was saluted by the women who dipped and raised their pennants.^59 The sense
of optimism that the Second Conciliation Bill would succeed, together with
the ‘spirit of harmony’ temporarily existing between the militants and constitu-
tionalists, produced a pageant to rival the King’s Coronation Procession, as well
as to question women’s exclusion from it.^60 The leaders of the two main
women’s suffrage groupings, the NUWSS and the WSPU, were both full of
praise for the day. Millicent Garrett Fawcett told Maud Arncliffe Sennett, ‘I
never was surer of anything in my life than that it was the right policy for the
Cause, for the Nat. Union to cooperate in it.’^61 A joyful Emmeline, at a
triumphant WSPU meeting held at the Albert Hall immediately after the
pageant, told her audience:
What does this demonstration of ours mean? It means victory! ... We
have proved that we can combine; we have proved we can put aside all
personal beliefs and all personal objects for a common end; we have
proved that women have great powers of organisation; we have proved
that women have great artistic capacity ... we know that in proving all
these things we have shown that women, alongside with men, are
worthy to build up a humanity that men can never make without our
help.^62Emmeline Pethick Lawrence announced that the WSPU Campaign Fund had
now reached £103,400. The WSPU would never organise such a large-scale
demonstration again; ‘the limit’ of public spectacle had been reached, ‘not just
as a political device, but as a practical possibility’.^63
Emmeline needed a rest; the hard slog of campaigning, participating in
processions, and giving rallying speeches to her followers was taking its toll on
her health. Christabel stepped in and took her mother’s place at one meeting
out of London while Emmeline spent some time in the country relaxing and
visiting a sick friend. Immediately she returned to London on Sunday, 25 June,
she tried to contact the sculptor Alice Morgan Wright who was visiting
England and casting a head of the Union leader. Disappointed to find that
Alice had returned to France, Emmeline wrote an affectionate letter to her the
next day explaining why she had stayed in her country retreat rather than
return to the metropolis for the weekend:
As for Friday, staying away was a matter of common sense. I found on
Wednesday evening that I could not get a cab to the station & had 3
miles to walk in the rain. The trains were uncertain & very crowded &
when [I] arrived in London I should have to fight my way on foot, with
a bag to carry, through crowds out to view the illuminations, from
Waterloo station to the hotel. It seemed a foolish thing to attempt
such a task so I gave it up & remained quietly in the country.THE TRUCE RENEWED