Pethick would sail on the Oceanicon 4 October. ‘I shall be very glad to see your
welcoming face when we land.’^84
Two days before her departure, Emmeline chaired an enthusiastic afternoon
meeting at the London Pavilion after which she hurried to Woking where Ethel
Smyth chaired her evening address. The meeting closed in a now familiar way,
with Lady Sybil Smith leading the audience in a rendering of ‘The march of the
women’.^85
Ethel was amongst the small party of friends – which included the Princess
Duleep Singh, Lady Constance Lytton, Mabel Tuke, Kitty and Alfred Marshall,
Victor Duval, Annie Kenney and Emily Wilding Davison – who greeted
Emmeline at Waterloo station on that grey Wednesday morning of 4 October
when she arrived with Sylvia and Dorothy Pethick to catch the 9.45 a.m. boat
train to Southampton. She was wearing a small felt hat, tied round with a purple
and green shot chiffon scarf, and a dark blue serge suit onto which Constance
Lytton pinned a sprig of ivy geranium. Photographed byThe Standardand inter-
viewed by one of its reporters, the WSPU leader confidently asserted, ‘We mean
to have the vote next year.’ Then the two travellers, together with Ethel and
Sylvia, boarded the train which steamed out of the station floating from the
front of its engine a tricolour in purple, white and green. At Southampton docks
the small group was met by local WSPU members who presented their Union
leader with a bouquet in the colours. As Sylvia and Ethel stood on the quay,
waving goodbye, the ship’s siren blew loudly. Sylvia later wrote that the ‘adored
Mrs. Pankhurst, smiling and waving to us from the deck, was forgotten by the
musician, who snatched a note-book from her pocket and scribbled eagerly,
exclaiming in her ecstasy: “A gorgeous noise!” ’^86
The Pond Lyceum Bureau gave advance notice that anyone who wished to
book Mrs. Pankhurst for a lecture engagement were advised to apply early, her
subjects being ‘The triumph of women’s suffrage in England’, ‘The English
woman’s fight for the vote’ and ‘The militant movement’.^87 On the day of her
arrival in New York, 13 October, where custom officials allowed onto the quay
just four people from the great crowd that had gathered to greet her, Emmeline
wrote to Mrs. Page, Vice President of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association,
accepting the invitation to say in her home. ‘I did not answer your very kind
invitation in England because I had very little idea of my engagements until I
landed here.’ Emmeline was especially delighted to hear that the state of
California had just voted to grant women equal suffrage with men. ‘Is it not
splendid?’^88
Wherever she went, Emmeline found a newly awakened women’s movement
in the USA which had been spurred into action partly through the influence of
the WSPU. A Women’s Political Union (WPU) had been formed with the
same colours as those of the WSPU, and purple, white and green decorations
adorned the hall in the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, when
Emmeline gave her inaugural speech on 17 October. As she made her appear-
ance, the roof rang with applause that lasted for a full five minutes; then Harriot
THE TRUCE RENEWED