Lady Constance Lytton Page 15

  You don’t realise one bit what I feel of real misery at the work of your leaders, which I feel is really wicked and wrong, and leading to murder being done as a noble duty, which is against all my principles and beliefs and I see it is all spoiling my beloved perfect child.32

  Constance had frequent fits of guilt about the impact her behaviour had on her mother, though none were strong enough to make her change her mind. She did not, however, give up hoping that her mother would not only accept her decision but support it. ‘My hope has been all along that I should be able to take you into my confidence, that I should have the perhaps all undeserved yet heaven-like joy of knowing that though you could not share my views yet that you would understand why I had them,’33 she wrote, pleadingly, to Edith. For the first time, she believed that she had a duty which transcended her obligations to her mother. But Constance would never have that heaven-like joy. Her decision remained incomprehensible to Edith. Even now, at first sight it seems baffling. After nearly forty years of genteel inactivity, why should Constance suddenly become, ‘a whole hogger’,34 as she called herself? Why not, as her sisters did, simply collect signatures, host tea parties and stay on the right side of respectability?

  At the time, Constance’s actions seemed to many reading the papers to illustrate the dangers of being a single woman. Without a man to keep her in line or children to keep her occupied, it was unsurprising that she was drawn to the suffragettes. Even her brother Neville said she was ‘ripe for conversion, for she had not the cares of a family and she wanted an object in life’.35 The spinster had once been a benevolent and kindly figure in popular culture; now, she became something sinister and even threatening.

  In fact, it does not take much imagination to see why Constance should have become attached to the suffragettes, despite her shyness and diffidence, despite incredible differences of class and background, despite her illnesses and ailments. Constance always committed herself wholeheartedly to whatever she did, even if, until now, she had done very little. When her father died, she set aside all her own needs to devote herself to her mother in a way that made her siblings a little uneasy. There was no need for her to do so much. ‘She adored to serve,’ wrote Neville. ‘The more thorough her service, the more happy she became. It was obvious from the first that she would become a militant, because militancy involved a greater degree of sacrifice.’36 As Constance herself wrote to Adela in 1900, ‘What I hunger for most is to be able to serve those I love. I don’t want their respect, but that they should need me, whether as a servant or a toy or a wife.’37 Ray Strachey, one of the first historians of the struggle for the vote and herself a devotee of Millicent Fawcett, was always scornful of the suffragettes, arguing that they attracted drama queens, hero-worshippers and martyrs.38 The WSPU demanded everything, but Constance was prepared to give everything. It was what she had always been waiting for, though she had not realised it till now. At last, there was an alternative to the quiet life at home and the retreat onto the sofa.

  What is more difficult to explain, perhaps, is the apparent transformation in her personality. She was universally admired for her kindness, sympathy and gentleness: now she would become a self-proclaimed ‘hooligan’. Too crippled by her shyness to speak to people, now she would be thrust into the spotlight, speaking to huge crowds and regularly written up by the press. But was it really so out of character? Two decades before joining the suffragettes, she wrote to Aunt T, ‘I am often at my happiest when I am doing what is thought to be disagreeable.’39 The only way to explain this is to understand the sense of duty which was impressed into every fibre of her being: indeed, as she once said, her family had been ‘founded on chivalry without social distinction’40 and she was simply following this Lytton tradition. Her notion of public service may have been very different from her father’s, but it was no less important to her. Yet her siblings could never accept or endorse her commitment to violence, and it was to separate and isolate her from them in the coming years. Constance completely accepted what Christabel believed: that every possible course of action had been exhausted and the suffragettes had no choice left but violence. Her siblings saw alternatives; Constance did not.

  In the WSPU, however, she had the friendship, admiration and support of hundreds of other women: a ready-made family to replace the family she was leaving behind. The suffragettes had extraordinarily strong ties of sisterhood which were more than compensation for the hardships they suffered in prison or the humiliations they were subjected to on the streets. If Constance had been set on pursuing music, journalism or her relationship with John Ponsonby, she could perhaps have done so, but she would have been entirely alone. Now, for the first time in her life, she had friends. The profound ties of allegiance, so deep and binding, went far beyond the realms of ordinary friendship. This was a revelation for Constance. Until that time, her understanding of friendship had been limited to the superficial relationships she had made with Betty’s friends. She was too shy and awkward to make a friend of her own: ‘Every attempt to make a friend failed; the rebuffs I received seemed to turn one part of me to stone.’41 The suffragettes made Constance realise just how lonely she was, at home with only her mother for company. Their presence filled the void she barely knew existed. The suffragette leadership gave Constance something above and beyond even this exquisite friendship: something to believe in, someone to follow. Her spiritual side responded powerfully. ‘My life was literally transformed by contact with the four great leaders,’42 she said, counting Mabel Tuke alongside Emmeline Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence.

  The suffragettes gave Constance an entirely new way of looking at her life. She had never before connected her personal frustrations and disappointments to the political oppression of women. Joining the women’s movement made her see that she could hope and strive for something better, grasp at new possibilities and fulfil her potential.43 In this, she was like many women who, as Ray Strachey described, ‘read into the Cause not only what lay upon the surface, but all the discontents which they, as women, were suffering; their economic dependence; their conventional limitations, and all the multitude of trifles which made them hate being women’.44

  The suffragettes also offered Constance a sense of purpose and excitement. ‘If you could see the look in the eyes of the shop-women when I gave my name recently in London!’ she wrote to Aunt T in exultation.45 Constance was by no means the only woman who found her calling in the suffragette movement. ‘What the movement did was to make me think and then to believe that I could do things for myself,’ recalled one suffragette. ‘And I did!’46 Many came to see their time in the WSPU as the turning point in their lives, a transformational experience that defined them. These years were long, dangerous and uncertain, but for women who had lived hemmed in on all sides by convention and restraint, they were also unbelievably exciting and rich with possibilities. This quote is typical of the revelation which suffragettes experienced:

  The militant suffrage was the very salt of life. The knowledge of it had come like a draught of fresh air into our padded, stifled lives. It gave us release of energy … the sense of being some use in the scheme of things … it made us feel that we were part of life and not just outside watching it.47

  The WSPU was liberating for Constance, but she was good for them too. Though the union had its roots in the labour movement and many of the members were either sympathetic to or members of the Labour Party, Christabel and Emmeline had long since decided – to Sylvia’s consternation – that working women would not win the battle for them. Instead, they deliberately sought out and courted women with money, power and connections, believing – rightly, if cynically – that these women would attract attention and publicity. In Votes for Women, Christabel argued that ‘it is especially the duty of women of distinction and influence to show their earnestness and devotion to this cause by taking part in the militant movement’.48 ‘The political and geographical heartland of such a campaign,’ says th
e historian Martin Pugh, ‘was not Lancashire or the East End but Chelsea, Kensington, Holland Park, and, increasingly, the Home Counties.’49 Constance was by no means the only well-connected woman who was drawn to the suffragettes: another was Frances Parker, the niece of Lord Kitchener, and still another was Mildred Mansell, a cousin of the Liberal Chief Whip.50 Constance was, however, the biggest ‘name’, and hence the biggest prize of all. Hooking Lady Constance Lytton was a masterstroke. Edith always felt that Constance was being used and certainly Constance fell completely under their spell. But Edith could never come to terms with the idea that her beloved daughter would choose to join these outcasts and outlaws voluntarily.

  ‘My sister knew perfectly well that the publicity value of her name was considerable, and she herself saw to it that her public conduct should be courageous and honourable, so that by it the cause should be advanced,’ Neville stated.51 The suffragettes were mistresses of propaganda and public relations, and having the Lytton name, with all its aristocratic associations, was akin to a celebrity endorsement for a brand today. Constance absolutely knew what she was doing and she well understood what being a Lytton entailed. She was not hypnotised nor duped nor even gently persuaded into anything. She made her choices with her eyes fully open to the consequences.

  Once convinced that the suffragettes were on the side of righteousness, the next step was to start working for them. She eased her way in gently, going to London to help gather signatures for a petition to the King asking for suffragettes to be treated as political prisoners. For the first time, she encountered women who were unenthusiastic, lukewarm or even positively opposed to suffrage; finding ‘people who either couldn’t [sign] because of their official position or their husbands wouldn’t let them, or merely refused with shocked faces’. More significantly, perhaps, Victor made his first speech on women’s suffrage. He had sat in the Lords for several years but had not yet made any particular mark, unlike his friend and contemporary Winston Churchill. Now, under Constance’s influence, he began tentatively to fight this most unpopular of battles and to impress those who heard him speak.52

  At the end of December, Constance was at WSPU headquarters to welcome Mrs Pankhurst home on early release. She wrote to thank the Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone, for this delightful Christmas present. ‘I have seldom seen so many beaming countenances or experienced such a sense of bubbling happiness as I found there,’ she told him.53 But this event also sharpened her sense that she lacked credibility. ‘I got in with the two Miss Brackenburys and another girl, ex-prisoner too, who said she could not go in again, as it would cost her livelihood,’ she told Aunt T ruefully. ‘I felt an awful fraud amongst that truly serving lot.’54 If Constance was going to become a militant suffragette, she felt she would have to do more than the ordinary suffragette, to compensate in some way for her privileges and advantages. In the meantime, she sent a copy of Robert’s poetry to Annie Kenney as a Christmas present, and said, ‘When I look back – over all that has happened since – to our Littlehampton days together I feel that years must have gone by.’55 She signed herself Sister Conny. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence was called ‘Sister Emmeline’ by the women in the Esperance Club, but Annie and Jessie were too conscious of Constance’s nobility and it never caught on.56

  In January, Constance wrote her first pamphlet for the cause, dismantling the arguments of those who were against votes for women. She was keen to point out that she doesn’t believe in the superiority of women, merely that without women’s views being represented, especially on questions which primarily affect them, the issues cannot be satisfactorily addressed.57 Interestingly, both in view of her own background and the Pankhursts’ views, Constance puts her faith in the ‘working women, unshielded by social privilege’ who ‘see with more directness than those in the leisured classes’.58 She was already questioning the established social hierarchy and the privileges of her own class, believing that women who know more of real life and real hardship should direct the future. This is a more radical viewpoint than most women of her class, even those who were in favour of the vote, would be prepared to countenance. It is worth remembering that many of the ‘working women’ Constance so championed would not actually benefit from the policy that the suffragettes were pursuing: the right to vote on the same terms as men. Many would be excluded by the property qualifications. Either Constance had not fully thought through the implications of the policy, or she took an optimistic view of the numbers who would qualify, or else she saw a partial franchise as a step towards full suffrage. It is also noteworthy, given Constance’s interest in working women and their living conditions, that she was drawn to Christabel and not Sylvia Pankhurst. Sylvia’s politics were far to the left of Christabel’s, and she would spend many years among the working women of the East End of London, striving alongside them for a better life. Nevertheless, for Constance, it was Christabel and Emmeline who were the heart and soul of the women’s movement. They were the leaders to be followed, at any cost.

  Constance had already been given a taste of some of the anti-suffrage sentiment in the country, and quotes an anonymous letter she has received, which describes suffragettes as ‘common scolds and viragos, who are fortunate to live in an age which has forgotten the use of the ducking stool’.59 But what comes across most strongly in this booklet is her admiration for the suffragettes.

  The women in this movement are pledged to it by their belief in it, by their devotion to it, by their service for it. The greater the call for their labours and their heroism, the greater their response. The more the sphere of legitimate action is narrowed for them, the greater the pressure of their cramped enthusiasm, and, whatever the cost, they do not yield.60

  Constance was impressed and inspired by the suffragettes; and felt enveloped by the warmth of their welcome. She could not wait to truly become one of them. But when she offered the pamphlet to Leo Maxse, her old editor at the National Review, he wrote back to say that he ‘thought female Suffrage would be worse than German invasion in the way of national calamity’.61 It was a small foretaste of what they were up against.

  NOTES

  1 Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, p. 226.

  2 Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 104.

  3 Antonia Raeburn, The Militant Suffragettes, p. 64.

  4 Daily Chronicle, 14 October 1908.

  5 Daily Mail and Daily Express, both 14 October 1908.

  6 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World, p. 198.

  7 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 26.

  8 Constance Lytton to Edith Lytton in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 144.

  9 Constance Lytton to Edith Lytton, 10 October 1908, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 146.

  10 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World, p. 198.

  11 Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 105.

  12 Constance Lytton to Edith Lytton, 14 October 1908, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 147.

  13 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 27.

  14 Anonymous suffragette, quoted in Antonia Raeburn, The Militant Suffragettes, p. 63.

  15 Women were not allowed to practise law until the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act was passed in 1919.

  16 Jane Marcus, Suffrage and the Pankhursts (Routledge, 1987) prints documentary evidence of this trial; this summary covers pp. 70–106.

  17 Frank Meeres, Suffragettes, p. 67.

  18 Saturday Review, 24 October 1909.

  19 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 27.

  20 The Times, 27 October 1908.

  21 Constance Lytton to Lady Lytton, 14 October 1908, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 149.

  22 Daily Chronicle, 26 October 1908.

  23 Cheryl R. Jorgensen-Earp, Speeches and Trials of the Militant Suffragettes, p. 81.

  24 Daily Telegraph, 26 October 1908.

  25 For example, Daily
Telegraph: ‘Ability which may be misused, and courage, possibly, shown in a wrong cause’, 26 October 1908; Daily News: ‘It is deplorable that so much courage and intelligence should be wasted in advocating a course which already has behind it a sufficient majority in Parliament’, 29 October 1908.

  26 Frank Meeres, Suffragettes, p. 66.

  27 Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, undated 1908, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 152.

  28 A 1921 note in Constance’s scrapbook, which follows the obituary she wrote of Olive Schreiner.

  29 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 30.

  30 Emily Lutyens to Edwin Lutyens, 15 October 1908 and Edwin Lutyens to Emily Lutyens, 16 October 1908, quoted in Clayre Percy and Jane Ridley (eds), The Letters of Edwin Lutyens to his wife Lady Emily, p. 163.

  31 The Times, Obituary of Edith Lytton, 19 September 1936.

  32 Lady Lytton to Constance Lytton, 28 November 1908, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 156.

  33 Constance Lytton to Edith Lytton, quoted in Prisons and Prisoners, p. 32.

  34 Constance Lytton to Edward Carpenter, 17 January 1910, quoted in Michelle Myall, ‘“Only beye strong and very courageous”: the militant suffragism of Lady Constance Lytton’, Women’s History Review, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1998, p. 70.

  35 Neville Lytton, The English Country Gentleman, p. 268.

  36 Neville Lytton, The English Country Gentleman, p. 268.

  37 Constance Lytton to Adela Smith, 28 August 1900, 01274, p. 26.

  38 Ray Strachey quoted in June Purvis, ‘“A Pair of … Infernal Queens”: A Reassessment of the Dominant Representations of Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, First Wave Feminists in Edwardian Britain’, Women’s History Review, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1996), p. 262.