As it was in London, the Peckham election was of course most noticed by the Press and, because it was so near its headquarters, the Women's Social and Political Union was able to put up the biggest fight there.
On Peckham Rye, a stretch of common land where hosts of preachers and speakers of all kinds are to be heard on every holiday, each of the parties in the election, including the Suffragettes, began by holding a meeting on the first Sunday of the contest. There was a good deal of rather dangerous horseplay which ominously recalled the Mid-Devon election, the Suffragettes being chief target of the disturbers. But before many days were over the situation had entirely changed. Peckham, as every Londoner knows, is one of that great forest of suburbs of mushroom growth on the south side of the river. Its miles and miles of dingy streets are lined with monotonous rows of ugly little houses which the jerry builder tries to convert into villa residences by disfiguring with heavy over-ornamented stone work and by planting a useless pillar on either side of the narrow doorway. A large proportion of these little dwellings are tenanted by at least two families, and the district is given over to small shopkeepers and clerks, shop assistants, teachers and those who belong more frankly to the working classes. No one who can afford to live elsewhere chooses to live in Peckham; it is full of honest worthy people, but there is nothing romantic or attractive about it.
The Suffragettes opened their Committee Rooms in the High Street and soon seemed to be everywhere. They were riding up and down on the noisy electric tram cars and dashing along Rye Lane, where the cheap shops are and where on Saturday nights you can buy everything for half the usual price at the costermongers' stalls, chalking the pavements, giving out handbills, and speaking at the street corners, and soon it was found that these busy, active women had not only converted almost everyone in the district to the justice of their claims, but had captured the heart of the constituency. How had it happened? Partly, it may be, because of the romance and colour that they had brought into the humdrum Peckham life, but perhaps the following impressions of "An Enthusiast" which appeared in the Daily Mail in the midst of the election will best explain the mystery:
Three happy girls, eyes laughter-lit, breezy, buoyant, joyous, arm in arm, talking like three cascades, are making a royal progress down "the lane that leads to Rye." Such is the head of the comet. Just a glance at the tail. A heterogeneous nebula of human life—all ranks and ages, both sexes and all professions, following, jostling, bustling, hustling. Miss Christabel Pankhurst shakes herself free from one of her supporters, and takes under her wing a barefoot, ragged urchin, whose eyes are dancing with glee and pride, for his pals are envious. Who is he that that gloved hand should rest caressingly upon his shoulder? The girl and the gamin trudge along together. "Oh, ain't she just sweet?" says a factory girl, "and fancy 'er abeen to prison!" "Carn't she tork—my word?" chimes in her mate. "Why, she just shut up them blokes as arsked the questions just like a man, she did!"
Her magnetism lies in her complexity, her bafflingness, her buoyance, her radiant health, her colouring—that of the inside of a seashell. She is so every inch alive—the very exuberance of life, body and mind. Not the racked intensity that comes of nerves high strung and over-active brain, but just that finger-tip aliveness which comes of perfect health and perfect happiness in engrossing occupation.
This girl orator and organiser, martyr and crusader, holds and sways her crowds by a very network of antithesis, and her rosy face is the index of her complexity. Defiance chases demureness; she flings a madcap word and then lectures you like a schoolmistress.
One moment reticent, grave, and serious, then simmering with mischief, as she lays a Cabinet Minister or a man in the crowd safely upon his back—O rash questioner! Then her wilfulness—that puckered chin tells a tale—yet her willingness to listen and to learn. Her melting, comprehending sympathy for the sorrowful and heavy-laden—her rapier wit and repartee, but ever smothered in the white sugar of good humour. All these you see—some, when sitting in the background of the trolly, she seeks to hide from the public stare, which she shrinks from with a maiden's modesty when not actually engaged in speaking—others, when with lissome figure swaying, in rhythmic sympathy with the outpouring words, she fastens her mind and yours upon the point at issue.
And then her unconscious petulance. That green veil of hers tied under her chin that would for ever get awry. Yes, she is very, very feminine, and that is what will win the vote for women.
With a voice that never tires (nor ever tires the listener), she is born to charm the ear with an ebb and flow of sweet sound—sound so clear, so silver, so bell-like, now rising, now falling, now rushing and tumultuous, now measured and tempered and austere—earnest and grave—impetuous, a very volley, ardent, burning, scathing, denunciatory—then sinking to appeal to low notes and something near to sadness.
Shall I speak of her logic? It is inexorable. It is not on mere smart retort that she depends when heckled—she has a good case and relies on it. She is saturated with facts, and the hecklers find themselves heckled, twitted, tripped, floored. I think they like it. She does, and shows it. She flings herself into the fray, and literally pants for the next question to tear to shreds. Her questioners are for the most part earthenware, and this bit of porcelain does them in the eye, quaintly, daintily, intellectually, glibly.