The Times Great Women's Lives

by Sue Corbett

  As soon, however, as she was back in England, she again devoted her energies to the encouragement of the campaign of pin-pricks and violence to which she was committed and by which she hoped to further the cause which she had at heart. In 1912, for her own share in these lawless acts, she was twice imprisoned, but in each case served only five weeks of the periods of two months and nine months — for conspiracy to break windows — to which she was sentenced. A year later she was arrested on the more serious charge of inciting to commit a felony, in connexion with the blowing-up of Mr Lloyd George’s country house at Walton. In spite of the ability with which she conducted her own defence, the jury found her guilty — though with a strong recommendation to mercy — and she was sentenced by Mr Justice Lush to three years’ penal servitude.

  On the tenth day of the hunger strike which she at once began (to be followed later on by a thirst strike) she was temporarily released, under the terms of the measure introduced by Mr McKenna commonly known as the Cat and Mouse Act, because of the condition of extreme weakness to which she was reduced. At the end of five months, during which she was several times released and rearrested, she went to Paris, and then to America (after a detention of two and a half days on Ellis Island), having served not quite three weeks of her three years’ sentence. On her return to England the same cat-and-mouse policy was resumed by the authorities — and accompanied by more and more violent outbreaks on the part of Mrs Pankhurst’s militant followers — until at last, in the summer of 1914, after she had been arrested and released nine or ten times on the one charge, it was finally abandoned, and the remainder of her term of three years’ penal servitude allowed to lapse.

  Whether, but for the outbreak of the Great War, the militant movement would have resulted in the establishment of woman suffrage is a point on which opinions will probably always differ. But there is no question that the coming of the vote, which Mrs Pankhurst claimed as the right of her sex, was sensibly hastened by the general feeling that after the extraordinary courage and devotion shown by women of all classes in the nation’s emergency there must be no risk of a renewal of the feminist strife of the days of militancy. When the War was over it was remembered that on its outbreak Mrs Pankhurst, with her daughter Christabel and the rest of the militant leaders, declared an immediate suffrage truce, and gave herself up to the claims of national service and devoted her talents as a speaker to the encouragement of recruiting, first in this country and then in the United States. A visit to Russia in 1917, where she formed strong opinions on the evils of Bolshevism, was followed by a residence of some years in Canada and afterwards in Bermuda for the benefit of her health. Since she came home, at the end of 1925, she had taken a deep interest in public life and politics, and had some thoughts of standing for Parliament, though she declined Lady Astor’s offer to give up to her her seat in Plymouth.

  Emmeline Pankhurst

  Whatever views may be held as to the righteousness of the cause to which she gave her life and the methods by which she tried to bring about its achievement, there can be no doubt about the singleness of her aim and the remarkable strength and nobility of her character. She was inclined to be autocratic and liked to go her own way. But that was because she was honestly convinced that her own way was the only way. The end that she had in view was the emancipation of women from what she believed, with passionate sincerity, to be a condition of harmful subjection. She was convinced that she was working for the salvation of the world, as well as of her sex. She was a public speaker of very remarkable force and ability, with a power of stimulating and swaying her audience possessed by no other woman of her generation, and was regarded with devoted admiration by many people outside the members of her union. With all her autocracy, and her grievous mistakes, she was a humble-minded, large-hearted, unselfish woman, of the stuff of which martyrs are made. Quite deliberately, and having counted the cost, she undertook a warfare against the forces of law and order the strain of which her slight and fragile body was unable to bear. It will be remembered of her that whatever peril and suffering she called upon her followers to endure, up to the extreme indignity of forcible feeding, she herself was ready to face, and did face, with unfailing courage and endurance of body and mind.

  Emmeline Pankhurst, campaigner for women’s suffrage, was born on July 14, 1858. She died on June 14, 1928, aged 69

  DAME ELLEN TERRY

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  COMPELLING SHAKESPEAREAN ACTRESS OF GREAT VITALITY AND CHARM

  JULY 23, 1928

  The death of Dame Ellen Terry has been received with universal sorrow. In the history of the English stage no other actress has ever made for herself so abiding a place in the affections of the nation.

  Ellen Alice Terry was born at Coventry on February 27, 1848, and was the second in age of three sisters, Kate (Mrs Arthur Lewis), Ellen, and Marion, who, with their brother, Mr Fred Terry, made up a famous theatrical family. Their parents, Mr and Mrs Benjamin Terry, were well-known provincial actors in the days of stock companies, and Miss Ellen Terry took early to their calling. At the age of eight she was engaged by Charles Kean to play Mamillius in The Winter’s Tale at the Princess’s Theatre, and she remained in his company for some years, acting, among other parts, Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Arthur in King John. Even in those early days she appears to have shown the characteristics that made her irresistible in her prime; roguish comedy in Mamillius and Puck, pathos in Arthur, and personal charm in all three.

  Kean gave up the Princess’s Theatre in 1860, and Ellen Terry went to the provinces in search of experience. For some time she was in the old-established stock company of the Chutes at Bristol, of which her sister Kate, Madge Robertson (now Dame Madge Kendal), and Henrietta Hodson were also members. She returned to London in 1863, to play the part of Gertrude in A Little Treasure at the Haymarket to the Captain Maydenblush of Sothern; here, too, she first played Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing before a London audience. Another performance in London was that of Desdemona to the Othello of Walter Montgomery. That was in 1863, and soon after it there came a break in Miss Terry’s theatrical career. In February, 1864, she was married to G. F. Watts, the great painter, who was nearly 30 years her senior. In June, 1865, they parted.

  In 1867 occurred an event pregnant with interest. Having left the stage for two years, Miss Terry accepted an engagement at the now extinct Queen’s Theatre in Long Acre; and here she first acted with Henry Irving. He and she played Petruchio and Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, or rather in Katherine and Petruchio, Garrick’s version of that play. Her elder sister, Kate, had married at the height of her career, and retired from the stage. Ellen Terry was looked upon as her worthy successor, but only the next year she retired once more from the stage, and she remained in private life till 1874. Even then she was only 26 years old, and an actress of her talent had little difficulty in making up lost ground. It even seemed that the interval had done her service by ripening the individual characteristics on which the great part of her success depended.

  Returning to the Queen’s Theatre for a time, she found her first great opportunity in April, 1875, when Mr and Mrs Bancroft put on The Merchant of Venice at the old Prince of Wales’s Theatre, and, being unable to secure Mrs Kendal for Portia, turned to Miss Terry. A better move could not have been made. Ellen Terry was always the ideal Portia. More than 20 years later, when she was hampered by a distressing lack of memory and some slight loss of vitality, her beauty (she was well compared to a portrait by Veronese), her dignity, and her graciousness were unimpaired, and the bubbling spring of her mirth seemed as fresh as ever; it would be well worth while to be old to have seen her play the part at 27. The revival, admirable though it was, was short-lived, chiefly owing, it is said, to Coghlan’s Shylock; but Miss Terry’s reputation was doubled. She remained with the same management for more than a year, playing Clara Douglas in Money, Mabel Vane in Masks and Faces, and Blanche Haye in Ours. On leaving the Prince of Wales’s Theatre she joined John H
are’s management at the old Court, where, among other parts, she appeared for the first time as Olivia in Wills’s adaptation of “The Vicar of Wakefield.”

  When Henry Irving took over the Lyceum, at the close of the Bateman management in 1878, one of his first steps was to engage Ellen Terry as his leading lady, and for the next 13 years they acted together, almost without a break. Her first part under the new management was Ophelia, and the influence of Irving was apparent at the outset. The part had been thought out as a whole, and one result was that the “mad scene” had a meaning. The phrases no longer appeared to be ungoverned spurts of lunacy; each proved to have been born of that character in those circumstances; and the effect of all was not only to intensify the devotion, the tenderness, and the innocence of Ophelia herself, but to point the tragedy of the whole story. No doubt Irving had found good material to work on; beauty (as Ophelia, said M. Jules Claretie in La Presse, Miss Terry looked like a “living model of Giovanni Bellini’s”), rare personal charm, intense vitality, and no lack of intelligence; but it says much for Irving’s own power, and for the loyalty of one who might practically be called his pupil, that at her very first appearance under his management a born comedian should achieve a triumph in the part of Ophelia.

  Her first season at the Lyceum was typical of the years of hard work that were to follow; besides Ophelia it included her appearance as Pauline, Lady Anne, Ruth Meadows, and Henrietta Maria. One of the most remarkable features of her career, indeed, is the loyal and patient manner in which she subordinated her own bias to fulfil the demands of her manager and his theatre. She played a great variety of parts, and though she played them not all equally well, she was always able to present a reasoned and consistent interpretation, while her irresistible personal charm went far to conceal the fact that she was frequently out of her depth. Lady Macbeth, for instance, was a part to which her special gifts were totally unsuited; but to recall her rendering of it is to recall far more than the regally beautiful woman who appears in Sargent’s picture. It fell short of the magnificent, perverted nature which Shakespeare conceived, but it displayed a firmness that was an admirable foil to the moral cowardice of Macbeth, and something of the tragedy of a great love unworthily bestowed.

  To chronicle all Miss Terry’s appearances between 1878 and 1901 would be to chronicle the history of the Lyceum Theatre. In only two plays — Nance Oldfield and The Amber Heart — did she appear without Sir Henry Irving; and to these might be added Olivia, as distinctly her triumph rather than his. In consecrating her best years to the Lyceum Miss Terry no doubt sacrificed many chances of appearing in plays, new or old, which might have exploited her personal bent; on the other hand, she was freed from the dangers of an ever-narrowing range and a faulty judgment which too often beset leading actors and actresses; she gained breadth and knowledge by playing whatever part Sir Henry Irving wished her to play, and she had the satisfaction of knowing herself a member of one of the greatest histrionic partnerships the English stage has seen.

  Like Irving, she commanded the attention; it was impossible to take one’s eyes off her — until he appeared on the stage; unlike him, she commanded by appealing, by charming, rather than by interesting. Womanly, tender, mirthful, witty, graceful, musical, with a clear and melodious enunciation and rhythmical, flowing movements, she made the most perfect foil to her partner that could be imagined.

  And once or twice, where Irving was least successful, it happened that Miss Terry was most in her element. Her matchless Portia we have referred to; Irving’s Shylock was long unacceptable to the town; Miss Terry’s Viola (a performance unfortunately cut short by illness) was inimitable, one of her finest achievements, while Irving’s Malvolio was all in the wrong key. In Romeo and Juliet they failed together, and in Hamlet they succeeded together. As Beatrice (which was perhaps the very finest of all the adorable performances she gave) she was so enchanting that the memory of her wit and charm leaves Irving’s Benedick somewhat dim.

  Still on stage at the age of 80: Dame Ellen Terry

  Of all Miss Terry’s failures probably her Madame Sans-Gêne was the most outright, and the best deserved. The incarnation of all that was gracious and graceful, an actress whose every movement was a poem, whose speech was music, and whose ebullient spirits were constantly caught and guided into a stream of beauty by some natural refinement, she turned in that part to try to be vulgar. That she failed was only a new proof of the distance that separated her from the realistic school represented by Mme Réjane, a new illustration of the rare quality of her gifts. Though she lacked great tragic power, in scenes of simple pathos and affection, like those of Olivia or Cordelia, the emotions of her audience were utterly at her command; her highest moments came in the high-bred raillery of Portia and Beatrice.

  Miss Terry left the Lyceum company in 1901, after the end of the run of Coriolanus, but appeared as Portia in the performance of The Merchant of Venice which closed the history of the theatre in July, 1902. A short season at the Imperial Theatre in 1903 under her own management brought no success. The name of her son, Edward Gordon Craig, was not then so well known in England as it is now, and his theories of scenery and of stage-lighting were even more puzzling to London then than they would be to-day. And so the interesting — it might be called the prophetic — production of Ibsen’s The Vikings at Helgeland fell flat. In subsequent years Miss Terry appeared as Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor at His Majesty’s Theatre; she played with indescribable fascination Lady Cecily Waynflete in Shaw’s Captain Brassbound’s Conversion; she appeared in Alice Sit-by-the Fire and in Pinkie and the Fairies, and she delivered in many towns of England and the United States two series of wilful, witty, very “feminist,” and very perspicacious, lectures on Shakespeare’s heroines.

  In June, 1906, the 50th anniversary of Miss Terry’s first appearance on the stage was celebrated at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, amid fervent enthusiasm. She had always been idolized by the public; and even the shrewdest critics found their judgment seduced by her supreme vitality and personal charm. At that “Jubilee”, public, critics, and the theatrical profession (to whose memories she had endeared herself by her unfailing kindness, consideration, and unselfishness) joined to show her how much she was loved and admired. In spite of advancing years, failing memory, and increasing restlessness, she was always welcome on the stage; and she preserved her gaiety and verve to the end.

  In May, 1922, Miss Terry received the hon. degree of LL.D. at St Andrews. In the New Year honours of 1925, to the delight of her countless admirers, she received the Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. In celebration of this event she and her sister Dames created at the same time — namely, Dame Millicent Fawcett and the late Dame Louisa Aldrich-Blake — were presented with wreaths of laurel at a reception held by a number of distinguished women. Her 80th birthday was celebrated last February with messages and tributes from her countless admirers, headed by the King and Queen, and it drew from old playgoers an interesting correspondence in The Times containing reminiscences of her triumphs. Some day, perhaps, a full and authoritative biography will fill the gaps inevitably left by her modesty and consideration for others in the fascinating book of memories which was her chief contribution to literature. She was a woman of genius; but her genius was not that of the brain so much as of the spirit, and of the heart. She was a poem in herself — a being of an exquisite and mobile beauty. On the stage or off she was like the daffodils that set the poet’s heart dancing.

  Dame Ellen Terry, GBE, Shakespearean actress, was born on February 27, 1848. She died on July 21, 1928, aged 80

  DAME MILLICENT FAWCETT

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  MODERATE BUT DETERMINED PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN SUFFRAGE SOCIETIES

  AUGUST 6, 1929

  The death of Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, which occurred early yesterday morning, recalls a long and important chapter in the story of the political emancipation of women.

  The seventh child o
f Newson Garrett, of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, she was born there on June 11, 1847. Before she was 20 she was married to Henry Fawcett. A few years earlier he had become Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge, an office which he held till his death. His political career was still to come. His wife shared his interests in economics, and herself published various works on that subject, including “Political Economy for Beginners,” 1870, “Tales in Political Economy, 1875, and, with her husband, a book of “Essays and Lectures,” 1872.

  After her widowhood she published biographies of Queen Victoria and of Sir William Molesworth, one of the old “philosophical Radicals,” and biographical studies of “Some Eminent Women of our Time,” 1889, and “Five Famous Frenchwomen,” 1906. In old age she published a volume of reminiscences, “What I Remember,” 1924, and an account of a visit to Palestine, “Easter in Palestine,” 1926, a country which she visited three times in her old age. But probably those of her books which will last longest are the two in which she describes the movement to which her life work was mainly devoted — “Women’s Suffrage: a Short History of a Great Movement,” 1911, and “The Women’s Victory — and After,” 1919. It happens that her public life was exactly co-extensive with this movement. It began with her first platform speech in March, 1870, on behalf of the first Women’s Suffrage Bill to be introduced into the House of Commons. Its active stages ended shortly after the Representation of the People Act, 1918, which granted the first great instalment of women’s suffrage, and it has finally terminated not long after the first woman MP has achieved Cabinet rank — an event which may be said to have rounded off the achievement of political equality between men and women.