Lady Constance Lytton
Page 23
For census day, 2 April 1911, the suffragettes rediscovered their sense of fun. They decided to be naughty, rather than aggressive, and boycott the census. Many went roller skating at the Aldwych all night long, meaning they would not appear on the forms which required details of everyone in a given house on the night. Even more imaginatively, Emily Davison hid in a parliamentary broom cupboard, meaning that she could legitimately give the House of Commons as her address on that night. The historian Jill Liddington has recently completed a thorough study of suffrage tactics on census day and distinguishes between ‘evaders’ and ‘resisters’, who scrawled defiantly across their form or just refused to fill it in.47 Constance was one of the latter, and it was completed for her by one of the census officials (which presumably accounts for the mistakes: her age is stated as ‘over 60’ though she was only forty-two; her place of birth is given as ‘British born’, though it had been Vienna). Her personal occupation is described grandly as ‘daughter of sister of an Earl’ and her industry marked as ‘independent means’.
In May 1911, she was at last able to meet Arthur Balfour in person to discuss votes for women, accompanied by Betty and Annie Kenney. He was not especially encouraging.48 But change at last appeared to be afoot. A second Conciliation Bill passed the second reading stage by a majority of 167 MPs, and Asquith promised a new Conciliation Bill would get the parliamentary time it needed to become law the following year. Was the end in sight at last? In June, 40,000 suffragettes and suffragists turned out to mark the coronation, to give a visible symbol of their patriotism and desire to become full citizens. There were more mass meetings at the Queen’s Hall, in which Victor pledged his determination to see the Conciliation Bill through, and Arthur Ponsonby popped up to show his support, saying, ‘Even a quarter of a loaf was better than no bread.’49
By the autumn, it was obvious Constance was becoming increasingly ill and weak. At least three times after speeches she was overcome with what she described as ‘heart-seizure’, which left her ‘incapacitated for about a quarter of an hour’.50 She reluctantly began to turn down invitations to speak. On one occasion, she gave the organisers a list of suggested alternative speakers – interestingly enough, about half were men – but said that both Betty and Victor were full up until after Christmas.51
The rank and file members loved her more than ever: for transcending class barriers, for her experiences as Jane Warton and for her determination to keep going until the fight was won, despite her obvious frailty. Constance was now a star attraction in the WSPU, adored by the suffragettes and almost as prominent as the Pankhursts themselves. She was even fictionalised as Mary O’Neil, the heroine of Constance Maud’s suffrage novel No Surrender. Mary is Irish, but her passion, empathy and close identification with working women all belong to Constance.52 Perhaps it was this fictional appearance in print that gave her the idea to begin writing her own book. With her name and notoriety, she hoped that it would reach a far wider audience than she would ever have access to otherwise, no matter how many speeches she made and meetings she attended. Every moment that was not given to the suffragettes or wasted on illness was now spent writing this statement of her beliefs, values and experiences.
NOTES
1 WSPU election literature, National Archives HO 144/1054/187986/6.
2 Emily Lutyens to Betty Balfour, 24 January 1910, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 187.
3 Christabel Pankhurst to Betty Balfour, 24 January 1910, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 192.
4 Victor Lytton to Herbert Gladstone, 15 February 1910, HO 144/1054/187986/15.
5 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, pp. 300–302.
6 Constance Lytton to Herbert Gladstone, 25 January 1910, HO 144/1054/187986/12.
7 Constance Lytton to Alice Ker, 26 January 1910, 9/21/09, LSE Library collections and Constance Lytton to Ada Flatman, 8 February 1910, 9/21/10, LSE Library collections.
8 Votes for Women, 28 January 1910, Vol. 3, p. 274.
9 National Archives HO 144/1054/187986/3 and National Archives HO 144/1054/187986/4.
10 National Archives HO 144/1054/187986/7.
11 National Archives HO 144/1054/187986/11.
12 Victor Lytton, The Times, 10 March 1910.
13 A copy of this letter is in the National Archives at 187986/7.
14 Winston Churchill, 1 March 1910, Home Office Records 187986/17.
15 Elizabeth Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 386.
16 Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 153.
17 Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, p. 336.
18 Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 154.
19 Conciliation Committee Bill.
20 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence to Constance Lytton, 29 May 1910, in the Suffragette Fellowship Collection 50.82/1119.
21 Constance Lytton to Victor Lytton, 7 May 1910, Knebworth Archive, item 41954, and Victor Lytton to Constance Lytton, 14 June 1910, Knebworth Archive, item 41936.
22 C. M. Woodhouse, unpublished biography of Victor Lytton, p. 76.
23 C. M. Woodhouse, unpublished biography of Victor Lytton, p. 88.
24 Betty Balfour, Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 214.
25 Constance Lytton to Mrs Terraro, 3 July 1911, 9/21/18, LSE Library collections.
26 Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, 19 June 1910, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 207.
27 Frances Balfour to Betty Balfour, 18 June 1910, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD/433/2/340/70–1.
28 Ethel Smyth, Female Pipings in Eden (Peter Davis Limited, 1933), p. 191.
29 Constance Lytton to Victor Lytton, 16 July 1910, Knebworth Archive, 41938.
30 Frances Balfour to Betty Balfour, 18 June 1910, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD/433/2/340/70–1.
31 Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, pp. 157–9.
32 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928, p. 361.
33 Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, June 1910, Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 209.
34 Krista Cowman’s Women of the Right Spirit describes the life of WSPU organisers. Specific facts in this and the preceding paragraph are from p. 5, p. 124 and p. 56.
35 Constance Lytton to Rose Lamartine Yates, undated, 7EWD/B/3/2/FL554, LSE Library collections.
36 Constance Lytton to Ada Flatman, 5 November 1909, 9/21/03, LSE Library collections.
37 Neville Lytton, The English Country Gentleman, p. 273.
38 Michelle Myall, Flame and Burnt Offering, p. 205.
39 The Times, 15 April 1910, p. 13; 13 June 1910, p. 13; 13 July 1910, p.15.
40 Constance Lytton to Mary Phillips, 3 July 1910, quoted in Martin Pugh, The Pankhursts, p. 188.
41 Elsie Bowerman to Mrs Chibnell, 23 October 1910, ELB/B/2/17/395/12, LSE Library collections.
42 Papers of Molly Mortimer, 7MLY/A, LSE Library collections.
43 The Times, 10 October 1910, p. 10.
44 Katharine Cockin, ‘Cicely Hamilton’s Warriors: Dramatic Reinventions of Militancy in the British Women’s Suffrage Movement’, Women’s History Review, Vol. 14, Nos 3 and 4 (2005), p. 532, and Lucienne Boyce, The Bristol Suffragettes (Silverwood Books, 2013), p. 40.
45 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 310.
46 Lady Selborne to The Times, 11 March 1911, p. 10; 13 March 1911, p. 10; and 15 March 1911.
47 Jill Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote: suffrage, citizenship and the battle for the census (Manchester University Press, 2014), Constance’s form can be accessed through websites like ancestry.co.uk.
48 Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 219.
49 Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 185.
50 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 325.
51 Constance Lytton to Rose Lamartine Yates, 11 September 1911, 9/21/20, LSE Library collections.
52 No Surrender was reprinted
in its centenary year by Persephone Books.
CHAPTER TEN
BETRAYAL
‘If this bill does not go through, the woman suffrage movement will not be stopped, but the spirit of conciliation of which this bill is an expression will be destroyed, and there will be war throughout the country, raging, tearing, fierce, bitter strife, though nobody wants it.’ 1
In November, Asquith inexplicably changed his mind and abandoned the idea of a Conciliation Bill. Instead, he announced the government would be introducing universal suffrage for men. There was no mention of women at all in the Bill. By way of an afterthought, Asquith eventually added that women’s suffrage could be tacked on as an amendment, if MPs were so minded.
Asquith could not have done anything that was more offensive to the women’s movement. As Millicent Fawcett said, ‘If it has been Mr Asquith’s object to enrage every Woman Suffragette to the point of frenzy, he could not have acted with greater perspicacity.’2 The restricted franchise for men was undoubtedly outdated and problematic, but to overlook women in this way was hugely insulting. On 17 November, Constance was one of thirty women, both suffragettes and suffragists, who met with the Prime Minister to express their outrage. Constance was no longer terrified at the thought of coming face to face with him. Her experiences as Jane Warton had given her the confidence to believe that she could speak authoritatively and with credibility on behalf of other women. The other members of the deputation were Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst, Annie Kenney and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence: Constance was firmly among the leaders now. Betty was also at the meeting, representing the Conservative women’s supporters of suffrage. But nothing they said could persuade him to change his mind. Christabel despised him. ‘Mr Asquith that day was rosy-faced and smiling. He might have been Father Christmas with votes for women in his bag of presents.’3
The suffragettes declared war. On 21 November, there was a mass window-smashing rampage around Westminster and Victoria. Constance was accompanied by her friend Miss Lawless, armed with a hammer as well as with her usual stones. She wandered up and down Victoria Street in a state of nervous agitation. When the clock struck eight, she told Miss Lawless, ‘I can wait no longer’, then turned to the nearest building and began smashing away.4 She was soon arrested but found the whole experience rather enjoyable as there were so many comrades about and the police were good-humoured, even encouraging.
She was ordered to return to Bow Street Magistrates’ Court on 23 November. On the morning of the hearing she had a ‘heart collapse’, and found herself unable to lift her head or speak. Nevertheless, she struggled out of bed, without seeking medical attention, and made it to the magistrates’ court by the afternoon, keen to use the defendants’ stand as a soap box. ‘This was the only effective means of protest left to us by a Government which boasts of Liberalism and representation where men are concerned’, she told the court, ‘but ignores the elementary principles of representation where women are concerned. Votes and riot are the only form of appeal to which this Government will respond. They refuse us votes, we fall back on riot. The wrongs they inflict on women are intolerable, and we will no longer tolerate them.’ Fully warmed up, she continued, ‘Although we committed the acts alleged, we were not guilty of crime, our conduct being fully justified by the circumstances of the case.’5 The magistrate did not agree.
Given the publicity her case had received, it is unimaginable that the authorities would have done anything that might have risked her health. But they would have been equally careful of anything that could be seen as further special treatment. So despite her obvious illness Constance was sentenced to fourteen days in Holloway. She was put in a taxi with Mary Leigh, Miss Lawless and several policemen to go to the prison, but Miss Lawless found that she had forgotten her purse and the car had to stop and get it.
‘I decided,’ Constance wrote in Prisons and Prisoners,
that the Constable should get out with Miss Lawless, put her in charge of another policeman, then return and mount guard on us … nothing would have been easier than to open the door the other side of the pavement, and, with the noise of the street, Mrs Leigh or I could have escaped. But it was understood all round that this was not the game, and we waited quietly.6
The police and the suffragettes were well used to playing this game by now.
Constance was sent straight to the prison hospital and spent most of her time resting and reading. She was impressed with the changes in Holloway: suffragettes were now allowed to wear their own clothes and talk to each other: she walked arm-in-arm with Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence around the exercise yard. Small improvements, perhaps, but hard won, the results of Jane Warton’s experiences and rule 243a. On 28 November, an anonymous benefactor paid her fine and she was released. The supervisor escorted her home and Constance spontaneously kissed her. She took several months off to recover from the strain of this experience, staying quietly at home.7
She did write to the Home Secretary to complain that her sentence had been light compared to that of Mary Leigh. Constance alleged that Mary’s past convictions had been held against her, while her own had been overlooked. The Home Office brushed this aside.8 In December, Emily Davison was arrested for setting fire to a postbox. Asked about her motives in court, she said she was protesting at the harshness of the sentence given to Mary Leigh compared with that of Constance Lytton.9 The suffragettes would not give up their fight for equal treatment as well as equal rights.
Back in South Africa, Olive Schreiner had completed what she believed to be her life’s work. The first draft of this had been destroyed in the Boer War and she had painstakingly rewritten it over a decade. This was published in 1911 as Women and Labour and became an incredibly important text for feminists: it had a profound impact on the young Vera Brittain, who would call it ‘the Bible of the Women’s Movement’. It was dedicated, in tribute to their friendship and in recognition of her service, to Constance Lytton.
In the new year, Constance went with Christabel and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence to the wedding of a fellow suffragette, Una Dugdale, which reached the newspapers because the bride refused to use the word ‘obey’.10 Then she plunged back into a whirlwind of activity, acting as Mrs Pankhurst’s deputy at speeches in Bristol, Shrewsbury and Stroud. It took an immense toll on her. ‘My life is mostly a rush of continuous bodily and mental strength,’ she told Alice Ker.11 There was no time to slow down. ‘From all private accounts that reach me the Cabinet are at last beginning to fear the situation they have created for themselves on this question. It is the moment therefore to “press” our advantage & more than ever to remember the helpless for whose sake we suffer,’ she told Millicent Fawcett.12 But her intelligence was too optimistic. The Cabinet might be increasingly afraid of what the suffragettes might do, but that didn’t mean they were prepared to give in. Supporters of the Conciliation Bill had a third and final try at getting it through the House of Commons in February and March 1912, regardless of Asquith’s suffrage bill for men. This time it was defeated, voted down by Irish nationalists who were focusing all their energies on a Home Rule Bill.
With the Conciliation Bill dead and buried, the suffragettes needed a new strategy. On 16 February 1912, the Liberal MP Charles Henry Hobhouse made a speech in which he declared that the suffragettes had done nothing on the scale of burning Nottingham Castle or tearing up railings in Hyde Park: actions which directly led to the Great Reform Acts in 1832 and 1867. The suffragettes took this as the go-ahead for renewed and extreme violence. Emmeline Pankhurst proclaimed that ‘the argument of the broken pane of glass is the most valuable argument in modern politics’.13 The suffragettes put this theory to the test on 1 March 1912, when there was a mass smashing of windows in central London. Up and down Oxford Street, Piccadilly, the Strand and elsewhere, women produced hammers from their handbags and went to work on shop windows.14 Emmeline Pankhurst, having been taught to throw stones by Ethel Smyth, broke the windows at 10 Downing Street. The trick was repeated again a
few days later. Constance’s old friend Alice Ker had come down especially from Liverpool for the occasion: she was sentenced to three months. Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson, daughter of the medical pioneer Elizabeth, and niece of Millicent Fawcett, was also arrested for the first time.
Constance wasn’t well enough for a session of smashing, nor the inevitable prison sentence which would follow. Instead, she went to Holloway after the event to see if she could do anything for the women. She was amused to read the ‘newspaper accounts of the hysterical girls of 18!’ and looked round at rows of women like her, approaching middle age. Her presence, and the knowledge of what she had done for them, gave the prisoners new strength. Ethel Smyth, waiting to be sentenced, wrote to Betty that ‘the adoration of Suffragettes for “Lady Conny” is a thing to see, not tho’ to wonder at’.15 Constance began writing to Alice’s daughter Margaret, to keep her up to date on what she knew of her mother’s trial and situation. ‘Your mother has been perfectly splendid!’ she told Margaret. ‘She was the only one of the lot … who was allowed bail, but she wouldn’t take it as the others hadn’t a chance of it … I know she is ever so happy now at her job being over & well brought off.’16 The judge said he regretted her actions, but Alice replied that as the mother of daughters, she would do anything she could to bring about votes for women.17 Inspired by her mother’s example, Margaret Ker became a suffragette herself. Constance went down to the House of Commons, where she loitered in St Stephen’s Hall to lobby MPs about the treatment of the women in Holloway. Frances Balfour saw her there ‘in full costume … and looking a meek mule … She is a very yellow colour and her eyes look strained, but she was all herself.’18