A Monstrous Regiment of Women

I did ring the Temple the following morning, and after long delays and losing the connexion twice, I finally spoke with the churlish Marie, whose accent on the telephone was thick as marzipan. I shifted to French, but she stubbornly persisted with fracturing English, and at the end of the bilingual conversation, it transpired that Miss Childe was not able to see me that day for longer than fifteen minutes, that Miss Childe wished to see me for a longer period of time, and that Miss Childe therefore suggested that I dine with her the next evening, Saturday, at a half past six. I told Marie in the most florid of French that such an arrangement was entirely felicitous and unreservedly acceptable, then rang off.

I sat for a minute at the telephone desk, whistling tunelessly, and then picked up the receiver again and asked for a number in Oxford. While waiting for the trunk call to go through, I retrieved the morning paper. The day’s article on Iris Fitzwarren stretched one meagre piece of news (that the nightclub she had been in was raided by Scotland Yard late Thursday night, with a number of deliciously scandalous arrests) into two columns, but despite the writer’s efforts, it was obvious that nothing was happening. Had it not been for her name, the story would have been killed or relegated to the innermost recesses.

The exchange came up then with my number, and I spoke for a few minutes to the man on the other end, referring obliquely to certain debts and favours and describing the information I wanted, and said I would ring him back in an hour. Holmes would have done the matter by telegram, I knew, but I always prefer the personal touch in my matters of mild blackmail.

I went for breakfast and then returned to the telephone. My informant had the college address and private telephone number I needed, which I wrote in my notebook. I thanked him, took up my hat, gloves, and increasingly light handbag, and called a farewell to the concierge (such a grand name for that dried-up figure!). Taxis beckoned, but I resolutely turned my steps toward the Underground. Ridiculous as it seemed, after the depredations of generosity the other night to the East End poor, my purse was emptying fast, and no reinforcements were due until the banks opened on Monday. As I walked down the steps into the noisy station, a sudden thought made me laugh aloud: The cost of the clothes the elves were making for me amounted to precisely five pounds more than the total allowance I had drawn during my three years at Oxford, and here was I hoarding my last few shillings. Monday a ragged-coated philanthropist, Friday too poor for a taxi, and Sunday on the edge of being a millionaire (in dollars, perhaps, if the market was strong and the exchange rate very good).

In Oxford, I walked through a low drizzle and presented myself at the address in my notebook, where I was surprisingly well received despite the fact that I was obviously interrupting the great man’s work. I spent an instructive two and a half hours and came away with a list of books and names. The former, I tracked down in the Bodleian, where I spent the afternoon skimming several thousand pages. I spent a few shillings on a stodgy pub meal, worked a while longer, and on my way out of the town centre stopped for a brief chat with the colleague (whom I had dubbed Duncan) with whom I was doing the public presentation in January. The brief visit turned into dinner and a lengthy consultation, and I returned late to my digs on the north end of town, read for another couple of hours, and slept fitfully.

Saturday morning, I rose early, made myself a pot of tea, and began to read Evelyn Underhill’s massive (in scope, if not number of pages) treatise on mysticism. At a more reasonable hour, my landlady came in with a tray of coffee and buttered toast. Reluctantly, I closed Miss Underhill and picked up the material Duncan had given me the previous evening. At mid-morning, I walked to his house, an amiable shambles of loud children and a wife every bit as absentminded as he, and after an hour’s friendly argument, I took myself on a contemplative stroll through the Parks and Magdalen’s deer park to a converted laundry in Headington, a building that smelt oddly of starch and scorched sheets when warm, at whose whitewashed front window passersby often drew up, startled at the noises coming from within.

Watson called this form of martial art “baritsu,” for reasons best known to himself. (There was in his day a form of glorified grappling by that name, invented by an Englishman and dignified with an Oriental title, but had Holmes depended on it, he would never have survived Reichenbach.) That day, out of condition from weeks at my books and distracted as well, I called it torture, and I collected a handsome variety of bruises from my gentle and ever-genial teacher. I bowed to him gingerly and crept away to the train, reflecting on how salutary it is occasionally to put one’s self in the hands of a ruthless superior.

I arrived at the Temple promptly at five o’clock, at the everyday business doors down the street from the meeting hall. As we had arranged, Veronica met me and spent the next hour showing me the workings behind the doors. It was an enlightening experience. We saw the Refuge, open to poor women in trouble, with long tables to feed them, a small surgery to treat their ills, and a tiny garden in the back with swings for the children. (“The only garden some of them have ever seen,” commented Ronnie.) I saw the classrooms, with readers designed for children but used mostly, said Veronica, by grown women (“We’re writing a simple adult reader”); the commissary, with its stores of food and clothing for the destitute; the secretarial training rooms, with a row of typewriting machines (“You probably know that if a woman refuses to take a job as a servant, because of the low pay, long hours, and lack of dignity, she may have her unemployment benefits cancelled,” Ronnie said. I had to admit I did not); and a storage room with shelves of books, a future, dreamed-about library (“These people will read anything and everything, given a chance”).

The next building, between the Refuge and the lecture hall, was the Temple’s heart. On the street level were offices that handled communication for Margery—speaking engagements, business appointments, interested outsiders. These rooms resembled the offices of any prosperous business, without the heavy oaken dignity. What surprised me was the extent of what lay behind these.

Behind the front offices and taking up the entire basement was the Temple’s political organisation. One room had nothing but telephones in cubicles and a large switchboard. (“We can get a response or put out information immediately—it also serves to train women while they earn.”) Another had a round table nearly twelve feet across (“for making decisions on policies”). On the walls around it were a number of typed and hand-written notices and memoranda. “First reading divorce bill—March??” said one. “Remind Refuge workers that midwives get a shilling for each referral,” said another. “If you know of any sympathetic journalist, give the name to Bunny Hillman.”

“Pamphlets for the Parliament demo will be ready midday 5 January.”

“Needed: more typewriters, bedding, children’s shoes, eyeglasses.”

“Physical culture classes beginning 20 January; see Rachel.”

“Talk on ‘Sex-Role Conditioning, Marriage Contracts, and the Age of Feminism,’ Saturday, 22 January, St Gilberta’s Church, W1.”

“needed: country overnight lodgings for mother-infant outings this summer, preferably with forest or lake nearby. See Gertrude P.”

“lost: shawl, mauve with dark trim; see Helen in the front office.”

“The next France tour leaves 18 February. Sign up now!! Remember: sensible shoes and be there early! See Susanna Briggs or Francesca Rowley.”

“Hymnbooks are disappearing at an alarming rate! Please remember to watch for them in the foyer after services and remind the member to return it to her seat!”

“books wanted for lending library, good condition, nothing too dreary. Veronica Beaconsfield.” We went on.

The next room was a study, with books on law and history; filing cabinets of articles, maps, and census reports; several volumes of jokes; and great piles of journals, from suffragette tractates to Punch (“This is where we draught the speeches”). There was even a print shop in the corner that could turn out broadsheets and pamphlets.

And to think, a week ago I didn’t even know this existed, I thought, and then said it aloud to Veronica.

“You’d have heard of it before too long,” she said, and I believed her. In my preoccupation with the religious aspects of Margery Childe’s personality and message, I had been aware of the attendant practical manifestations of that message only as on the periphery. Now, moving around within the walls of the hive, as it were, I became increasingly aware that as far as Margery’s followers were concerned, the thrice-weekly services might be Margery’s way of infusing them with her energies, but here was where those energies were ultimately spent.

The Temple was a political machine, a highly efficient means of gathering in and laying out monies and giving the enthusiasm of every Temple member, no matter how lowly, a direction and a concrete goal. Canvassing, speech making, pamphlet printing; doctoring the poor and teaching the illiterate; feeding the hungry and planning assaults on the law of the land—all went on here, all directed by a member of the Inner Circle, and therefore ultimately by Margery Childe herself. A mystic, perhaps, but one quite aware of the need for works as well as contemplations. There was a groundswell of power within these walls, gathering beneath Margery Childe and carrying her—where? A seat on the local council? Into Parliament? The fifteenth-century St Catherine of Genoa was a teacher, a philanthropist, the administrator of a great hospital—and a mystic. A century before her, another Catherine, of Siena, advised kings and popes, played a key role in papal reformation, and ran a nursing order; she was also a visionary and a mystic ranked by Miss Underhill alongside St Francis in importance. So, why not Margery Childe in twentieth-century London?

We went back up the stairs to the ground floor, and Veronica was about to lead me into the side entrance of the hall when we were intercepted by one of the refuge workers.

“Oh, Miss Beaconsfield, I’m glad I found you. There’s a Queenie something wants to see you, says her husband’s gone off his nut. She’s cryin’ and carrying’ on like anything.”

“You go on, Ronnie,” I said. “It’s almost time for me to see Margery, anyway.”

“If you’re sure? I’ll tell Marie you’re here.”

She scurried down the hallway and up the stairs, then returned within a minute, gave me a brief wave, and turned into the corridor that led to the shelter. I nodded at the women behind their desks, noting that their curiosity about me had increased when I had mentioned Margery, an indication that the Temple was now big enough to make its leader aloof from lesser mortals. I sat down and picked up a stack of pamphlets to keep me occupied, managing to work my way through Diseases of Childhood, Treating Tuberculosis, and Women in the Classroom before Marie appeared in the doorway, pronounced my name, and turned without another word. I followed at a leisurely pace and chattered away at the taciturn grey back in perversely cheery French as she led me up the stairs to, I was unsurprised to see, the corridor where Veronica and I had ended up on Monday night. Marie paused in front of the door opposite the Circle’s meeting room, knocked once, waited for the response, and opened it for me.

Margery Childe was sitting in front of a fire, wearing an orange-and-grey shot silk dressing gown, a book in her lap. She uncurled from her chair and came to greet me, one hand out to seize mine.

“Mary, how lovely—may I call you Mary? Everyone calls me Margery. I hope you will. Do you mind an informal meal, here in front of the fire? I never eat very much before a service, and I have to go and dress and meditate in an hour. I hope you don’t mind that, either. What a lovely colour of green that is; it does magical things to your eyes.”

My responses consisted of Yes, of course, very well, of course not, I understand, and thank you, and I found myself giving Marie my coat and hat and being seated at a small table with two delicate chairs that I tentatively identified as Louis XIV. The place settings were luminous and paper-thin, the silver old and heavy, the glasses blown into an ornate and modern twist. I hid my twice-let-down hem beneath the table.

“Veronica has been showing you about, I take it?”

“Yes, it was most impressive.”

“You sound surprised.” From her expression, it was a common reaction.

“Mostly by the fact that I’d not heard of the Temple before Monday.”

“We are working to remedy that. Wine?”

“Thank you.” She poured from a cut-glass decanter into two glasses that matched those on the table, these with a twist of pale orange in the stem. “But it must be new,” I noted, accepting the glass, “most of it. One of the presses in the print shop looked almost unused.”

“True. Five years ago, we hired a pair of second-storey rooms once a week. We now own four buildings outright.”

I wanted very badly to know more of just how the transformation had come about, but I held my tongue. It would have sounded, if not accusatory, at the least suspicious, and even if she did answer, I did not want that note to sound just yet.

“Very impressive,” I repeated. “I shall make a donation to the library fund.”

“A good choice,” she said blandly, without so much as a glance at my tired clothing. “Veronica has great hopes for her free lending library.” The bluestocking will be good for a couple of pounds, she was thinking, and with a rush of mischief, I decided to surprise her come Monday.

“I had also not expected you—the Temple—to be so politically active, somehow.”

“Religion oughtn’t dirty its hands, you mean? Without essential changes in the law, we will be operating soup kitchens and baby clinics until Doomsday.”

“But don’t you think—” I was interrupted by Marie, entering with a wide tray on which were several covered dishes. She unloaded it onto our table, removed the covers, and fussed with the arrangement of bits of cutlery for a moment, and then, somewhat to my surprise, she left. Margery served us, giving herself rather little and me rather a lot of the chicken slices in tarragon sauce, the glazed carrots, still firm, the potatoes and salad. She bowed her head briefly over her plate, then approached the food with neat concentration, chewing each mouthful thoroughly and washing it down with a sip of some pale herbal tea that had a slice of lemon floating in it. I drank a glass of fruity German wine. She ate a bite, then looked up at me.

“You were saying?” she enquired.

“I was wondering whether your identity as a, shall we say nonconforming religious leader might not count against you in the political arena.”

“I think not. Some will take it as a sign of my dedication and will listen to me the more for it; others will see it as a mere eccentricity.”

“I hope you’re right.” It was said politely, but she took it as a declaration of wholehearted support.

“That’s very good of you. And actually, I have been thinking, and praying, a great deal about you and your offer.” (Offer? I thought indignantly.) “And I have come to realise that my teaching has indeed been a very personal thing, and perhaps it is time to place it on a more universally acceptable plane. It came to me in the night that perhaps once the other projects are securely launched, we might think about sponsoring an academic project, research and discussions along the lines of what you were saying the other night. Invite the more prominent thinkers in the field. Perhaps even a journal… on the press you saw standing idle. What do you think?”

Damn it, was what I thought; then grimly, Does the woman imagine she can buy me? Something of the thought must have shown on my face, because she laid down her fork and leant forward.

“I’m not asking you to do anything you don’t feel is right, Mary. I’m sure there are a thousand things I’ve said and done that you don’t agree with. And I’m not about to say that I’ll change. However, I want to learn. For my own sake, and for the Temple, I need to know how your world handles the questions that I grapple with alone. You say that you were surprised at our existence; it is nothing to the impression you made on me. I did not sleep at all Monday night. All I could do was think how blind and arrogant I’d been. I felt like some peasant who owned a pretty box, only to have someone take it and open it to reveal the jewels inside. I need your help, Mary. Not as a permanent commitment—I don’t ask that of you. I’m not asking you to join the Temple. But I need you, just at the beginning, to start me on the road. Please.”

How does one refuse such a request? I know that I was not able to. By the time Marie arrived with a second tray, coffee and strawberries (in January!) I found I had agreed to a series of informal tutorials with Margery and one lecture to the Inner Circle at the end of the month.

Having gotten what she wanted, Margery sat back with her coffee.

“Tell me a little about yourself, Mary. Veronica hints of dark secrets and exciting adventures in your life.”

I made a mental note to kick Veronica when next I saw her.

“Ronnie exaggerates. I had to be away for over a month in the middle of my second year at Oxford, on some rather distasteful family business, and when I didn’t talk about it later, rumours started.” The truth was considerably more complex and deadly than that, but so far I had kept my name from the newspapers. “Then a couple of months later I was injured in an accident, and that seems to have changed the rumours to fact. You know how it works. The truth is, I’m just a student. Not an ordinary Oxford student, perhaps, but a student nonetheless. My mother was English, father American, both dead. A house in Sussex, a few friends in London, and an interest in feminism and theology.”

“A long standing interest. Tell me honestly, Mary: What do you think of what you’ve seen and heard?”

I started to give her a polite answer, then saw in her eyes that this was no light conversation on her part, but a very serious question. I put down my cup and frowned at it for a minute, putting together a response that was honest but not too revealing. She waited, and then I picked up the exquisite hand-spun glass that had held my wine.

“About ten years after the crucifixion of Jesus,” I began, “there was born a Jew named Akiva. He was a simple man, a goatherd who didn’t even learn to read until he was a grown man, yet he became one of Judaism’s greatest rabbis. Akiva, like Jesus, taught best in brief epigrams and barbed stories. He also, incidentally, brought in a number of reforms regarding the status of women, but that is beside the point. I shall answer your question with one of his remarks. ‘Poverty,’ he said, ‘is as becoming to the daughter of Israel as a red strap against the neck of a white horse.’ ” I put the costly glass down on the gleaming linen tablecloth and ate the last of my tiny, intense berries.

“You don’t approve of wealth,” she said.

“I’m not a socialist.”

“In the Temple, then.”

“I speak of the aesthetic beauty of poverty; you take it as a personal criticism.”

“You feel uneasy,” she decided, “at the misuse of funds. I do understand. Were it strictly up to me, I would take the gifts given me and feed my sisters. However, there is Biblical precedent for using the expensive oil rather than selling it, as Judas would have wished.”

“Using it as an ointment to prepare the body for burial,” I commented. “Not as a perfume for daily life. The parallel is faulty.” She studied me intently, puzzled and more than a bit angry.

“It is a difficult thing,” she said abruptly. “A certain amount of show and glitter is necessary, in order to be taken seriously by the sorts of people I believe we must reach. The image of ourselves as fanatics can only harm our cause. It is a balancing act—to walk proudly before men and humble one’s self before God. Power and luxury are great temptations, Mary. Humility, discipline, self-abnegation are the only ways to remain pure to the cause.”

Her words startled me, or rather, the way they were said. Margery Childe had seemed to me the soul of rational humanism, and although I had seen evidence of strong religious feelings, had heard Veronica’s account of this woman’s mystical trance, I had not been witness to such unbridled passion until now. For a brief and unsettling moment, her eyes gleamed with fervour and she sat forward as if to seize my shoulders; then it passed and she deflected an equally brief moment of confusion into reaching for the coffeepot and refilling our cups.

“You’ve touched on the topic for this evening, you know.”

“Have I?”

“Yes. Power, we call it, but as that sounds so very aggressive, I often present the idea as ‘eliminating powerlessness’ when I speak to outside groups. You’ll hear a great deal of energy, even anger, at our Saturday meetings. As I said to you the other night, the Vote is acting as a great deceiver, fooling women into thinking that the powers we took over for the duration of the War remain in our hands. In truth, the rights of women to own property, decide what their children will do, divorce themselves from a cruel or demeaning marriage, and a thousand other human rights held predominantly by males have developed little since the last century. We aim to see that changed. The suffrage movement is in disarray, aimless, splintered; I believe that we in the Temple can step in and pull the pieces together again.”

“Through legislation?”

“Supporting proposed changes, yes, through educating voters and convincing members of Parliament. But we need women in Parliament—many women.”

“You propose to stand for election yourself, then?”

“A seat is coming available in north London within the next two years. I have my eye on it, yes.” Something in my manner must have communicated my doubts. “You seem dubious.”

“I think you may be underestimating the misgivings the voting public will have with the idea of a ‘lady minister’ standing for office. In America, you might get away with it, but here?”

“I don’t agree. We English are a sensible race, ready to overlook such minor foibles as an odd choice of religion or an inappropriate sex if the candidate is obviously the best one for the job. And after all, I’ve made a specialty of wooing sceptical males.” She flared her eyebrows and I chuckled with her.

She talked a bit more about politics, about the coming march on Parliament and a bill concerning divorcement soon to come up for its first reading, about the as-yet-underexploited usefulness of newspapers for exposing gross inequities in a variety of laws, showing as they did the human face of the problems at hand, and about the challenge of building a public face and future constituency without compromising herself. She might well have lectured me all night had Marie not come in, looking, as usual, disapproving.

“Goodness,” exclaimed Margery, “look at the time! Mary, I am sorry, but I must run. It was lovely to have such a nice long chat. I look forward to the next one. Will you stay for the meeting tonight?”

“Indeed.”

“Good. Even if you’re not politically inclined, you’ll find it interesting. There are a number of very fine minds and hearts working in the Temple, and Saturday nights are their chance to speak out and be heard. However, I’m afraid it’s time for me to excuse myself. Thank you for coming this evening. I look forward to our session on Monday. And… Mary? I’ll keep in mind the red strap.”

I went to the hall and took a seat in the back row, though Veronica would have welcomed me in the Circle’s box, and I tried my best to make sense of the proceedings. I am not, however, as Margery had put it, politically inclined, and much of what was discussed so vehemently was more foreign to me than the politics of ancient Rome. I slipped away while the opposing packs were still in full voice, then, lost in thought, walked across half of London to my club.

I thought of Margery Childe and about the mystics I had been reading about. I thought of Rabbi Akiva, and particularly about another dictum of his: that any nonessential words in a given passage must have a special significance, one not immediately obvious, yet of potentially great import. He was speaking of the interpretation of Scripture, but there was a broader truth in his dictum, one that Freud had recognised as well, and I could not help but wonder: Why had Margery so emphatically brought the ideas of discipline and self-abnegation into a discussion of poverty? The streets of London gave me no satisfactory answer.