Marshall, with whom she often stayed at their home in Chipping Ongar, took
her away on a cruise to Gibraltar. When she returned, apparently fit, the
arduous life began again. There were more clubs for women (‘Fuchsia Clubs’) to
establish and more trips to be arranged to entertain the women. ‘Next month’,
Emmeline wrote to Esther on 20 September 1927, ‘the club members are having
an outing to the Shredded Wheat Factory at Welwyn Garden City. We have
chartered two buses. ... The factory owners supply tea.’ In addition, Emmeline
had to trail behind Commander Venn, the Conservative candidate for a
possible London County Council election, making up for his deficiencies as
speaker. Since she knew, too, that she could not defeat the local socialist candi-
date in her own constituency, Emmeline succumbed to the pressure to accept
invitations from far and wide to speak for the Conservative Party. As she
explained to Esther, since the party provided her agent and paid for the
expenses of a canvass, she, in return, was doing ‘a certain amount of “outside”
speaking. I go for three meetings to Lancashire (our county) next week.’^31
Travelling hither and thither, at short notice, Emmeline worked too hard.
Friends told Ethel Smyth that when Emmeline arrived at their home, due to
speak at some meeting or the other, she was usually so worn out that she sank
into an armchair, ‘motionless and almost speechless’, until it was time to start.
But once on the platform, her whole being became transfigured. ‘Radiant,
inspired, she was as magnificent in attack, as irresistible in persuasion, as deadly
in her methods with rowdies and hecklers as ever. Opposition had always called
forth her full powers.’^32
By the autumn, Nellie Hall-Humpherson had accepted Emmeline’s invita-
tion to be her secretary and Emmeline was living with Ada at a new address. ‘I
succeeded in persuading my sister to leave that dreadful Elsham Rd & come
here where it is so much more convenient for me’, she wrote to Esther in
November, from the new home at 35 Gloucester Street, SW1. ‘We are close to
Eccleston & Warwick Square in what is called Pimlico or if one is snobbish
South Belgravia. I get down to Whitechapel in half the time & Westminster in
a few minutes.’^33 Emmeline was increasingly popular amongst her constituents.
‘The East Enders adored her’, recollected Nellie. ‘She was a lovely person to
them ... she never talked down to them and she was interested in them rather
than expecting them to be interested in her. She was a compassionate woman
in all her dealings with people, but particularly women.’^34 But Emmeline’s rela-
tionship with both the central and branch offices of the Conservative Party was
far from ideal. Used to running matters autocratically, staff in the Central Office
found her difficult to deal with. Without money, property, landed family
connections or even a motor car, she was not true blue. Nellie remembered
sadly that Emmeline was ‘so badly treated by the Conservative Central Office
... like a poor and unwanted step-relation’ that she often wondered how the
party survived ‘if they treat other people so cavalierly’.^35 Emmeline’s election
themes of the importance of a democratic society based on class co-operation
where women would work for the moral uplifting of both Britain and the British
CONSERVATIVE PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATE