mademoiselle would teach the girls to converse in the French language but it
was not very successful. The children did not like her because if they were
naughty she would lock them in a dark cupboard, a particular ordeal for Mary
and Joan who, unlike Kathleen, were frightened of the dark. The dislike of their
governess intensified when, one day, she squashed a mouse behind the very
same cupboard.^25
Emmeline, on a lecture tour in the USA, arrived in Pittsburgh in late
January 1921. It was here she heard the unexpected, delayed news that her
brother, Herbert, had died one month previously. Weeping in sorrow, she wrote
on 28 January to Ethel Smyth:
My heart yearns for the few I love to-day, for I have just heard that my
dear brother Herbert, whom you met, died on 28th December, and was
laid on New Year’s Day beside my sister Mary. ... It is a dreadful blow
that he, so much younger than I am, should go first. There was never
any one like him, so unselfish, so always ready to help, never claiming
anything for himself. ... To-day I feel life and its burden almost intoler-
able and yet one must go on to the end. Thank God dear old Lady Pine
is with me. ... If only I had been better to him, more with him, made
him feel how much I loved him, my heart would not be so sore ... Oh
the unavailing tears!^26Emmeline now had few relatives for whom she cared deeply. There were the
adopted children and, of course, her eldest daughter, Christabel, but her two
other daughters, Sylvia and Adela, were supporting the communism she so
hated. Sylvia, according to her biographer, had now become ‘a political pariah’
to her mother while Adela, who had recently given birth to a baby girl, rarely
kept in contact.^27 With a heavy heart, Emmeline threw herself into her
lecturing. On 7 March she wrote to Ethel Smyth from the Hotel Pennsylvania,
New York, where she was staying for about one month, full of hope that she
could earn enough to purchase ‘one of these dear little houses in Victoria with 1
to 3 acres of garden and orchard, where I could live happily and comfortably
with the babes, ekeing [sic] out my income with a few weeks lecturing and a
little writing.’^28 Emmeline cherished the dream that Christabel and little
Elizabeth would come and live with her. Then suddenly, in an abrupt way,
Emmeline ended her close friendship with Ethel Smyth.
The blunt Ethel Smyth, not known for her tact, had written to Emmeline,
telling her about a testimonial fund that had been set up in England, in tribute
to the work that she and Christabel had done for the women’s cause. A number
of Emmeline’s old friends, such as Lady Constance Lytton, Dr. Flora Murray,
Sybil Rhondda, Kitty Marshall, May Billinghurst, Ada Wright, Barbara Wylie
and Elsie Bowerman had been involved in the fund raising which reached only
£3,000 rather than the hoped for £10,000. Although the intention was to spend
the money on purchasing a country house which could be presented to
LECTURER IN NORTH AMERICA