It was a great relief to the exhausted fifty-five-year-old Emmeline when she was
allowed to travel openly to France on 15 August 1913, the day that parliament
was prorogued, and spend two months with Christabel; the previous day Sylvia
had again been released, good news that brought her mother some cheer.
Emmeline was in desperate need of a cure and rest after the struggles of the last
five months; her time with Christabel would also give them the opportunity to
plan the autumn campaign.
Christabel was staying at the fashionable watering-place of Trouville, as the
guest of the wealthy American suffragist Mrs. Belmont, and Emmeline and
Annie Kenney joined her there. As international figures, early icons of the
twentieth century, Emmeline and Christabel particularly attracted media atten-
tion. ‘We are here for a holiday and a rest’, said Emmeline to persistent
interviewers, ‘and we wish to be left alone.’ One reporter found them there
sitting in the casino gardens, prettily dressed, with no outward sign that they
were ‘the trio that defied a Cabinet and made a Government look foolish’.
Christabel had a French look about her in her pink frock with a fetching hat to
match and a red jacket, but Emmeline was dressed all in black, relieved only by
the trimming of a large white lace collar. ‘It was noticeable that Mrs. Pankhurst
has picked up wonderfully as the result of her rest’, the reporter continued.
‘When she arrived here she was gaunt and haggard, the result of the “Cat-and-
Mouse” treatment in England. Now she is bright and beaming, and, judging
from her smiling face, one would imagine that she had never seen the inside of
an English prison.’ After some refreshment, the three strolled along the sea
front and paid a visit to the gambling saloon where a crowd was standing by a
table intent upon a game of ‘petits chevaux’. The three women watched the
players, Emmeline wanting to know ‘what the little horses were for, and how
the money was staked’. With a smile, Christabel initiated her mother into the
mysteries of the game, and the trio subsequently left ‘without having ventured a
franc upon the hazard’.^1
By early September Christabel had returned to Paris while Emmeline was
staying at the Hotel des Thermes in Bagnoles de l’Orne. From here Emmeline
wrote to Helen Archdale in early September since Adela had not settled in well
nancy kaufman
(Nancy Kaufman)
#1