The Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward

by Janet Penrose Trevelyan

The question, in fact, did not enter the region of practical politics until the advent to power of the Liberal Government in December, 1905. It was on the occasion of Campbell-Bannerman’s great meeting at the Albert Hall, before the election, that the portent of the Suffragette first manifested itself in the form of a young woman who put inconvenient questions to “C.-B.,” in a strident voice, from the orchestra, and was unmercifully hustled out by indignant stewards. It was the beginning of eight years of tribulation. Mrs. Ward watched through 1906 and 1907 the growing violences of these women with mingled horror and satisfaction: horror at the unloveliness of their proceedings and satisfaction at the feeling that an outraged public would never yield to such clamour what they had refused to yield to argument. She did not yet know the uses of democracy. But the constitutional agitation was also making way during these years, especially since it was known that Campbell-Bannerman himself was a Suffragist, and even after his death Mr. Asquith announced to a deputation of Liberal M.P.’s, in May, 1908, that if when the Government’s proposed Reform Bill was introduced, an amendment for the extension of the franchise to women on democratic lines were moved to it, his Government as a Government would not oppose such an amendment. This announcement brought Women’s Suffrage very definitely within the bounds of practical politics, so that those who believed that the change would be disastrous felt bound to exert themselves in rallying the forces of opposition. Mrs. Ward had hardly returned from America before Lord Cromer and other prominent Anti-Suffragists approached her with regard to the starting of a society pledged to oppose the movement. They knew well enough that no such counter-movement had any chance of success without her active support, and they shrewdly augured that, once captured, she would become the life and soul of it. Mrs. Ward groaned but acquiesced, and thus in July of this year (1908) was born the “Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League,” inaugurated at a meeting held at the Westminster Palace Hotel on July 21.

In the long struggle that now opened it is easy to see that Mrs. Ward was not really at her ease in conducting a movement of mere opposition and denial. She did not enjoy it as she enjoyed her battles with the L.C.C. for the pushing forward of her schemes for the children, yet she felt that it was “laid upon her” and that there was no escape. “As Gertrude says, it is all fiendish, but we feel we must do it,” she wrote after the inaugural meeting; but this feeling explains her imperative desire to give a positive side to the movement by dwelling on the great need for women’s work on local bodies—a line of argument which was mistrusted by many of her male supporters, one of whom, Lord James of Hereford, had spoken passionately in the House of Lords against the Act of 1907 for enabling women to sit on County or Borough Councils. But Mrs. Ward had her way, so that when the programme of the Anti-Suffrage League came out it was found to contain twin “Objects”:

(a) To resist the proposal to admit women to the Parliamentary Franchise and to Parliament; and

(b) To maintain the principle of the representation of women on municipal and other bodies concerned with the domestic and social affairs of the community.

This second “Object” was indeed the keystone of Mrs. Ward’s fabric for the useful employment of the energies and gifts of women, in a manner suited to their special experience as well as conducive to the real interests of the State. She called it somewhere the “enlarged housekeeping” of the nation, and maintained that the need for women’s work and influence here was unlimited, whereas in the special Parliamentary fields of foreign affairs, war and finance, women might indeed have opinions, but opinions unsubstantiated by experience and unbacked by the sanction of physical force. It is interesting to observe how she conducts her case for a “forward policy” as regards Local Government before her own supporters in the Anti-Suffrage Review (July, 1910):

‘There is no doubt that the appointment of a Local Government Sub-Committee marks a certain new and definite stage in the programme of our League. By some, perhaps, that stage will be watched with a certain anxiety; while others will see in it the fulfilment—so far as it goes—of delayed hopes, and the promise of new strength. The anxiety is natural. For the task before the League is long and strenuous, and that task in its first and most essential aspect is a task of fight, a task of opposition. We are here primarily to resist the imposition on women of the burden of the parliamentary vote. And it is easily intelligible that those who realize keenly the struggle before us may feel some alarm lest anything should divert the energies of the League from its first object, or lest those who are primarily interested in the fight against the franchise should find themselves expected willy-nilly to throw themselves into work for which they are less fitted, and for which they care less.

‘But if the anxiety is natural, the hope is natural too Many members of the League believe that there are two ways of fighting the franchise—a negative and a positive way. They believe that while the more extreme and bigoted Suffragists can only be met by an attitude of resolute and direct opposition to an unpatriotic demand, there are in this country thousands of women, Anti-Suffragist at heart, or still undecided, who may be attracted to a positive and alternative programme, while they shrink from meeting the Suffragist claim with a simple ‘No.’ Their mind and judgment tell them that there are many things still to be done, both for women, and the country, that women ought to be doing, and if they are asked merely to acquiesce in the present state of things, they rebel, and will in the end rather listen to Suffragist persuasion and adopt Suffragist methods. But the recent action of the executive opens to such women a new field of positive action—without any interference with the old. How immeasurably would the strength of the League be increased, say the advocates of what has been called ‘the forward policy,’ if in every town or district, where we have a branch, we had also a Local Government Committee, affiliated not to the present W.L.G.S., which is a simple branch of the Suffrage propaganda, but to the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League! The women’s local government movement, which has been almost killed in the last two years by Suffragist excesses and the wrath provoked by them in the nation, would then pass over into the hands of those better able to use without abusing it. Anti-Suffrage would profit, and the nation also.”

Mrs. Ward looked forward, indeed, to the regular organization of women’s work and influence on these lines, culminating in the election, by the women members of local bodies, of a central committee in London which would inevitably acquire immense influence on legislation as well as administration in all matters affecting women and children. “Such a Committee,” she said to an American audience in 1908, “might easily be strengthened by the addition to it of representatives from those government offices most closely concerned with the administration of laws concerning women and children; and no Government, in the case of any new Bill before the House of Commons, could possibly afford to ignore the strongly expressed opinion of such a committee, backed up as it could easily be by agitation in the country. In this way, it seems to me, all those questions of factory and sanitary legislation, which are now being put forward as stalking-horses by the advocates of the franchise, could be amply dealt with, without rushing us into the dangers and the risks, in which the extension of the suffrage to women, on the same terms as men, must ultimately land us.”

This passage shows very clearly Mrs. Ward’s belief in the duty of educated women to work for their fellows. She did not by any means wish them to sit at home all day with their embroidery frames, but looked forward instead to the steady development of what she called women’s “legitimate influence” in politics—the influence of a sane and informed opinion, working in collaboration with Parliament, which should not only remove the remaining grievances and disabilities of women, but hold a watching brief on all future legislation affecting their interests. Decidedly Mrs. Ward was no democrat. She was willing to wear herself out for Mrs. Smith, of Peabody Buildings, and her children, but she could not believe that it would do Mrs. Smith any good to become the prey of the political agitator.

Her activity in carrying on the Anti-Suffrage campaign from 1908 to 1914 was astonishing, considering how heavily burdened she was at the same time with her literary work and with the constant pressure of her Play Centres and Vacation Schools. She was practically the only woman speaker of the first rank on her own side, except for the rare appearances in public of Miss Violet Markham, so that the Branches of the Anti-Suffrage League formed in the great towns were all anxious to have her to speak, and she felt bound to accept a certain number of such invitations. She went to Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield in 1909; she led a deputation to Mr. Asquith in 1910 and another at a more critical moment in December, 1911; she wrote a series of articles in the Standard on “The Case against Women’s Suffrage” in October, 1911, besides carrying on an active correspondence in The Times, as occasion arose, against Lady Maclaren, Mrs. Fawcett, or Mr. Zangwill; she spoke at Newcastle, Bristol and Oxford early in 1912, and at a great meeting in the Queen’s Hall, just before the fiasco of the Liberal Reform Bill, in January, 1913. At all these meetings the prospect of Suffragette interruptions weighed upon her like a nightmare. The militant agitation was, however, a very potent source of reinforcement to the Anti-Suffrage ranks throughout this period, so that although Mrs. Ward groaned as a citizen at every new device the Militants put forth for plaguing the community, she rejoiced as an Anti-Suffragist. The most definite annoyance to which she herself was subjected by the Suffragettes occurred at Bristol, where she addressed a huge meeting in February, 1912, in company with Lord Cromer and Mr. Charles Hobhouse, M.P. A devoted lady had found a place of concealment among the organ-pipes behind the platform, from which post of vantage, as the Bristol Times put it, “she heard an excellent recital of music at close quarters, and for a few minutes addressed a vast meeting in a muffled voice which uttered indistinguishable words.” She and a number of her fellows were ejected after the usual unhappy scrimmage, and Mrs. Ward and Mr. Hobhouse were allowed to proceed. But whether in consequence of this or as a mere coincidence, the Bristol Branch became one of the strongest of the League’s off-shoots, devoting itself, to Mrs. Ward’s intense satisfaction, to much useful work on local and municipal bodies.