Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography

Goldstein announcing her probable arrival so all is in train.’^70 At the interview
in Paris, Adela felt that her mother was ‘against’ her. ‘Mother seemed to think I
had not tried to get work and wanted to come into the Movement as
Christabel’s rival. I did not tell her about Sylvia’s offer nor my refusal. Had I
done so, she and Christabel would probably have thought better about me.’
Shattered by the news that her mother, to whom she was devoted, considered
her a failure, a dejected Adela decided not to argue against Emmeline’s well-
meant plan to send her to Melbourne:

She [Emmeline] was facing three years imprisonment and it appeared

to me that the best thing I could do for her was to make myself inde-

pendent of the Movement and of her. I was very miserable, but down

in the bottom of my heart, hope was stirring. I felt that I was not such

a fool or a knave as I had been made out and that in another country I

should find my feet and, happiness, perhaps. Nothing would have

induced me to enter a fight between Sylvia and the rest of the family

and my mother’s action in getting me out of the way was best for

myself and all concerned.^71

Emmeline gave Adela her fare to Australia, some woollen clothing and all the
money she could spare, a mere £20.
Emmeline had exercised iron discipline again, in regard to a member of her
family. As with Sylvia, if there was any suspected challenge to Christabel’s role
in the WSPU and to the policy they had jointly agreed, the price to pay was
expulsion. The women’s cause was above family relationships. Now that the
‘problem’ of Adela had been solved, Emmeline sat down to write to Ethel,
giving her the news:

We are busy getting her ready for the journey ... it is somewhat an

expensive business for me, but I feel it is high time she settled down to

real work if ever she is to do any. Of course now all is settled I have

pangs of maternal weakness, but I harden my heart and have been busy

with domestic cares all this time, sewing for Adela and Christabel.^72

Adela left for Australia, on the Geelong, on 2 February 1914. Vida Goldstein,
whom Adela had met in London three months earlier, invited her to join her in
the women’s movement in that country. Determined not to accept the invita-
tion unless her mother approved, Adela wrote to Emmeline, asking for her
permission. The anxious mother wrote back, giving her blessing, ‘with many
loving words’.^73 Emmeline was never to see her youngest daughter again.

OUSTING OF SYLVIA AND A FRESH START FOR ADELA