the Parliamentary vote, as I believe they will. I venture to assert that
the women of the land mean to have the vote, and that at an early date.
Agitation to educate and to organise is going on rapidly. ... Women
will insist on being heard at the Bar [Door] of the House [of Commons]
to assert their claim to vote – a claim that is supported by constitu-
tional right and ancient practice. It is a crying injustice that women
cannot exercise their right to vote. Here I am a householder, an
employer of labour, and heavily taxed, yet I am refused the vote which
my porter may enjoy. I often feel inclined to refuse to pay these unjust
taxations, and let the bailiffs seize every stick and sliver of my furniture
until I get my vote. When once we have the vote, the right to work,
the due preparation for work, will be placed for women, I believe, on
larger lines, and will be followed by great and beneficial results, in
giving to all women a wider outlook and a more varied field of activity
and influence.When the interview ended, and Richard entered the room and saw his
‘lady’,^57 as he usually called Emmeline, with their children now around her, he
felt blessed. ‘Does not this prove conclusively that neither business nor politics
can in any way take from all that we desire and look for in the wife and mother?’
he commented.^58 Undoubtedly he glowed with pride when, in December of that
year, Emmeline acted as hostess to a Conference on the Programme of the
League, held in their home over three evenings so that working people could
attend; although League members had offered to pay the cost of the refresh-
ments and arrangements, Emmeline generously refused such kindness.^59
Emmeline and Richard’s advanced views on the role of women in society
were typical of the ‘new woman’ stereotype of middle-class femininity discussed
earlier although there were many aspects of this image that Emmeline did not
embrace. This blending of traditional and modern is, perhaps, especially evident
in the way the children were brought up. Their children’s lives had to be organ-
ised to fit into her busy schedule, and, in typically Victorian manner, she was a
stickler for discipline although often softer than her harsh words. The tempes-
tuous Emmeline, often tired from the juggling of her political interests,
domestic responsibilities and financial constraints, could move swiftly ‘from
crossness to kisses.’^60 As Adela recollected, her mother could speak impulsively
and say ‘very hard things in her anger, but cooled down quickly’.^61 Usually it
was the servants who enforced Emmeline’s orders, the discipline growing in
severity by its delegation to others. Sylvia, recalling that her mother would
tolerate ‘no likes and dislikes’, remembered how the children would be scolded
for not eating their often lumpy and cold porridge or dawdling when out
walking when their boots were tight.^62 Emmeline was also traditional in feeling
too embarrassed to talk to Christabel and Sylvia about ‘the facts of life’. When
some big boys in the Square garden asked Adela some ‘strange questions’,
Emmeline scolded the elder girls for leaving their younger sister alone and then,
POLITICAL HOSTESS