31 Vicinus, Fin-de-siècle theatrics, p. 183.
32 Marcus, Introduction, p. 8.
33 Ibid., pp. 8, 11.
34 S. Raitt, The singers of Sargent: Mabel Batten, Elsie Swinton, Ethel Smyth,Women: A
Cultural Review, 3, 1, 1992, p. 27, states that Mrs. Pankhurst was a lover of Ethel
Symth’s; Winslow,Sylvia Pankhurst, p. 7, proposes ‘In all probability both Christabel
and Emmeline were involved in lesbian relationships, although there is little documen-
tation on the subject. ... Their mother’s relationship with Smythe [sic] was something
that both [Sylvia] Pankhurst and Christabel wanted to play down, and they urged
Smythe [sic] not to write about it. Yet, in her book,Female pipings in Eden, she not only
hints at her own and Emmeline’s homosexuality but also indicates that [Sylvia]
Pankhurst’s heterosexuality might have been a reason for her estrangement from
mother and sister.’ Hamer,Britannia’s glory, p. 23, points out ‘It has been suggested that
Ethel Smyth had an affair with Emmeline Pankhurst; they certainly had a very intimate
relationship. If this is true it would put lesbianism at the heart of the suffrage move-
ment.’ J. Trautmann Banks in her edited volumeCongenial spirits: the selected letters of
Virginia Woolf(London, The Hogarth Press, 1989), offers a more cautious note. On
page 339, a letter dated December 3 [1933] from Virginia Woolf to Quentin Bell, is
reprinted where Woolf states, ‘I have Ethel Smyth and Rebecca West to tea [next
week] to discuss the life of Mrs Pankhurst. In strict confidence, Ethel used to love
Emmeline – they shared a bed.’ In a footnote on p. 339, Banks notes that Ethel Smyth
was an ardent supporter of both the women’s suffrage movement and its redoubtable
leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, but the ‘bed bit is less certain’, despite the fact that Ethel
herself wrote (inFemale Pipings in Eden) about ‘some intense emotional intimacy in a
two-bedded room’.
L. Collis, in Impetuous heart: the story of Ethel Smyth(London, William Kimber, 1984),
pp. 72–3, also offers a cautionary statement. ‘What she [Ethel] really sought in her
continual romances was highly charged friendship supplemented by the preliminaries of
sex: kisses, hugs, being arm in arm, or hand in hand. For all her talk of love, her constant
pursuit of new objects, it could be said that she was a chaste woman and also emotionally
immature. This is not to say she never consummated an affair with a woman, but it was
rare in proportion to the number of times she declared herself, and indeed was, head over
heels, hopelessly, helplessly, in love.’ Pugh, The Pankhursts, pp. 214–15, falls short of
calling the ‘loving and intense relationship’ between Ethel and Emmeline ‘lesbian’, but
implies that there was something sexual happening.
35 Smyth, Female pipings, p.188. Pugh, The Pankhursts, pp. 214–15, conveniently ignores this
point.
36 C. St John, Ethel Smyth: a biography(London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1959), p. 185.
37 Vicinus, Fin-de-siècle theatrics, p. 181.
38 VfW, 14 April 1911, p. 463; Murphy, The women’s suffrage movement, p. 64.
39 EP to Miss Flatman, n.d., Carnarvon, Tuesday, SFC.
40 EP to Miss Flatman, 13 April 1911, SFC.
41 E. Sylvia Pankhurst to Hardie, 26 Feburary [1911], as quoted in Romero, E. Sylvia
Pankhurst, p. 59.
42 K. Hardie to Sylvia [Pankhurst], 10 March 1911, ESPA.
43 R. Childe Dorr, A woman of fifty(New York and London, Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1924),
p. 265.
44 VfW, 28 April 1911, p. 491.
45 A. E. Metcalfe, Woman’s effort: a chronicle of British women’s fifty years’ struggle for citizen-
ship (1865–1914)(Oxford, B. H. Blackwell, 1917), pp. 171–2; VfW, 5 May 1911, p. 514.
46 VfW, 12 May 1911, p. 532.
47 EP to Miss Robins, 26 May 1911, Robins Papers, Fales Library.
48 Smyth, Female pipings, p. 191.
NOTES