Lady Constance Lytton Page 11
56 Constance Lytton to Mrs Mansel, 23 March 1898, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 15.
57 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 30 June 1898, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 17.
58 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 23 March 1899, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 19.
59 Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, 7–11 November 1899, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/321/55–7.
60 Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, 17 November 1899, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 20.
61 See Journals of Constance Lytton, 1899, for example 24 April, 11 September, 16 September, Knebworth Archive, box 110.
62 Journals of Constance Lytton, 15 December 1899, Knebworth Archive, box 110.
63 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 23 July 1900, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 22.
64 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 28 August 1900, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 26.
65 Constance Lytton to Aunt T, 7–11 November 1899, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/321/55–7.
66 Neville Lytton, The English Country Gentleman, p. 259.
67 Constance Lytton to Aunt T, 25 August 1900, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 28.
68 Journals of Constance Lytton, 14 January 1901, Knebworth Archive, box 110 and Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 26 January 1901, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 30.
69 Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, undated, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 108.
70 Constance Lytton to Edward Marsh, 7 March 1901, Knebworth Archive, 41943.
71 Journals of Constance Lytton, 24–25 March 1901.
72 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 11 June 1901, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 31.
73 Journals of Constance Lytton, 13 June, 24 June, 29 June and 30 June 1901, Knebworth Archive, box 110.
74 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 13 July 1901, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 32.
75 The Times, 26 July 1901, in Journals of Constance Lytton 1901, Knebworth Archive, box 110.
76 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 2 August 1901, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 33.
77 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 2 August 1901, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 33.
78 Constance Lytton to Aunt T, 26 August 1901, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 36.
79 Journals of Constance Lytton, 12 August 1901.
80 Journals of Constance Lytton, August 1901. I have not been able to trace the author.
81 Constance Lytton to Adela Smith, 7 February 1902, and Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, 31 January 1903, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 38 and 40.
82 Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, 16 April 1905, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 40.
83 Journals of Constance Lytton, 6 June 1906 and 25 December 1906, Knebworth Archive, box 110.
84 Journals of Constance Lytton, 18 October 1903, Knebworth Archive, box 110.
85 Journals of Constance Lytton, 23 December 1904, Knebworth Archive, box 110.
86 Constance Lytton to Adela Smith, 6 September 1907, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 43.
87 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 27 May 1895, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 8.
88 Victor Lytton to Betty Balfour, 24 December 1924, quoted in Michelle Myall, ‘“Only be ye strong and very courageous”: the militant suffragism of Lady Constance Lytton’, Women’s History Review, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1998).
89 Emily Lutyens to Edwin Lutyens, 11 April 1897, quoted in Clayre Percy and Jane Ridley, The Letters of Edwin Lutyens to his wife Lady Emily, p. 41.
90 Neville Lytton, The English Country Gentleman, p. 259.
91 See Emily Lutyens, A Blessed Girl, p. 215 and Elizabeth Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, pp. 303–20.
92 Emily Lytton to Rev. Whitwell Elwyn, 24 August 1893, quoted in Emily Lutyens, A Blessed Girl, p. 215.
93 Elizabeth Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 319. This was not the only triangle connecting Emily and Judith: Emily had at one time been pursing Gerald Duckworth, who proposed to Judith. Jane Ridley, Edwin Lutyens, p. 95 and Elizabeth Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 339.
94 Edith Lytton, ed. by Mary Lutyens, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, 1895–1899, p. 90.
95 Mary Links interview with Brian Harrison, 8/SUF/B/085, LSE Library collections.
96 A selection of which are published in Clayre Pierce and Jane Ridley, The Letters of Edwin Lutyens to his wife, Lady Emily (Collins, 1985).
97 Elizabeth Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 339.
98 Constance Lytton to Aunt T, 20 July 1899, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/320/1/49–51.
99 Elizabeth Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 339.
100 Jane Ridley, Edwin Lutyens: His Life, His Wife, His Work, p. 142. The subsequent page describes the reality.
101 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 1.
102 Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, 10 January 1908, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/271/2.
103 Olive Schreiner to Edward Carpenter, 6 February 1908, National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription SMD 30/32/gii, line 15.
104 Lisa Appignanesi, Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present (Virago, 2009), p. 171.
105 Lisa Appignanesi, Mad, Bad and Sad, p. 115.
106 Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, 24 April 1907, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/335/51–2.
107 Lena Leneman, ‘The Awakened Instinct: Vegetarianism and the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain’, Women’s History Review, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1997), p. 275.
108 Kathryn Gleadle, British Women in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave, 2001), p. 183.
109 Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, 26 July 1899, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 130.
110 Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, 25 August 1900, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 28.
111 Constance Lytton to Adela Smith, 12 June 1908, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 44.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE CAUSE
‘There was a call from far off, something inevitable as the voice of fate.’ 1
There is a famous and lovely – though sadly probably apocryphal – story that one day, Emily Davies went to visit her friend Elizabeth Garrett and Elizabeth’s younger sister, Millicent, and the conversation turned to the embryonic struggle for women’s rights. These three young women – Millicent was only thirteen – decided to put the world to rights between them. Emily was given the task of tackling women’s education, Elizabeth would open up the medical profession to women, and thirteen-year-old Millicent would win women the vote. That is almost exactly what happened. In 1865, Elizabeth became the first woman qualified to practise medicine in England and three years later, Emily founded the first women’s college at Cambridge. Millicent dedicated her life to winning the vote and became the leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society (NUWSS). She would have to wait a lot longer to see her dream realised.
In the Victorian era, the rise of the middle classes meant the rise of a new bourgeois ideology which divided the world in half: public/private; male/female – an ideal historians have called ‘separate spheres’.2 In theory, men and women had equally important roles: men had to take on the burdens and responsibilities of public life, while women were supposed to nurture the home and the children, ideally as the patient, submissive, devoted ‘angel in the house’. In reality, women were very much second-class citizens, dependent on husbands, fathers and brothers.
But as the nineteenth century progressed, the role of women in society began to significantly change. Women (and their supporters) began, tentatively and one step at a time, to challenge the limitations and constraints that shackled their lives. Judicial reform gave women new legal rights over their money, their property and their children. Divorce, though still time-consuming and expensive, was becoming accessible. Some middle-class women went to university, though it was still out of reach for the working clas
ses and unthinkably déclassé for the upper classes. A few pioneers joined the professions. Thousands became teachers and nurses. Some women joined the chorus of late-Victorian concern about poverty and inequality and began to push for social reform. One notable success was the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act in 1886, which allowed police to arrest and inspect women in certain areas suspected of prostitution. Led by Josephine Butler, this campaign was particularly notable for the way in which ‘respectable’ women were prepared to risk that respectability by standing up for prostitutes, showing how women from extremely different backgrounds could work together in a common cause.3 (Lady Ponsonby, for example, was interested in this issue.) Campaigning women rejoiced in these successes. They were increasingly confident, with a growing belief in what they could offer, what they might do and what they might achieve.4
But there was one glaring omission from women’s advance into public life: they could not vote in national elections. As a result, the struggle for the vote came to preoccupy the women’s movement. Historian Susie Steinbach suggests that ‘nineteenth-century feminists focused their efforts on suffrage because it was the one battle they were losing; from the 1850s to the end of the century they won astonishing victories in almost every area’.5 The vote became a talisman for progressive women. It had both symbolic importance – for the first time, acknowledging women as equal citizens – and tremendous practical importance. It would give them power and influence over political decision making and be a means to achieving other goals, whether that involved improving conditions for working women, supporting family life or changing the sexual double standard.
As we have seen, Constance’s great-grandmother Anna Wheeler had been arguing for female suffrage in the 1820s. The first petition to Parliament on this issue was presented by Henry Hunt in 1832, on behalf of Mary Smith of Stanmore, who stated that since she paid taxes she should have a representative in Parliament. In 1867, John Stuart Mill presented another petition, signed by 1,499 women, asking to be enfranchised, but the Reform Act brought in that year by Disraeli did nothing for women. In 1868, a Miss Lily Maxwell was named on the electoral roll by mistake. Supported by the campaigner Lydia Becker, she duly voted and was duly knocked back in court. The vote was, and would remain, the preserve of men. Lydia Becker was the driving force behind the campaign for the vote until her death in 1890. The struggle was then taken up by a new generation of reformers: Esther Roper, her partner Eva Gore-Booth and, most significantly, Millicent Garrett (now Fawcett) stepping up to fulfil her destiny.6 The demand for the vote was also taken up by working women in Lancashire, whose experiences in mills and factories made them simultaneously independent, vocal and acutely aware of the disadvantages they faced as women, paid less than their male colleagues and disregarded by male-dominated trade unions.7
The campaign united women who otherwise had very little in common. It was not just class that divided the women, but also geography, religion, party; whether they were married or not; whether they worked outside the home or not.8 Yet ‘most appeared to have felt that they had a unique contribution to make as women, and that their authority in moral affairs enabled them, at times, to transcend customary affiliations and to join hands with women across political and ideological divides,’ writes the historian Kathryn Gleadle.9 Supporters said that the vote would be good for women: it would make them better, more engaged citizens.10 Women and men were thought to be different, which meant that gaining the vote was essential to protect women’s unique interests. Further, women’s participation in political life would change it for the better, bringing new issues into the political arena and changing the tenor of debate.
On the other hand, opponents had any number of reasons why women should not be able to vote. Some pointed to biology, arguing that menstruation, pregnancy and breastfeeding would all apparently get in the way of women from voting. Others saw difference as a sign of inferiority, arguing that women were more emotional and less intelligent than men, lacking the logic and common sense needed to make political decisions. Some said that because women couldn’t defend the state in wartime, they did not deserve the vote. Others – though by the end of the nineteenth century, their numbers were dwindling – thought the whole issue too stupid even comment on.11 Still others were afraid of what women might want next.12
Nevertheless, by 1900, a million women could vote in certain local elections: for councillors, poor law guardians and school board representatives.13 None of the catastrophic consequences for their families or communities predicted by apocalyptic commentators came to pass. Some women were even elected to serve as Poor Law guardians – one of these was Emmeline Pankhurst – and they helped make workhouses more humane, especially for disabled or ‘delinquent’ children.14
So why did the struggle for the franchise become such an epic battle? Part of the reason was disagreement about which women should be enfranchised, because significant numbers of men still could not vote. Campaigning women themselves were also divided. Some believed that, tactically, it would be more sensible to give single women the vote first, since it could be argued that without a husband, they did not even have indirect representation, despite the fact that as householders they were paying taxes. Others, though, believed that married women with family responsibilities had a greater stake in the nation’s affairs and needed a voice.
But even more significant was the lack of political leadership. In the general election at the end of 1905, Arthur Balfour’s Conservative Party was punished for the controversial Boer War and the Liberals, led by Henry Campbell-Bannerman, were returned to government in a landslide victory. Liberal Party members were generally in favour of the vote. But Liberal leaders took the position that giving the vote to women on the same terms as men would not be in their interests: they saw such women as natural Conservative supporters.15 In any case, having been out of power for a generation, the Liberals had other, ‘more important’, business to get on with. Meanwhile, the labour movement, now represented in Parliament with twenty-nine MPs, was no more enthusiastic about women’s suffrage, believing that attention should be focused on universal suffrage. This was hugely frustrating for the women who had campaigned to get them elected in the first place. An exception to the rule was the labour leader Keir Hardie, but he had little success in persuading his colleagues to take the women’s demands seriously.
Most women were resigned to many more years of campaigning. Without government support, their only option was to sneak electoral reform in through the back door, by encouraging a friendly MP to sponsor a Private Members’ Bill. It was very unlikely, but it was their best shot.
For some women, though, this wasn’t good enough. They had been politely asking for the vote for over forty years. It was time to start demanding the vote. The most outspoken of these women belonged to the Women’s Social and Political Union, led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel.16
Emmeline came from a family of campaigning reformers. Her husband Richard, a barrister, was a progressive in every sense: in favour of education for the working classes and Home Rule in Ireland, as well as the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords.17 Richard had helped John Stuart Mill draft the original parliamentary proposals to give women the vote in 1867 and also drafted the bill which gave married women the right to their own property in 1882. In 1889, the Pankhursts were among the founders of the Women’s Franchise League, a campaigning group that helped win the vote for women in local elections. But at this time, suffrage was just one of the Pankhursts’ many causes. They were more closely aligned with socialism than feminism and their house in Manchester became a meeting place for radicals and progressives. The Pankhursts were active in the Independent Labour Party (ILP), formed in 1893, and friends with Keir Hardie. Richard stood, unsuccessfully, for election in 1895. But Emmeline was becoming increasingly aware that her relationship with the labour movement was one-sided. Socialist women were expected to be active campaigners for their male colleagues, but few men
felt the need to repay them by supporting women’s suffrage.
Richard Pankhurst died unexpectedly in 1898 and Emmeline opened a shop in order to make a living. Her eldest daughter, Christabel, reluctantly worked in the shop, while the next child, Sylvia, took up a scholarship at the Royal College of Art. The youngest, Adela and Harry, were still at school. But neither Emmeline nor Christabel were successful businesswomen and Emmeline soon found alternative employment as a Register of Births and Deaths. This work led her into closer contact with working-class women and the many problems they faced, from illegitimate children and early widowhood to large families they could not afford to feed. More than ever, she became convinced that women needed political representation to solve the problems in their lives. Meanwhile, Christabel had been attending lectures at Manchester University and had become friends with the campaigners Esther Roper and Eva Gore-Booth. Both Emmeline and Christabel were reaching the conclusion that not only was winning the vote for women increasingly urgent, but that women would have to do it for themselves, with or without the support of the labour movement.
In 1900, the Richard Pankhurst Memorial Hall was opened, built with money raised by prominent ILP leaders like Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald, and decorated by Sylvia. Emmeline was furious to discover that the hall was going to be used by an ILP branch which refused to admit women. Sylvia and her sisters would not even be allowed in. Emmeline needed no clearer evidence that the male-dominated labour movement at this time did not take women or their concerns seriously. She was determined to develop an alternative.
On 10 October 1903, she held the first meeting of the Women’s Social and Political Union in her living room. It was set up to be ‘a new approach to an old problem’, as Sophia A. van Wingerden, historian of the WSPU, puts it.
They were to be entirely independent of political parties, to oppose all government until the vote was won, to organise women all over the country, to educate public opinion, and most significantly, to adopt ‘vigorous agitation upon lines justified by the position of outlawry to which women are at present condemned’.18