about her feelings, the emotional Ethel tried to analyse the character of the
leader of the WSPU, drawing a picture of her as someone who was aloof from
the expressions of human feeling, a being destined to lead great causes whose
heart she had won:
[B]y no sort of possibility however much I might have given myself up
to it could I ever have swept up crowds & groups as you do. ... But you
are the unreadable person because of a particular blend in you which
there is in no one else – a sort of humanity that the egoism of the
musical (or other artistic) specialist puts out of reach. How ever clever
a ‘generale’ you may be, you cannot re-cast your nature. It is a thing like
short & long sight. Your ordinary vision embraces the mass – that’s why
you have always shrunk from personal relations. ... I am the glorious
exception for you – & I think it is the crowning achievement of my life
to have made you love me. And proof of your cleverness to have found
me – & found a new gift in yourself – the friendship you give.
Yes – I also am getting more & more ‘off ’ men. They are so extraor-
dinarily impossible to respect. Sometimes I wonder if it is because they
have always considered themselves ‘easy first’ – ever since they started
that preposterous theory about the rib!^24The news that Emmeline was not fit to speak at Lowestoft that Easter was
kept a secret; Annie Kenney, also a ‘mouse’ staying at Campden Hill Square, or
‘Mouse Castle’ as the suffragettes termed it, offered to take her place. Emmeline
spent the time resting, and occasionally writing to friends, such as Helen
Archdale, giving her the latest news about Adela who had arrived in bustling
Melbourne on 27 March:
I have had a cable from Adela since she landed & 2 p cs [postcards]
sent en route. I am now anxiously waiting for a letter. I hope all will go
well with her & that she will settle down happily.
After she had really gone I felt very sad & yet I know it is the only
way for her to realise that she is really grown up. We have all treated
her like a little girl.
Life for women is so free & stimulating in Australia that I am sure she
will like it & derive energy from it ... When I hear from Adela I will let
you know. If you get a letter first I know you will do as much for me.^25For some months now, it had been announced that Emmeline would lead a
deputation to the King, on 21 May. ‘We finally resolved on the policy of direct
petition to the king’, she explained, ‘because we had been forced to abandon all
hope of successfully petitioning to his Ministers. Tricked and betrayed at every
turn by the Liberal Government ... [w]e would carry our demand for justice to
the throne of the Monarch.’^26 On 25 February, Emmeline had written to
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