The Times Great Lives

Emmeline Pankhurst

A pioneer of woman suffrage

14 June 1928

Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, whose death is announced on another page, was born in Manchester on July 14, 1858. In her early childhood she was brought into close touch with those who had inherited the spirit of the Manchester reformers. Her father, Mr Robert Goulden, a calico-printer, was keenly interested in the reform question and the dawn of the movement for woman’s suffrage; her grandfather nearly lost his life in the Peterloo franchise riots in 1819. At the age of 13, soon after she had been taken to her first woman suffrage meeting by her mother, she went to school in Paris, where she found a girl-friend of her own way of thinking in the daughter of Henri Rochefort. In 1879 she married Dr R. M. Pankhurst, a man many years older than herself. An intimate friend of John Stuart Mill and an able lawyer, he shared and helped to mould his wife’s political views. She served with him on the committee which promoted the Married Women’s Property Act, and was at the same time a member of the Manchester Women’s Suffrage Committee. In 1889 she helped in forming the Women’s Franchise League, which, however, was discontinued after a few years. She remained a Liberal until 1892, when she joined the Independent Labour Party. After being defeated for the Manchester School Board, she was elected at the head of the poll for the board of guardians and served for five years. When her husband died, in 1898, she was left not well off, and with three girls and a boy to bring up. Accordingly she found work as registrar of births and deaths at Chorlton-on-Medlock, but her propaganda activities were considered inconsistent with her official position and she resigned.

In 1903 her interest in the cause of woman suffrage was reawakened by the enthusiasm of her daughter Christabel and she formed the Women’s Social and Political Union, the first meeting of which was held in her house in Manchester in October of that year. Two years later the militant movement was started as the immediate result of the treatment received by Miss Christabel Pankhurst and Miss Annie Kenney, two members of the union who endeavoured to question Sir Edward Grey on the prospects of woman suffrage, at a political meeting held in Manchester. In 1906 Mrs Pankhurst and her union began a series of pilgrimages to the House of Commons, which resulted in conflicts with the police and the imprisonment of large numbers of the members. In October, 1906, she was present at the first of these demonstrations, when 11 women were arrested. In January, 1908, she was pelted with eggs and rolled in the mud during the Mid-Devon election at Newton Abbot, and a month later she was arrested when carrying a petition to the Prime Minister at the House of Commons, but was released after undergoing five of the six weeks’ imprisonment to which she was sentenced. Some months later, in October, a warrant was issued for her arrest, together with Miss Pankhurst and Mrs Drummond, for inciting the public to ‘rush’ the House of Commons. During her three months’ imprisonment in Holloway Gaol she led a revolt of her followers against the rules of prison discipline, demanding that they should be treated as political prisoners. In 1909, the year in which the ‘hunger strike’ and ‘forcible feeding’ were first practised in connection with these cases, she was once more arrested at the door of the House of Commons, and after her trial, and pending an appeal founded on the Bill of Rights and a statute of Charles, dealing with petitions to the Crown, she went to America and Canada on a lecturing tour; two days before her return her fine was paid by some unknown person, so that she did not go to prison.

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 those 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 connection 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 2½ 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.

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 on 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.

D. H. Lawrence

A writer of genius

2 March 1930

David Herbert Lawrence, whose death is announced on another page, was born at Eastwood, near Nottingham, on September 11, 1885. His novel Sons and Lovers and his play The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd are at least so far biographical as to tell the world that his father was a coalminer and his mother a woman of finer grain. At the age of 12 the boy won a county council scholarship; but the sum was scarcely enough to pay the fees at the Nottingham High School and the fares to and fro. At 16 he began to earn his living as a clerk. When his ill-health put an end to that, he taught in a school for miners’ boys.

At 19 he won another scholarship, of which he could not avail himself, as he had no money, to pay the necessary entrance fee; but at 21 he went to Nottingham University College, and after two years there he came to London and took up teaching again. It was in these years that he wrote, under the name of Lawrence H. Davidson, some books on history. He had begun also the writing of fiction, and his first novel, The White Peacock, was published about a month after his mother’s death had robbed him of his best and dearest friend.

Sons and Lovers, published when he was 28, brought him fame. Many years of poverty were to pass before his work began to make him financially comfortable; and even then the collapse of a publishing firm in America deprived him of some of the fruits of his labours. But this revolt against society which fills his books had its counterpart in his life, in his travels, and especially in his attempt to found, in 1923, an intellectual and community settlement in New Mexico.

Undoubtedly he had genius. He could create characters which are even obtrusively real. His ruthless interpretation of certain sides of the nature of women was recognized by some women to be just. Every one of his novels, as well as his books of travel, contains passages of description so fine that they command the admiration of people whom much of his work disgusts. His powers range from a rich simplicity, a delicacy almost like that of Mr W. H. Davies, to turbulent clangour, and from tenderness to savage irony and gross brutality. There was that in his intellect which might have made him one of England’s greatest writers, and did indeed make him the writer of some things worthy of the best of English literature. But as time went on and his disease took firmer hold, his rage and his fear grew upon him. He confused decency with hypocrisy, and honesty with the free and public use of vulgar words. At once fascinated and horrified by physical passion, he paraded his disgust and fear in the trappings of a showy masculinity. And, not content with words, he turned to painting in order to exhibit more clearly still his contempt for all reticence.

It was inevitable (though it was regrettable) that such a man should come into conflict with the law over his novel The Rainbow, over some manuscripts sent through the post to his agent in London and over an exhibition of his paintings. But a graver cause for regret is that the author of Sons and Lovers, of Amores, and the other books of poems, of Aaron’s Rod, the short stories published as The Prussian Officer, Ladybird, and Kangaroo should have missed the place among the very best which his genius might have won.

In 1914 Lawrence married Frieda von Richthofen, who survives him. He left no children.

Dame Nellie Melba

A great prima donna

23 February 1931

Melba, to use the name by which she was universally known until the prefix of Dame Nellie was attached to it, whose death we regret to announce this morning, was born near Melbourne in 1859, and began her career as Helen Porter Mitchell. Her Scottish parents, who had settled in Australia, had themselves some musical proclivities. But it was not until after her early marriage to Mr Charles Armstrong that it became clear that her gifts must be taken seriously.

It was largely by her own efforts that she came to England in 1885 with the intention of cultivating her voice. When she arrived the experts to whom she appealed in London did not realize her possibilities. It is amusing to record that she was refused work in the Savoy Opera Company by Sullivan, though probably he did her and the world at large the greatest service by his refusal. She went to Paris, and to Mme Mathilde Marchesi belongs the credit of having instantly recognized that, to quote her own phrase, she ‘had found a star’.

A year of study and of close companionship with this great teacher was all that was needed to give Nellie Armstrong a brilliant début at ‘La Monnaie’ in Brussels as Mme Melba. She made her first appearance there on October 13, 1887, in the part of Gilda in Rigoletto. Her second part was Violetta in La Traviata, so that from the first she was identified with the earlier phases of Verdi, in which she has been pre-eminent ever since. Although, contrary to the traditions of the Brussels theatre, she sang in Italian, she aroused such enthusiasm that when a little later she was to sing Lakmé, and the question arose as to whether her French accent was sufficiently secure, the composer Délibes, is said to have exclaimed, ‘Qu’elle chante Lakmé en français, en italien, en allemand, en anglais, ou en chinois, cela m’est égal, mais qu’elle la chante.’

Her first appearance at Covent Garden on May 24, 1888, in Lucia di Lammermoor, was a more qualified success. Curiously enough, she was more commended at first for some supposed dramatic power than for the only two things which have ever really mattered in her case – the exquisite voice and the perfect use of it. From London she returned to the more congenial atmosphere of Brussels, and in the following year, 1889, proceeded to the conquest of Paris, where she triumphed as Ophélie in Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet. In Paris Mme Melba had the advantage of studying the parts of Marguerite in Faust and of Juliette with Gounod, and she took part in the first performance of Roméo et Juliette in French at Covent Garden in 1889.

From this time onward Mme Melba had only to visit one country after another to be acclaimed. From St Petersburg, where she sang before the Tsar in 1891, to Chicago, where in 1893 her singing with the de Reszkes was one of the features of the ‘World’s Fair’, the tale of her triumphs was virtually the same. But from the musical point of view a more important episode was her prolonged visit to Italy between these two events. Here she met the veteran Verdi and the young Puccini. Verdi helped her in the study of Aïda and of Desdemona (Otello). She made the acquaintance of Puccini’s Manon, but La Bohème, the only one of his operas with which she was to be identified, was not yet written. Another young composer who begged leave to be presented was Leoncavallo. She sang Nedda in the first London performance of I Pagliacci a little later.

Mme Melba’s early American appearances recall her few experiments with Wagner. She sang Elisabeth in Tannhäuser at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, during her first season there, and it was later in America that she made her single appearance as Brünnhilde. She had previously sung Elsa (Lohengrin) at Covent Garden, but she quite rightly realized that Wagner’s music was not for her. The only pity, when one recalls her repertory, is that either lack of opportunity or of inclination prevented her from turning to Mozart instead.

Her actual repertory amounted to 25 operas, of which, however, only some 10 parts are those which will be remembered as her own. La Bohème was the last of these to be added, and she first sang in it at Philadelphia in 1898, having studied it with the composer in Italy earlier in the year. She was so much in love with the music that she would not rest until she had brought it to London, and it was largely by her personal influence that it was accepted at Covent Garden. Indeed, she persuaded the management to stage La Bohème with the promise to sing some favourite scena from her repertory in addition on each night that she appeared in it until the success of the opera was assured. She kept the promise, though the rapid success of the opera soon justified her faith. To most of the present generation of opera-goers ‘Melba nights’ meant La Bohéme nights, and, for several seasons before the War and when Covent Garden reopened after it, there could not be too many of them for the public. She bade farewell to Covent Garden on June 8, 1926, when, in the presence of the King and Queen, she sang in acts from Roméo et Juliette, Otello, and La Bohème. Actually her last appearance in London was at a charity concert in 1929.

It is difficult now to realize that 30 years or so ago La Bohème seemed to offer few opportunities for the special characteristics of Mme Melba’s art, intimately associated as it then was with Donizetti, the earlier Verdi, and Gounod. But those characteristics in reality had full play in all music based on the expression of a pure vocal cantilena, and could appear in the simply held note at the end of the first act of La Bohème as completely as in the fioritura of ‘Caro nome’ or ‘The Jewel Song’. The essence of her power was due to such an ease in the production of pure tone in all parts of the voice and in all circumstances that there was no barrier between the music and the listener.

It is unnecessary to enlarge on the personal popularity of Melba here, or the almost passionate devotion which she inspired among her own countrymen on the various occasions when she revisited Australia. Her book of reminiscences, Melodies and Memories (1925), was disappointing, for it contained too little about her methods and experiences. She was generous in giving her services for good causes, and her work for War charities is remembered in the title conferred in 1918. She was then created dbe, and gbe in 1927.

Sir Edward Elgar

The laureate of English music

23 February 1934

The number of musicians of whom it can safely be said that the general public needs no explanation of their importance and asks for no justification of the place which their fellows accord them is small. Among composers this country has possessed two in the last century – Sullivan and Elgar. Of these the case of Elgar, who died yesterday at his home at Worcester at the age of 76, is the more remarkable because his genius was devoted to the larger forms of the musical art with which the ordinary man is supposed to sympathize least readily – the symphony, the concerto, and the oratorio. He never associated himself with the theatre in any close way; he never held any dominating official position in the musical life of the country, he rather stood aloof from institutions of any sort. Through nearly half his working life he was entirely unknown; during the remainder he was unhesitatingly accepted as our musical laureate.

In these days when the term ‘British composer’ is on everyone’s lips it is worth while remarking that Elgar by descent, upbringing, and education was entirely English. His father, a native of Dover, had settled in Worcester, where he kept a music shop and was organist to the Roman Catholic church of St George. His mother, Ann Greening, came from Herefordshire.

Edward William Elgar (he entirely dropped the second name in later years) was born at Broadheath, a village about four miles from Worcester, on June 2, 1857, and spent his youth in the typically English environment of the cathedral town and its surrounding country. Much has been said of Elgar’s upbringing as a member of the Roman Catholic Church and of the inspiration which it brought to his greatest choral work, The Dream of Gerontius, all of which is natural and true. But Elgar used to resent the idea that these influences in any way cut him off from others. As a boy he was constantly in and out of the cathedral listening to the music of its daily services and drawing many of his earliest and most treasured experiences from them. The Three Choirs Festivals at Worcester were sources of the most vivid delight to him. Indeed, it was characteristic of him at all times, that he loved to show himself knowledgeable on whatever others were inclined to think might lie a little outside his sphere of interest.

Early Compositions

Young Elgar had no systematic musical education, but he entered into all the musical activities of his father, which were many. He played the organ at St George’s, and, indeed, succeeded his father as regular organist there; he played the bassoon in a wind quintet (which perhaps accounts for the bassoon solo in the ‘Enigma’ Variations No. 111), but more particularly the violin, his thorough knowledge of which certainly had something to do with the brilliant passage-work of the famous concerto. He took an active part in all local music, particularly the concerts of the Worcester Glee Club, whose members gave him a bow for his violin in recognition of his services. Above all, he composed constantly, and some of the music now known in the orchestral suites, The Wand of Youth, dates from his boyhood. Pieces for violin and piano, part-songs, a motet, slight essays for the orchestra, are chief among such early works as survive. The interesting thing about them is that among much that is obvious and some that is trite one comes across turns of melody and harmony which are unmistakably the voice of Elgar. Even the first phrase of ‘Salut d’Amour’ must be allowed to be one of them.

Elgar was 32 years of age when he married, in 1889, Caroline Alice, only daughter of General Sir Henry Gee Roberts. This is hardly the place to write particularly of his wife’s influence on his career, but beyond question her unfaltering faith in him both as man and as artist sustained him through all the disappointments of his isolated position and enabled him to hold the difficult course towards success to which his helm was set.

In one respect his marriage rather emphasized the difficulties, for it caused him to live in London for the first time, and to discover how unready were musicians, publishers, and concert givers to take any interest in his music. The neglect of genius is always a fruitful theme for commentators who are wise after the event. Elgar was a genius, he lived two years in London unrecognized; these commentators cry ‘shame!’ but it is difficult to see what there was to recognize between 1889 and 1891. He had written none of the great works which have made him famous since. It may be remarked that Mr Bernard Shaw’s recently published Music in London, 1890–1894 does not contain the name of Elgar. True his overture ‘Froissart’ was produced at the Worcester Festival in 1890, and some people realized that here was something fresh and original.

Festival Works

In 1891 Elgar returned to the West Country and settled at Malvern, where he began his serious work in the composition of a number of pieces for choir and orchestra which were produced at various festivals in the succeeding years. The Black Knight, characteristically described as ‘a symphony for chorus and orchestra’, came out in 1893. Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf, Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands and an oratorio, The Light of Life, all appeared in 1896, the first at the North Staffordshire Musical Festival, the other two at Worcester. Here indeed was proof positive of the new voice in music, more than a hint of that mystical imagination, that sensitiveness to tone-colour, and that elusive yet individual gift of melody which were to seize his hearers so powerfully a little later. A patriotic cantata, The Banner of St George, for the Diamond Jubilee year, and Caractacus, written for the Leeds Festival of 1898, emphasized another side of Elgar’s musical character, an alert and nervous energy, the love of pageantry, the discovery of the poetry underlying external splendour. One finds here the Elgar of the ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ marches, the Coronation march, and the Scherzo of the Second Symphony.