Suffragette (3 page)

“‘I’m doing this for you, Dollie,’ she said the evening before I was due to leave. ‘I want you to have a future. God knows, I don’t want you to end up like
me.’

“The following morning we said our goodbyes. I watched her struggling with her emotions and hugged her so tight. ‘I’ll come back soon,’ I whispered, choked with my
own.

“‘No, you won’t,’ she barked. ‘Forget me. Forget all this. I don’t want to see your face here again. Promise me you’ll never return.’

“‘But…’

“‘Promise, Dollie.’

“I nodded, failing hopelessly to fight off tears.”

“What happened then?” asked Flora.

“I was driven in a chauffeured motor car to Paddington Station, given a ticket and put on a train to Gloucestershire. It was the first time I had ridden in a train. I was headed for your
grandmother’s estate. When we arrived at the country station where I had been instructed to get off, a porter met me. I remember how puzzled he was that I had no luggage, no belongings of any
sort. He hailed a horse-drawn cab and within the hour I was with your grandmother.”

“But how absolutely extraordinary that she never mentioned a word about you or any of this story to me,” mused Flora.

“I have often wondered why she bothered with me, but on the few occasions when I begged her to tell me she fobbed me off without giving me a satisfactory explanation.”

“I think I might know the answer,” said Flora.

“Really? What is it?”

“Let’s leave it for another day, but I will tell you when the time is right. Meanwhile, please, tell me all about your life at this famous school. Are you happy here?”

“I am very fortunate, though I am a bit of a square peg in a round hole.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’m the only girl of working-class origins here.”

“Ah, I see. Yes, that could be difficult. How long have you been here?”

“Two years. Before that, while I was at living at your grandmother’s, I was tutored by a governess. I couldn’t read or write when I left home. There was a lot to learn. I had
to work very hard. Then I attended a school in one of the neighbouring country towns for a short while and only later, when it was agreed that I would be able to keep up, was I enrolled here. But,
in answer to your question, yes, I was happy here until Lady Campbell died, but now I feel…”

“What?”

“Cut off. Alone. For the first time since I arrived in Gloucestershire, I am really homesick. I long to return to the city.”

Flora rose, took me in her arms and embraced me like a sister. “You are never again to consider yourself alone. I am certain, Dollie, that you and I will become the best of friends. My
grandmother’s wish is that I replace her as your guardian. On a temporary basis, at least, until you and circumstances choose us another direction. What do you say to that? I realize that we
are as yet barely acquainted, but I would like you to think of me as a sister, or if you feel that I am too old for such a role then how about a kindly aunt?”

“Sisters!” I exclaimed. “Oh, yes, please.”

“And how would you like to come and stay with me for a few days at my house in London? We could organize it for May.”

I was overwhelmed. Such a generous offer was unexpected.

“What do you say, Dollie?”

“I would love it,” I answered shyly.

“Then it’s settled. I shall speak to Mrs Partridge and arrange everything.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

We said our goodbyes and I hurried back to the library, where I had left my books. I was horribly late for maths, but I didn’t care. I could hardly believe my good fortune. It was as
though all that I had been longing for was suddenly being offered to me.

17th May 1909

Flora’s home is in Bloomsbury, a district of London slightly north-west of the city centre. A horse-drawn cab awaited me as I came out of the station at Paddington the day
before yesterday. It delivered me right to her door. She was waiting there with open arms to greet me, and since then I have not found a single minute to write my diary until now.

I have never visited such a place before. It is a tall, narrow house in a terraced row. There are five storeys, and my room is on the fourth. The place is spilling over with visitors and guests.
I feel SO SHY. But what a splendidly lively environment! Each room is chock-a-block with fine furniture and furnishings, including Art Nouveau lamps and chairs and goodness knows what else. (I had
never heard of Art Nouveau until Flora showed me some examples.) The dining table is carved mahogany and has twelve matching chairs. The curtains are of a printed fabric from a famous department
store in Regent Street, Liberty’s.

Writers, designers and film-makers are endlessly around. Almost all of them are from Europe or America. One or two of them are staying here, while the rest drop by to discuss their ideas or to
be introduced to like-minded artists. Flora says that she sees her home as a focal point for creative thinkers. It is all dazzlingly bohemian.

Every room I enter, I discover gaggles of artistic folk bawling good-naturedly in an assortment of languages. French seems to be their common ground, not English, while Flora skips easily from
one to the other. Yesterday, she introduced me to two French film-makers: Alice Guy, a highly regarded director who taught Flora in Paris, and Max Linder, a dapper, internationally famous actor and
director. Cecil Hepworth, a British producer, was also present.

“Has anyone seen his new picture,
The Lonely Villa
? You must! You simply must!” Hepworth was shouting, while waving his arms to emphasize his point. “It’s a
magnificent example of intercutting, Alice! And what drama his techniques create!”

His comrades were deep in debate. It transpired that their passionate exchange was about an American director called DW Griffith who, Alice explained to me, is revolutionizing the technical
language of motion pictures. “Intercutting”, “close-up figures”. I did not understand these terms because I have never seen a motion picture, but I didn’t own up to
it.

France, someone claimed, continues to be the most important film-producing country in the world, and its film business is rapidly expanding. Another woman, an American with a necklace of large
amber beads and smoking a cigarette, disagreed loudly. She claimed American Biograph was the most innovative film company in the world.

Flora spoke of her high hopes for England. “And what of London? It is the financial centre of the world, but I dream of giving it equal status as an artistic centre. I want to live in an
England where women’s rights and talents are recognized and thoroughly exercised. Today, there is not one woman working as a director of films here, but I intend to change that.”

Lord, I was exhausted just listening to them. Such intensity and passion! Oh, I adore it here. There is much I shall learn and, for the first time in ages, I feel light-hearted.

18th May 1909

I slept for ever and woke late! I hadn’t realized that I was so tired. There has been so much coming and going that I didn’t notice until this morning, when the
house was calm, that Flora has two truly gorgeous silver-blue cats. I found them curled up asleep on one of the Liberty chairs when I went in for breakfast.

19th May 1909

We had luncheon today with a journalist friend of Flora’s who writes for the
Times Literary Supplement
and lives round the corner from here in Gordon Square. Her
name is Virginia Stephen. She is a rather delicate-looking lady with wistful eyes and a pale face shaped like a long leaf. She and her sister, a painter called Vanessa Bell, along with several
other friends of theirs, are the founders of a locally-based society known as the Bloomsbury Group. Flora is also a member. Among the other guests at lunch was a Labour politician from Scotland,
Keir Hardie. He is a well-known supporter of the women’s movement and a great friend of the Pankhursts.

“What does your group do?” I asked Miss Stephen. “What is its purpose?”

“We are all of us passionate about the arts and believe that the highest form of social progress is the accessibility of art to everyone. All society should be entitled to enjoy the
pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects.”

I could not always follow the subject matters but the discussions were very lively. The talk was of social progress, sexual equality and the “strictures of the Victorian Age”.

From time to time I nodded and tried to look intelligent. I agreed with much that was said, particularly about sexual equality, but I remained silent. I felt too shy to speak.

By then it was about time for tea. The others left and Flora invited me to her study. It smells of leather from the big chairs and the hundreds of books lining the shelves. I was glad everyone
had gone because we had barely seen one another since I arrived.

“When I was your age, Dollie,” she said, “one of my favourite pastimes was afternoon tea with Grandma. Cook would serve us my favourite home-made biscuits and then, once we
were settled and I was tucking contentedly into the goodies, Grandma would encourage me to talk. She wanted to know all about my worries and my hopes and joys.”

“Yes,” I said. “She used to ask me the same.”

“Do you intend to try for Oxford, as my grandmother obviously hoped for you?”

I do desire to go to university, but I did not have the confidence to say so. How could a working-class girl like me, even with the special opportunities that have been bestowed upon her, dare
to count on the possibility of Oxford?

“I am very touched that Lady Campbell has made such a path available to me,” was my response. “I will work hard and do my best.”

“Have you decided what you will read if you are accepted there? Or do your imaginings take you travelling? Perhaps you fancy studying medicine or law?”

I hesitated. So many questions.

“What do you hope for, Dollie? What do you dream of achieving? Do tell, darling.”

“I intend to be a journalist.”

“Ah, yes, I had forgotten. And what will you use your pen to fight for?”

I was a bit sheepish about divulging any of my secret plans but eventually, because Flora continued to press me – “Tell me every detail and I will do my utmost to assist you.”
– I confided that I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Lady Violet, and of Flora herself. “Your grandmother always taught me that votes for women are essential, but that the vote is
only the beginning. And that is what I feel, too.”

“Indeed, Dollie, it is only the beginning. Once we have won the right to vote, we will have been given the opportunity to voice our opinions and to be heard throughout the Empire. We can
make a difference.”

“Do you believe that one day it will be possible to offer every woman the chance of a decent education? To give them self-respect and equal rights with men?”

“Yes! We will put women into Parliament, Dollie. Think of it. Women contributing to the way our country is governed. Women like my great friend Christabel Pankhurst. She has a degree in
law and showed her skills with such brilliance when she defended both herself and her mother at their trial last year. But do you know that she is barred from practising her profession as a
barrister for the simple reason that she is a woman? Her qualifications and talent, which are outstanding, count for nothing. When we have the vote such sexual injustices will be swept
aside.”

“England was the first country to grant women the right to practise medicine, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” smiled Flora. “Yes, Dollie, it was.”

“So why not law? Or politics? It doesn’t make sense,” I added.

Flora poured me another cup of tea and glanced across to the grand piano where a splendid silver-framed photograph of Lady Violet took pride of place. “My grandmother dedicated her life to
the Votes for Women campaign and working for those less fortunate than herself,” she continued. “As did my mother, I believe. Sexual equality was their goal, as it is mine. So you dream
of being a suffragist, Dollie?”

“No, I intend to be a suffragette.”

Flora stared at me quizzically. “A suffragette? Do you understand the difference between suffragists and suffragettes?”

“The
Daily Mail
christened the women fighting for votes ‘suffragettes’ and, like you and your grandmother, I want to wear that name honourably. You ask me what I dream
of? Well, I want to fight, too. I want to see women such as my mother given the opportunity to learn to read and write, to be more than the domestic help in the home, to be treated decently,
equally. Never to be…” I paused because I was about to touch upon a private matter that I am not ready to discuss, not even with Flora.

Flora sensed my reticence. “Never to be what, Dollie?” she interrogated.

“Never to be subjected to male dominance, never again to be at their beck and call. It is a question of human rights and, if necessary, I will give my life to the cause,” I
confided.

Flora laughed in a kindly way and suggested that perhaps I should not consider such dramatic resolutions. “I doubt that any of us will be called upon to give our lives, Dollie. At least, I
sincerely hope that we won’t.”

I did not feel it polite to remind her that Mrs Pankhurst has described her organization as a “suffrage army fighting in the field” and so I kept quiet.

Flora promised to give me all the support she could. She explained, though, that she is with the constitutionalists not the militants. “We of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies, the NUWSS, are suffragists, Dollie, not suffragettes. We advocate legal means of campaigning such as parliamentary lobbying, whereas the more militant activists, those in the WSPU, the
organization founded in 1903 by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, are the women the
Daily Mail
dubbed ‘suffragettes’. It was intended as an insult because they are judged
unladylike and because they are willing to break the law to achieve their goals.”

“Yes, I know that the WSPU is the more militant of the two leading suffrage organizations,” I countered, for I didn’t want Flora to believe me ignorant. “And I know
exactly what first caused them to become more extreme,” I added.