Mrs. Drummond made me feel faith in the woman’s movement, her type was most lovable, full of daring for the enemies of woman, full of patience in working for them, full of the most noble kind of humility in her reverence for them.
Christabel Pankhurst was the sunrise of the woman’s movement, I cannot describe her in any other way. The glow of her great vitality and the joy of her being took hold of the movement and made it gladness. Yet, her nature being so essentially a woman’s, there was a vein of tenderness throughout her speech, and her strength lay in her steadfast, resourceful and brilliant intellect.
With the exception of declining to give a pledge to keep the peace for twelve months, a pledge which these women were quite unable to accept, they had been guilty of no offence. Mrs. Pankhurst and Mrs. Drummond were each sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, and Christabel Pankhurst to ten weeks’ (two and a half months) imprisonment. It was like darkness when these three were in prison. Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and Sylvia Pankhurst, Christabel’s sister, kept the weekly meetings going at the Queen’s Hall in a splendid way. Sylvia is an artist by profession and an artist at heart, but whenever the women’s movement wants her she is there for its bidding. She looked all that is most modest and humble, but speaking seemed to come as a second nature to her as to everyone of the Pankhursts, and at times I could not have believed, but for having heard and seen, the splendid political speech which came from that young girl. During this time I lived in the country and seldom came to London. I needed no converting now and my only wish was to convince my mother.
CHAPTER III
A DEPUTATION TO THE PRIME MINISTER
Throughout this month of January, 1909, I became convinced that I should be justified in offering myself as a member of the next deputation to the Prime Minister to demand the removal of women’s disabilities to the Parliamentary franchise. I became a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union, and on January 28 I wrote to Mrs. Pethick Lawrence offering myself for the deputation. I did not tell anybody but her of my decision. On the 30th I received her answer, accepting my offer.
On February 24 I went up to London from Homewood, without telling mother of the plan and actually without saying good-bye to her, as she went out to the village before I started. I wrote her the following letter at King’s Cross Station, but did not post it till later in the day:—
“Wednesday, February 24, 1909.
“My Angel Mother,—I don’t know whether I shall post this to you or see you first. I want to have a letter ready.
“Don’t be startled or afraid. I have something to tell you which—with the help of recent presentiments—you, I know, are half expecting to hear.
“If you ever see this letter it will mean that after joining the deputation I have been arrested and shall not see you again until I have been to Holloway. For months I have been planning this letter to you, but now that the time has come, it is not any easier to write for that. Of course, my hope has been all along that I should be able to take you into my confidence, that I should have the perhaps all-undeserved yet heaven-like joy of knowing that though you could not share all my views, yet that you would understand why I held them, and, granted these, you would further understand my action and the great sacrifice which I know it means to you. My darling Muddy, you will never know, I trust, the pain it is to have to do this thing without your sympathy and help—with, on the contrary, the certainty that it shocks you and hurts you and makes you suffer in numberless ways. Hardly a day has passed but what I have tried to feel my way with you, tried to convert you—not to my theoretic views, difference there does not matter, but to my intended conduct in connection with them. Every day I have failed. If I decided to do this thing, absolute secrecy was necessary, for, the whole of these police regulations being arbitrarily ordered and special to the case, they would never arrest me, not, I mean, unless I really broke the law, if they knew who I was. Unless I had your sympathy and understanding, it was, of course, hopeless to count on your secrecy. I had two alternatives, to give up the plan, or to keep it and deceive you about it. I chose this last. For your sake I have tried never to tell you an actual lie in words. I have not done this, and that is, perhaps, why you have your suspicions. But to my conscience that is no easier. It was my intention to deceive you, and I have deceived you, and, for all practical purposes, successfully. Once the intention is to deceive, it seems to me not to make any difference how it is done.
“You will be angry. If it could be only that. But you will be hurt through and through. As I write the words their meaning is acute in my mind and heart. You will hardly care to know, but I must tell you what has decided me to take this torturing step.
“Prisons, as you know, have been my hobby. What maternity there lurks in me has for years past been gradually awakening over the fate of prisoners, the deliberate, cruel harm that is done to them, their souls and bodies, the ignorant, exasperating waste of good opportunities in connection with them, till now the thought of them, the yearning after them, turns in me and tugs at me as vitally and irrepressibly as ever a physical child can call upon its mother.
“The moment I got near the Suffragettes the way to this child of mine seemed easy and straight. But I knew the temptation to think this must make me doubly sure of my ground. I have felt from the first that I could not take this woman’s movement merely as an excuse for Holloway. I have waited till my conviction was genuine and deep at every point, and till the opportunity occurred for facing the police regulations in a way possible to my whole nature, temperament, conscience. There are several other things which the Suffragettes do, which I would not and could not do.
“I finally made up my mind in about the middle of January, and soon after wrote to Mrs. Pethick Lawrence. Enclosed is her answer. I had not recently been seeing them, or going to meetings, or in any way specially communicating with them. I took the decision entirely on myself, in no way consulted her nor asked her advice; even had they not accepted me in the deputation I should have joined outside.
“About the physical discomforts part of Holloway, don’t be distressed for that. These are already nothing to what they were. And I am such a muff, what remains of hardship will be wholesome for me—really ‘reformatory’ for me as imprisonment seldom is to others. If I could only know that you will help me face it, it would be nothing to me. It’s my journeying after the hobby that sucks up my soul like a tide, my Nile sources, my Thibet, my Ruvenzori. If you, my splendid Mother, will only help me in spirit that the little spark of Sven Hedin shall not fail in me. I am no hero, but the thought of other travellers’ much worse privations on that road will, I believe, fizzle up my flimsy body enough for what is necessary, and if only I knew you were helping me in your heart I should not, could not, fail, Muddy darling.
“You can’t forgive me now, but perhaps you will some day. Whatever you feel towards me, whatever I do, I shall still be always
“Your most loving and devoted
“Con.
“The account papers, tradesmen addresses, wages paper, are in the lift-up place of desk on dining-room writing table. I expect I shall be away from you a month. The others will cling round you. If I were going a trip abroad you would not resent the separation. In my little warm cupboard nest in Holloway my only thought of the outer world will be of you. I shall try anyhow to get back to you to-night.
“Con.”
I went to 4, Clement’s Inn, lunched there with Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Christabel, Mrs. Pankhurst and Mrs. Tuke; Miss Neal came too. She kindly undertook to post my letter to mother and buy me a brush and comb and toothbrush in case we should be sent to the 1st Division.