With the wild applause of the previous night’s meeting still ringing in her
ears, Emmeline set sail on 1 December 1909, the day her ‘right of petition’ case
was heard in London. As we saw in the last chapter, her case, along with that of
Evelina Haverfield, was dismissed, with costs. Both women had already
instructed their solicitor that they would refuse to pay costs, and so Emmeline
knew that a prison sentence awaited her. Perhaps this weighty matter, together
with her worries about Harry, accounted for her change of moods on her voyage
home. Alice Morgan Wright, a young American sculptor, travelling on the
same liner as Emmeline and Dorothy Pethick, confessed to a friend:
You should have seen her [Mrs Pankhurst] at one moment huddled up
in her deck chair with the sorrows of the universe marked out all over
her face, and the next ... the four of us hoppity skipping up and down
the ... deck at top speed! Needless to say these little episodes occurred
at night when the decks were otherwise deserted and only Orion & co
to bear witness.^40However, when Emmeline arrived in England on 8 December, on the
Mauretania, she learnt that some unknown friend had paid her fine of £5, rather
than see her sent to prison.^41 She did not question this kind gesture since she
now heard the bitter truth from which both Sylvia and Christabel had tried to
protect her, namely that Harry would never walk again and that his future was
bleak.
Christabel, as the eldest and favourite daughter, felt a special responsibility
about the conveyance of such news, explaining to Dr. Mills, ‘As to Mother, I
want things to be made as easy as possible. At the very best it will be very
terrible I am afraid.’^42 Emmeline was stunned when she was told that her only
son would be permanently an invalid. ‘He would be better dead!’ was her
despairing cry.^43 It was decided that Sylvia, who was less active in the suffrage
movement than her sisters, would stay with Harry until he was stronger, and
then resume her artistic career. The following evening, on 9 December,
Emmeline spoke at a welcome home meeting at the Albert Hall.^44 Earlier that
day, Charlotte Marsh had been released from Winson Green Gaol, after serving
a three months’ sentence; she had been forcibly fed by tube 139 times.^45
The Pankhurst family, determined to do all they could for Harry’s welfare,
were grateful when some suffragist friends, who were going to stay in India for a
year, placed at their disposal their house and servants. The convalescent Harry
was to be moved there the following day when his old bladder illness returned. A
worried Dr. Mills called in consultants who confirmed that there could be no
hope of recovery; Harry might live, at the most, for three weeks. Emmeline could
not believe that her only son was dying; neither could she bring herself to tell
him the diagnosis of the doctors.^46 All the excitement of the women’s movement
that fired Emmeline was drained from her; she hovered by her boy’s bedside, ‘dull
as spent ashes’.^47 She attended some WSPU functions, as was necessary, and
PERSONAL SORROW AND FORTITUDE