Falling Angel

GertrudeWaterhouse

Oh, dear-I have just returned from one of Kitty Coleman’s At Homes with such a headache.

In January something happened that I had always dreaded might one day. Kitty Coleman changed her At Homes to Wednesday afternoons so that she could attend some sort of meeting in Highgate on Tuesdays. (At least that means she will not be coming to my At Homes!) Now I have felt obliged to go-not every week, I should hope, but at least once or twice a month. I managed to get out of the first few, saying I had a chill, or that the girls were unwell, but I couldn’t use that excuse every time.

So today I went along, taking Lavinia and Ivy May with me for support. When we arrived the room was already full of women. Kitty Coleman welcomed us and then flitted across the room without making introductions. I must say it was the loudest At Home I have ever attended. Everyone was talking at once, and I am not sure anyone was actually listening. But I listened, and as I did my eyes grew big and my mouth small. I didn’t dare say a word. The room was full of suffragettes.

Two were discussing a meeting they were to attend in Whitechapel. Another was passing around a design for a poster of a woman waving a sign from a train window that read “Votes for Women.” When I saw it I turned to my daughters. “Lavinia,” I said, “go and help Maude.” Maude was serving tea across the room, and looked as miserable as I felt. “And don’t listen to what anyone around you is saying,” I added.

Lavinia was staring hard at Kitty Coleman. “Did you hear me, Lavinia?” I asked. She shook her head and shrugged, as if to shake away my words, then made a face and crossed the room to Maude.

“Ivy May,” I said, “would you like to go downstairs and ask the cook if she needs help, please.”

Ivy May nodded and disappeared. She is a good girl.

A woman next to me was saying she had just been speaking at a rally in Manchester and had rotten tomatoes thrown at her.

“At least it wasn’t rotten eggs!” another woman cried, and everyone laughed.

Well, almost everyone laughed. A few women like myself were very quiet, and looked just as shocked as I felt. They must have been Kitty’s old friends who came to the At Home expecting pleasant conversation and Mrs. Baker’s excellent scones.

One of them, less timid than me, finally spoke. “What is it that you speak about at these rallies in Manchester?”

The tomato woman gave her an incredulous look. “Why, for women to have the vote, of course!”

The poor woman turned bright red, as if she herself had been hit by a tomato, and I was mortified for her.

To her credit, Caroline Black came to her rescue. “The Women’s Social and Political Union is campaigning to have a bill brought before Parliament that would allow women the right to vote in government elections, just as men do,” she explained. “We are rallying the support of women and men all over the country by speaking publicly, writing to newspapers, lobbying MPs, and signing petitions. Have you seen the WSPU’s pamphlet? Do take one and read it-it is so informative. You can place a donation for it on the table by the door when you go. And don’t forget to pass on the pamphlet when you are done-it is really surprising how much life there is in a little pamphlet when you hand it on to others.”

She was in her element, speaking so smoothly and gently and yet also forcefully that several women indeed took away pamphlets and left coins by the door-myself included, I am ashamed to admit. When the pile of pamphlets reached me, Caroline Black was watching me with such a sweet smile on her face that I had to take one. I could not bring myself to hide it down the back of the sofa as I might have liked. I did that later, at home.

Kitty Coleman did not take the floor in quite the same way as Caroline Black, but she was still in an excited state, her eyes glittering, her cheeks flushed, as if she were at a ball and had not stopped dancing once. She did not look entirely healthy.

I know I should not say this, but I wish she and Caroline Black had never met. Kitty’s transformation has been dramatic, and undoubtedly it has pulled her out of the bad way she was in, but she has not gone back to her old self-she has changed into something altogether more radical. Not that I was greatly enamored of her old self, but I prefer that to her present state. Even when she is not at her At Homes with suffragettes everywhere, she still talks incessantly about politics and women this and women that till I want to cover my ears. She has bought herself a bicycle and goes around even in the wind and rain, getting grease marks all down her skirts-if they are not already covered in chalk from all the signs she has been drawing on pavements about meetings and rallies and such. Whenever I find her crouched somewhere with a bit of chalk, I cross the road and pretend not to see her.

She is never at home now in the afternoons, but always at a meeting, and neglects poor Maude shamelessly. Sometimes I think of Maude as my third daughter, she is at our house so often. Not that I am complaining-Maude is very thoughtful, helping me with tea or Ivy May with her schoolwork. She sets a good example for Lavinia, who I am sorry to say never seems to take it up. It is very peculiar that one daughter can have a mother who pays her no attention and yet turns out well, while the other gets all the attention in the world and yet is so difficult and selfish.

It was a relief to leave Kitty’s At Home. Lavinia seemed eager to come away as well. Back home she was very kind to me, sending me off to bed to nurse my head while she insisted on making supper. I don’t even mind that she burned the soup.

Jenny Whitby

Lord, I hope these At Homes don’t last. Since the missus switched ‘em to Wednesdays I’m run off my feet. At least I’ve got Maude to help-though I don’t know that she’ll stick it. The whole afternoon she looked like she wanted to bolt, even when Lavinia came to keep her company.

That one makes me laugh. When she’s here she watches the missus with an outraged look on her face. And when the master’s home, she looks at him all puzzled and sorrowful. She hasn’t said nothing, though, nor tried to send another letter-I’ve kept an eye out. I’ve no intention of letting her wreck this house-I need my wages. As it is I’m not managing to pay for Jack. Or I am, but I’ve had to do something I never thought I’d stoop to-taking spoons to sell from an old silver set in the sideboard what the missus’s mum left her. They don’t use it, and no one but me ever polishes it. It ain’t right, I know, but I don’t have no choice.

I finally listened to them suffragettes today as I passed round the scones. What I heard made me want to spit. They talk about helping women but it turns out they’re choosy about who exactly gets the help. They ain’t fighting for my vote-only for women who own property or went to university. But that Caroline Black had the nerve to ask me to donate some of my wages “for the cause.” I told her I wouldn’t give a penny until the cause had anything to do with me!

I were so mad I had to tell Mrs. Baker about it when we were washing up afterward.

“What did she say to that?” Mrs. Baker asked.

“Oh, that men would never agree to give the vote to everyone all at once, that they had to start with some women and once they’d secured that they would fight for everyone. But ain’t it always the way, that they put themselves first? Why can’t they fight for us first, I say? Let workingwomen decide what’s what.”

Mrs. Baker chuckled. “You wouldn’t know who to vote for if they bit you on your arse, and you know it.”

“I would!” I cried. “I ain’t that stupid. Labour, of course. Labour for a laboring woman. But these ladies upstairs won’t vote Labour, or even Liberal. They’re all Tories like their husbands, and them Tories’ll never give the vote to women, no matter what they say.”

Mrs. Baker didn’t say nothing. Maybe she was surprised I was talking politics. To be honest, I were surprised at myself. I’ve been round too many suffragettes-they’re starting to make me talk a load of rubbish.