Lady Constance Lytton

by Lyndsey Jenkins

  Holloway could not accommodate the volume of prisoners. Some had to be sent out to other gaols around the country while Holloway itself had so many suffragettes that it was almost like a suffrage reunion. Striding round the exercise yard in the March chill, the suffragettes decided to cheer themselves up by singing the suffragette anthem, ‘March of the Women’. From a cell above, two arms appeared, waving a toothbrush in lieu of a baton. It was Ethel Smyth, conducting her own composition in the most unlikely of circumstances.19 But this was a light-hearted moment in an otherwise bleak time. The sentences imposed on the window breakers were severe: generally several months’ hard labour. Worse still, Rule 243a did not apply where an individual had been sentenced for ‘serious violence’ so the privileges they had become accustomed to were taken away. The suffragettes responded by returning to their old weapon: the hunger strike. But they were sent a message to hold off while awaiting the outcome of further alarming developments.

  The government did not just want the window breakers themselves in prison: they wanted the leaders there too. After the second attack on West End windows, the offices of Votes for Women were raided and shut down by the police. Emmeline Pankhurst and Mabel Tuke, already in prison for smashing windows, were charged alongside the Pethick-Lawrences with conspiracy to incite violence. Only Christabel was free, and after dodging the authorities for some weeks in London, she fled to Paris, where she attempted to conduct the campaign in exile. Annie Kenney took over as leader. But the government achieved its aim, in the short-term at least, as the organisation faltered without their most inspirational figureheads at the helm.

  Later, Betty asked Annie why Constance wasn’t asked to take on a formal leadership role at this time. With so many powerful and significant women missing, Betty believed that Constance could have filled the gap.20 But the truth was that Constance did not have the calculating political brain needed to direct a campaign. Her talent was not for strategising, but for sacrifice. At a major event on 7 March, just after the Pethick-Lawrences had been arrested, Constance stood up and surveyed the assembled crowds. ‘I believe the militant section of the movement has “collapsed”,’ she said. ‘I congratulate you on that collapse.’ The rest of the reported speech shows how far she had come as a speaker. She could now rouse a crowd with the best of them.

  They think they can seize our funds, that they can behead the movement of its leaders and the movement will come to an end. (Cries of ‘Never!’) It is quite true, our leaders are phenomenal. (Applause.) But they are the products of the movement which they lead: they have not created it. Nobody knows that better than themselves. Nobody knows it better than we do in a dark hour like this. There will be a variation in our next few meetings. Our leaders will not be on the platforms, but they will be there. Whether they are in prison or whether they are dead, our leaders shall lead us. (Applause).21

  A few weeks later, Constance was once again advertised in Votes for Women as a hostess for a meeting in honour of the leaders called ‘all will be well’. Emmeline Pankhurst said with her usual confidence that ‘the fact that this trial should be held is the very best thing that could happen to this movement … The trial, like everything else that has happened to us, is going to be a great victory for the women’s cause.’22 But privately, with Christabel so far away, she cannot have been so optimistic. This was the last time that Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Emmeline Pankhurst would appear together in public.

  At the end of May, Mrs Pankhurst and the Pethick-Lawrences were sentenced to nine months in the second division. They threatened to go on hunger strike unless they were moved to the first division and treated as political prisoners. They were moved, but their comrades were still serving sentences for hard labour, so they went on hunger strike anyway. The government was incensed about what they saw as a complete breakdown in logic. The leaders were in the first division because they had been sentenced for incitement to violence rather than actually committing violence themselves. Their window-smashing comrades could not be expected to be put in the first division: that was not how rule 243a worked. But the suffragettes weren’t interested in this distinction.

  So the hunger strike was now used once more on a mass scale, for the first time in several years. It was also the first time any of the leaders were forcefed. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence found the experience so horrendous that she fainted. Emmeline Pankhurst, listening next door, threatened to hit the doctor with a jug if he tried it on her, and was left alone. From this time on Emmeline Pankhurst was regularly on hunger strike, though she was never forcefed.

  The two women were freed after a couple of days, though Fred Pethick-Lawrence was made to suffer force-feeding twice a day for ten days before his release.23 Ethel Smyth and Louisa Garrett Anderson were both released just weeks into their lengthy sentences, which brought up all the old questions of preferential treatment. ‘If it is considered just to release these two women of intellectual distinction and social position, why is not a similar course of action taken with regard to the other women still in prison?’ demanded Votes for Women.24 At this time, there were more than eighty women on hunger strike in Holloway. In June, Emily Wilding Davison attempted to commit suicide by throwing herself down an iron staircase. Like her old comrade Constance Lytton, she hoped to save other women pain and degradation by making herself into a martyr. On this occasion, she failed.25

  There were a few voices still prepared to stand up for the suffragettes in public. One was their loyal friend Keir Hardie and another was Louisa Garrett Anderson, who wrote in the British Medical Journal that ‘the reason they do not take their food is political, not pathological, and the appropriate treatment is statesmanship, not a stomach tube’.26 Another supporter was Emily Lutyens. Though vehemently opposed to the violence of the suffragettes, she was still a strong supporter of votes for women. She wrote to The Times at the end of March to promote

  the happy wives and mothers who, having everything that this world can give have yet been willing to face insult, imprisonment and even death if necessary because by doing so they hoped to bring a little nearer the day when their sisters would no longer toil in sweated industries or be driven on to the streets for a livelihood.27

  But, in general, the renewed militancy horrified the public. The suffragettes were becoming more extreme and, as a result, what public support they had now began to ebb away. Even some suffragettes began to feel uneasy at the new strategy. Where once they had been an army, now they were more like a militia and individual suffragettes were no longer merely soldiers but guerrilla fighters. The fight itself, not the cause they were fighting for, seemed to become the focus of their efforts. But those who remained were prepared to go to any lengths for their beloved leaders.

  Their former friends in the NUWSS were also alienated by the renewed militancy. Millicent Fawcett felt just as let down by Asquith over the failure of the Conciliation Bill as she had at his surprise support for universal male suffrage. But rather than turning to violence, the suffragists turned instead to the Labour Party. They believed that helping more Labour candidates into Parliament would put greater pressure on the Liberal Party, and set up an ‘election fighting fund’ to achieve this aim. The labour movement and the women’s movement thus came together again: though without the suffragettes, who still refused to support any political party.

  Constance drafted an angry letter to Millicent Fawcett expressing her disappointment at this new policy.

  What did working men do to ensure fair play for women … through the long drawn out struggle of over 40 years during which there was no question of violence on the part of women? When militancy began … what did the Labour party to secure … that women’s deputations should be received, that women’s suffragists should not be imprisoned, that if imprisoned the treatment of them should be differentiated from that of criminals? How did these defenders of the right to strike stand by the women when their hunger strike … was met by the barbaries of forcible feeding during weeks and months of i
mprisonment?28

  Constance’s admiration for working women obviously did not extend to working men. While, as we have seen, she regularly lobbied prominent members of the Conservative and Liberal Parties, I have not seen anything that suggests she did the same for Labour politicians. Understandably enough, she put her energy into trying to persuade those in her own social milieu whom she might reasonably be expected to influence. Later in the year, the Labour MP George Lansbury actually resigned in order to take a stand over women’s suffrage. For once the suffragettes broke their own rules in order to give him their backing, but the Labour Party and the WSPU were unable to work successfully together and he lost his seat.29

  The suffragettes became ‘more violent, but also less confrontational’.30 Where they had once deliberately sought arrest, now they did not want to waste their time in prison, nor their energy on hunger striking. Sabotage and subterfuge were the order of the day.

  But Constance was not about to embark on a midnight arson attack. She was feeling worse and worse. ‘I have been so utterly done with the overstrain these last weeks that I did not know what I was doing or saying – have had to come home here and collapse into bed with a fever attack,’ she wrote to Margaret Ker, apologising for her silence.31 She had flu and bronchitis, which kept her in bed for several weeks. When the hunger strikes began, she forced herself to get out of bed and put herself to work trying to get the suffragette side of the story into the press. After a couple of visits to the Times offices, her heart ‘gave out, returning to the tricks it has often indulged in since 1912’.32 She reluctantly concluded that the only thing she could do now was take herself off to a quiet cottage and finish her book.

  Her troubles were not just physical: the old depression was creeping up on her. She was having nightmares ‘about my jobs left undone, about beloved leaders in prison, fearful gloom at the separation from them and total removal of all our heads’, she told Betty. She was profoundly worried about the ordinary members in prison. She felt a strong sense of obligation to do whatever she could for them, and believed she was always letting them down in some way.33 She also was unsure whether she was going to be tried alongside the Pethick-Lawrences. ‘My name was mentioned in the prosecution, & certainly if the Leaders are criminals on the grounds of “incitement”, “conspiracy” etc so am I,’ she told Alice Ker, still in prison. ‘It seems to me our Albert Hall meeting this summer will be in Holloway.’ She concluded this letter by saying, ‘My thoughts are constantly with you. If you have an opportunity give my love to all my fellow-workers in Holloway & my friendly greeting to those officials who know me.’34

  These were the last words she ever wrote with her right hand. Later that day, Constance’s charwoman let herself into the Euston Road flat as usual. There, she found Constance lying on the floor, barely conscious and unable to move or speak.

  NOTES

  1 Quoted in Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story, Vol III, Chapter IV.

  2 Quoted in Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 188.

  3 Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 188.

  4 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 322.

  5 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 327.

  6 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, pp. 328–9.

  7 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 334.

  8 The Times, 13 December, 1911, p. 13.

  9 Daily Mail, 22 December 1911, p. 7.

  10 The Times 15 January 1912, p. 11.

  11 Constance Lytton to Alice Ker, 20 February 1912, quoted in Michelle Myall, Flame and Burnt Offering, p. 221.

  12 Constance Lytton to Millicent Fawcett, 6 February 1912, 9/21/22, LSE Library Collections.

  13 Quoted in Joyce Marlow, Votes for Women: The Virago Book of Suffragettes, p. 157.

  14 Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 200.

  15 Ethel Smyth to Betty Balfour, 6 March 1912, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 229.

  16 Constance Lytton to Margaret Ker, 4 March 1912, 9/21/28, LSE Library collections.

  17 Votes for Women, 5 April 1912, p. 432.

  18 Frances Balfour to Betty Balfour, 4 March 1912, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD/433/2/344/23–3.

  19 Votes for Women, 15 March 1912, p. 378.

  20 Betty Balfour to Annie Kenney, KP/AK/2/BalfourB/2.

  21 Votes for Women, 15 March 1912, p. 374.

  22 Votes for Women, 20 April 1912, p. 469.

  23 Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story, p. 255.

  24 Votes for Women, 12 April 1912.

  25 Figures quoted in Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story, p. 251; Emily Davison’s experience described in Joyce Marlow, Votes for Women: The Virago Book of Suffragettes, p. 168.

  26 Louisa Garrett Anderson in British Medical Journal, quoted in J. F. Geddes, ‘Culpable Complicity: The medical profession and the forcible feeding of suffragettes’, in Women’s History Review, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2008), p. 86.

  27 Emily Lutyens, The Times, 29 March 1912, quoted in Votes for Women, 5 April 1912, p. 429.

  28 This is marked as draft; it is not clear whether she sent a version or not. Constance Lytton to Millicent Fawcett, 6 February 1912, 9/21/23, LSE Library collections.

  29 Joyce Marlow, Votes for Women: The Virago Book of Suffragettes, p. 179.

  30 Sophia A. van Wingerden, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain, p. 131.

  31 Constance Lytton to Margaret Ker, 17 March 1912, 9/21/30, LSE Library collections.

  32 Constance Lytton to Alice Ker, 24 May 1912, 9/21/31, LSE Library collections.

  33 Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, 23 March 1912, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 230.

  34 Constance Lytton to Alice Ker, 4 May 1912, 9/21/32, LSE Library collections.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PARALYSIS

  ‘I would rather be Con, lying broken and shattered there than any one of those men who have been false to every principle of the Liberalism they have preferred. If Con had died, she would have died gloriously.’ 1

  Constance had suffered a stroke. At first it was uncertain whether she would survive. She lived at first at Emily’s house in Bloomsbury Square. A nurse, Sister Kate Oram, who had previously nursed Florence Nightingale, was hired and became her constant companion. It was a long struggle back to a half-life. Two months passed before she could get out of bed. She could manage only a few steps at a time, and otherwise had a wheelchair. Nurse Oram would push the chair through Bloomsbury each day so that she might enjoy the outdoors.2 Her right side remained paralysed and she would have to gingerly lift the right hand with the left. She could no longer write. Improbable rumours about what had happened to her spread. Olive Schreiner reported that ‘a particle from the worn-out heart has got into one of the arteries in the brain … She will never be able to stand the least excite again, as there will always be the danger of particles from the worn-out heart breaking off again and getting into the circulation.’3

  Eventually Constance was well enough to go back to Homewood. Edith’s visitors’ book for Homewood records, in her own handwriting, ‘Constance Georgina Lytton returned home July 28th 1912.’ She would not, of course, have added any comment on her feelings, but her gratitude that Constance was still alive, and recovering, would have only been heightened by the knowledge that she was home for good. Aside from a few days here or there, Constance would not leave home for over a decade.

  But that did not mean that Constance lost interest in the suffragettes. Quite the contrary: even her near-fatal collapse was used in service of the cause. At the end of June, Betty wrote to The Times supporting the hunger-striking women in prison and informing the public of Constance’s condition. Betty made it very clear that they all believed Constance’s illness was an after-effect of the force-feeding. ‘I feel it a public duty to mention this case of the dire result of the treatment which it is believed is still being meted out to some 70 prisoners in the Suffrage cause.’4 Betty continued to raise their ca
se throughout the summer, more horrified than ever at the brutality of force-feeding now that she had seen the long-term consequences. But she still kept well away from endorsing the suffragettes. ‘As a non-militant I am prepared to deplore the rebellious spirit – the spirit of hate – as the motive power for the redress of any grievance,’ she told the Evening Standard. ‘But wise rulers should take care how they excite it in any section of the community.’5

  The situation of these seventy women was debated in Parliament and the Jane Warton affair was brought up once more. Victor wrote to The Times to complain that Reginald McKenna, now the Home Secretary, had misled the House by telling them that Jane had refused to be forcefed. He also pointed out that McKenna had finally admitted that Jane could not keep the food down; at the time, Edward Troup had insisted that she had not been sick.6 While Votes for Women mentioned these letters, is rather surprising to find that the newspaper did not cover her illness in greater depth.7 Perhaps this was because the paper was once more packed with personal testimonies of women being forcefed. In this context, Jane Warton was old news.

  Once the suffragettes knew what had happened, letters expressing what Constance had meant to them poured in. Constance had been inspired by the suffragettes she had met – Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Jessie Kenney, Laura Ainsworth – now she in her turn became an inspiration, enabling other women to screw up their courage and do whatever they thought necessary. ‘Every life she has ever touched has been strengthened, purified and ennobled,’ wrote Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, while Annie Kenney said, ‘How little we feel, how small-hearted and narrow-minded compared to her! I always think of a lamp that throws out its light that those who are stranded can be guided to safety and security.’ ‘She makes one give one’s very best in words and deeds, even without speaking. I always want to be and act my noblest because of her,’ an anonymous suffragette wrote to Edith. From South Africa came a letter signed by forty-five feminists: ‘We deeply hope that we shall before long hear that you are fully restored to labour for the cause so near all our hearts. Across the seas we stretch hands of love & sympathy towards you.’ The last signatory was Olive Schreiner. Only Emmeline Pankhurst struck the wrong note. Preoccupied and distracted, she wrote carelessly, ‘I hope you will soon be well again and that you will take better care of yourself in future’, and used the rest of her note to praise Christabel.8 Meanwhile, a suffragette visiting Constance at Emily’s house asked her nephews whether they were proud of their ‘splendid Auntie’. ‘No,’ was the reply. ‘We think she has done very wrong.’9