THE KING AND HIS REIGN: IV; WOMEN'S RIGHTS
By E.
F. BENSON
ON the fall of the Whig Government in 1839. Queen Victoria, not yet twenty years old, fought a pitched battle with Sir Robert Peel, whom she had sent for to form a Tory Ministry, and defeated him single-handed. The casus belli was that Sir Robert desired the Queen to change sonic, at any rate, of the Ladies of her Household who were the wives or daughters of Whigs, as a mark of confidence in her new Government, and have Tory ladies about her. She refused to part with any of them and Sir Robert resigned. In describing the various phrases of this battle to Lord Melbourne she wrote, " I should like to know if they mean to give the Ladies scats in Parliament." In these withering words sarcasm had found its supreme expression. She never modified her uncompromising attitude as to the proper limits or employment for her sex, and forty years later, hearing that some woman had spoken in favour of female suffrage, she said that "Lady C -- ought to have a good whipping."
Though King Edward was not so drastically disposed, he had a strong objection to women stepping out of their " proper sphere." On one occasion he almost refused to eat some venison because the stag had been shot by a Diane chasseresse, and he was strongly Opposed to what his mother termed "so-called and erroneous rights for women." As late as 1908, when female suffrage had become a subject on which Asquith's Cabinet debated and was divided, he poured scalding vials of wrath on Mr. Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, for attending and speaking at a meeting in the Albert Hall on the subject. By this time, it is true, it had become more odious to him by reason of the antics of militant Suffragettes, and the King's dislike of the principle was emphasized by the hooliganism of its more active sup- porters, who, despairing of arriving at anything by -constitutional means, resorted to these expedients with the avowed intention of making themselves so rabid a nuisance that notice must be taken of them. In the Cabinet, Haldane and Sir Edward Grey were both in favour of female suffrage, and Mr. Lloyd George had warned the militant section that their lawless proceedings were doing the greatest disservice to their cause. But it was no good : the King maintained that Mr. Lloyd George had shown "an entire absence of good judgement, good taste and propriety." " I shall have no more to do with him than what is absolutely necessary," was his irritated Conclusion.
Mr. Lloyd George was quite right in believing that mili- tant methods retarded rather than advanced the cause with which he was in sympathy, but for the next six years, up till the outbreak of the Great War in the fifth year of King George's reign, these 'injudicious ladies continued their operations, but got no nearer their goal. Their leaders Were earnest and noble-minded women, but their notion of making themselves — such a nuisance that somebody must attend to them only enlisted the attention of the police. They padlocked themselves to the railings in Downing Street and to the pulpit in Westminster . .
Abbey, they set fire to haystacks, they broke windows, • they slashed Sargent's portrait of Henry James on exhibition at the Royal Acadeniy, they- were credited, at any rate, with making some plot for kidnapping or killing :gr. Lloyd George when golfing by hiding in some furze builies near a bunker. into ' which he might be -con- fidently expected to drive-: • they committed a thousand futile and foolish outrages in order to terrorize the nation into granting their demands. Certainly they were in earnest, for they gladly faced prison, where some of them went on hunger strike, and were forcibly fed, for the sake of the cause. But no Government could possibly bring in a Bill for their enfranchisement while these outrages continued, and they only alienated the sympathies of those who rightly deplored such lawless methods. Mr. Lloyd George had already promised to bring the question before the House of Commons, but what Minister could support them as long as they showed themselves less lit for the vote than for prisons or lunatic asylums ? The burning of haystacks could not be considered a qualification for political responsibility.
But on the outbreak of War these stupid outrages eeased abruptly and were never renewed. England became a military training camp, and women were needed to take the place of men. They came forward in thousands and tens of thousands, and there was scarcely a business or an industry,- except those that required physical strength beyond that of their sex, in which they did not adequately fill the places of the men who had vacated them. They became clerks, constables, chauffeurs, chemists, munition-workers, electricians and doctors, and in all such trades they showed themselves quick to learn, eager to work, efficient and reliable. More than that, they exhibited powers of organization, com- petent shouldering of responsibilities, management of subordinates, all which qualities hitherto had been supposed to be the property of males alone. When the War was over many directors of large businesses preferred to retain their women and girls to reinstating demobilized men.
The effect of employment on women themselves was amazing. They had discovered and proved their Own capabilities, and as always happens except in the case of those who are congenitally lazy, they enjoyed their use. Thousands of girls who had hitherto mooned their time away in objectless idleness chose to continue working rather than go back to the easy monotony of their previous life. Work not only exercised their faculties but brought them wages and freedom. All day they were occupied with their jobs, and, as the independent worker has every right to do, they .claimed the freedom of their leisure. Latchkeys took the place of domestic evenings, and they set up for themselves, sharing a flat with friends, or living in hostels for women, This movement of independence which had begun before the War was vastly accelerated by it, and- it could not have been otherwise. As for the franchise, even those who had most strenuously opposed it saw the iniquity of withholding it any longer. The Bill was passed by the Conservative Government, but any Government, - Labour or . Liberal; would 'have done the same : it was won, however, not by the lawless campaigns of the militant; but by the patriotic industry of the whole :sex, and though deservedly earned- was of far less consequence to women in general than was their independence. Practically all professions had been opened to them, and, oddly enough, the only one in which their work was not as successful as that of men was dressmaking.
The cry, of course, arose that women had become unsexed. That was bound to happen; but it would bc far nearer the 'truth to-say that they had rid- themselv(s of many obsolete conventions. It is related; forinstanec, that, late in- the ?nineties' a lady whose daughter was to be married a week later went with. friend to see a play which was then thought to be very advanced. She enjoyed her evening and was much interested ; at the end she said, "What a wonderful play ! And dearest Margaret will be able to see it next week." That, with all respect to Victorian tradition, was great nonsense. If the play had a corrupting influence, this careful mother should have been shocked herself : if it had not, there was no reason why dearest Margaret should wait for a week. A great many of such false proprieties were wholesomely swept away by the four years' gale of stark reality. Boys and girls, men and women, discussed together subjects which had hitherto been considered impossible for inter-sexual conversation : powder and lip-stick were used openly instead of privately, mixed bathing in light attire became a conynon object of tha seashore, and 'it was a matter or universal knowledge, based on demonstration, that women had legs. But it is a most mistaken idea to assume that such laxities have anything to do with loosenesi of morals or the unsex- ing of women. Their general emancipation, of which the suffrage was one of the less important items, was long overdue, for they had proved by four years of in- cessant demonstration how much vaster a body of able and efficient workers the nation possessed than had ever been suspected. There followed in due course, as a corollary of women's suffrage, their entry as members into the House of Commons.
[In his net article, entitled "1914," Mr. Benson deals with the' crises of the eve of war.]
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