witnessed the endless suicides and brutality and knew so many families they couldn’t save were going to the gas chambers, the girls would think of Rosa Ponselle, their favourite opera singer, and tell themselves those heady New York days would come again.
Ida’s outgoing personality and work as a writer mean the stories are told in her voice but she credits Louise as much as herself. Louise’s words are harder to find. After Ida’s death in 1986, Louise burned all the letters and photos belonging to their intrepid past. Was she terribly grief-stricken and couldn’t bear reminders or did she have a more damaged relationship with the past? It is a terrible shame that we will never know.
Isabel Godin des Odonais (1728–92)
A desperate exploration of the Amazon, estranged lovers reunited, peril, betrayal, death and, above all else, survival – you could make it up but why bother when history has such epic tales hidden in its pages?
Nowadays it’s practically a cliché to don a backpack and go exploring but we go armed with vaccinations, mosquito repellent, maps and sun screen. It was an entirely different proposition in the seventeenth century not least for genteel ladies brought up to delicately fan themselves while outside. The most seasoned of explorers thought twice before taking on the well-reputed dangers of the Amazon.
Isabel Godin would prove the dainty exception to this stereotyped rule. She was born in the Spanish colonial city Riobamba in 1728, now part of Ecuador. When the French arrived as part of an expedition to measure the equator under the famous La Contamine, she met Jean Godin des Odonais who had been employed as a chain-bearer (official measurer). They fell in love and married when she was only 13, the same age as Juliet when she fell for Romeo. Isabel and Jean would have a happier ending but there would be a wealth of tragedy along the way.
After Jean heard of his father’s death, he decided it was time to return to France. Jean went on ahead as Isabel was pregnant, leaving her to book a safe passage home. When he tried to return to Riobamba, he was prevented by a bureaucratic nightmare. The Portuguese and Spanish had locked horns over territo
ry and neither would allow a Frenchman through to collect his family. Now the romantic couple were separated by an entire continent, instead of contending with the feuding Capulets and Montagues, their love was sabotaged by feuding nations. He stayed and pestered endlessly, even a sending a desperate missive to the French government to suggest it was a good time for France to invade and take their land.
It would be twenty years before they held each other again. Eventually the King of Portugal decided a French ally would be helpful and agreed to send a ship to Isabel but Jean was paranoid the king had discovered his idea to go to war and that it was a trap. He sent his friend Tristan instead with money and letters, but the treacherous Tristan ran off with the money.
Isabel had heard rumours of this ship and sent her loyal slave Joaquin to investigate, promising him his freedom when she reunited with Jean. It took him two years to return and she decided she would meet that ship come hell or Amazonian water. Woefully naive, she set off in 1769 with a party of forty-two including servants to carry elaborate crockery, clothes and jewels – very handy in the rainforest, nothing like an emerald pendant for frightening away malaria-riddled mosquitoes. Her brothers Antoine and Eugenio also came along, one in his infinite wisdom bringing his 10-year-old son so he could go to school in Europe, as well as maids, slaves and a French doctor and his companion seeking an adventure. In the end there would be one survivor – Isabel.
After navigating the Andes, home to active volcanoes, the tired group arrived nine days later at a mission station where they were supposed to retrieve supplies and a boat to travel the Amazon. It was completely empty of life, a true ghost-town that had been ravaged by smallpox before being burnt to the ground by survivors. Sensibly, but unfortunately for Isabel, the porters ran from this hellhole.