Juan-les-Pins was finally chosen for the English Tea-Shop of Good Hope
which looked very elegant with its tangerine-clothed tables, big window-seat
and pretty window box with flowers. Christabel continued with her writing
while Mabel Tuke cooked the cakes and scones. But few customers called. Only
a few elderly British women of straitened means wanted to drink tea and eat
Mabel Tuke’s cakes.^73 Emmeline was in despair. She had little money left and
the winter was much harsher than she imagined.
Former suffragettes in England, hearing of her plight, wanted to help. Lady
Rhondda wrote to Emmeline saying that if she came back to England and
worked with the Six Point Group, a feminist pressure group that worked for
equality for women, including an equal franchise for women under thirty, she
would be guaranteed an income of £400 for a minimum of three years. The
proud Emmeline politely refused anything that hinted of ‘charity’. But she was
also of the view that the time was not opportune to raise the women’s franchise
issue again. ‘The situation, both international and national, is exceedingly and
increasingly serious and alarming’, she replied. ‘It seems to me undesirable to
reopen the franchise agitation in such a world-crisis as this, especially as women
have already enough voting power, if effectively employed, to secure the various
ends to which the vote is a means.’ Emmeline did, however, express her enthu-
siasm for an effort to make wise and constructive use of the voting power that
women already possessed.^74 Emmeline must have had misgivings about working
in the women’s movement in England with its left-wing, pacifist leanings. Her
feminism was now a maternal, imperial feminism that gave high priority to
women’s role in raising the moral tone of the nation and Empire. She was not
likely to have much sympathy with those left-wing, ‘progressive’ feminists, like
her socialist daughter, Sylvia, who advocated class war, an end to imperialism
and free love. Soon after she had replied to Lady Rhondda, Emmeline devel-
oped bronchial symptoms, induced by the bleak French winter. Ill and nearly
penniless, she had no choice but to return with Mary to England, arriving just
before Christmas 1925.
LECTURER IN NORTH AMERICA