The Times Great Women's Lives

by Sue Corbett

  Behind all this brilliance lay a power of hard and steady work. Lady Randolph was a woman of solid ability as well as of dash and daring. In his meteoric political career, and especially, perhaps, in the Primrose League, she helped her husband “like a man”; and history, perhaps, will never have the chance of revealing how much the early career of her son, Mr Winston Churchill, owed to his mother’s intellect and energy.

  Outside the field of strict politics, the dearest wish of this American wife of one Cabinet Minister and mother of another was to render the United States and Great Britain intelligible to each other. During the Boer War she equipped the Maine as a hospital ship with American money, sailed in it to South Africa, and headed the executive committee which controlled it. And the same purpose underlay her most solid contribution to literature — the Anglo-Saxon Review, which she founded, owned, and edited. The idea was permanence. “Articles full of solid thought and acute criticism, of wit and learning, are read one day and cast into the waste-paper basket the next.” To issue them in a more costly form would be to lengthen their existence; buyers would preserve a book they had paid highly for, and contributors would write the better for that expectation. No pains were spared in the production; a new cover was to be designed for each issue; and each was to be a facsimile of some celebrated binding of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The price was fixed at a guinea for each quarterly number. Among the contributors were Swinburne, Henry James, Mr Max Beerbohm, and Mrs Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes). But permanence cannot be guaranteed; and the Anglo-Saxon Review’s career was brief.

  The dashing Lady Randolph Churchill

  Lady Randolph could write, as well as edit. Her “Reminiscences” (1908) were discreet, but interesting. Her book of essays, “Small Talks on Great Subjects” (1916), was readable. Her love of the drama was expressed not only in her passion for attending first nights, but in the authorship of two plays, His Borrowed Plumes (1909) and The Bill (1914). The latter was a political play, and proved rather too discreet to be entertaining. The men in it, wrote a critic, were humdrum, but she was far more successful with her women, the naughty little roguey-poguey and the elderly cats. These say and do amusing things, because Lady Randolph knows her sex, and does not hesitate to let her lively sense of humour play freely over it.

  She had been beautiful; she had been brilliant; she filled her life with work and play. She had her worldly rewards — the Order of the Crown of India, the Order of the Royal Red Cross, the Ladyship of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem; not to mention great social success. It came to her to be called upon to fit her vigorous, daring personality to a narrower mould than that which it had once filled. But to the last no illness nor social change could dim her courage and her kindliness.

  To Lord Randolph Churchill (who died in 1895) she bore two sons, Mr Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill and Mr John Spencer Churchill. In 1900 she married Mr George Cornwallis West, whom she divorced in 1913. In 1918 she married Mr Montagu Porch, who survives her.

  Lady Randolph Churchill, writer and social figure, was born on January 9, 1854. She died on June 29, 1921, aged 67

  EMILY DAVIES

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  CAMPAIGNER FOR UNIVERSITY EDUCATION FOR WOMEN, AND FOUNDER OF GIRTON COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

  JULY 14, 1921

  We regret to announce that Miss (Sarah) Emily Davies, a pioneer in women’s causes, especially education, died yesterday at her home in Belsize Park, Hampstead, in her 92nd year.

  Miss Emily Davies was the daughter of the Rev J. Davies, DD, at one time rector of Gateshead, and was born on April 22, 1830. Her education was completed at home, according to the custom of the time. Girls’ public day schools were not in existence, and in middle-class families boarding schools formed the only alternative to the private governess. A change, however, was at hand. The disclosures of the Schools Inquiry Commission of 1864 aroused an agitation for the reform of girls’ secondary education. A committee was formed to obtain the opening of the Cambridge (boys) Local Examinations to girls, and Miss Davies, who had taken up her residence in London, became honorary secretary. Cambridge yielded in 1865, after an experimental examination in which only six out of 40 senior girls from different parts of the country passed, the remainder failing in elementary arithmetic. By 1870 Edinburgh, Dublin, and Oxford had all thrown open their local examinations.

  If Miss Davies had accomplished nothing else she would have deserved well of her sex. Her task, however, was only begun. She next took part in the attempts made to obtain admission for women to the University of London degrees. Special interest attached to the application, for Miss Elizabeth Garrett (Mrs Garrett Anderson, MD) was working her way into the medical profession and knocking in vain at the doors of examining bodies for a qualifying diploma. For a time the attack on the University failed, but Miss Davies and her friends persisted, and the London degrees were thrown open to women in 1874.

  Meanwhile University lectures to ladies had been started in several large towns in the north of England, and their success had stimulated the desire for systematic instruction of the same type. Queen’s College (over which Miss Davies’s brother, the Rev Llewelyn Davies, presided) and Bedford College, excellent though they were, hardly fulfilled the new ideal. In 1867 a committee was formed with Miss Davies as honorary secretary, and a scheme drawn up for a college “designed to hold in relation to girls’ schools and home teaching a position analogous to that occupied by the Universities towards the public schools for boys.” Hitchin was chosen as the locality, since lecturers could thus be obtained from both London and Cambridge, but the share of Cambridge predominated.

  When in October, 1869, six students assembled in the private house at Hitchin which was leased for the college the promoters of women’s education throughout the country told each other with jubilation that a new era had begun. In 1870 five of the Hitchin students passed the previous examination by private arrangement with the examiners, and two years later, under the same conditions, Miss Woodhead obtained a second class in the Mathematical Tripos, and Miss Cook a second and Miss Lumsden a third in the Classical Tripos. The results were remarkable when we consider that to most of the students the subjects were new and to all the methods of study were unaccustomed. Their success established the reputation of the college and assured its future; if women could pass honour examinations it was clearly worthwhile providing facilities for study.

  The college committee, however, had made up their minds some time before. “It is decided,” wrote Miss Davies in August, 1870, “that as soon as we can raise £7,000, including what has been already promised, we shall begin to build for 30 students on a plan to which additions can be made hereafter. It is to be either at Hitchin, or at some place within three or four miles of Cambridge, but not in Cambridge itself.” The “three or four miles” were diminished to two, but from the decision to keep outside the boundaries of Cambridge the committee declined to swerve. Miss Davies had thoroughly made up her mind as to the form the new institution should take, and she never faltered. Convinced that a high standard of attainment was only possible by adopting University methods, she decided that the model should be followed in small matters as well as great.

  In 1873 the college entered into possession of its new buildings at Girton, Miss Davies herself residing as mistress during the first three or four years. As a working head she was perhaps hardly so successful as an organizer, but by her presence on the spot she was enabled to impress the desired form upon the college institutions during their early growth. For long after this close connexion had ceased Miss Davies continued to watch closely over the fortunes of Girton.

  Miss Davies was a member of the first London School Board, a life governor of University College, and a governor of the Hitchin Grammar School. Her interest in educational matters was maintained till her death, and she was a warm advocate of extension of the Parliamentary vote to women. In the various demonstrations and processions her aged figure, small but alert, formed a striking and
justly honoured feature. She lived to record her vote at a Parliamentary election.

  An address and a cheque for 700 guineas were presented to Miss Davies in 1912 by members of the various groups of women who had profited by her labours. She offered the money at once to the Council of Girton College towards the extension of the buildings.

  Emily Davies, campaigner for women’s right to university education, was born on April 22, 1830. She died on July 13, 1921, aged 91

  SARAH BERNHARDT

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  FRENCH TRAGIC ACTRESS WHOSE STAGE CAREER SPANNED 60 YEARS

  MARCH 27, 1923

  No temperament more histrionic than Mme Bernhardt’s has, perhaps, ever existed. To read her memoirs or her biographies is to live in a whirl of passions and adventures — floods of tears, tornadoes of rage, deathly sickness and incomparable health and energy, deeds of reckless bravado, caprices indescribable and enormous. Her determination and independence of character were always strong; and when they, with her energy, became concentrated on her principal art they established a supremacy which would have been unmistakable even without the aid of her eccentricities. The marvellous voice of gold, that wide range of beautiful movement, queenly, sinuous, terrible, alluring, that intensity of passion and that bewitching sweetness have brought men and women of all degrees — from professional critics to ranchers, from anarchists to kings, from men of pleasure to Puritan ladies — in homage to her feet.

  In spite of their common training, her theory of her art was the opposite of Coquelin’s. She was all for the “artist,” the creator, as opposed to the “comedian,” the exponent of science and rule. She loved “the limelight,” and time was when she kept it pretty constantly upon her off the stage, whether in her wonderful house (or museum) in the Boulevard Péreire in Paris, on tour over the habitable globe, or in her holiday home at Belle-Ile-en-mer, near Morbihan, in Brittany. But all the fierce battles which raged about her life and conduct never obscured the fact of her greatness, by temperament and by accomplishment alike.

  Sarah Bernhardt was born at No 265, Rue Saint Honoré, Paris, on October 23, 1845. She was the eleventh of a family of fourteen children. Her mother was a Dutch Jewess, but Sarah was baptized at the age of 12 and sent to school at the Augustinian Convent at Grandchamp, Versailles. At the age of 16, on the advice of her mother’s friend, the Duc de Morny, she was put to the stage as a profession. She had no inclination to it, but won a couple of second prizes at the Conservatoire. She never won a first prize. When she made her début at the Français in Iphigénie, her fellow-student Coquelin aîné being in the cast, the only genuine emotion that she felt was fear, and the audience laughed at her long, thin arms.

  Less than a year had passed when the gawky young Jewess gave a taste of her elemental fury. Mme Nathalie, a well-known old actress, was rough with Mlle Bernhardt’s younger sister. Sarah flew at her and boxed her ears. An apology was demanded by the Comédie Française — and refused. Very soon afterwards Mme Nathalie found means to render Mlle Bernhardt’s life at the theatre intolerable. She gave in her resignation and left the Français for the first time. For the next two or three years her career was chequered. She played in burlesque at the Porte Saint-Martin (the scene of some of her later triumphs), and at the Gymnase in vaudeville. In 1864, disgusted with a poor part at the latter house, she ran away, with characteristic impulsiveness, for a totally unauthorized holiday in Spain.

  In 1867 brighter days dawned. She joined the company at the Odéon. Here, as Zacharie in Athalie, Mlle Bernhardt made her first success; here, too, she won great favour in M. Coppée’s Le Passant; and here she boxed the ears of Taillade because he asked her, in a play, to kiss the hem of his robe. In 1869, shortly after the production of George Sand’s L’Autre, the Franco-Prussian War brought about the closing of the theatre. Mlle Bernhardt was patriotic to the core. Few things made the Dutch-French Jewess more angry than to be taken for a German Jewess; some years later she reduced to confusion the German Minister at Copenhagen and all the other guests present at a public banquet by remarking aloud, as he proposed the toast of “France,” “I presume, Baron, that you mean the whole of France?” During the war her patriotism found vent in equipping and managing a hospital for wounded soldiers in the Odéon, one of the first patients being M. Porel, later the husband of Mme Réjane and manager of the Vaudeville.

  When the war and the Commune were over the Odéon became a theatre again, and Mlle Bernhardt improved her position. She owed a great deal to the consistency with which Sarcey championed her in the Temps, while other critics were complaining of her thin voice and still thinner figure, her monotony and her languor. In 1872 there came a turning-point in her career. Victor Hugo had returned to Paris, and in the production of his Ruy Blas at the Odéon Mlle Sarah made so great a success as the Queen that Perrin, the manager of the Français, was practically compelled by the newspapers and by public opinion to re-engage her for the national theatre.

  Her membership lasted for eight years, and little by little — certainly not all at once — she forged her way to eminence. Her enemies on the Press were active, and even Sarcey seemed for a while to turn against her. But she worked with her characteristic energy and did her best to overcome her disabilities. In December, 1874, she played Phèdre for the first time. During the first act nervousness drove her into a fault which she had, apparently, picked up from her mother — that of speaking nasally through clenched teeth. As the performance went on she warmed to her work, and played so well that her audience raised no protest when she made nonsense of a line which, of course, they knew, with the rest of the play, by heart. Sarcey declared her superior to Rachel, and thenceforward she was one of the lions of Paris. The exhibition of two specimens of her sculpture in the Salon of the following year made her still more notorious.

  This was the period when the Sarah legend began to grow — the legend of the coffin in which she slept (a white satin-lined coffin with the softest of mattresses and the richest of perfumes, and love-letters, bouquets, and so forth stitched into the lining); the legend of wild animals kept for pleasure and decapitated or tortured from curiosity; the legend of retirement to a convent after one of her frequent attacks of apparently grave, but very momentary, illness — legends which at least suffice to show that Mlle Sarah was one of the most talked-of persons in Paris. Meanwhile she went on working hard at the Français, and found in Zola a sturdy and generous champion, who did his best to dissipate the clouds of gossip which gathered round her exploits in ballooning, animal training, and the rest of it.

  In 1879 came the well-remembered visit of the members of the Comédie Française — Got, Coquelin, Delaunay, Mounet-Sully, and others — to London and the Gaiety Theatre. Their repertory included Phèdre, L’Etrangère, Le Sphinx, Hernani, Andromaque, Zaïre, and other great pieces, and Mlle Bernhardt was a very important person in the troupe. Even during her absence Paris was full of gossip about her: she was exhibiting her works of art in London, and hanging about at the gallery to show herself off; she was going about in man’s clothes, and so forth; and Mlle Sarah felt herself compelled to write to the French Press to state that she was not going about in man’s clothes because she had left her suits at home.

  Meanwhile, in spite of several little contretemps, she was being loudly acclaimed by the English Press and public. But the engagement in London was not over before her friends and foes were provided with a real scandal to quarrel over. Mlle Bernhardt was due, on a certain Saturday, to play in L’Etrangère in the afternoon and in Hernani in the evening. She sent a message that she was too tired to appear. But she had not been too tired to give, the evening before, a performance at a private house; and the right to give these private performances was a bone of contention between her and the Français. There was an uproar. When the news reached Paris, Paris was furious. The company had been insulted. But Mlle Sarah was too valuable to be lost. When she hurled her resignation at the head of Got, the Français replied by making her a sociétaire, with
a full share in the profits.

  After all, the breach was only healed for a time, and a short time. Less than a year later she failed notably in a revival of Augier’s L’Aventurière. She complained of insufficient rehearsal, resigned on the spot, and was off to Havre before they could stop her. So, for the second time, she left the Comédie Française, and this time never to return. An interviewer flew north to Sainte-Adresse and found Mlle Sarah wielding brush and chisel and determined never to return to the stage.

  A month later she was acting in London with her sister Jeanne and others, playing in Adrienne Lecouvreur and Froufrou. Then the news reached her that the Courts had fined her 100,000f and deprived her of her share in the reserve fund; and she realized that great measures must be taken. And so began that long series of tours — royal progresses, triumphal processions, theatrical hurricanes sweeping over the habitable globe — which lasted till not so long ago.

  Her first tour was in 1880; it embraced Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and was followed by a run through the south of France and Switzerland. That autumn, she whirled herself, her company, her servants, agents, animals, and her 28 trunks full of dresses across the Atlantic for her first tour in America. Here, amid incredible adventures, she added an alligator to her menagerie (but it died in the flower of its youth — of champagne), a very large sum to her fortune, and thousands to her admirers. When she landed at Havre in May, 1881, she was welcomed by a crowd reckoned at 50,000 persons. There followed almost immediately a tour which embraced practically the whole of Europe except the hated Germany (although on one occasion in her career she did act in Berlin). While St Petersburg paid £20 for a box to see her, Kieff insulted her and Odessa stoned her in the streets for a Jewess; at Genoa she all but died one night, and started next morning for Basel; in London, on April 4, she committed “the only eccentricity she had not yet perpetrated” by getting married at the Greek Consulate to a member of her company, M. Damala, and whisking him off the same morning to Marseilles, en route for Spain. Almost before Paris had got over the shock the pair had separated.