but Harben said I was too deeply suspected, apparently as a friend of the
Lawrences’.^32 Annie Kenney expressed her disapproval of Sylvia’s tactics by
sending a circular letter to all the WSPU branches, strongly objecting to the use
of her name, without her knowledge, and disputing some of the facts and views
Sylvia had espoused. ‘Surely, the I.L.P. is scarcely an organisation for us to take
our example by! It belongs to the Labour Party, which is one of the political
failures of the day. ... It is to Mrs. Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst that we
look for guidance in the constructive and political work of the W.S.P.U.’^33
Theodora Bonwick, a member of the Hornsey WSPU, wrote to Sylvia that she
was ‘very cut up about it all’. She cautioned, ‘It seems to me that far too much
fuss has been made over a small matter’, and explained that she had also written
to ‘Miss Christabel ... for I cannot bear to think of any further division in our
ranks, of what our enemies would think & our members feel.’ She begged Sylvia
not to take any action until Emmeline had returned from the USA but ‘to lie
low a little while’ so that the public could not make anything of ‘what must
surely be but a passing trifle’.^34 But the matter was not a passing trifle; it
involved fundamental differences between the two sisters in regard to political
perspectives and to tactics for winning votes for women, fuelled by their sisterly
rivalry. On 27 November, Christabel, the elder sister and Chief Organiser of the
WSPU, wrote a stern letter to Sylvia, warning, ‘There is room for everybody in
the world, but conflicting views and divided counsels inside the WSPU there
cannot be.’^35
Emmeline, on the Majestic, due to arrive in Plymouth on 4 December, knew
that she might be rearrested and thus prevented from speaking to Sylvia; in the
event of this happening, she asked Rheta to undertake the task for her, of
bringing Sylvia into line. Christabel, isolated in Paris, had a nagging doubt that
Sylvia might twist their mother around her finger. As Ethel Smyth, staying at
the Tewfik Palace Hotel in Helouan, was later to explain to the anxious
Emmeline whom she affectionately addressed as ‘My darling Em’:
I think C’s one preoccupation – only half a one! – was lest Sylvia
should get round your maternal heart re their differences of opinion!!
While I was in Paris ... I couldn’t help reminding C that I had always
said that, given S’s brain formation or something she would never fall
into line & would always be a difficulty, given the fact that C is not on
the spot. Sylvia will never be an Amazon. If it isn’t J.K.H. [Keir
Hardie] it will be someone else.^36On the day before the Majesticarrived in Plymouth, Emmeline wrote to Mrs.
Belmont. She made no mention of her family concerns but expressed her ‘affec-
tionate admiration’ for all her American hostess had done to make the tour so
successful. ‘You are doing a unique work in New York for women & I often
wished that Christabel could see & appreciate it as I know she would.’ After
expressing the hope that Mrs. Belmont would find time to come to Europe and
OUSTING OF SYLVIA AND A FRESH START FOR ADELA