THE SUFFRAGE
“The sex is learning sense.”
—_Grierson’s Way._
I am not going to embark upon a long discussion as to the wrongs and
rights of the question, I am not going to attempt to write a history of
the movement; I am only going to try to tell you of some of the
incidents, the thoughts, and personalities that remain with me.
Why did I become a Suffragist? Because all my life I had been a working
woman; I had, and still have, a passionate love for England; I believed
that I ought to be able to have a voice in the government of that
country; and believed, too, that simply because I was a woman, there
were certain very vital questions on which my opinion, and the opinion
of my sister-women, might be of value—questions which affected “us” as
women, and “us” as mothers.
I did not go to prison; but I had, and have, the deepest respect for the
women who did. When you look back on the ordeals which women endured,
and what they suffered, as suffer they did, remember that _no woman_ who
faced those ordeals or endured those sufferings did it for either
notoriety, enjoyment, or bravado!
As for the “damage” they did, well, I am content to leave the wisdom of
such methods to be justified by wiser heads than mine, and to believe,
as I do firmly, that those methods were only resorted to when the
leaders believed that all other means had failed. Were we not advised by
Mr. Hobhouse to abandon a policy of “pinpricks”, and “do as the men had
done”?
There were many funny incidents connected with the Suffrage Movement,
and not the least funny was Mr. Austen Chamberlain’s reason why women
ought not to have the vote: “Because women are women, and men are men.”
It was Mr. Chamberlain who said that women ought not to mix at all in
political affairs. My sister Decima wrote to him at once, to ask if by
that statement he meant that he wished women to discontinue working for
the Tariff Reform League, and she received a prompt answer “in the
negative”.
My first public speech was made at the Queen’s Hall. They rang up at
very short notice to ask if I would “say a few words”. Rather fearful as
to my powers of oratory, I went. I remember Christabel Pankhurst was in
the chair. I began to speak, and a small blood vessel broke in my lip. I
stood there speaking, and between sentences mopping up the small but
persistent stream of blood. When my own handkerchief was no longer of
any use, Christabel passed me another. By the time I finished my speech
a small pile of “gory” looking handkerchiefs lay at my feet, and not a
woman on the platform had a handkerchief left. It was a horrible
experience for a “raw hand”.
What a fighter Christabel Pankhurst was! The hall might be in an uproar,
but it did not daunt Christabel; she spoke, and, if no one listened, she
went on speaking until they did! She was a brilliant speaker, who never
let her brilliance get above the heads of her audience, and never let
them feel she was “talking down to them”. I have never known any woman,
who was so ready-witted; no one ever “caught her out”.
A man once got up and asked, “Now, Miss Pankhurst, putting all the fun
of talking in public on one side, don’t you really wish you were a man?”
Miss Pankhurst gave the question a second’s consideration, looked
carefully at the speaker, then gave her head that queer little jerk
which always heralded some unexpected answer—the crowds knew it, and
used to watch for it. “Don’t you?” was all she said. Another occasion a
man got up and commenced a long, rambling question as to what would
happen to “the home” if he got into Parliament and his wife got into
Parliament too. It took him a long time to say it all, and he drew a
really very touching picture. “I don’t know your wife, sir,” said
Christabel; “I’ve never seen her; she might, of course, be returned for
Parliament; but you—oh! (very soothingly) I don’t think _you_ need
worry!” Taking the audiences on the whole, they liked her. If there was
a row that even she could not talk down, it was an extraordinary thing.
They liked her humour, they liked her doggedness, her pugnacity, and her
youthful enjoyment of any and every joke, even if one was turned against
her. The famous Pantechnicon was Christabel’s idea. Everyone has heard
of it, and it is exactly the same story as the “Wooden Horse of Troy”,
only “the horse” was a furniture van, the occupants were Suffragists,
and “Troy” was the sacred precincts of the House of Commons.
Mrs. Pankhurst had all the fighting spirit, but she lacked the quick
humour of her daughter. She was a wonderful woman, who had worked all
her life “for women”, and worn herself out bodily—not mentally—in doing
so. I have seen and heard her often, but never without a sense of deep
admiration for her brain and her endurance. Those of us who remember
will recall the placards in those days: “Arrest of Mrs. Pankhurst”,
followed a fortnight later by “Mrs. Pankhurst Released”—that was after
hunger striking—then, “Illness of Mrs. Pankhurst”. About three weeks
later, when she had regained a little of her strength, you saw, “Arrest
of Mrs. Pankhurst”. (That was under “the Cat and Mouse Act”.) That weary
round used to go on, until you wondered how human brain, let alone human
body, could stand it. But stand it she did, and came back again and
again. I wonder now if all that she suffered, and all that she gained,
ever enters the minds of the women voters who go to the polling-booths
on election days?
Not only may they remember Mrs. Pankhurst, there are other figures “that
remain”—Flora Drummond, Annie Kenny, Mrs. Howe Martin, Lady Constance
Lytton, and Mrs. Despard. The last was, as Mrs. Nevinson once said, “not
a woman, but an inspiration”. She was born fifty years too soon; she was
an old lady when the Suffrage Movement first began to be a real “thing”
in practical politics. It was a living example of mind over matter that
made it possible for her to work as she did. She was, I suppose, the
most picturesque figure in the movement; she looked what she is—an
aristocrat. You will find her type in the Spanish pictures of Tiapolo. I
can think of one at the moment which hangs in the Scottish National
Gallery; Mrs. Despard might have sat for the court lady on the left. Now
she has become an Irish citizen, and lives outside Dublin, devoting her
time to trying to alleviate the sufferings of her adopted countrymen.
That I do not see eye to eye with her aims and methods does not shake my
belief that those aims and methods are actuated from nothing but rooted
beliefs. It was Mrs. Despard who said once, during the most strenuous
part of the Suffrage campaign, “Oh! then ’twas good to be alive, but to
be young was very heaven!” An idealist, even something of a fanatic, but
with her eyes fixed on the stars and her heart full of high purpose and
great faith in her cause—that is Mrs. Despard as I saw, and still see,
her.
Of the sufferings (and I use the word advisedly) of the women who “dared
greatly”, I will not write, and for two reasons—first, the fight is
over, we gained our objective, and removed from the Statute Book the
clause which classed women with “lunatics”; and, secondly, because if I
did write, and write truly of the things I know, no one would believe
me, and I even doubt if anyone could print what I could write, and write
in all truth. So I leave that side, and ask you to believe that, even if
we admit (and I reserve my own opinion) that many of the things which
the Suffragists did were foolish, unnecessary, destructive, even wicked,
they had punishment meted out to them in not only full measure, but
“pressed down and running over”; and I can tell you only that the
courage with which they met that punishment was worthy of the great
cause for which they fought, whatever their methods—the Emancipation of
Women.
The Actresses’ Franchise League was formed after the Women’s Social and
Political Union, and after the Women’s Freedom League. It was “non-party
and non-political”. Though it did not advocate the extreme measures, it
did not condemn; its policy was “The aim is everything”. I remember our
first meeting at the Criterion; Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson took the
chair and spoke for us. He, like his mother before him, has been a warm
supporter of anything which will lead to better conditions for women.
The meeting was a great success, and from that time we, the Actresses’
Franchise League, took its place with the other franchise societies. I
remember, in one of the processions which were organised from time to
time, the Actresses sent a contingent. Cissy Loftus, May Whitty, Lena
Ashwell, and I were marching four abreast. We all wore white dresses,
with sprays of pink roses, except Lena Ashwell, who was in mourning. At
the end of Northumberland Avenue there was a long wait; we were held up
for some time. A man who was passing looked at us and recognised Lena
Ashwell. He turned to his friend and said, “See ’er, that third one in
that line? I’ll tell you ’oo she is; she’s the ‘Bad Girl of the
Family’!”
I think in most of us the work cultivated a sense of humour, but it was
certainly due to a lack of that valuable commodity in someone that I was
asked to hand in my resignation to the A.F.L. My husband wrote a one-act
play, called _Her Vote_, the story of a “fluffy” young woman who, after
persuading everyone she meets that it is “their duty” to attend a big
Suffrage meeting, does not go herself, because her “young man” has taken
tickets for a fashionable ball. That, roughly, was the story. I played
the sketch, and it really was very funny. Two days later, at a meeting
of the League, “someone” got up and stated that they had seen the
sketch, and that evidently “Eva Moore preferred Kisses to Votes”, and
suggested that I should be told not to play the sketch again, or resign.
I resigned; I felt that one could work as well for a cause outside a
society as in one. I may say that I was asked to go back, which I did,
still reserving the right to myself to play in _any_ play, without the
assumption that I was working anti-Suffrage propaganda. That line,
“Prefers Kisses to Votes”, has always struck me as so very excellent, it
should be used in a play.
I did, however, call down upon my head a terrible storm, and quite
innocently. At a time when “forcible feeding” was being resorted to very
much, two girls, who were Suffragists, were presented at Court. They
were both of very good social position, and very charming. One of them,
on being presented to the King, said “Your Majesty, won’t you stop
forcible feeding?” She was promptly hustled out of the presence, and the
Press the following day was full of “the insult offered to the King”. It
may have been, probably was, the wrong time to do it; it was probably
the wrong way to attempt to do it; but I did feel, and still feel, that
the girl must have called up every ounce of courage she possessed to say
what she did. At a meeting next day I ventured to say just what I have
written here, ending with: “Whatever one may feel about the wisdom or
the propriety of her action, you must take off your hat to the girl for
her courage.” Then the storm burst. That evening I found headlines in
the papers: “Eva Moore takes off her hat to the woman who insulted the
King”, and so on; it was astonishing. The result was rather dreadful;
men I had never seen wrote to me, wrote the most abusive, indecent
letters I have ever read or even dreamed could be written, letters which
left me gasping that people who could write at all should descend to
using such epithets and expressions. Had I not already been a
Suffragist, those letters would have made me one! However, it came to an
end and I survived, though I admit at the time it distressed me very
much indeed.
A disagreeable experience was when I was called to give evidence in the
case of “Pankhurst and Pethick Lawrence _v._ the Crown”. Mrs. Pankhurst
was alleged to have spoken against the Crown and His Majesty’s
Government at the Albert Hall meeting, and the Pethick Lawrences, as
chief organisers of the meeting, were involved. That, so far as my
memory serves me, was the case. I was to give evidence for Mrs.
Pankhurst. I was instructed not to answer too quickly, not to answer too
slowly, and no first night has ever brought such a torture of nerves as
did that cross-examination at the Old Bailey. I remember very little
about it all, except the grim air which seemed to brood over everything,
and the fear that I might “say something wrong”. Sir Rufus Isaacs was
“for the Crown”, and I was in the witness-box. I remember after some
time he said, “—and so you suggest so-and-so, Miss Moore?” It was a
question very like the old story, “Do you still beat your
wife?”—whichever way you answered, you were wrong. I admit frankly I was
paralysed with fright; I tried to collect my wits, tried to think of
some “really telling” answer; no inspiration came. At last I said, with
what dignity I could muster, “I suggest nothing”, and heard him say the
most welcome words which, I think, have ever struck my ears, “You may
stand down!”
And we were told we went through that kind of ordeal because we liked it
and loved the notoriety! What imagination some people have!
Some day, when we look back from a distance of years, the things will
fall into their right perspective, and we shall be able to tell stories
which will fire the imagination of those who hear them; such stories
will be the Pantechnicon; the story of “Charlie” Marsh, lying hidden on
the roof of Birmingham Town Hall, followed by three months’
imprisonment, during the whole of which time she was forcibly fed; the
story of Lilian Lenton, who hid for two days in the organ loft in Leeds
Town Hall; the story of Theresa Billington and the Dog Whip, and many
others. We are still too near them as actual happenings, we still let
our political opinions, on either side, colour our feelings; but in the
future we shall see them for what they were: as brave attempts to fight
whole-heartedly for a great cause.
I think of the great public funeral accorded to Emily Davidson, and
remember that a martyr is “one who suffers death or grievous loss in
defence or on behalf _of any belief or cause_”; the worthiness or
unworthiness of the cause is a question which only the martyr can answer
to his or her own soul. Emerson says: “A man does not come the length of
the spirit of martyrdom without some flaming love”, and I believe that
it was a “flaming love” for their sister-women which was the
driving-force behind all they did.
I look back, no longer “dreaming dreams”, but seeing “visions”—and the
visions I see are of women coming from all parts of England, from the
factories of Lancashire, from Yorkshire, from the hunting-fields, from
offices, schools, and from every place where women might be found, who
wanted to see the dawn of the new era, giving up much which made life
pleasant and easy, braving scorn, ridicule, and often bodily danger, to
do what they might to “right a wrong”. I like to remember that “I did
what I could” and was, at anyrate, one of the rank and file in that
great army.
I go back to August, 1914, and think how all those women put aside their
political ambitions, even their demand for recognition, and declared a
truce, so that they might concentrate against a common enemy which
threatened their country. “I hated war,” one of them said to me,
speaking of ’14, “I was and always had called myself a pacifist, but,
when the war came, well, I worked with the rest of us, to help to win
it.”
The war was over, and at a luncheon given at the Savoy I met Mr. Lloyd
George. I told him that I had not seen him for a long time, and reminded
him that the last time was when I came, as a member of a deputation on
behalf of Women’s Suffrage, to see him at 10 Downing Street. “Yes,” he
said, “I remember. Well, I always told Christabel Pankhurst you should
all have the vote, and I kept my word!” After nearly forty years of
“constitutional methods”, of spade-work and propaganda, and after nearly
a decade of active work—nearly ten years during which constitutional
methods were flung to the winds, and the women fought for the franchise
as “the men had fought”—they won that which they demanded: their
political freedom—obtained, as all freedom has been obtained, “with a
great price”, and that “great price” was years of self-sacrifice,
culminating in the European War.
So political swords were turned to ploughshares, for, as Mrs. Pankhurst
used to say, “Remember when you have gained the vote your work is only
beginning”; and the women of England were at last able to say, each one,
“I am a citizen of no mean city.”