Roe were coming to stay for a holiday. Arriving in Montreal on 7 August, en
route to Victoria, Christabel explained that she had no plans to address meet-
ings although she did hope to gather material about the possibilities for British
women in Canada. All the objections that anti-suffragists raised about women’s
suffrage had been disproved, she insisted, and in Quebec, where women still did
not have the provincial vote, the situation would right itself in time. Militant
women in an intensely conservative England had broken open the door, she
explained, making it unnecessary for other women to do what they had to do,
but now was not the time to recall fights of the past. ‘Men and women now
have votes and that is all that is necessary. What they have to do is to forget old
grievances and work together in a spirit of co-operation for the new future that
lies in front of them.’^38
There was great excitement in the Pankhurst household with the arrival of
Aunts Christabel and Grace, and little Elizabeth. Yet the happy but ever restless
Emmeline could not afford to be idle. ‘I am wondering how your plans for an
autumn campaign are working out and how soon work is likely to begin’, she
asked Gordon Bates on 14 August. She suggested that in the early autumn,
while the weather was good, they should tour the more scattered districts,
asking local organisations, such as the women’s institutes, to arrange meetings.
Her second suggestion was the holding in the larger cities of a week’s mission to
which local clergy and doctors would be invited to give their services. ‘I should
greatly like to undertake that kind of work’, Emmeline enthused. ‘In the cities I
would visit the “prominent citizens” & try to get their financial support &
would speak at the meeting making a different speech every time. I find with
practice how possible this is for the question is many sided!’^39
A reply to Emmeline’s letter was some time coming and during the inter-
vening period she moved to nearby 1428 Beach Drive, Oak Bay. The rented,
one-storey house was close to a large hotel which, Kathleen remembered, ‘had
Chinamen as servants. It frightened the life out of Joan but it never bothered
the rest of us.’ Emmeline dismissed the unpopular French mademoiselle and
decided, probably on grounds of finance, to send the children to the local
school where a bully pushed Joan into a prickly hedge. ‘Later, the school was
moved to another place and, yes, our little bully came along too’, continued
Kathleen. ‘One day I saw him sitting on a low wall near the school so I made
one big rush at him and pushed him over! He never bullied Joan again.’^40
Such experiences undoubtedly confirmed for Emmeline the view that formal
schooling should be supplemented with parental lessons. When she was at
home, she used to encourage the children to express themselves by dancing to
music, such as Mendelssohn’s flight of the bumble bee. As Mary recollected,
‘We all used to dance, to gramophone records ... and she used to say, “Now do
what you think ... flowery attitudes”, and we did it.’ Emmeline also insisted on
speaking to the children equally in French and English so that they became
bilingual. When one of the children asked about something, Emmeline would
say ‘ ‘‘read it for yourself ” and ... “find a book”. She was very grim like that’.
LECTURER IN NORTH AMERICA