& we shall all become more effective than we have hitherto been’. Emmeline
closed her letter with warm greetings. ‘Christabel joins me in love & hopes that
your cold of which Miss Smyth writes is now better. Much love Mother.’^65
But Sylvia would not be placated. ‘The East End Federation of the
Suffragettes’ was the title of her organisation, a decision, she claimed, in which
she took no part but was made by the members. Their colours were to be the old
white, purple and green, with the addition of red. Emmeline was furious.
Remembering the naughty little girl who would not eat her cold lumpy
porridge, she sent her thirty-one-year-old daughter a scolding:
You are unreasonable, always have been & I fear always will be. I
suppose you were made so!
I enclose the statement we mean to insert in ‘The Suffragette’ and
send to the Press. Had you chosen a name which we could approve we
could have done much to launch you & advertise your society by
name.
Nowyou must take your own way of doing so. I am sorry but you
make your own difficulties by an incapacity to look at situations from
other people’s point of view as well as your own. Perhaps in time you
will learn the lessons that we all have to learn in life.
With love
Mother^66After this angry exchange, Emmeline and Sylvia drifted further apart and seem
to have had little contact with each other.
On 26 January, Emmeline wired Adela, asking her to come to Paris in a
couple of days time. A short time before, Adela had been in Locarno where
Annie Kenney had visited her, bringing a reprimand from Emmeline and
Christabel about the way she had handled an incident in Milan when a reporter
had assumed that the ‘Miss Pankhurst’ was Christabel. Annie had already
written to Adela, asking her to promise not to speak in England again, and
repeated the request; an indignant and angry Adela made no such promise.^67
Neither did Adela accept the invitation from Sylvia to work with her in her
East End group, whose connection with the WSPU had just been severed. ‘I
refused at once’, recollected Adela, ‘seeing that the E.L.F. was in opposition to
mother and Christabel.’^68
Christabel, however, did not know that the unpredictable Adela felt this way
and suspected her younger sister might join forces with Sylvia, and form a rival
faction to the WSPU.^69 She shared her concerns with Emmeline who also
desperately wanted to solve the ‘problem’ of her restless, unemployed daughter,
and had decided that Adela should have a fresh start in life in Australia, the
homeland of suffragist Vida Goldstein. ‘I hope A will take the right attitude
about all this’, wrote an anxious Emmeline to Helen Archdale. ‘We must do
what we feel is best for her & all concerned. I have written to ... Miss
OUSTING OF SYLVIA AND A FRESH START FOR ADELA