Constance was horrified both by the renewed use of force-feeding and by the Cat and Mouse Act. It was difficult to imagine which was worse. ‘This is inhuman, like the feeding of the beast – no, of an insentient thing,’ she said of the law. She used the closing pages of her testimony to warn the government would never stop the suffragettes, whatever they did, until their demands were granted. She justified the wave of arson attacks now sweeping the country by saying, ‘They will burn buildings until they are treated rationally as an equal part of the human race.’33 Victor acted as Constance’s agent and placed the book with William Heinemann, who insisted on inserting a disclaimer distancing himself from the subject matter. This was extremely unusual: what publisher does agree with everything an author writes? Unfortunately, the correspondence has disappeared from the publisher’s archive, so how they discussed the question and came to this compromise may never be known.
Prisons and Prisoners was the first personal testimony of a suffragette to be published in a book. Teresa Billington-Greig and Sylvia Pankhurst had written histories of the movement but not from their individual perspectives. Emmeline Pankhurst published her ghostwritten autobiography My Own Story later in 1914, but most other suffragettes waited until long after the campaign had been completed before telling their stories: then all their pent-up memories came pouring out.34 Prisons and Prisoners is written in the heat of battle by a wounded soldier who is longing to take to the field once more and does not know how the conflict will end. There was no mention of her stroke or the consequences for her health. Instead, the book concludes on a note of righteous fury that passionately makes the case for the justice of the cause and the inevitability of the victory. Shortly after ‘Jane Warton’ was released, she had written up extensive notes on her experience; she drew heavily on this account when writing Prisons and Prisoners.35 This earlier draft was privately printed in 1987 as I, Constance Lytton, and there is very little difference in the substance of these accounts. There is, however, a slight difference in tone: I, Constance Lytton, composed in the heat of the moment, is somewhat more tentative and hesitant. ‘I think’ is repeated again and again. In contrast, Prisons and Prisoners is more assertive, a confident story born of frequent retelling, with no room for uncertainty lest critics seize on inconsistency as evidence of inaccuracy.
Constance was understandably nervous about the reception but was thrilled at the sales and the reviews. ‘It was well noticed in the press in England, America, Canada, Australia, S Africa, and I received numerous letters from strangers about it,’ she noted some years later with justifiable pride and pleasure.36 ‘They had first printed 2,000 copies, then ordered 500 more and to-day I hear another 500,’ she told Aunt T. ‘That is good for under a week.’37 Perhaps her greatest pleasure, though, would have come from her mother’s verdict, handwritten on the inside of her own copy: ‘A human document … beautifully written … in spite of the acute pain of the whole thing.’38 Betty, however, received a letter which could stand for the ongoing scepticism of the Lytton family friends. ‘It is an example of wonderful self-sacrifice and martyrdom which one cannot help regarding with respect – but O if all these energies and loyal devotions had been directed into wholesome and natural channels for her!’39 Another commented that Robert would have ‘adored’ it.40
Sylvia Pankhurst designed the original cover, and Constance sent Sylvia Pankhurst half the royalties to support her paper, the Women’s Dreadnought. This interaction, together with her ongoing support for Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, suggests that Constance maintained relationships with her comrades even when Christabel cut them off. Sylvia recalled that Constance was so hard up she could not afford an annual subscription to the penny-a-week paper, but had to pay in instalments.41 Constance celebrated her literary success with several long trips: first to the Pethick-Lawrences and then to Aunt T. But she was overdoing it. She was soon ill again, this time with the breathlessness that would plague her for the rest of her life.
Then in August 1914, the outbreak of war changed everything for the suffragettes, for women, and for the country.
The WSPU immediately called a truce, and offered to put their army to work serving the government. The government responded by releasing all suffragette prisoners. McKenna, the Home Secretary, said in Parliament that ‘His Majesty is confident that the prisoners … will respond to the feelings of their countrymen and country-women in this time of emergency, and that they may be trusted not to stain the causes they have at heart by any further crime or disorder’. But he cannot have anticipated that Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst would become the most patriotic of citizens.
Of all their decisions, this was among the most difficult to explain to their followers. It was one thing to suspend hostilities. It was quite another to wholeheartedly support a government that had spent the best part of a decade trying to crush them. Yet members of the WSPU now began to hand out white feathers to men they suspected of ‘shirking’ their ‘duty’. The name of their newspaper was changed to Britannia, and the articles became virulently anti-German. Asked why and how they could become such staunch government allies, Christabel responded, ‘The country was our country. It belonged to us and not to the Government, and we had the right and privilege, as well as the duty, to serve it.’42 But that was only part of the story. She – and others – saw that they had a chance to prove themselves. As Millicent Fawcett said, ‘Let us show ourselves to be worthy of citizenship whether our claim to it be recognised or not.’43
They were knocking at an open door. The government needed women – and in particular they needed the suffragettes, with their organisational nous and their gift for propaganda. Lloyd George especially recognised this. The old enmity was forgotten and he became almost friends with Emmeline Pankhurst. As Minister for Munitions, he asked her to mount one more of the suffragettes’ great processions, demonstrating women’s willingness to work in munitions factories. The deputation as part of this procession was the first she had ever led which was welcomed with open arms. Given that just a few years earlier she had been held responsible for blowing up his house, the transformation in their relationship was remarkable. Later in the war, following the Russian Revolution, Emmeline went to Russia to try to persuade their women to support the war effort; she would also go to the Balkans, and try – rather unsuccessfully – to start a project to help war babies. Another suffragette, Charlotte Marsh, imprisoned alongside Mary Leigh in Birmingham while protesting against Asquith, and a hunger-striker who had been forcefed hundreds of times, was Lloyd George’s chauffeur in the war. One wonders what she said to him.
But not all the militants followed Christabel’s lead. Sylvia Pankhurst and her new Federation of East London Suffragettes, for example, were committed to pacifism. The Federation and the Women’s Freedom League were the only groups who kept up the campaign for the vote during the war: all others set it aside for the duration. The NUWSS occupied a middle ground, supporting efforts to relieve suffering rather than the war itself. But many members of the NUWSS resigned to campaign more actively for peace, and joined forces in this endeavour with former suffragettes like Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence: the war thus formed new alliances and relationships in the women’s movement.
It is difficult to build up a complete picture of Constance’s life during the war years. She was not, of course, writing many letters and does not appear to have restarted her diaries. Her nephews, fortunately, were too young to be called up. Victor was working for the Admiralty in London (it has recently been suggested that he may have been involved in code-breaking). Neville joined up and served as an officer on the Western Front, where he was injured, though not seriously. He was eventually awarded the Legion d’honneur by the French government. In 1917, on her mother’s death, Judith became Lady Wentworth. This prompted a new outbreak of hostilities with Wilfred Scawen Blunt over the stud at Crabbet. Some horses were stolen and others were shot as father and daughter fought in the courts and in the stables over the inheritance. J
udith eventually won, but it must have been a bitter victory.
Constance herself did what she could for the war effort. Her friend Dr Marion Vaughan was running a field hospital in Belgium and because of this, Belgian refugees became a major preoccupation. She and Edith had a couple sleeping in the library.44
But her first thought, of course, was always for her beloved suffragettes. However hard-up Constance was, she continued to give away what little she had, and reserved particular sympathy for her fellow hunger strikers. Kitty Marion, who had been with Constance in Newcastle, had a particularly horrific experience of force-feeding. In June 1913, Kitty had been imprisoned for setting fire to a grandstand at a race track; a tribute to Emily Wilding Davison after Emily’s death at the Epsom Derby. She was forcefed 232 times over fourteen weeks and contemplated hanging herself. She was eventually released having lost thirty-six pounds, looking elderly and emaciated, unrecognisable to her friends. Kitty Marion’s experience reminded Constance of her own. ‘Jane Warton counted the hours and wondered each time how she would bear it again … Now Kitty Marion has borne it for 4 months!’ she told a friend in horror. To Kitty herself, she sent flowers from Homewood and an effusive message of devotion: ‘My reverence for you is of the greatest and I feel a love for you which I cannot put on paper. I have thought of you incessantly while you were being forcibly fed. Your splendid courage is greater than anything I can conceive.’45 What Kitty had done put her own actions in perspective, yet Kitty’s experience never had the impact that Constance’s had: she was an actress, not an aristocrat. When war was declared, Constance helped Kitty leave England for a new life in America. She also gave her a letter of introduction to a prison commissioner to try to help Kitty find a job. This was unsuccessful, and Kitty eventually went to work for the birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. In 1922, Constance tried, unsuccessfully, to get Kitty a British passport so that she could accompany Margaret to China and Japan.46
Constance also took on responsibility for the medical care of Rachel Peace. Rachel had been arrested alongside Mary Richardson in October 1913 for arson and had gone on hunger and thirst strike. She used an alias, Jane Short, and her face appears in photos of the time as among the ‘most wanted’ suffragettes. Rachel was forcefed while on remand to make sure that she was fit to stand trial. Questions were asked in Parliament about how this could be allowed, given that she had not yet been found guilty of the crime. A group of suffragettes smashed windows at her trial to protest at the way she was being treated and were themselves sent to prison; another group tried to set off a bomb at Holloway. Rachel was sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labour. Like Kitty, she was one of the suffragettes judged likely to reoffend and too dangerous to release and so was forcefed for several months. The experience had driven her mad.47 Constance worked tirelessly for Rachel, who had no family of her own. She raised money to keep Rachel in a private asylum and had her to visit when she was well enough. This cannot have been easy for Constance, as Rachel was, according to Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, ‘not dangerous but quarrelsome and talkative’.48
The Lyttons were uncomfortable about Constance’s generosity and believed that she was much too ready to believe a hard-luck story.49 She gave away all her money and sold her belongings, helping not just the suffragettes, but other unpopular causes: Germans struggling in wartime, conscientious objectors, ex-convicts. All the legacy she had inherited from Georgina Bloomfield had long since been channelled into the suffragette cause.50 She even got herself into £300 worth of debt by helping suffragettes who were down on their luck.51 Edith saw Constance as utopian and impractical, and she was not far off the mark.52
They had to endure their fair share of hardships and discomforts during the war years. This, of course, appealed to Constance’s self-denying instincts, and even Edith seems to have approached deprivation with a certain spirit of adventure. ‘Mother is living in a most cruelly Spartan manner, with only one fire of wood and an oil stove. She is really crazy about it. She has a most peculiar set of servants who shout and sing and talk all day regardless of anyone’s presence,’ Emily reported to Edwin in horror. ‘Con of course encourages them and has them in to sing to her.’53
With the natural passing of time and with the distraction of war, the visits from her fellow suffragettes dried up. In the summer of 1915, she told Adela that she had seen Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence twice recently, and Annie Kenney had been down, but that she had not seen Christabel for over a year.54 This was not uncommon. Hannah Mitchell wrote in her autobiography:
I was deeply hurt by the fact that none of the Pankhursts had shown the slightest interest in my illness, not even a letter of sympathy … I did not realise that in the great battle the individual does not count and stopping to pick up the wounded delays the fighting.55
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, though, her first and best suffragette friend, remained a loyal and regular visitor.
The war changed the nature of the debate on voting rights. Existing law required men to be resident at their home for twelve months in order to be eligible to vote. This would disqualify all soldiers and sailors fighting abroad. Just before he resigned as Prime Minister in December 1916, Asquith gave this problem to the Speaker, who set up a cross-party conference on electoral reform. Though the claims of the fighting men were paramount, it was impossible to ignore the claims of women any longer. A hundred thousand had been nurses or worked in hospitals; a hundred thousand more had served in the auxiliary forces. A quarter of a million had worked on the land. But the biggest change had been in the factories, where 800,000 women had worked building munitions and in engineering. 56 Women had been clerks and typists, they had driven trains and buses. With a few exceptions – front-line fighting was still off limits, as was heavy industry – they had proven that they could do a man’s job in a man’s world. They had demonstrated their capability as citizens. Their efforts, their total mobilisation and their complete dedication had made it possible for the men to fight. It was unthinkable that they would not be rewarded for their sacrifice. The Speaker’s conference recommended abolishing property qualifications for men and granting the vote to women over thirty, and university graduates. The Cabinet, now led by David Lloyd George, accepted. After passing the Commons, the bill went to the Lords, where votes for women had never yet been tested. But, perhaps with one eye on the Russian Revolution, the Lords chose ‘the lesser of two evils’,57 and finally granted women the right to vote.
In 1918, the Representation of the People Act became law. It was not at all the triumph the suffragettes had anticipated. ‘We had pictured national rejoicing, a great public celebration of our Votes for Women victory. It had come in a time of public mourning and deepening war danger,’ said Christabel Pankhurst.58 Nor was it a particularly fair settlement: in excluding young women from the vote, the government had excluded many of the women who had worked so hard for the war effort in factories and hospitals. But, in other ways, it went further than the suffragettes had dared hope for. Women could not only vote, they could also stand for election, and a few brave women did so. Constance marked it in her notebook: ‘February 6th 1918: 4 years later from publication my Book Ap.[ril] 1914 By the Representation of the People Act, about 6 000 000 women of 30 years of age and over obtained the Parliamentary Vote.’59
NOTES
1 Olive Schreiner to Mrs Francis Smith, 27 August 1912, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD/433/2/342.
2 Betty Balfour, (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 236. Nurse Oram’s connection with Florence Nightingale is mentioned by Hermione Cobbold, Memory Lane, p. 19.
3 Olive Schreiner to Minnie or Mimmie Murray née Parkes, 6 July 1912, National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription 2001.24/33 l. 41 and ll. 47–9. Olive repeated the unlikely story of the particles to several of her correspondents.
4 Betty Balfour in The Times, 27 June 1912.
5 Betty Balfour, Evening Standard, 25 July 1912, quoted in Vote
s for Women, 2 August 1912, p. 718.
6 Victor Lytton, The Times, 1 July 1912.
7 Votes for Women, 5 July 1912, p. 649.
8 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence to Betty Balfour, 14 May 1912, and Annie Kenney to Betty Balfour, May 1912 in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 233; Anonymous to Lady Lytton, undated, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 226; Multiple signatories to Constance Lytton, 8 June 1913, in the Suffragette Fellowship Collection 50.82/1119; Emmeline Pankhurst to Constance Lytton, 12 April 1912, 9/20/12 LSE Library Collections.
9 Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, p. 333.
10 There would be one more niece, Madeline, born in 1921, to Neville and his second wife.
11 Constance Lytton to Alice Ker, 19 March 1914, 9/21/34.
12 Mary Lutyens, To Be Young (Corgi, 1989), p. 60.
13 Lady Selborne to Betty Balfour, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 233.
14 Recollections of Constance by her nieces are on CD in the LSE library as part of the ‘Brian Harrison Interviews’ – a series he conducted in the 1970s with surviving campaigners for the vote and their relatives to inform his books. The material also covers their memories of Victor and Emily. The interview with Elisabeth Lutyens is at 8/SUF/B/049; with Davinia (Lytton) Woodhouse at 8/SUF/B/051; with Mary (Lutyens) Links at 8/SUF/B/085; and with Hermione (Lytton) Cobbold at 8/SUF/B107.
15 Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland, A Regional Survey, p. 108.
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