Lady Constance Lytton

by Lyndsey Jenkins

  The Home Office still refused to hold a public inquiry and, as their justification, they brought out the letter that Jane Warton had written at the end of her sentence. ‘There is nothing that you need worry about as regards me … I am not ill … in my case no injury results only pain and you have always said that pain is wholesome.’13 It did not matter that this letter was designed to set Edith Lytton’s mind at rest. If Jane Warton had said she was not ill and had suffered no injury, it was no use Constance Lytton claiming otherwise now. As far as they were concerned, that was that.

  Or not quite. Constance and the suffragettes did not know it, but behind the scenes Churchill did intervene. Privately, he dismissed Constance’s claims, ‘many of which are trivial and others imaginary. The business of forcibly feeding an unruly and hysterical woman must in any case be disagreeable in its details.’ He introduced a new rule which took away the discretion of prison governors and doctors: once a prisoner had been on hunger strike for twenty-four hours, force-feeding should begin immediately.14 But he also put in place new policies which would prevent any other Jane Warton-type cases. Before any other prisoner was forcefed, a medical officer must sign a certificate showing that the prisoner had been fully examined and that no harm would result from the forced feeding. What was public knowledge, though, was Churchill’s introduction of Rule 243a. It did not recognise suffragettes as political prisoners as such, but nevertheless gave WSPU members sentenced to the second and third division the privileges of those in the first division. (Robert’s old friend and Judith’s father, Wilfred Scawen Blunt, claimed credit for putting the idea in Churchill’s head.)15 Rule 243a put an end to the hunger strikes for several years.

  This might not have been the vindication that Constance was hoping for. Nor would she ever get any credit for the new Home Office policies. But Jane Warton’s suffering would, indirectly, prevent others from suffering in the same way. That was something.

  Meanwhile Victor had decided that enough was enough. Inspired and moved by Constance’s bravery, he was determined that her ordeal should not have been in vain. The vote simply had to be granted to women before more damage could be done. Henry Brailsford – who seems to have been rather an unsung hero of the women’s suffrage movement – established a ‘Conciliation Committee’, which would attempt to build a consensus to deliver the vote quickly. Victor chaired the committee. Mrs Pankhurst supported the idea. With the Conciliation Committee at work and Rule 243a in place, she called a truce. Privately, Christabel was not convinced that the Conciliation Committee would succeed, but she welcomed the truce as a time to regroup.16 The truce also, incidentally, helped keep Constance in the public eye as there were no more dramatic acts of militancy to take her place in the press. Far away on holiday in Innsbruck, Sylvia Pankhurst was asked about Jane Warton: her escapade had reached the European papers too.17 Constance was the poster girl of the horrors of forcible feeding for the public, but particularly for the suffragettes. For them, she represented the worst excesses of a government which seemed increasingly violent and vindictive towards innocent victims.18

  Within a few months the committee had a draft Bill – the Conciliation Bill – which they believed was moderate enough to gain enough support – from all parties – to become law. It was not a radical or far-reaching proposition, and the committee admitted as much.

  We do not claim for our Bill that it is an ideal solution; it is a working compromise. Its single merit is that, in a way which no party can consider objectionable or unfair, it breaks down the barrier which at present excludes all women from citizen rights … it does not preclude a future advance towards Adult Suffrage; but neither does it render such an advance inevitable.19

  It would give women property owners the vote, though a man and a woman could not represent the same house, and so would only benefit around a million women, mostly unmarried women and widows. The old objections, that these women were more likely to vote Conservative, thus resurfaced among Labour and Liberal supporters. Nevertheless, most of the suffragettes were thrilled. It was the principle of votes for women that mattered most. They could worry about extending the franchise to more women later on. ‘You are playing so very important & essential part in the scheme of things. Suddenly the centre has shifted and upon you and your brother & Mr Brailsford so much rests,’ wrote Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence.20 A realistic prospect of victory was at last in sight.

  Interestingly, Victor and Constance were often personally at odds in this period. ‘Your speech seems splendid from your point of view,’ she said, pouring cold water on it. ‘It is difficult to think as you do that it will do good.’ Eventually Victor grew tired of her inability to listen or compromise. ‘Our minds are not tuned to the same key & our explanations therefore lead to discord instead of harmony … You are trying all the time to misunderstand me – to misinterpret my opinions and to catch me out in some verbal inconsistency,’ he wrote crossly. ‘We had better work in our own ways and on our own lines. We have the same goal and we shall reach it some day. When militancy is going on I can do little and you think me lukewarm.’21 Like the other suffragettes, Constance believed that half-hearted friends and allies were worse than enemies. They were all tired of politicians who professed support and then gave up when push came to shove. Though perhaps, too, Constance found it frustrating that she had taken all the risks and now her brother was charging in to capture the glory. Victor’s biographer argues that for him, ‘woman’s suffrage … was a truly knightly cause, especially when the damsel in distress was his own sister’.22 Constance must have found this patronising and beside the point. Suffragettes wanted to speak – and vote – for themselves, not be rescued.

  But the fault was not all on Victor’s side. It’s an indication of just how fanatical Constance had become that she was suspicious of Victor at the very moment he was staking his reputation on this controversial cause. He even lost his oldest friend, Winston Churchill, over the matter. Their relationship, already strained over the Jane Warton episode, now snapped. Victor initially overestimated Churchill’s support for the Bill and then later unfairly interpreted Churchill as going cold on it, which he saw as an unforgivable betrayal. In truth, Churchill would never have supported the proposals. He despised the suffragettes, who had dogged and disrupted his career for years, and would not countenance anything that looked the least bit like the government caving in. Their friendship had survived Pamela choosing Victor over Winston; it did not survive Victor choosing the suffragettes over Winston.23 But still Constance underestimated what he was sacrificing for her. She was single-minded in the extreme and ‘did not spare her friends or family’, as Betty commented drily.24 Constance sent a piece Betty had written for Votes for Women titled ‘Why I Believe’ to a friend and said patronisingly, ‘I think it an excellent presentation of the case from the point of view of the average well-to-do woman who means well.’25 Whatever her family did to support her, unless they became militants themselves, it would never be enough. Edith always welcomed her back to Homewood. Betty and Emily disagreed with her means but absolutely supported her ends. Victor made her cause his own. But Constance always felt isolated within her family and this constant sniping threatened to overshadow all that they held in common.

  On 18 June, 10,000 women marched from the Embankment to the Albert Hall in support of the Conciliation Bill. At the head of the parade were 617 women dressed in white armed with silver staves. These were women who had been to prison. Eighty-seven of them women had been on hunger strike. To her frustration, Constance was put in charge of the musicians, or, as she put it to Betty, ‘My task was to work up the respectables. Oh how I hate the respectable world!’26 All her siblings marched in the parade except Victor, who was a speaker at the main event at the Albert Hall. Watching the procession, Frances Balfour caught sight of Constance: ‘A wonderful figure, so set and fixed … But Con’s face is the thing that remains to me. I don’t feel she is to be long amid the waves of this troublesome world.’27 Afterwards, C
onstance went on holiday to Droitwich in Worcestershire with Edith for a much-needed rest. The last time she had been there was just after the John Ponsonby affair had ended so painfully. She was able to look back without regret, though, as all her focus was now directed forward, towards the Conciliation Bill and much-looked for success.

  A musician of a rather different sort also reappeared in Constance’s life in 1910. It was WSPU policy to contact women who distinguished themselves in public life and ask them about their stance on suffrage. Ethel Smyth had been awarded a doctorate of music by the University of Durham, and Constance, perhaps remembering their past acquaintance at the Ponsonbys’, duly wrote to question her about votes for women. Ethel was indifferent and carried the letter around unanswered until a friend persuaded her that women’s suffrage was ‘the one really alive issue in England’ and Mrs Pankhurst ‘the most astounding personality’.28 Still unconvinced, Ethel went along to a meeting, whereupon she met Mrs Pankhurst, and like thousands of women before her, was bewitched. This meeting transformed both her personal and her professional life. She gave up music for two years to become a full-time suffragette. There has been some speculation about the nature of her relationship with Mrs Pankhurst, but it is clear that it was profoundly significant to both women. Ethel and Constance renewed their own acquaintance; rather more surprisingly, Ethel was a great admirer of Edith’s.

  In July, Constance spoke alongside Emily Wilding Davison at yet another major demonstration in Hyde Park and, in her own spirit of conciliation, she wrote to Victor to say, ‘You are paying a bitter price. I can’t help hoping that, as you share the crosses, so you will share at least something of the joys.’29 This generosity reflected the general mood of hopefulness among the suffragettes. It genuinely seemed that victory was around the corner. But they had underestimated Asquith’s intransigence. He met with Millicent Fawcett – he would not see the militants – to discuss the question. She said there would be huge anger if the Conciliation Bill did not get beyond a second reading. Frances Balfour felt half the NUWSS were teetering on the bunk of militancy and told Arthur, ‘We are as near revolution as we have ever been, the women determined to go forward and life and blood will be sacrificed.’30 There had been plenty of Bills which had got so far but then were lost for lack of time. It was time the Bill needed, for it had the votes: it passed second reading by a majority of 109. But it was sent to a committee of the whole house, a delaying tactic. Victor wrote desperately saying that a week was all that was needed; Asquith would not commit to anything.31

  Constance was now employed full-time as an ‘organiser’ by the WSPU and paid £2 a week. Her pay was backdated to January, in a tacit acknowledgement of her service above and beyond the call of duty in Liverpool Gaol. This meant that for the first time in her life, Constance had the means to live a life independently of her mother. She rented a small flat, at 15 Somerset Terrace, Dukes Road, just off the Euston Road and was ready to leap on a train at a moment’s notice to go wherever she might be needed. Mary Neal was a near neighbour.32 ‘It will mean the week days away from home, but every Friday to Monday free. Wondrous terms; in return I give all I have to give, night and day, year in and year out,’ she told Aunt T, who can’t have seen these terms as wonderful at all. ‘Mother on the whole pleased, and feels it to be flattering.’33 Either Edith was gritting her teeth very hard or Constance was taking a rosy view of the situation.

  Being an organiser was hard work. Most organisers were expected to co-ordinate all aspects of the campaign in their area, from posters and propaganda to large-scale demonstrations. By this time, they were experienced and hugely in demand, so much so that they were being discouraged from going to prison because their loss in the field would be too great. A few, like Constance, may have been called ‘organisers’ but were given the title as a reward for particularly distinguished service and in expectation that it would continue. Constance did not have any formal training in campaigning, nor did she have any particular talent for it. Her post was something more ceremonial. It was her presence the suffragettes needed, not her skills.

  Being an organiser meant a packed schedule, relentless travel, snatched meals and uncomfortable nights spent on temporary beds.34 Constance usually just spent one night in any given town before moving on; her letters did not follow as quickly and she was always trying to catch up and to make arrangements for her next visit.35 Such a chaotic lifestyle took its toll even on the most robust of suffragettes. It was intensely draining for the sickly Constance, who developed strict rules to help manage her time on the road. ‘I always carry about my own flannel sheet. I am a vegetarian, eat no meat, fish or fowls and only require the simplest of other ordinary foods. The only luxury I care much about is a fire in my room: unless I can warm up at home, I can’t speak,’ she informed another organiser.36 Constance might like to imagine herself as just one of the girls, with simple needs, but her very specific requirements – especially her vegetarianism – must have seemed unusual to some of her provincial hostesses.

  She took to her duties with enthusiasm and her usual wholehearted commitment. Her body, as well as her name, was now invaluable. Always thin, she did not recover the weight she had lost in prison, and was painful to look at. Some women were aged by their time in prison; Constance seemed somehow younger. ‘There was a look of spirituality about her that was very moving,’ Neville remembered. ‘Her ethereal delicacy made a great effect on a platform, and it was important that she should show herself at meetings in order that the crowds of waverers should finally be converted by her look of suffering.’37 So Constance found herself on something of a whirlwind tour of the country, speaking at meeting after meeting. Her correspondence at this time gives some indication of the distances she was travelling: Bath, Bristol, Lewisham, Walthamstow and Sheffield.38 She also reappears in The Times, in the column announcing the day’s arrangements: she was with Christabel in Liverpool in April; with Betty in West London in June and with Mrs Pankhurst in Kensington in July. She even addressed a Christian conference in September at which David Lloyd George was also a speaker.39

  She had no illusions about her place in the movement, writing to another organiser, Mary Phillips, that she was ‘content to be used socially either before or after the meeting’.40 She was clearly in great demand, though she had become notorious enough that the Cambridge women’s colleges refused to have her on the premises. An enterprising student had to hire a hall and have a married woman act as hostess. ‘I don’t think the Authorities can very well have any objection to that,’ wrote another excited student home to her mother.41

  The victory had to be won in all corners of the country. But she also retained her ties to Hertfordshire and often stopped in to the Letchworth branch of the WSPU to see what they were up to, though she left the day-to-day running of the organisation to others.42 Nor did she give up her place at the centre of the movement: in October, she and Adela Pankhurst went to lobby the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster into supporting the Conciliation Bill. (It was unsuccessful: he treated them on a lecture to their tactics instead).43

  In November, after addressing the Actresses’ Franchise League, she took part in The Pageant of Great Women in Bristol. Written by Cicely Hamilton, this play presented great heroines of the past as a way of restoring women to history and emphasising their present claims. The cast was a mixture of professional actresses and leading suffrage figures. Constance played Florence Nightingale; Annie Kenney, Christabel Pankhurst and the Pethick-Lawrences were all in the audience.44

  But the cost to her health was increasing. In the autumn, Constance suffered a heart seizure and temporary paralysis; she spent weeks in bed, supported by a nurse, to recover.45 Then she caught shingles and was confined to bed again, which meant she missed one of the suffragettes’ most famous and bloody battles: Black Friday, 18 November 1910. Asquith had stalled and stalled over the Conciliation Bill: now he dissolved Parliament entirely and called another general election, the second that year, hopin
g it would give him a decisive majority. The Conciliation Bill was lost for that parliamentary session. Mrs Pankhurst was appalled and led a deputation of over three hundred women to the House of Commons. The Westminster police were well used to their tactics by now, and managed most such deputations and protests without injury. On this occasion, though, police were brought in from other parts of London who were less experienced in dealing with the suffragettes and positively seemed to enjoy exercising as much brutality as possible. For once, public sympathy was almost entirely with the suffragettes because the police had so obviously used disproportionate force. More than two hundred women were arrested but Churchill ordered them all released without charge. Though no women were killed on the day, several of the women, weaker or older, died later, and Black Friday was blamed for their injuries. One of these was Emmeline Pankhurst’s sister, Mary Clarke, discovered dead in her room on Boxing Day. Mrs Pankhurst, always a patriot as well as a militant, and determined to prove that her followers were responsible citizens, re-established the truce for the coronation year, 1911. But the savagery of Black Friday meant the suffragettes started to question whether they needed to keep putting themselves in harm’s way. Why keep hurling themselves at the House of Commons to no avail? Why not make their presence felt in other ways?

  In the spring, Constance reappeared in the pages of The Times in bizarre circumstances. Lady Selborne, a prominent Conservative supporter of women’s suffrage, wrote to The Times enclosing a letter she said was from Constance which read, ‘You have often pointed out to me the undesirability of militant methods for the propagation of our reasons for demanding the vote … I cannot help thinking that my method is far more effective than yours.’ Three days later, Lady Selborne wrote again to The Times confessing that Constance had never actually written the letter; she had just ‘borrowed her name’ to show ‘how hard it is for women like myself, who have no inclination to adopt militant methods, to get our views reasonably set forth’. The combination of the Lytton name and the outrageous tactics of the suffragettes were irresistible to the newspapers, whereas those struggling within the law could not get a fair hearing. But the following day, a letter appeared from Constance herself, saying that even though she had not written the letter, Lady Selborne ‘wrote with my full approbation’: she completely agreed with her, and no apology was necessary. Indeed, one of the reasons why militancy was so important was that otherwise, women were simply ignored.46