This chapter is devoted to the political and public life of Elsie Inglis. It can be written in a fortunate hour. The ‘common cause’ to which she gave so much of her life has now been won. The tumult and the turmoil are now hushed in peace and security. The age which began in John Stuart Mill’s ‘Subjection of Women’ has ended in the Representation of the People’s Bill. It is possible to review the political period of the generation which produced Elsie Inglis, and her comrades in the struggle against the disqualification of sex, without raising any fresh controversy.
We may safely say that Dr. Inglis was one of the finest types of women produced by the ideals and inspiring purposes of the generation to which she belonged. She was born when a woman was the reigning Sovereign, and when her influence and power were at its height. Four years after her birth the Reform Bill of 1868 was to make the first claim for women as citizens in the British Parliament. The Married Woman’s Property Act, and the laws affecting Divorce, had recognised them as something else than the goods and chattels or the playthings and bondwomen of the ‘predominant partner.’ Mary Somerville had convinced the world that a woman could have a brain. Timidly, and yet resolutely, women were claiming a higher education, and Universities were slamming to their doors, with a petty horde of maxims claimed to be based on divine authority. Women pioneers mounted platforms and asserted ‘Rights,’ and qualified for jealously closed professions—always, from the first, upheld and companied by ‘Greathearts,’ men few but chosen, who, like John Inglis, recognised that no community was the stronger for keeping its people, be they black or white, male or female, in any form of ignorance or bonded serfdom.
As Elsie grew up, she found herself walking in the new age. Doors were set ajar, if not fully opened. The first wave of ridicule and of conscientious objections had spent its force. A girl’s school might play games decorously and not lose all genteel deportment. Girls might show a love of knowledge, and no longer be hooted as blue-stockings. The use of the globes and cross-stitch gave place to learning which might fit them to be educated, and useful members of the community. Ill-health ceased to be considered part of the curse of Eve, to be borne with swooning resignation on the wide sofas of the early Victorian Age. Ignorance and innocence were not recognised as twin sisters, and women, having eaten of the tree of knowledge, looked round a world which prided itself on giving equal justice to all men, and discovered that very often that axiom covered a multitude of sins of injustice against all womankind.
It was through Elsie’s professional life that she learnt to know how often the law was against the woman’s best interests, and it was always in connection with some reform that she longed to initiate, that she expressed a desire for the Vote.
To her Father
‘Glasgow, 1891.
‘Many thanks for your letter about women’s rights. You are ahead of all the world in everything, and they gradually come up into line with you—the Westminster Confession and everything except Home Rule! The amusing thing about women preaching is that they do it, but as it is not in the churches it is not supposed to be in opposition to Paul. They are having lots of meetings in the hall downstairs; every single one of them is addressed by a woman. But, of course, they could not give the same address in a church and with men listening! At Queen Margaret’s here, they are having a course of lectures on the Old Testament from the lecturer on that subject in the University, but then, of course it is not “Divinity.”’
The opponents to Woman’s Franchise admittedly occupied an illogical position, and Elsie’s abounding sense of humour never failed to make use of all the opportunities of laughter which the many absurdities of the long fight evoked. No one with that sense as highly developed could ever turn cynical or bitter. It was only when cruelty and injustice came under her ken that a fine scorn dominated her thought and speech. She gives to her father some of these instances:—
‘I got a paper to sign to thank the M.P.’s who voted for Sir A. Rollitt’s Woman’s Suffrage Bill. I got it filled up in half a minute. I wish she had sent half a dozen. There is no question among women who have to work for themselves about wanting the suffrage. It is the women who are safe and sound in their own drawing-rooms who don’t see what on earth they want it for.
‘I have just been so angry! A woman came in yesterday very ill. A. took down her case, and thought she would have to have an operation. Then her husband arrived, and calmly said she was to go home, because he could not look after the children. So I said that if she went she went on her own responsibility, for I would not give my consent. He said the baby was ill. I said, “Well, take it to a hospital.” Then it turned out it was not ill, but had cried last night. I said I saw very well what it was, that he had had a bad night, and had just determined that his wife should have the bad night to-night, even though she was ill, instead of him. He did look ashamed of himself, selfish cad! Helpless creature, he could not even arrange for some one to come in and take charge of those children unless his wife went home to do it. She had got some one yesterday, but he had had a row with her. I gave him my mind pretty clearly, but I went in just now to find she had gone. I said she was stupid. So one woman said, “It was not ’er fault, Miss; ’e would have it.”
‘I wonder when married women will learn they have any other duty in the world than to obey their husbands. They were not even her children—they were step-children. You don’t know what trouble we have here with the husbands. They will come in the day before the operation, after the woman has been screwed up to it, and worry them with all sorts of outside things, and want them home when they are half dying. Any idea that anybody is to be thought of but themselves never enters their lordly minds, and the worst of it is these stupid idiots of women don’t seem to think so either: “’E wants it, Miss,” settles the question. I always say—“It does not matter one fig what he wants. The question is what you want.” They don’t seem to think they have any right to any individual existence. Well, I feel better now, but I wish I could have scragged that beast. I have to go to the wards now!
‘We had another row with a tyrannical husband. I did not know whether to be most angry with him or his fool of a wife. She had one of the most painful things anybody can have, an abscess in her breast. It was so bad Miss Webb would not do anything for it in the out-patients’, but said she was to come in at once. The woman said she would go and arrange for somebody to look after her baby and come back at six. At six appeared her lord and master. “I cannot let my wife come in, as the baby is not old enough to be left with anybody else.” Did you ever hear anything so monstrous? That one human being is to settle for another human being whether she is to be cured or not. I asked him whether he knew how painful it was, and if he had to bear the pain. Miss Webb appealed to him, that he was responsible for his wife’s health, for he seemed to assume he was not. Both grounds were far above his intellect, either his responsibility or his wife’s rights. He just stood there like an obstinate mule. We told him it was positively brutal, and that he was to go at once and get a good doctor home with him if he would not let her in. Of course, he did not.
‘What a fool the woman must have been to have educated him up to that. There really was no necessity for her to stay out because he said she was to—poor thing. Miss Webb and I have struck up a great friendship as the result. After we had both fumed about for some time, I said, “Well, the only way to educate that kind of man, or that kind of woman, is to get the franchise.” Miss Webb said, “Bravo, bravo,” then I found she was a great franchise woman, and has been having terrible difficulties with her L.W.A. here.’
The writer may add one more to these instances. Suffrage meetings were of a necessity much alike, and the round of argument was much the same. Spade-work had to be done among men and women who had the mental outlook of these patients and the overlords of their destiny. Meetings were rarely enthusiastic or crowded, and it was often like speaking into the heart of a pincushion. To one of these meetings Dr. Inglis came by train straight from her practice. In memory’s halls all meetings are alike, but one stands out, where Dr. Inglis illustrated her argument by a fact in her day’s experience. The law does not permit an operation on a married woman without her husband’s consent. That day the consent had been refused, and the woman was to be left to lingering suffering from which only death could release her. The voice and the thrill which pervaded speaker and audience as Dr. Inglis told the tale and pointed the moral, remains an abiding memory.
Her politics were Liberal, and, what was more remarkable, she was a convinced Home Ruler. Those who believe that women in politics naturally take the line of the home, may find here a very strong instance of the independent mind, producing no rift within the lute that sounded such a perfect note of unison between her and the prevailing influence of her youth. Mr. Inglis had done his work in India, and his politics were of an Imperialist rather than that of a ‘Home Ruler All Round.’ When Mr. Gladstone introduced his Home Rule Bill of 1893, Elsie complains of the obstructive talk in Parliament. Mr. Inglis gently says she seems to wish it passed without discussion. Elsie replies on the points she thinks salient and likely to work, and wonders why they should not commend themselves to sense and not words. The family have recollections of long and not acrimonious debates well sustained on either side.