the Halifax women ... Good luck to you. Get a good Branch started.’^27
Sometimes her letters to Union members convey an anxiety about whether a
planned visit has been efficiently arranged. In 10 December 1907, she wrote to
Caroline Phillips, ‘I expect to be in Aberdeen on Thursday the 12th. I leave
Kings X at 10am arriving Aberdeen 10.5pm. ... I don’t know whether you can
make arrangements for me to stay with friends. If not perhaps you will take a
room for me at the hotel.’^28
With so much travelling, preparation and encouragement to be given,
Emmeline must have looked forward to spending Christmas that year with
Christabel, Sylvia and Mary Gawthorpe in Teignmouth, mid Devon, in the
vicinity of a pending by-election. Initially, Sylvia had refused when her mother
asked her to come since she had recently received a letter which aroused in her
‘a sudden storm of misery’; it was probably from Hardie, who was abroad,
possibly suggesting that they should no longer see each other. Not wanting to be
alone, the sensitive Sylvia decided to join her family, arriving on Christmas Eve
when a furious gale was blowing. But the merriment of the three women who
greeted her was not suited to Sylvia’s melancholy. On the day after Christmas
she insisted on returning to London.^29 It is highly probable that Emmeline did
not know that her old friend, Keir Hardie, now fifty-one years old, and her
daughter, just half his age, were lovers although she must have become aware of
the relationship at some time during the subsequent years. In 1913, Ethel
Smyth told Emmeline, ‘Sylvia will never be a amazon. If it isn’t J. K. H. it will
be someone else.’^30 But, at Christmas 1907, these matters were not spoken
about and Sylvia merely felt her ‘mother’s disgust’ when she left Teignmouth
early.^31 Such behaviour, plus Sylvia’s continual allegiance to the ILP, undoubt-
edly helped Emmeline to form an impression of her second daughter as difficult.
She could be a possessive mother, brooking no dissent from her views, perhaps a
particularly Victorian trait.^32
The turbulent Newton Abbot by-election that Emmeline fought early in
1908 was made worse by severe frost and an infrequent train service. The
hostility shown towards her and her co-worker, Nellie Martel, erupted into
violence on 18 January when the result was announced in favour of the
Conservative candidate. Both women were attacked by a group of young male
clay-cutters who had supported the ousted Liberal candidate whom the two had
opposed. Pelted with clay, rotten eggs and snowballs packed with stones,
Emmeline and Nellie ran to the haven of a grocer’s shop and then out through
the back door only to find the hooligans waiting for them. While Emmeline and
the grocer’s wife managed to wrestle the half-fainting Nellie from the man who
was beating her and push her back into the safety of the shop, Emmeline was
not so fortunate. As she stood on the threshold of the door, a staggering blow
fell on the back of her head, throwing her to the muddy ground. Momentarily
stunned, and with her ankle badly bruised, she regained consciousness and
found a silent ring of men around her. Afraid that she might be placed in an
empty barrel nearby, Emmeline courageously asked, ‘Are none of you men?’
AUTOCRAT OF THE WSPU?