A Mad, Wicked Folly

by Sharon Biggs Waller

  “What do you mean?”

  He let out a laugh. “I can tell you where we’ll be patrolling, and you can fly-post somewhere else. Simple.”

  “You? A turncoat? William Fletcher!”

  He shrugged. “Let’s just call me an informant. The way I see it, you could use someone on the inside to tip you off. It’s not like I haven’t helped the suffragettes before. Victorious would be able to give them all the slip.”

  I could imagine the frustration of the government, waking up each morning to a city wallpapered with my illustrations. Everyone would wonder who Victorious was, and surely the papers would take notice.

  “‘Deeds not words.’ Isn’t that the suffragette motto?” He pulled off my stocking and whistled. It was not a pretty sight. My ankle was puffy and swollen and already turning an unlovely shade of yellow.

  “Blimey,” he said. “You did a good job of it, didn’t you?” His fingers pressed around my ankle. “I’m not sure it’s broken; maybe just wrenched. Still, I’ll strap it up for you, and then in the morning we’ll get you to a doctor.”

  Will went to Lucy’s fireplace, shoveled in some coal, and coaxed a fire to light. My chin stung where I had scraped it. I brushed it with the back of my hand.

  Will went into Lucy’s little kitchen, and I heard cupboard doors opening and closing. He reappeared carrying a bowl of water and some cloths. He dipped one into the water, came over, and pressed it to my chin. “Hold it there and it will ease in a moment. It’s just a little cut; I don’t think you need stitches. You’ll look as though you’ve gone a few rounds with a bare-knuckle fighter, I expect.”

  He knelt on the floor and began to wrap a cloth around my ankle. “So out with it. What’s all this about? Last time we spoke, you were off to marry a rich bloke. Now you’re dressed as a lad, fly-posting illustrations up and down Whitehall. Surely you must have known you would have been arrested if you were caught? I doubt there are any art classes offered in Holloway.”

  His flippant remark stung me. “I suppose I deserve that.”

  “I’m sorry, Vicky.” He shook his head. His voice was marked with frustration. “I don’t mean to be a swine to you. I’m just a little confused.”

  “I couldn’t go through with the marriage. There was no freedom in that life after all. I left home, and now I’m a suffragette.”

  “I can’t imagine what that cost you, Vicky.” Will’s fingers hesitated on the bandage. He looked up, his face grave. “What about art school?”

  “I got accepted. But it turns out I could never have gone.”

  Will looked at me in sorrow. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m going to try again next year, this time for the scholarship. I tried to find you to see if you wanted to work together again. I went to your flat, but you weren’t there. I even went to the police station, but they wouldn’t tell me anything about you.”

  “After that day I saw you at the RCA, I moved out of my flat and back into the police barracks.” He finished rolling the bandage and sat next to me. “After what happened with you, I didn’t want to stay in that flat. There were too many memories of you there.”

  “But why?” I said. “I thought you hated me. The way you sounded that day at the RCA—it was the way you sounded when you thought I was an anti-suffragist. Disgusted.”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t disgusted with you. I was disgusted with me. When you told me you were engaged, I felt so daft. It was stupid of me to think I had a chance with you. Especially when I realized you had to get married in order to go to art school. I couldn’t give you that. And then I thought I had mucked things up between us, kissing you as I did.”

  “Didn’t you notice that I kissed you back?”

  “I did.” He looked at me in that adorable way that I remembered well. I watched his mouth turn up at the sides as he smiled.

  Without even hesitating, I put my hands around his neck, pressed my mouth on his, and kissed him soundly.

  Will made a garbled noise. He pulled away. “Vicky, what the devil are you doing?”

  “Kissing you.” I suddenly felt uncertain. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  He looked at me for a long moment. “Well, do it again so I can be sure.”

  So I did. And the same feelings I had had before bloomed inside me, as if they had never gone away—the same desire, the same need to feel him against me. And my love for him bloomed into life, too.

  “Is that all right?” I said, a moment later, feeling more than a little breathless.

  “Better than all right; grand, if you want to know the truth of it.” He squeezed my fingers. “I had given up on ever kissing you again. But I don’t understand. What’s this about? Before, you told me what you felt for me was a passing fancy.”

  “It was a lie. The truth is, I can’t ever imagine my life without you.”

  He pulled me close to him, and I rested my head on his chest. For the first time in maybe my entire life, I felt as if I was exactly where I needed to be and exactly who I needed to be.

  WILL’S DIAGNOSIS WAS correct. Painful as it was, my ankle had only been wrenched, and a month later Victorious was fly-posting again, with her inside informer telling her where to go. For weeks I posted my illustrations, evading and frustrating the police. And slowly, as I worked, public opinion began to change, and more and more people understood that force-feeding was barbaric and torturous. My mother’s favorite newspaper, the Daily Bugle, was the first to take the suffragettes’ side. It denounced the force-feeding, saying, “No matter whether one agrees with the suffragettes, the government’s brutal torture of the women cannot be justified.” Because of the public outcry, the Home Office began an inquiry, interviewing all the prison warders. While the WSPU waited to see what the government would do, it called a truce.

  Lucy and the other two suffragettes arrested with her had been released at the beginning of December. There were over a hundred of us at Holloway to greet them as they walked through the small door in the gothic iron gate. We draped them with flower garlands and paraded them home in an open-topped horse-drawn carriage, the fife-and-drum band marching behind them.

  I was now among the top artists at the WSPU, and I asked Miss Housman if I could teach drawing classes at the atelier. My classes were exactly the kind that women should frequent. In my classes we drew from the undraped figure—the nude. I started out with six students, all female, from teenage girls to married women. But when word got round that my model was PC William Fletcher, I had a waiting list.

  “Draw what you see, ladies, not what you know,” I said, walking around the room, checking each drawing and making comments and corrections. “Don’t gape, Violet,” I said in a lofty voice to a teenage girl who was staring at Will posing on the model’s dais. “A life-drawing class is always professional, never risqué.” Violet blushed and returned to her drawing. Will looked at me out of the corner of his eye, trying valiantly to keep his expression still, fighting the compulsion to laugh.

  Forty

  Darling residence, front garden,

  Sunday, ninth of January 1910

  WINTER HAD BEGUN in earnest, and snow lay thickly on the ground and covered the rooftops like cotton blankets. Everything was so white that it nearly hurt my eyes.

  It was so cold I could see my breath in the air, and I felt sorry for a little house sparrow that pecked around for seeds in my mother’s desolate rose garden. I looked up at the windows of my old bedroom. The remains of the wisteria vine looked ragged and forlorn in the winter light. So long ago I had climbed out that window.

  I held in my hand a newly minted tuppeny novelette that featured Will’s story, which Freddy’s company had published. On the cover was my illustration of Robert Hoode dressed in a black cloak, robbing a lord who staggered drunken from the Reform Club. On top of it was written: Magnificent Picture Printed in Full Color! Robert Hoode Steals from the R
ich and Gives to the Poor! And on the bottom: Written by W. Fletcher. Illustrated by V. Darling. Published by Darling and Whitehouse and sold by all newsagents everywhere. I looked forward to including it in my RCA application in April. I hadn’t given up on my dream of going to art school, and I never would, no matter how many times I had to apply.

  Mamma was the first person I wanted to show it to. I wanted her to see that I had become an artist and that I was earning money. I wanted to show her because I knew she would be proud of me.

  When I lifted my hand to pull the doorbell, I saw a curtain twitch at the window. And there was my father peering out. I caught his eye and he nodded.

  And smiled.

  I LEFT MY parents’ house and I stepped out into a day that had turned bright with sunshine and promise. Mamma had loved the novelette, and I left it with her, along with the promise to join her at Sally’s Tea Shop on Saturday to meet Will. As for Papa, the smile was a start.

  I walked to the Royal Academy and into the courtyard, past the statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds, holding his palette in one hand, brush held aloft in the other, making his mark on an unseen canvas. But Sir Joshua did not hold my attention for more than a passing glance. I saw Will leaning against statue’s plinth. I threaded my way through the scrum of people to his side.

  Together we left the Royal Academy and walked down the streets of London, a place brimming with hidden opportunity. And I knew that I would find it. For opportunity is nothing if you don’t grab it by both hands.

  Author’s Notes

  EDWARDIAN LIFE

  The Edwardian era (1901–1910) was one of great change for women. Queen Victoria (May 24, 1819–January 22, 1901) had been very straitlaced, and her subjects often copied her behavior. Her son and heir, King Edward VII, for whom the era was named, was her exact opposite and had many very public affairs; his mistresses included the famous actress Lillie Langtry and socialite Alice Keppel (who was the maternal great-grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and second wife of Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales and future king of England).

  Edwardian women were making their voices heard through the suffrage movement, and young women were finding employment, becoming better educated, and even becoming doctors and lawyers, although many universities did not award degrees, and many associations, such as the Bar Council in England, denied females the right to practice. Middle-class girls were rebelling against their parents and demanding treatment equal to that of boys. Upper-middle-class and aristocratic girls clung to tradition more than middle-class girls, but they too wanted the freedom to be more independent. Working-class single women were the most vulnerable without suffrage. The government turned a blind eye to their lives, which, if they worked outside the home, usually included sweated labor (sweatshop labor, as we know it in the United States) or long hours and no private life as a live-in servant. A great many working-class women were not paid a living wage and were forced to live in squalid conditions.

  Vicky’s arranged betrothal was very common for the time. People rarely married purely for love; a good match equaled marrying someone within your own class or someone who could further the interests and contribute to the betterment of the family. Vicky, as an upper-middle-class girl, would have been forbidden to date someone like Will, who was working-class.

  EDWARDIAN CLOTHING

  The elaborate and beautiful clothing worn during the Edwardian era was the privilege of those who could afford it, in other words the upper classes (the upper-middle class and the aristocracy). The fashion was vastly different from that of any other class. Women’s fashions were all about the curves and required a corset, to produce tiny “wasp” waists. Women often “tightlaced” their corsets: pulling them so taut that they could barely breathe. Dresses were tight-fitting around the waist and bottom, and often ended in a long swath of material at the hem. Later in the era, during Vicky’s time, skirts became much narrower, with slight trains, and the silhouette was longer and slimmer, requiring a new kind of corset called the S-bend, which ended mid-thigh instead of at the hips. The S-bend was touted as a health corset because it put less strain on the stomach. However, because the corset pushed the torso forward, it caused a new health problem: backache. Women would use parasols or walking sticks to help take the strain off the back. Hats were huge—often twenty-four inches in diameter—trimmed with feathers and ribbons and secured through the hair with a long, decorative hatpin.

  Vicky’s tailor-made was very much in fashion around the turn of the twentieth century. It was essentially a man’s suit combined with a long skirt. Very comfortable and informal, it represented the changing nature of the Edwardian woman.

  TUPPENNY NOVELETTES

  The penny dreadful and the tuppenny novelette were the graphic novels of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. These publications were made very cheaply so that the young working class would be able to afford them. The booklets contained serialized stories released over time. They were usually thrillers. Early stories included Black Bess, or the Knight of the Road, Varney the Vampire, and The String of Pearls: A Romance (introducing Sweeney Todd). A popular Edwardian serial about a fictional detective called Sexton Blake, which first appeared in 1893, was published up until the 1970s.

  VOTES FOR WOMEN

  The reason why women were not given the right to vote seems ridiculous viewed through our twenty-first-century eyes. Many men thought women too irrational to make important decisions. They feared women would become the majority voters and use emotional arguments to change policies, particularly on moral and sexual issues, imposing higher standards. It was also felt that women would lose their charm, and men their dominance over women. Women were allowed to vote in municipal elections, and it was thought that this was sufficient, because local government dealt with social issues, which were deemed women’s concerns. The national government dealt with wider issues, such as defense of the realm, something that was not a woman’s concern.

  Many women also opposed suffrage. An anti-suffrage group—largely formed of women—called The National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage was formed to put their case forward. These women believed firmly that a man was better equipped to make decisions, and that women had enough to do running the household. They believed women could influence their husbands to make the right voting decision. Queen Victoria was appalled at the idea of women’s suffrage, and in 1870 she urged her subjects to check “this mad, wicked folly of ‘Women’s Rights.’”

  In the United States, there were many women in the temperance movement, and it was feared that women would be able to bring about Prohibition. Ironically, Prohibition came in before women received the right to vote.

  British suffragettes did indeed chain themselves to railings, heckle political meetings, throw rocks and tiles at cars, and smash windows. Later, their actions increased to arson and destroying works of art. It’s unclear whether their militant tactics had any weight in the final decision to give women the vote. Instead, it is thought that women’s part in winning World War I (1914–1918) actually turned the tables in their favor. Because they successfully took on roles that men had to abandon to become soldiers, they were no longer seen as “half angels, half idiots,” as the famed pro-suffrage politician Keir Hardie put it.

  British women began demanding the vote in 1865 and were finally granted it in 1918 for those over thirty years of age. In 1928, women were granted the same voting rights as men, which was over the age of twenty-one.

  What’s the difference between suffragettes and suffragists? In 1906, the journalist Charles E. Hands of the Daily Mail, a British newspaper known for its conservative views, called the WSPU suffragettes, meaning it to be a slur. The WSPU embraced the name and responded that they were actually suffragets, because they were going to get the vote. Groups other than the WSPU were simply called suffragists. The definition of suffragist is someone, male or female, who advocates for extending voting rights (also known a
s suffrage). Today the word suffragette is widely used as a blanket term to reference any woman in the nineteenth or twentieth century who fought for the right to vote.

  In the United States, the fight was just as strong, although suffragists weren’t as militant as those in the Great Britain. Their demand for the vote began in 1848. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Burns, and Alice Paul were some of the stalwart warriors fighting for women’s right to vote. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns attended school in England and joined the WSPU (Paul in 1908, Burns in 1909). Paul was force-fed in England in 1909 after hunger-striking. As noted in the story, Paul was arrested after gate-crashing the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. The character of Lucy Hawkins is based on these two women.

  Wyoming became the first state to grant women’s suffrage, in 1869. In 1920 Woodrow Wilson signed the Nineteenth Amendment, which prohibits state and federal agencies from gender-based voting discrimination.

  We modern women are fortunate to have had such brave souls fighting to give us the vote. It’s a gift to treasure, certainly never one to ignore. The spirits of the Pankhursts, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and hundreds of others who sacrificed their peaceful existence for women in the future must always follow us into the voting booth.

  THE PANKHURSTS

  In 1878, Emmeline Goulden (1858–1928) married Richard Pankhurst, a lawyer who was passionate about women’s suffrage. They had five children: Christabel, Sylvia, Frank (who died in infancy), Harry, and Adela, who was also involved in the movement, but largely in the north of England. Adela was banished to Australia in 1914 by her mother and sister Christabel after they falsely accused her of being useless to the suffrage movement.

  Emmeline cofounded the Women’s Social and Political Union with Christabel. She was very stalwart about women’s suffrage, and often sacrificed her children’s happiness for the movement. During World War I, Emmeline put aside the suffrage demand temporarily to help with the war effort. She encouraged women to chastise men for not going to war by presenting them with a white feather, which was a symbol of cowardice. Two years after her death, a statue of her was erected in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to Parliament. It stands there today.