could hold her composure in public as she struggled privately to control the
overwhelming heartbreak about Harry’s death that threatened to submerge her.
On 3 February 1910 she wrote to Elizabeth Robins:
Forgive me for not writing to you sooner & believe that the delay does
not mean that I do not value your dear letter of sympathy.
In the time of self reproach for things left undone & bitter regret for
what might have been perhaps prevented had I rightly understood your
letter has given me comfort.
I am sticking to my work as best I can. I dare not give myself up to
grief it would be selfish & hurtful in every way.^63Three days later, Emmeline confessed to Elizabeth, ‘Work is the only cure for
the thoughts I find so uncontrollable just now.’ She was busy planning ‘missions
to women’, which would be held all over the country to rouse women to demand
the vote. Emmeline explained that she had returned recently from Liverpool
where she had spent a morning with the newly released Selina Martin and Elsie
Howey. ‘Selina Martin’s story is a dreadful one. They are both much shaken by
the horrible experience.’^64 When speaking at a large meeting at Liverpool’s Sun
Hall, Emmeline had expressed the hope that the early release of the two women
indicated an ‘amnesty’ on the part of the government. While warning that the
by-election anti-government policy would continue unless there was a promise
of a women’s enfranchisement measure in the King’s Speech, she hoped the time
had come when prison would be unnecessary and the methods ‘which women
themselves held so obnoxious’ had done their work.^65
The Conciliation Committee, with Henry Brailsford as its secretary and Lord
Lytton, brother of Constance, as its chair, drew up a Women’s Franchise Bill
that was deliberately drafted along narrow lines in order to win the support of
the Conservatives. Thus it did not seek to give the parliamentary vote to
women on equal terms with men, but to extend it to women possessed of a
household qualification or of a £10 occupation qualification; however, a wife
could not be qualified in respect of the same property as her husband.^66 All the
women’s suffrage societies decided to support the bill, at least in public.
However, since widows and spinsters would be favoured under these terms,
women lodgers excluded and relatively few wives and working-class women
given the vote, not all suffragists were wildly supportive. While speaking in the
West of England, Emmeline, wisely, voiced her reservations in private to Henry
Nevinson; she also explained that she had told Brailsford of her objections, but
that he had ‘overborne’ her.^67
This trip to the West of England, one among many that included ‘women’s
missions’ as well as WSPU gatherings, brought Emmeline some comfort since
she met up again with the WSPU Organiser for the region, Annie Kenney.
Emmeline’s own mother had died that spring and her death, coming so soon
after Harry’s, added to her deep sorrow. Although Mrs. Goulden had had a
PERSONAL SORROW AND FORTITUDE