each other, wondering why we had been so troubled. ... Neither of us
ever forgot that dawn.^28Ethel dressed in a mannish style that evoked an androgynous appearance and
being by temperament an enthusiast for any cause she espoused, eagerly
embraced the colours of the WSPU in her everyday dress, usually with results
that only drew attention to her ‘ill-conceived deviancy’.^29 As Sylvia Pankhurst
observed, Ethel Smyth had ‘little about her which was feminine’. Her features,
which were clean cut, were ‘neither manly nor womanly, her thin hair drawn
plainly aside, her speech clear in articulation, and incisive rather than melo-
dious, with a racy wit’. Wearing a small, mannish hat, old and plain-cut country
clothes, hard worn by weather and usage, ‘she would don a tie of the brightest
purple, white and green, or some hideous purple cotton jacket, or other oddity
in the W.S.P.U. colours she was so proud of, which shone out from her incon-
gruously, like a new gate to old palings’.^30 Vicinus comments that Ethel Smyth
never referred to herself as a ‘lesbian’ in any of her seven volumes of autobio-
graphical writings, even though she foregrounded her passionate cultes, as she
termed them, for aristocratic, mothering women.^31 The beautiful, elegant and
feminine Emmeline Pankhurst fitted the mould. Ethel fell in love with her,
attracted by her ‘authority’ as ‘master’.^32 But her account of their friendship is
not just that of a ‘soldier’s view of her general’ but that of a ‘failed love affair’, as
Marcus tellingly puts it.^33
Although some historians suggest that Ethel and Emmeline were involved in
a lesbian relationship, it is highly unlikely that they were lovers in any physical
sense; Emmeline was too much the politician to risk the scandal of such an
involvement and Ethel often developed passions for women (and men) that
were not reciprocated.^34 And, surprisingly, historians have often ignored what
Ethel herself notes in her memoir, that she fled to Egypt, after devoting her
promised two years to the women’s cause, in order to escape the ‘combined pull
of the suffrage and human affection’, namely her feelings for Emmeline.^35 For
Emmeline, her close friendship with Ethel Smyth, coming so soon after her
sister’s death, fulfilled a need in her for human warmth and helped to lift the fog
of bereavement. The two women had much in common. Both were fifty-three
years old; both were fiery and dramatic in temperament; both were strong willed
and determined, and both were fighters and pioneers in a man-made world.
Ethel Smyth, one of the few women composers of any note, frequently
complained that her music was not treated fairly by the critics since it was
regarded as the work of a woman.^36 Flamboyant and theatrical, used to
performing on a stage, the spectacle, songs, and ceremonies of the WSPU held a
particular appeal for Ethel.^37 Now, in this year of the truce on militancy, she
threw herself into teaching as many suffragettes as possible her ‘March of the
women’ and conducting concerts of her own works.
A few days after the Census boycott, Emmeline made a return visit to
Ireland, speaking to enthusiastic audiences, although, as Murphy emphasises,
THE TRUCE RENEWED