George V, asking for an audience; the unusual request had been refused, on the
advice of the Home Secretary, McKenna, who argued that it was his duty to so
advise since the request had come from a person under sentence of penal servi-
tude who was openly defying the judgment of the court. A demonstration to
gain entrance to Buckingham Palace now seemed the only alternative to
Emmeline who was determined to recover her health in time for the event.
On 21 April she wrote to Ethel again, hoping she would be fit for the day. ‘I
have been up twice. ... This wretched anaemic heart is all the trouble.’ Poor
heart or not, Emmeline still had to do some of her WSPU duties while conva-
lescing. ‘Suffragette Week’ was soon to begin, a time when WSPU members
were urged to increase the circulation of their newspaper, and Emmeline had
been busy composing her message. ‘Oh dear, why do I always feel as if I were in
the dentist’s chair when I try to write?’ she commented to Ethel. ‘Pity the
sorrows of a poor agitator! I can’t speak my mind for they won’t let me speak,
and I can’t write it!! It is indeed a case of being driven to “deeds not words”!’^27
The anguished Ethel had protested to Christabel about her mother’s trip to East
Fife, knowing that it was too much, too soon, and had received a scolding reply
from Emmeline. Ethel promised Emmeline that she would not remonstrate to
Christabel again, but pointed out that ‘to court a break down seems to me
simply stupid – & I still can’t understand why youdid it – as I do so trust your
common sense as a rule’. Ethel continued, ‘You know, Em, you need not explain
to me that you must fight. ... And of course I shan’t write to C. about it again
... being only glad I did, all the same.’ Despite being emphatic about not apolo-
gising for what she had done, Ethel could not bear the pain of upsetting
Emmeline, especially since she knew her friend was likely to face yet another
imprisonment. She ended her letter with a loving apology. ‘Darling I’m so sorry
you should be so put out about my writing to C. – But it’s over now.’^28
Emmeline, for her part, entreated Ethel not to worry so much and to remember
that she was ‘always all right, warranted to come out on top of every thing; in
fact a cork’.^29
Still a ‘mouse’ on the run, who had not returned to prison on 21 March as
her licence stipulated, the fugitive Emmeline sought haven where she could
find it. In early May she moved to a county retreat ‘so remote’, she informed
Ethel, ‘that it seems made on purpose for my purpose. ... It is furnished hardly
at all, but has the essentials, bath, with hot and cold water, and good fireplaces.’
Here, she explained, under the watchful eye of a female attendant and a body-
guard of one, she and Annie Kenney rested ‘on two camp beds, taking an open
air cure’ on an upstairs porch. ‘Already I feel a different being’, Emmeline
confided. ‘Soon I shall be able to write to you about my next resting place, but
will not do so till I am safely installed there.’^30 But Ethel remained uneasy. She
wrote again on 6 May saying that she understood and accepted Emmeline’s
insistence that she had to go on fighting her three-year sentence, but her main
concern was for her health and for the hard, calculating way in which
Christabel was using her mother to bear the brunt of the militant policy:
FUGITIVE