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Mabel Bent
Mabel Virginia Anna Bent (née Hall-Dare, a.k.a. Mrs James Theodore Bent) (28 January 1847 – 3 July 1929), was an Anglo-Irish explorer, excavator, writer and photographer. With her husband, James Theodore Bent, she spent two decades (1877–1897) travelling, collecting and researching in remote regions of the Eastern Mediterranean, Asia Minor, Africa, and Arabia.
Hall-Dare was born on 28 January 1847. Her birthplace was her grandfather's estate, Beauparc, on the River Boyne in County Meath, Ireland. Via her mother, Frances Anna Catherine Lambart, she descends from Oliver Lambart, 1st Lord Lambart, Baron of Cavan (died June 1618), English MP for Southampton (1597), Governor of Connaught (1601), Irish Privy Counsellor (1603). He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Shortly after her birth the Hall-Dares moved to Temple House, County Sligo, before re-locating in the early 1860s to County Wexford, acquiring the property that was later to become Newtownbarry House, in Newtownbarry (now the village of Bunclody). While young, Hall-Dare suffered several bereavements, losing both her parents and her two brothers.
Hall-Dare and her sisters received education at home with private governesses and tutors.
Distant cousins (via the Lambarts), and having met in Norway, Hall-Dare married J. Theodore Bent on 2 August 1877 in the church of Staplestown, County Carlow, not far from Mabel's Irish home. There was wealth on both sides, and the Bents set up home first at 43 Great Cumberland Place, near Marble Arch, in London, later moving closer to the Arch at number 13; Mabel remained in that same rented townhouse for 30 years after Theodore's death in 1897, until her own death in 1929.
Mabel and Theodore Bent’s first journeys took them to Italy at the end of the 1870s, Theodore, who history at Oxford University, being interested in Garibaldi and Italian unification. From there, Theodore decided to pursue a career as a historian and amateur archaeologist. For the next twenty-seven years, the couple would embark on annual travels across the Mediterranean, Africa, and Arabia.
The Bents chose to spend the winter and spring months of every year traveling, using summers and autumns to write up their findings and prepare for their next campaigns. Their main geographical fields of interest can be roughly grouped into three primary areas: Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean (the 1880s); Africa (the early 1890s); and Southern Arabia (the mid 1890s).
Mabel documented her travels with a series of diaries or ‘Chronicles’. These contained her travel notes, findings, and observations. Her husband used her notebooks as aides memoires in his own writings. Her collection of notebooks is now in the archives of the Hellenic and Roman Library, Senate House, London. Several of her letters home from Africa and Arabia are held in the Royal Geographical Society in London.
Starting in 1885, Bent travelled with her photographic equipment and, from then on, became expedition photographer. She often travelled with a large quantity of equipment, including two to three cameras, chemicals, glass plates, film, and a portable darkroom. Few of her original photographs have survived, but many were used to produce the illustrations that feature in her husband's books and articles, and the lantern slides that enhanced his lectures at the Royal Geographical Society in London and elsewhere.
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Mabel Bent
Mabel Virginia Anna Bent (née Hall-Dare, a.k.a. Mrs James Theodore Bent) (28 January 1847 – 3 July 1929), was an Anglo-Irish explorer, excavator, writer and photographer. With her husband, James Theodore Bent, she spent two decades (1877–1897) travelling, collecting and researching in remote regions of the Eastern Mediterranean, Asia Minor, Africa, and Arabia.
Hall-Dare was born on 28 January 1847. Her birthplace was her grandfather's estate, Beauparc, on the River Boyne in County Meath, Ireland. Via her mother, Frances Anna Catherine Lambart, she descends from Oliver Lambart, 1st Lord Lambart, Baron of Cavan (died June 1618), English MP for Southampton (1597), Governor of Connaught (1601), Irish Privy Counsellor (1603). He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Shortly after her birth the Hall-Dares moved to Temple House, County Sligo, before re-locating in the early 1860s to County Wexford, acquiring the property that was later to become Newtownbarry House, in Newtownbarry (now the village of Bunclody). While young, Hall-Dare suffered several bereavements, losing both her parents and her two brothers.
Hall-Dare and her sisters received education at home with private governesses and tutors.
Distant cousins (via the Lambarts), and having met in Norway, Hall-Dare married J. Theodore Bent on 2 August 1877 in the church of Staplestown, County Carlow, not far from Mabel's Irish home. There was wealth on both sides, and the Bents set up home first at 43 Great Cumberland Place, near Marble Arch, in London, later moving closer to the Arch at number 13; Mabel remained in that same rented townhouse for 30 years after Theodore's death in 1897, until her own death in 1929.
Mabel and Theodore Bent’s first journeys took them to Italy at the end of the 1870s, Theodore, who history at Oxford University, being interested in Garibaldi and Italian unification. From there, Theodore decided to pursue a career as a historian and amateur archaeologist. For the next twenty-seven years, the couple would embark on annual travels across the Mediterranean, Africa, and Arabia.
The Bents chose to spend the winter and spring months of every year traveling, using summers and autumns to write up their findings and prepare for their next campaigns. Their main geographical fields of interest can be roughly grouped into three primary areas: Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean (the 1880s); Africa (the early 1890s); and Southern Arabia (the mid 1890s).
Mabel documented her travels with a series of diaries or ‘Chronicles’. These contained her travel notes, findings, and observations. Her husband used her notebooks as aides memoires in his own writings. Her collection of notebooks is now in the archives of the Hellenic and Roman Library, Senate House, London. Several of her letters home from Africa and Arabia are held in the Royal Geographical Society in London.
Starting in 1885, Bent travelled with her photographic equipment and, from then on, became expedition photographer. She often travelled with a large quantity of equipment, including two to three cameras, chemicals, glass plates, film, and a portable darkroom. Few of her original photographs have survived, but many were used to produce the illustrations that feature in her husband's books and articles, and the lantern slides that enhanced his lectures at the Royal Geographical Society in London and elsewhere.
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