The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward

by Janet Penrose Trevelyan

The arguments advanced in this Protest are interesting as showing the position from which Mrs. Ward hardly moved in the next thirty years, though many of her original allies who signed it fell away and joined the Suffrage camp. There is first the emphasis on the essentially different functions of men and women:

“While desiring the fullest possible development of the powers, energies and education of women, we believe that their work for the State, and their responsibilities towards it, must always differ essentially from those of men, and that therefore their share in the working of the State machinery should be different from that assigned to men.” Women can never share in such labours as “the working of the Army and Navy, all the heavy, laborious, fundamental industries of the State, such as those of mines, metals and railways, the management of commerce and finance, the service of that merchant fleet on which our food supply depends.... Therefore it is not just to give to women direct power of deciding questions of Parliamentary policy, of war, of foreign or colonial affairs, of commerce and finance equal to that possessed by men. We hold that they already possess an influence on political matters fully proportioned to the possible share of women in the political activities of England.”

At the same time the recent extensions of women’s responsibilities, such as their admission to the municipal vote and to membership of School Boards, Boards of Guardians, etc., is warmly welcomed, “since here it is possible for them not only to decide but to help in carrying out, and judgment is therefore weighted by a true responsibility.” Then comes a denial of any widespread demand among women themselves for the franchise, “as is always the case if a grievance is real and reform necessary,” and finally an argument on which Mrs. Ward continued to lay much stress in after years, that of the steady removal of the reasonable grievances of women by the existing machinery of a male Parliament.

‘It is often urged that certain injustices of the law towards women would be easily and quickly remedied were the political power of the vote conceded to them; and that there are many wants, especially among working women, which are now neglected, but which the suffrage would enable them to press on public attention. We reply that during the past half-century all the principal injustices of the law towards women have been amended by means of the existing constitutional machinery; and with regard to those that remain, we see no signs of any unwillingness on the part of Parliament to deal with them. On the contrary, we remark a growing sensitiveness to the claims of women, and the rise of a new spirit of justice and sympathy among men, answering to those advances made by women in education, and the best kind of social influence, which we have already noticed and welcomed. With regard to the business or trade interests of women—here, again, we think it safer and wiser to trust to organization and self-help on their own part, and to the growth of a better public opinion among the men workers, than to the exercise of a political right which may easily bring women into direct and hasty conflict with men.”

This feeling was evidently uppermost in her thoughts at that time, for she wrote as early as January, 1889, to her sister-in-law, Miss Agnes Ward:

‘What are these tremendous grievances women are still labouring under, and for which the present Parliament is not likely to give them redress? I believe in them as little as I believe now in the grievances of the Irish tenant. There were grievances, but by the action of the parties concerned and their friends under the existing system they have been practically removed. No doubt much might be done to improve the condition of certain classes of women, just as much might be done for that of certain classes of men, but the world is indefinitely improveable, and I believe there is little more chance of quickening the pace—wisely—with women’s suffrage than without it.... There is a great deal of championing of women’s suffrage going on which is not really serious. Mr. Haldane, a Gladstonian member, said to me the other day, ‘Oh, I shall vote for it of course!—with this amendment, that it be extended to married women, and in the intention of leading through it to manhood suffrage.’ But if many people treat it from this point of view and avow it, the struggle is likely to be a good deal hotter and tougher before we have done with it than it has ever been yet.

“I should like to know John Morley’s mind on the matter. He began as an enthusiast and has now decided strongly against. So have several other people whose opinion means a good deal to me. And as to women, whether their lives have been hard or soft, I imagine that when the danger really comes, we shall be able to raise a protest which will be a surprise to the other side.”

In spite of the fact that the organizers of the Protest were handicapped by the natural reluctance of many of their warmest supporters to take part in what seemed to them a “political agitation,” and so to let their names appear in print,[31] they worked to such purpose during the ten days that elapsed between the meeting at Mr. Frederic Harrison’s house and the going to press of the Nineteenth Century that 104 signatures were secured. They were regarded by their contemporaries as the signatures either of “eminent women” or of “superior persons,” according to the bias of those who contemplated the list. Posterity may be interested to know that they included such future supporters of the Suffrage as Miss Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb), Mrs. Creighton and Mrs. T. H. Green, while among women distinguished either through their own work or their husbands’ in many fields occur the names of Mrs. Goschen, Lady Stanley of Alderley, Lady Frederick Cavendish, Mrs. T. H. Huxley, Mrs. J. R. Green, Mrs. Max Müller, Mrs. W. E. Forster, and Mrs. Arnold Toynbee.

Naturally the Protest drew the Suffrage forces into the field. The July number of the Nineteenth Century contained two “Replies,” from Mrs. Fawcett and Mrs. Ashton Dilke, to which Mrs. Creighton in her turn supplied a “Rejoinder.” Meanwhile a form of signature to the Protest had been circulated with the Review, and was supplied in large numbers on demand, so that in the August number Mr. Knowles was enabled to print twenty-seven pages of signatures to the statement that “The enfranchisement of women would be a measure distasteful to the great majority of women of the country—unnecessary—and mischievous both to themselves and to the State.” Mrs. Creighton’s “Rejoinder” was regarded on the Anti-Suffrage side as a dignified and worthy close to the discussion. “The question has been laid to rest,” wrote Mr. Harrison to her, “for this generation, I feel sure.” Nearly thirty years were indeed to pass before the question was “laid to rest,” though in a different sense from Mr. Harrison’s.

During the earlier part of that long period Mrs. Ward concerned herself no further, in any public capacity, with the task of opposing the Suffrage forces. Her own opinions were known and respected by her friends of whatever party, while her growing interest in and knowledge of social questions gave her an ever-increasing right to advocate them. At Grosvenor Place the talk at luncheon or dinner-table would often play round the dread subject in the freest manner, with a frequent appeal, in those happy days, to ridicule as the deciding factor. Mrs. Ward was particularly pleased with a dictum of John Morley’s, “For Heaven’s sake, don’t let us be the first to make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of Europe!” which I remember hearing her quote from time to time; but on this subject, as on all others, the atmosphere of the house was one of liberty to all comers to air and express their opinions. Most of her own family were of the Suffrage persuasion, especially her two sisters, Julia and Ethel, but her children followed her lead—save one who, being a member of a youthful debating society where the wisdom of nineteen ran riot in speech and counter-speech, was told off one day to get up the arguments in favour of Women’s Suffrage and to open the debate; she got them up with the energy of that terrible age, and remained a convert ever afterwards.