Maude was silent, a silence worse than the sulk earlier.
“Shall we go to Fortnum and Mason’s for ice cream?” I suggested.
“No, thank you, Mummy. I think I’d like to go home now, please,” Maude said in a small voice.
I’d thought she would love the necklace. It seems that I can never please her.
Richard Coleman
I noticed them immediately. Kitty was in the hallway, preening herself in the mirror before we left for Mother’s party. Jenny stood holding her wrap while Maude watched from the steps. Her dress was cut low, and as I glanced at her décolletage I recognized the emeralds. I had seen my mother wear them many times when she and my father went to parties and functions, and once to meet the Queen. They look hideous now, made up in a new necklace with other stones.
I said nothing-Kitty’s blackmail has effectively cut out my tongue. Instead I grew furious with myself for being so powerless with my wife. Surely this was not how a husband should be, so helpless and without authority. Kitty knew exactly what she was doing.
Later when I saw the look on my mother’s face as she gazed at Kitty’s necklace, I could have throttled my wife’s lovely white throat.
Edith Coleman
I think she enjoys tormenting me.
It has been bad enough this past year the few times when, for form’s sake, I have had to visit my son at their house. Worse still when she was sent to Holloway and the Coleman name appeared in the papers. I was mortified, but it blew over more quickly than I had expected. My friends-my good friends-did not mention it, sparing me further embarrassment. I was just glad that James is not alive to see his name brought so low.
But the worst has been the emeralds. James’s mother gave them to me the night before our wedding, with the understanding that I would cherish and preserve them, to pass on to my own son’s wife. In those days such an understanding was unspoken. It would never have occurred to me to do anything other than wear the emeralds proudly and pass them on willingly when the time came. It could never have occurred to any of us Coleman women to desecrate them as Kitty has done.
She wore them to my annual May party, with a dark green silk dress cut far too low. I knew immediately what they were, even if the necklace itself was not familiar to me. I would have known my emeralds anywhere. She saw me recognize them as well. Poor Richard standing next to her had no idea. Emeralds are in a woman’s realm, not a man’s. I shall never tell him.
I did not make a scene-I could not in front of everyone, and I would not do so to please her either. Instead I waited until the last guest had gone. Then I sat in the dark and wept.
JUNE 1908
Lavinia Waterhouse
At first I refused to help Maude. I wanted nothing to do with any suffragettes’ banners. But Maude is no seamstress, and when I saw her poor fingers at school one day, all pricked and torn from the needle (someone must teach her how to use a thimble properly!), I took pity on her and began going over in the afternoons to help.
It is a good thing I have! She is so slow, the dear, and her awful mother has left her with the most impossible pile of banners to sew. It was odd at first sitting in that morning room sewing-I was worried that at any minute Maude’s mother would come in, and I have not felt comfortable around her ever since I Found Out. As it happened, though, she is rarely at home, and when she is she is talking on the telephone she had installed, and doesn’t even notice us. That telephone makes me nervous-I always jump when it rings, and I would hate to answer it. Maude has to all the time when her mother is out, and takes endless messages about meetings and petitions and other nonsense.
Luckily my sewing is very good-I get through three banners to Maude’s one, and you can see her stitches. And it is rather fun sitting there together-we talk and sing, and sometimes Maude gives up sewing altogether when her fingers are bleeding too much, and reads a book aloud while I work. Jenny brings us endless cups of tea, and even coffee once or twice when we beg her.
All we have to do is to sew, thank goodness. We receive the cloth and letters already cut, and the slogan written on a piece of paper pinned to the cloth. The letters are usually white, the cloth green or black. I don’t think I could make up a slogan if you paid me. Some of them are so complicated I can make neither head nor tail of them. What on earth does TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION IS TYRANNY mean? Or worse, WOMEN’S “WILL” BEATS ASQUITH’S “WON‘T”? What does the prime minister have to do with it?
The best part has been the mistakes. It first happened when I was sewing on letters for one of the endless banners that read DEEDS NOT WORDS. (I am sick to death of those words!) As I was folding the finished banner I happened to glance at it and discovered I had sewn on WORDS NOT DEEDS. I was all ready to unpick the letters, but I peeked at Maude and saw that she hadn’t noticed-she was frowning over her banner, sucking on another pricked finger. So I quietly folded the banner, put it on the pile, and smiled to myself. Apparently there are to be thousands and thousands of banners-women all over the country are sewing them. Every few days Maude’s mother rushes in, grabs the pile of finished banners, and rushes out again without so much as a thank-you. I doubt anyone will trace the mistake back to me.
After that I began to make more “mistakes”-a few more WORDS NOT DEEDS, and then I sewed WEEDS NOT RODS, and stuffed the extra D in my pinafore pocket. It was great fun creating errors: WORKING WOMEN DEMAND THE VOTE became VOTING WOMEN DEMAND WORK; HOPE IS STRONG became ROPE IS THONG.
I had done half a dozen or so when Maude caught me out. She was helping me fold one when she suddenly said, “Stop a moment,” and spread out the banner. It read WHO WOULD FLEE THEMSELVES MUST STRIKE THE BROW.
“Lavinia! That’s meant to read, ‘Who would be free themselves must strike the blow’! You know, from Byron!”
“Oh, dear,” I said, and giggled.
“Haven’t you even been reading what you’re sewing? And where are the B and E for ‘BE’?”
I smiled sheepishly and pulled the letters out from my pocket. “I thought they were left over, or a mistake,” I said.
“You know very well what it was supposed to say,” Maude muttered. “What shall we do with it? It’s too late to change it, and we can’t hide it-Mummy’s sure to count them and will want to know why one is missing.”
I struck my own brow. “Oh, dear, I’d best flee.” It was silly but it made Maude laugh. Soon we were laughing so hard we were crying. It was good to see her laugh. She has been so serious these days. In the end we simply folded up the banner and added it to the pile.
I had not thought I would go to the Hyde Park march-the thought of being among thousands of suffragettes made me shiver. But after so many days of sewing and overhearing things about it, I couldn’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be rather fun. There are to be women from all over the country, not all of them suffragettes per se, and there will be bands and speakers, and spectacles all over. And then Maude told me everyone is to wear white and green and purple, and I thought up the perfect outfits for us. We would wear our white dresses, and trim our straw hats with flowers from the Colemans’ garden. Maude’s mother may be sinful, but she has cultivated the most wonderful flowers.
“Delphiniums, cornflowers, star jasmine, and Persian jewels, all wound round with green leaves,” I decided. “It will look ever so beautiful.”
“But you said you didn’t want to go,” Maude said. “And what will your mother say?”
“Mama shall come with us,” I said. “And we won’t necessarily march, but we can be spectators.”