BORN IN 1858 Ethel Smyth is the best remembered woman composer in musical history. In her long life she had many female lovers and one male; her tall bony figure, careless dress and appalling table manners, brought fear - or amusement - to the women she loved. She met Mrs. Pankhurst in 1910.
BEFORE THEN ETHEL had spent her energies trotting around the cities of Europe canvassing for her music to be given public airing. London, Berlin, Leipzig, Paris, Heidelberg; she travelled constantly, seeking patrons and
badgering the Musical Directors of the best Conservatoires. She had had no time for politics, believing that any association with dissent towards the establishment would jeopardize any hopes of getting her music performed. She had some success, and in 1903, to her delight, was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from Durham University. Right: Ethel in 1913
EMMELINE PANKHURST, also born in 1858, was the widow of a Mancunian business man. Originally interested in Workhouse Reform, Mrs. Pankhurst had swept into the Campaign for Women's Suffrage at the top of the ladder. Her eldest daughter Christabel had become friendly with Eva Gore-Booth the lesbian poet, when running the Pankhurst family gift shop in Manchester. Eva and her partner Ester Roper, both advocates of Women's Suffrage, had financed Christabel to study Law, but Mrs. Pankhurst was not pleased and to win her daughter away embraced the Cause of Women's Suffrage herself .
WITH A MIGHTY enthusiasm she founded the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903; its brief was to end the intellectually based arguments of the last 100 years, embrace militancy and take the battle into the streets - where
it would hurt ! Many - though not all - of Ethel's women friends had previously urged her, as a respected and prominent woman, to join The Cause. Reluctantly she agreed to go to meeting where Mrs. Pankhurst was speaking. When the short but fiery speaker, handsome with a fine complexion and a powerful yet melodious speaking voice began her eloquent and passionate speech - Ethel was instantly captivated. She fell in love and determined to devote two years to Mrs. Pankhurst and the battle for Women's Suffrage. Left: Mrs. Pankhurst 1910
NUMER TWO Pankhurst daughter, Sylvia,wrote about Ethel:
"...Individualised to the last point she had in middle age little about her that was feminine. Her features were clean cut and well marked, neither manly nor womanly, her thin hair drawn plainly aside, her speech clear in articulation and incisive rather than melodious. Wearing a small mannish hat, battered and old, plain cut country clothes hard worn by weather and usage, she would don a tie of the brightest purple, white and green, or some hideous purple cotton jacket, or other oddity in the WSPU colours she was so proud of..."
DEVOTION TO THE CAUSE was easily demonstrated. Music ! Ethel composed the Suffragette hymn and battle cry "The March of the Women" which was first performed publicly in 1911 to celebrate the release of 21 women from Holloway jail, imprisoned for damage to property. At organised Suffrage processions - often led by a Joan of Arc on a horse - the March was belted out by up to
40,000 female throats at times. More peacefully, fund raising concerts in The Albert and The Queens Hall , not unsurprisingly featuring much of Ethel's music, brought in the crowds. Right: A WSPU button
MRS. PANKHURST WAS charmed with this amazing and high profile recruit; Ethel remained infatuated. There is no indication that Emmeline ever responded to Ethel's passion, indeed many of the composer's love affairs were not to be of a carnal nature, but they became close friends and Mrs. Pankhurst treated Ethel with a kindness that was not always reflected in her treatment of her other lieutenants. They lived at the same hotel in Lincoln's Inn - from time to time Ethel was allowed to sleep in the spare bed in Mrs. Pankhurst's room, they would often stand and watch the night sky together.
DIFFIDENT AND OFTEN abrasive Mrs. Pankhurst reserved her passions for her daughter Christabel - and The Cause. No lover of literature or poetry her energy and restlessness made it hard for her to sit and listen to music and she did not sing in tune - which was strange to an artist of Ethel's calibre. Emmeline Pankhurst's supreme gift was oratory, the power to inspire, to move the spirit - and to incite action. Ethel, although envious, admired without rancour. Left: The WSPU bus about 1908!
IN 1912 A MIGHTY Window Breaking Demonstration and Rally was planned. Ethel, who had played ball games all her life and was a noted sportswoman, was called upon to give stone throwing lessons to Emmeline; lessons much needed it turned out since the first practice shot nearly stunned Ethel's dog.
ON MARCH 1st in Piccadilly, Regent Street, Oxford Street, Bond Street and the
Haymarket, women produced hammers and sticks from behind voluminous skirts and set about tackling the nearest shop windows. Police marched off the struggling agitators, noisy women supporters shouted after them, men hurled abuse; shop assistants hurriedly put up shutters, traffic stood still ! Mrs. Pankhurst, with two other women, went to Downing Street to hand in a letter to the Prime Minister. Two panes in the windows of Number 10 suffered and Emmeline, thanks no doubt to Ethel's training, managed to score a hit on the more distant Home Office before she was dragged away by the police. Right: Cover of the WSPU magazine
A RALLY WAS held in Parliament Square on March 4th; a crowd came to see the fun and the Police turned out in their hundreds. But Mrs. Pankhurst had planned carefully; the window breakers quietly made their way to Knightsbridge instead - where Pontings and Harrods had been left undefended. Ethel herself targeted the house of the Colonial Secretary and hurled a brick through his window. Arrested and charged, she was sentenced to two months with hard labour and packed off to Holloway Prison ! Left: A Suffragette demonstrates. The arrow at the top of the poster indicates that she has been imprisoned and earned the" Holloway Degree."
ETHEL TOO HAD NOW gained her"Holloway Degree!" Given a cell next to Mrs. Pankhurst they were able to take tea together, and when Emmeline was sent to a punishment cell for two days after a small infringement of rules Ethel nobly insisted on joining her.
THERE WAS NO hard labour and the sentence was reduced to one
month. Unable to cope with the huge influx of inmates after the Demonstration, the authorities had had to house the suffragettes together in a special wing and to prevent hunger strikes many rules were relaxed. Visitors smuggled in food and luxuries and athletics were organised in the prison courtyard - which was decorated with impromptu purple, white and green banners displaying defiant designs and mottoes. There was, naturally, much singing. Right: Ethel conducting.
SIR THOMAS BEECHAM the conductor came to visit Ethel and wrote in his diary:
"...I arrived in the main courtyard of the prison to find the noble company of martyrs marching around it and singing lustily their war chant while the composer, beaming approbation from an overlooking upper window, beat time in almost bacchic frenzy with a toothbrush..."
PLEADING RHEUMATISM - from which she genuinely suffered, Ethel was released from Holloway after three weeks.
IN 1912 THE TWO YEARS which Ethel has promised to Mrs. Pankhurst were up. She remained on good terms with Emmeline, but the first pangs of love were over. Prison - though an exciting experience - was not something she wished to repeat. Certainly a hunger strike could not be tolerated.. She sympathised with the WSPU campaigns of arson which followed - burning letter boxes, destroying race courses, damaging golf courses and telegraph wires, but took no further action.
OCTOBER 1912 FOUND Ethel in Vienna where Bruno Walter was conducting works by Mahler - and herself. Later, the 1920s and 30s were a good time for Ethel Smyth, her musical works were often played and in 1922 she was made a Dame of the Order of the British Empire. Increasingly afflicted with deafness she turned to writing and her autobiographical books were well received. She died in 1944 three years after her last great and equally cerebral love - Virginia Woolf.
MRS. PANKHURST died in 1928.
Thanks to:
Impetuous Heart by Louise Collins pub. William Kimber & Co. Ltd. (out of print)
The Purple White and Green by Diane Atkinson pub. Museum of London.
The Daily Mail Book of Women in the 20th Century by Maureen Hill pub. Chapman's Publishers
From Old Dyke 9, February 2001
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