Читать книгу What I Remember - Millicent Garrett Fawcett - Страница 15

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My marriage naturally made an enormous difference in my life, an even greater difference than is usual in the normal cases of the passage from girlhood to wife and motherhood. From the quietest of quiet country life I was transplanted into a society of surpassing interest and novelty both in London and Cambridge. My husband was in Parliament, and a conspicuous figure there even from the first. He was also a Professor of the University of Cambridge. We had a small settled income, and upon that had to maintain two homes, one in London and the other at Cambridge. It was a tight fit, but it could be done, and was done without any Spartan privations. I was a dragon over every unnecessary expenditure; for I was a firm believer in Mr. Micawber’s receipt for producing either happiness or misery.

My husband, notwithstanding his blindness, had a keen enjoyment of life and all its ordinary occupations, sports and interests. He skated, rode, and went to Scotland on fishing expeditions most autumns; we dined with our friends and gave them little dinners in return. The secretary he had had before his marriage (Edward Brown) left him in 1867; he had a boy who was careful and conscientious in leading him about, to and from the House, when we were in London, and to his lectures, etc., when we were in Cambridge, but this well-disposed and kindly lad had neither the education nor the capacity to be of much other service to him. Once, when my husband had to make a railway journey from Cambridge into East Suffolk to vote at a bye-election (my father had given him a tiny freehold as a qualification), Harry and his young secretary had to travel many hours in bad cross-country trains in order to get the double journey over in a day. To the lad it was an unprecedented treat to spend so many hours in first-class carriages; but a misfortune befel him: in putting his head out of the window when the train was in motion his hat blew off. Harry deeply sympathized, and telegraphed from the next stopping-place about the lost treasure. “How shall I describe it, my boy?” said he. The reply was, “Please say, sir, it was quite new and rather fashionable.” My husband’s huge enjoyment of this is an illustration of his temperament which carried him for the most part light-heartedly over the inevitable privations of blindness.

His many friends in Cambridge, and his devoted parents and sister at Salisbury, provided him with another unfailing source of strength and good cheer. It has often been told that when out partridge-shooting a misdirected shot from his father’s gun had cost him his eyesight. The anguish of a very loving father can hardly be imagined; but it roused in the son a settled determination to make his father see that the misfortune had not blighted the life so dear to him.

I received a most generous and loving welcome into this home circle, and I cannot speak with sufficient reverence and gratitude of my sister-in-law, Maria Fawcett. From the time of the accident, until our marriage, she had been all in all to her brother, lavishing on him her great love and watchful care: now, when I appeared, suddenly, to her, upon the scene, she did not look upon me as a supplanter, but welcomed me as a comrade and friend. I have never known a nobler or more generous nature. She was so full of loving appreciation, there was no room in her heart for jealousy or suspicion.

Mr. F. J. Dryhurst did not become my husband’s private secretary until 1871. He was from that time invaluable, and became a most faithful and lifelong friend. He was introduced to us by the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies, who had known him from boyhood.

My husband’s father was a North Country man, born at Kirkby Lonsdale in 1793. He was fishing under the beautiful bridge at Kirkby in 1805 when he heard of the Battle of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson. He was an only son, his parents died young, and he migrated in early youth to the South of England, first to London and then to Salisbury. He was in London in 1814, and attended the gala performance of the opera given in that year to welcome the Allied Sovereigns who were rather prematurely celebrating their victory over Napoleon; then came the escape from Elba, the hundred days and the short campaign which ended triumphantly at Waterloo. All this Mr. Fawcett remembered perfectly, and it was extraordinarily interesting to hear of these great events from him. He had settled in Salisbury before 1815, and he used to tell us of seeing from a distance the coach arriving from London decorated with branches of laurel. This was the method of telegraphing a victory, and when the coach finally pulled up in the Salisbury market-place he was the one deputed to jump on the top and read the dispatch announcing details of the triumph to the assembled crowd; for his ringing North Country voice carried farther than the Wiltshire gutturals. About 1828 he married a Salisbury lady, Mary Cooper, daughter of a solicitor. He had joined the volunteers that were raised while the campaign was at its height, was a member of the Salisbury Corporation a little later, became Mayor in 1832, the year of the first Reform Bill. He was a good judge of both food and wine; and living, as he did, to extreme old age (ninety-five), one of the cathedral dignitaries, a feeble old gentleman with an impaired digestion, had the happy thought of consulting my father-in-law as to daily diet: “I suppose, Mr. Fawcett,” he said, “you have always been an extremely abstemious man, especially in the matter of wine?” The reply was emphatic: “I have never said ‘No’ to a good glass of wine in m’ life.” On another occasion another ecclesiastic adopted another plan; he asked no advice, but he sat facing Mr. Fawcett at a municipal banquet, and watching every dish and every wine of which my father-in-law partook, took exactly the same himself. His wife had to send for a doctor in the middle of the night, as the unfortunate man thought his end was approaching. But let none imagine that these anecdotes indicate that my father-in-law was anything but a most temperate man; he had a fine palate, and enjoyed good wine and good food all the more for his moderation in their use.

Mrs. Fawcett, my husband’s mother, was a very able and capable woman: she wrote excellent letters, as she had an intuitive sense of what her correspondent was interested in and wanted to hear. She loved to know all she could about her neighbours, and to pass on her information. She was a keen politician, and delighted to dwell on her friendship, during the anti-corn law campaign, with Bright and Cobden; her Liberalism was on strictly party lines: whatever “the Party” ordained, she automatically became a strong supporter of. During the time I knew her she never gave an ounce of sympathy to any cause before “the Party” had done so: there were, as in most country towns, rigidly defined political barriers between the shops in the city—Liberal drapers, fishmongers, and so on, and Tory drapers, fishmongers, and so on. Mrs. Fawcett would never have dreamed of going into any but those in sympathy with the Liberals. I remember her indignation with me on one occasion because I had shown myself more intent on getting what I wanted than on inquiring into the politics of the shop in which I found it. But she was extremely good to me and patient in bearing with our differences in outlook. Another tie between us was that she had a keen sense of humour which never failed her. Almost the only time I remember her being seriously angry with me was on account of my having spoken during a bye-election in Southwark in 1870 on behalf of Mr. George Odger, a Labour candidate,^[5] at a time when the Labour Party had not come into existence.

It was not that Mrs. Fawcett disapproved of Odger’s politics or character. She did not care enough about him to inquire into either: nor did she express disapproval of my husband appearing on his platform and speaking and working for him. But at that time it was an unheard-of thing for women to speak on election platforms, and that I had done this on behalf of a candidate who was in opposition to the Liberal Party was to her almost an unforgivable sin. I couldn’t promise I would never do it again, but I did promise never to speak in Salisbury unless she invited me to do so, and this promise, of course, I kept, and in course of time she did invite me and I accepted the invitation.

Two of the most interesting inhabitants of Salisbury at the time of my marriage were Dr. and Mrs. Fowler. He was a retired physician, and in his young days had formed a part of the Holland House group of Whigs. He brought to Salisbury anecdotes of the Holland House dinner parties and of Lady Holland’s management of her guests: Macaulay was, of course, very frequently one of them, and dominated the rest of the company by his encyclopædic knowledge and his facility in pouring it forth. On one of these occasions, when for a long time there had not been one brilliant flash of silence, Lady Holland beckoned to a footman, and said to him, “Go round to Mr. Macaulay, and say ‘that’ll do.’ ”

Mrs. Fowler was a lady quite of the old school. She had in her childhood sat on the knee of Dr. Johnson, and it interested us to observe how few links were necessary to fill up the 150 years or so which covered the time between our little daughter and Queen Anne. Philippa had been patted on the head by Mrs. Fowler, who had sat on the knee of Dr. Johnson, who had been “touched” by Queen Anne.

Another very warm Salisbury friend was Dr. Roberts, also a retired physician. He sympathized with my husband’s general outlook in politics, and they had other interests in common. We used to drive out occasionally in Dr. Roberts’s company to dine with Dr. and Mrs. Roland Williams, the former then being rector of Broadchalke. He was rather frowned upon by the “County” and the Cathedral dignitaries of Salisbury for having written one of the articles in the once famous Essays and Reviews. The charming old rectory at Broadchalke was afterwards acquired by the late Mr. Maurice Hewlett, who created a marvellous series of gardens round it.

During the months of the Parliamentary Session which we spent in London, I regarded it as a very great honour when we were invited from time to time to dine with Mr. Mill and his stepdaughter, Miss Helen Taylor, at Blackheath. These were delightful evenings, when we met Mr. and Mrs. Grote, Professor Cairnes, Herbert Spencer, and other celebrities, and heard, I suppose, some of the best talk from some of the best talkers in England. Of course questions concerning Women’s Suffrage and the general position of women not infrequently came up, and I remember a discussion between Mill and Herbert Spencer, the latter taking the “anti” line, and basing his arguments on the heavy handicap nature had imposed upon women.

Mill’s reply took my fancy exceedingly. He said, “You look upon nature as something we should do well to follow. I look upon nature as a horrible old harridan.” Again, it was interesting to hear Mrs. Grote explaining why she had become a suffragist. She always reminded me of a well-bred old country gentleman; tall, robust, and well set up in every way, towering over her rather delicate finicking-looking husband, who resembled a Dresden China figure. Mrs. Grote habitually spoke and wrote of him as “the Historian.” When anything was said which surprised her she would exclaim, “Good God, good God, you astound me.” When explaining to us what made her a suffragist, she said, “When I discovered that the purse in my pocket and the watch at my side were not my own, but the Historian’s, I felt it was time women should have the power to amend these preposterous laws.” However, of course the laws went on unamended for many years after this. I have related elsewhere^[6] how at a Liberal meeting at my father’s house in Suffolk I had taken round a petition asking Parliament to pass the Married Women’s Property Bill then before it. Those present were mostly Suffolk farmers; I explained my petition and asked for signatures but obtained very few. One old farmer voiced the feelings of the majority. “Am I to understand you, ma'am, that if this Bill becomes law and my wife had a matter of a hundred pound left her, I should have to arst her for it?” Of course I was obliged to confess that he would have to suffer this humiliation, and then I got no more signatures.

It was several years after this, I believe in 1877, that I had another illustration of this monstrous state of the law. I was at Waterloo station taking a ticket; as I dropped my purse back into my pocket I felt a hand there that was not my own. I naturally grabbed it and tried to hold it; naturally, also, I was unsuccessful; it belonged to a young man who quickly broke from me with my purse in his possession. Some bystanders grasped the situation and pursued the thief, who threw my purse on the ground, and his flight was ended in the arms of a policeman. He and the thief and I were then marched off to a small office in the station, where there was a police inspector. The policeman said, “This here young gen'leman have been liftin’ a bit off the person of this here young lady.” The Inspector said to me, “Do you charge him?” and I replied, “Yes.” If I had known then as much as I knew later, I should have said “No,” and contented myself with the recovery of my purse. “But I, being young and foolish,” did not see that this would have been the best both for me and for the thief. He was brought up before a police magistrate the next day and committed for trial at the Surrey Sessions. I had to come up from Cambridge in about six weeks’ time to give evidence against him. When in the court I saw the charge sheet, and noted that the thief was charged with “stealing from the person of Millicent Fawcett a purse containing £1 18s. 6d., the property of Henry Fawcett.” I felt as if I had been charged with theft myself. A few minutes later I heard my thief condemned to seven years’ penal servitude, a very terrible thing for him, almost a sentence of death, at any rate, of social and industrial death. I am a magistrate myself now, and I often watch with respectful admiration the humanity and wisdom with which the presiding magistrate at the Newington Sessions, Sir Robert Wallace, deals with cases, now infrequent, of this kind; always trying through the probation system to give offenders, especially young offenders, another chance to come back into respectable methods of getting a living. It seems to me that the pessimists are altogether wrong, that the world is better and not worse than it was fifty years ago, more intelligent and more humane, and that the results of the comparatively gentle method of dealing with crime have not increased it, but the contrary. If I may refer here to another little piece of my small magisterial experience, I may mention having sat occasionally over a period of some three years as a member of the Holborn Bench to hear education summonses. My colleague in this capacity not infrequently was the late Sir John Kirk, one of the founders with Lord Shaftesbury of the Ragged School Union movement. This dear gentle old Christian gentleman was moved with compassion not only for the defaulting parents, but also for me, inexperienced as I was in the more seamy side of the life of the London poor, by the evidence brought before us of their wretchedness, as one after another a bedraggled and sodden-looking woman with one baby in her arms, another pulling at her skirts, was brought before us and called upon to explain why her son or daughter under the age of fourteen had not punctually attended school. Sir John Kirk used to say to me in a low voice so that no one but myself should hear him, “You must not let these things make you too unhappy. These that come before us are the failures; but the great mass is very satisfactory indeed.” The way he used to explain to parents how they could get helped, that there was a Care Committee which would aid them materially if applied to and that the whole machinery of the Court was devised in order to help them, and especially their children, to make good in the world and have a fair chance of a more satisfactory existence in the future, made a deep impression on me and was a lesson how these magisterial duties should be performed.

But I must go back to the time immediately after my marriage. My political education was just beginning; naturally I had to read and write for my husband. I grappled with newspapers and blue books, and learned more or less to convey their import to him. He took care that I should hear important debates in the House of Commons, and the Speaker and Serjeant-at-Arms were very kind in frequently offering me a seat in that portion of the ladies’ galleries which they controlled. Of course, the heavy brass trellis which then screened off these galleries, and their bad ventilation, made them quite unnecessarily tiring and even exhausting; but the whole scene was new to me and very interesting. During the debates on the Reform Bill of 1867 I heard the famous speech of Disraeli when, replying to a vehement personal onslaught from Gladstone, he had said that he had congratulated himself that he had been protected from his adversary by the substantial piece of furniture which lay between them. These chaffing remarks used to throw Gladstone into a white fury of rage. “You call it amusing, I call it devilish,” was, according to common talk, one of Gladstone’s remarks on such an occasion.

I also heard Mill’s speech when he moved the Women’s Suffrage amendment to the 1867 Reform Bill; its terms were to omit the word “man” from the enfranchising clause and substitute the word “person.” The speech was a masterpiece of close reasoning, tinged here and there by deep emotion. It thrilled me to hear my sister and her successful efforts to open the medical profession to women referred to. But perhaps what interested me most of all was the evidently powerful impression the speech made on the House. This was particularly shown in the case of Mr. John Bright. His brother Jacob, and all his sisters with whom I was acquainted, were Suffragists, but they had not succeeded in taking the most distinguished member of their family with them. As soon as Mill rose to speak John Bright entered the House and flung himself into the corner seat below the gangway on the left of the Chair, just below where Mill was speaking. Bright had a mocking smile on his face, which everyone who remembers it will recall had a strong natural capacity in the curve of the mouth, even in repose, for expressing contempt. He crossed his legs and swung the one that was uppermost backwards and forwards. His whole figure suggested a strong mixture of dislike and scorn; but as Mill developed his arguments this gradually changed. The swinging leg became still, the mocking smile vanished, and when the division was taken Bright’s name was actually among the seventy-three who voted for Mill’s amendment. Bright, however, soon had a relapse; he was by nature an Anti-Suffragist, and this was the one and only time that he gave a vote in favour of extending representative institutions to women. Though the amendment had been defeated by more than two to one, we were elated by the success, much greater than we had expected, of Mill’s speech, and were especially glad that the division had not been on party lines. Mr. Russell Gurney, Recorder of London, and a much-respected Conservative, acted as teller with Mr. Mill for the Suffragists, and in the division list, if pairs and tellers were added, it was found that the total number of our friends had been eighty, of whom ten were Conservatives. From that time until our final victory in 1918 we were successful in keeping the question of women’s franchise on non-party lines. Of course this had drawbacks, but these, such as they were, were greatly outweighed by advantages, especially as our chief work for many years consisted in active Suffrage propaganda in the country; but the story of this must be left for a later chapter.

[5] See Mr. F. W. Soutter’s book, Recollections of a Labour Pioneer. T. Fisher Unwin, 1922.

[6] See Women’s Suffrage: a Short History of a Great Movement, T. C. and E. C. Jack.