Lady Constance Lytton

by Lyndsey Jenkins

  What she experienced was much worse than she was prepared for. Constance came to see the prison as a ‘hive of hideous purpose from which flows day by day into the surrounding city a stream of evil honey, blackened in the making and poisonous in result’.26 There was no thought given to rehabilitation, no attempt to address either criminal behaviour or its causes. Instead, everything about the prison system seemed designed to infantilise the women. They were treated like children, not expected to respect the wardresses, just obey them. It was almost unbearable. But Constance knew her time behind bars, however gruelling, would only ever be temporary. Most of the other prisoners would be in for years and their lives outside prison would scarcely be better than their lives inside.

  On 24 March, Constance and twenty-five other women were released. Five hundred supporters came to their breakfast and Constance gave her first reported speech to a rapturous reception. She told the crowd that the worst that had happened to her in prison was the thought of giving that speech. She said she had been forbidden ink and so had made her notes in her own blood; even at the most serious moments of her life, she still kept her sense of humour. Otherwise, though the prison system was ‘ghastly’, she had been treated with ‘every consideration’ and had ‘an exceptionally good time’.27 Mary Neal was in the audience to see just how far Constance had come since their Littlehampton holiday. ‘For nearly an hour 400 people were kept spellbound,’ she told Betty.

  Without the slightest self-consciousness, or self of any sort, and in her particularly charming voice she gave her acct [sic] … I could not help feeling that the spirit which was in her words must eventually be too strong for any Government. I do not think Conny’s physical health will suffer; she has something beyond mere physical strength.28

  With the applause echoing in her ears, Constance must have been flushed with pride. For the first time since joining the movement, she felt credible. She had earned her ‘Holloway degree’,29 a term she coined that gained currency in the movement. She could now take her place among the suffragettes. ‘Holloway has been the greatest, most wonderful experience of my life. How I long to tell you things that have burnt into my brain and heart forever,’ she told Aunt T.30

  Constance was becoming ever more radicalised. She doesn’t ever use the words ‘socialism’ or ‘socialist’ in Prisons and Prisoners – perhaps this would have been the final straw for Lady Lytton – but with her profound sense of empathy, it is unsurprising that this is where she ended up. Constance was now in self-imposed exile from her class.

  Her apparent transformation was difficult for her family to comprehend. Betty took her two eldest children to meet Constance and found her unrecognisable. ‘I realised that she no longer belonged to us. She belonged to her union, and nothing else really counted.’31 This radical change, of course, had the greatest impact on Edith. Judith told Betty, ‘She is lost to your mother for ever, just as a tamed hawk which has shaken off its hood and flown away into the sky.’32 Even Frances Balfour said to Betty, ‘I have tea with them tomorrow, but I hope I need not talk any form of Suffrage. I think it is boring, and in my heart I am giving up hope of it.’33 There is a family story that after her release the family got together to hear her story. Someone asked her about the biggest mark prison had left on her. She said fiercely, ‘I learned – to hate!’ This must have been staggering to the family, who knew her only as gentle and kind. The object of this hatred was the prison chaplain, who seemed entirely lacking in empathy and understanding, lecturing the women on the wickedness of stealing, even when starving.34

  Once released, Constance tried to rekindle friendships with some of the women she had met. One woman in the hospital had a broken leg which caused her undue agony for not being cared for properly; Constance lobbied the Home Office until she was granted £500 in compensation.35 This act of kindness was typical of Constance, more so than the grander gestures designed to attract attention and maximise impact. Such acts came from the heart, without an eye on political strategy.

  Her spell in Holloway gained her instant notoriety. Particular attention was paid to her claim that she had been badly affected by hearing the screams of a woman who was facing the death sentence. The point was even raised in Parliament. According to the Home Office, the child murderer was perfectly quiet and ordinary, though Constance might have heard an insane woman shrieking.36 One woman’s screams sound much like another.

  This exchange bothered Constance enough to write to Gladstone about it. First, women sentenced to death for murdering their children were always reprieved, though this was not widely understood; she therefore thought it was inhumane that the women were not told this when they were sentenced. She would repeat this point on several occasions, which gained her an unfortunate reputation for being soft on child murderers.37 She did not defend their actions, but she did understand the circumstances which might lead women to extreme solutions. This distinction was too subtle for some audiences. Second, she told Gladstone, the insane woman should not have been allowed to scream out her pain alone: she might be insane, but she was still a person. Finally, she wrote, ‘I cannot help thinking that the information conveyed by the prison officials to the Home Office is not always correct.’ This mistrust of the government’s version of events would only intensify as she became more closely acquainted with official bureaucracy.38

  Gladstone responded, and Constance wrote back gratefully: ‘I have always heard from your friends of your keenness for reforms & of yr unlimited kindness of heart … But I know something of the hindering handicaps which cling around the high official posts supposedly all powerful.’39 He may have seemed kind at this moment, but soon Gladstone would represent to Constance and the suffragettes the worst excesses of government violence, brutality and abuse.

  NOTES

  1 Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story, p. 101.

  2 Christabel Pankhurst, The Times, 16 February 1909.

  3 Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, 4 February 1909, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/338/14–15.

  4 Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, undated, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/338/13.

  5 Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 157.

  6 Olive Schreiner to Edward Carpenter, 19 February 1909, Sheffield Libraries, Archives & Information, Edward Carpenter 359/94, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription ll. 14–16 and accompanying note.

  7 Constance Lytton to Edith Lytton, 24 February 1909 in the Suffragette Fellowship Collection, Museum of London, 5082/1119. This is a postscript to the letter published in Prisons and Prisoners, p. 31.

  8 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 43.

  9 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, pp. 50–51.

  10 Emily Lutyens to Edwin Lutyens, 9 February 1909, in Clayre Percy and Jane Ridley, The Letters of Edwin Lutyens to his wife Lady Emily, p. 167.

  11 Notes on the trial from Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 123; Constance’s statement reported in The Times, 26 February 1909.

  12 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 58.

  13 Beatrice Webb to Betty Balfour, 28 February 1909, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/338/21.

  14 Neville Lytton to Lady Lytton, 25 February 1909, in the Suffragette Fellowship Collection, Museum of London 50.82/1119.

  15 The Times, 25 February 1909 and Betty Balfour in The Times, 26 February 1909.

  16 Marie Mulvey-Roberts: ‘Militancy, Masochism or Martydom? The public and private prisons of Constance Lytton’, in June Purvis and Sandra Stanley Holton (eds), Votes for Women, p. 168.

  17 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 113 and p. 108.

  18 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 123.

  19 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 154–6.

  20 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 166.

  21 For a full discussion of the significance of this act, see Marie Mulvey-Roberts, ‘Militancy, Masochism or Marty
dom? The public and private prisons of Constance Lytton’, in June Purvis and Sandra Stanley Holton (eds), Votes for Women (Routledge, 2000).

  22 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, pp. 133–4.

  23 Neville Lytton, The English Country Gentleman, p. 270.

  24 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 135.

  25 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 103, p. 96 and p. 61.

  26 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 188.

  27 The Times, 25 March 1909.

  28 Mary Neal to Betty Balfour, 25 March 1909, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/338/24.

  29 Constance coined this description of a prison sentence which was adopted by other suffragettes. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, p. 359.

  30 Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, 25 March 1909, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 160.

  31 Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 159.

  32 Judith Blunt to Betty Balfour, 28 March 1909, Knebworth Archive, 125, quoted in Marie Mulvey-Roberts, ‘Militancy, Masochism or Martydom? The public and private prisons of Constance Lytton’, in June Purvis and Sandra Stanley Holton (eds), Votes for Women, p. 176.

  33 ‘Them’ is Constance and Edith. Frances Balfour to Betty Balfour, 29 March 1909, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/338/25–6.

  34 Noel Lytton to Jessie Kenney, 16 January 1964, KP/JK/3/Lytton/n2a.

  35 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence My Part in a Changing World, pp. 223–4.

  36 http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1909/apr/07/

  lady-constance-lytton-holloway-prison

  37 See, for example, Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, 1 May 1910, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/340/49–50.

  38 Constance Lytton to Herbert Gladstone, undated, British Library Add MSS 46066/312.

  39 Constance Lytton to Herbert Gladstone, 4 April 1909, British Library Add MS 46067/2.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MILITANT

  ‘The militant suffrage movement, which in its early days was like a dancing singing mountain stream, became a raging torrent like the Zambezi where at the Victoria Falls it hurls itself into a chasm, gathers itself together and proceeds along a narrow defile with terrific and overpowering momentum.’ 1

  In the spring of 1909, Constance got more involved in the day-to-day business of the WSPU. Invigorated by her experience in prison, she gained in confidence and became one of the most prominent suffragettes. Christabel welcomed her deepening commitment and wrote to Betty saying ‘how brave and fine your sister is to go on with her work without any timidity or hesitation, tho’ she knows of her heart weakness’.2

  Constance believed it was her duty to set aside her shyness in order to better serve the movement. That duty began at home. One of her first acts on leaving prison was to give a talk about her experiences to local women. It did not go well and she was embarrassed. She would need to raise her game if she was to become an effective speaker for the movement around the country. But her local listeners were forgiving of her shortcomings. The North Herts Women’s Suffrage Association was established, replacing a Hitchin off-shoot of the London’s Society. Victor became president, and Charlotte Bernard Shaw, George’s wife, was a vice-president, though Constance does not seem to have done more than go to the first meeting.3

  In April, she was at a breakfast of 500 supporters to welcome Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence out of prison; Emmeline was given a car. With Annie Kenney and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Constance was one of the first women to plant a tree in the garden at Bath dedicated to commemorating the suffragette campaign, which would become known as ‘Annie’s arboretum’. This garden belonged to Colonel Blathwayt and his family, who were loyal supporters of the suffragettes. Their home outside Bristol became a place where the women could rest, recover and plot their next moves. It wasn’t only the militants who were acknowledged in this way: Betty was later honoured with a holly tree.4 In the photo taken to mark the occasion, Annie stands neatly, hands behind her back, turning her direct gaze straight at the camera. Emmeline is smiling, posing with a shovel full of earth, though the planting is clearly complete. Constance leans on the fence surrounding the new shrub, disregarding the photographer, lost in thought.5 Annie and Emmeline remained her closest friends and mentors in the movement; she consulted them both on ambitious but vague plans to ‘tackle Hertfordshire’ and ‘do something’ in Ireland. Annie was the organiser for the west of England at this time, so Constance particularly wanted to campaign in Bath and Bristol, and regretted that she could not give Annie more of her time. She particularly admired Annie as a speaker and tried to emulate her style, instead of her own ‘vague jumbly thoughts’. Standing on a stage and addressing a crowd was always a difficult experience for Constance, who never outgrew her shyness and awkwardness. ‘I do wish I could feel some control over my speechifying instead of feeling it get on the top of me & grip me with terror-making claws,’ she sighed to Annie.6

  In May, Constance’s first article in Votes for Women, ‘Putting Back the Clock’, was published. What mattered was not how many women the movement could muster, but how strong their arguments were. ‘Patience, the arch enemy of this movement!’7 She was then one of the few women given the honour of opening a day’s activities at the great Suffragette Exhibition. Held in the ice rink at Knightsbridge over a fortnight, entirely decorated to Sylvia Pankhurst’s designs, this huge display was aimed at both fundraising and education. The other speakers were women who had made a mark in some way, in science or drama perhaps: Constance was distinguished only by her name but the leaders wanted to make sure that she was firmly on display. It lent legitimacy as well as publicity to the cause to have such prominent women supporting their efforts. Constance spoke about her experiences in the Black Maria on the way to Holloway, saying how alone and cut off from the world she had felt until she heard unexpected roars from the streets. One of the suffragettes was waving their scarf out of the window and the people were cheering for her.8 Constance ran the flower stall with a comrade and offered prizes for ‘the best bouquets and button holes’ – a rare occasion when her interests in flower arranging and suffrage coincided.9 Constance was feeling cut off from the world she had grown up in, and yet somehow didn’t mind. ‘I know there is much about me just now that must seem to you badly biased, excessive in concentration, and enthusiasm even to the point of falseness,’ she told Betty. ‘I don’t of course feel that it is myself. But I do feel that one had got into a kind of other sphere, beyond some border line which separates from past life and non-sympathisers as much as death might do in a greater sense.’10

  In another mark of her growing importance to the suffragettes, a picture of her proudly wearing her new suffragette medals was made into postcards. In one, she sits elegantly at a writing desk, presumably drafting an article on behalf of the cause, hair swept up, formal collar ending in a bow, the very image of an Edwardian gentlewoman except for the badge in a portcullis shape pinned to her breast, a memento of her time in Holloway. Suffragettes collected these postcards as mementos of their beloved heroines to inspire their sacrifice. Constance may have been only a new recruit but she was being quickly promoted to the suffragette leadership. The rank and file members of the WSPU accepted this: it seemed only natural that this woman from the top of the social scale would quickly rise to the top of the WSPU. Though she may not have had to make the same practical sacrifices that they did, they recognised the social cost to her actions and applauded her. She was at once ‘one of us’ and not like ‘us’ at all.

  In June, Betty arranged a lunch for Constance and Herbert Gladstone to talk about prison reform. As part of the deal, Betty had made her promise not to talk about the suffragettes or their specific concerns unless she was asked. Constance felt she had fluffed the opportunity: she had got flustered and been unable to get her points across. ‘At best, it is futile for an amateur like me to talk reform with an offici
al, and I was brainless and unable to string my words or even my thoughts together,’ she told Aunt T.11 Later in the year, reading Gladstone’s comments on the state of women’s prisons, she felt the meeting had been a total failure. He seemed under the impression that they were clean and healthy places with excellent staff: she had obviously failed to convey anything of the realities in Holloway.12

  Constance also began writing regularly to Betty’s brother-in-law, Arthur Balfour. He was still leader of the Conservative Party, and Constance believed that the Conservatives as well as the Liberals should be paying attention to their demands.13 Balfour already had strong supporters of women’s suffrage among his close relations – Frances as well as Betty – while his sister Eleanor was president of Newnham College, Cambridge. Why Constance thought she might succeed in prompting him to action where his near relations had so far failed is not clear, but she did not have much of an effect. Balfour went on the suffragettes’ ever growing list of politicians who supposedly supported them but did absolutely nothing to advance their cause.

  Lady Lytton was increasingly alarmed at Constance’s involvement with the suffragettes: not just because she disapproved but because she was genuinely concerned about the risks to Constance’s health. Betty pulled some strings to get the doctor’s report from Holloway Prison so they could make sure her treatment was appropriate. She wrote to the Home Secretary’s wife, Dorothy, who replied: