Aristocracy, Temperance and Social Reform: The Life of Lady Henry Somerset 9780755622306, 9781350172586

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ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The Somers Cocks Family Reprinted from Eastnor Castle: Guide with permission of James and Sarah Hervey-Bathurst

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2. Isabel (Lady Henry) Somerset National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union

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3. Portrait of Isabella and Adeline Somers Cocks, 1861 G. F. Watts, Eastnor Castle Collection Photograph Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art

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4. Portrait of Isabella Caroline Somers Cocks G. F. Watts, Eastnor Castle Collection Photograph Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art

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5. Frances Willard and Isabel (Lady Henry) Somerset, 1892 National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union

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6. Isabel (Lady Henry) Somerset Audrey Ward Collection, Reigate Priory Museum

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe a debt to the many people and institutions that assisted me in the production of this biography and wish to express my gratitude to them for their contributions and support at various stages of my work. I acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which provided funding for this project. I am indebted to James and Sarah Hervey-Bathurst for the opportunity to access the letters and documents in the Eastnor archives and for the patience and courtesy with which they met my every request for assistance. I offer a special thanks to them for the gracious hospitality they extended to me at Eastnor Castle. I am grateful to the Honourable Simon Howard, Castle Howard, Yorkshire, for permitting me to examine private papers in his possession. The officers of the National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union (NBWTAU) enthusiastically supported my research in various ways. I am particularly grateful to them for granting me access to organization records and for their generous assistance during the many occasions I worked at Rosalind Carlisle House, NBWTAU headquarters. Numerous members of the organization generously responded to my requests for information and materials pertinent to the history of the Union, for which I thank them. I owe a special debt to Lily Gaffney, who facilitated my access to the Union’s archives, smoothed my path at every turn, patiently answered my many questions, and was a constant, welcoming presence during my many visits to Rosalind Carlisle House. I am grateful for the assistance of Gwen Stretton, former president of the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, who has maintained a keen interest in the progress of my work.

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The officers and staff of the American National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (NWCTU) at their Evanston (Illinois) headquarters extended a warm welcome and gave me unstinting assistance during my visits to the Frances Willard Memorial Library. I extend my gratitude to the NWCTU for allowing me to reproduce material and photographs from the library archives, and to the NWCTU past president, Sarah Ward, for her generous assistance. The process of locating, examining, and interpreting the many documents and publications at the library was expedited and immeasurably simplified by the assistance of NWCTU librarian Alfred Epstein, who not only worked tirelessly on my behalf but patiently continued to supply me with valuable advice and information after my research visits had ended, and who has maintained a constant interest in ‘Lady Henry’. The collating of my research materials required the generous cooperation and expertise of faculty and staff members at a range of educational institutions, archives, and libraries, many of whom generously worked to search out and supply me with material after my visits to their locations. Included within this group are Sylvia Brown, Special Collections Librarian, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky; Mavis Davies, Information Assistant, Local Studies Library, Guildford, Surrey; Melvin Dieter, Director, Wesleyan Holiness Study Project, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky; David Doughan, former Assistant Librarian, Fawcett Library, City of London Polytechnic (now Women’s Library, Metropolitan University, London), whose knowledge of the Josephine Butler correspondence greatly aided my research; David Hall, Horley Local History Society, Surrey; Eeyan Hartley, Keeper of Archives, Castle Howard, Yorkshire; Elizabeth Hissink, who was arranging and cataloguing the Eastnor Papers at the time I commenced my research, and whose painstaking search of the Eastnor Castle archives produced much of the material made available to me; Jill Kelsey, Assistant Registrar, Royal Archives, Windsor Castle, Berkshire; A. S. Paice, Librarian, Ledbury Library, Ledbury, Herefordshire; Jav Rose, Research Assistant, Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, London; Saundra Taylor, Curator of Manuscripts, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; Aidan Turner-Bishop, Social Studies and Management Librarian, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire; Maria Twist, Local Studies Librarian, Birmingham Central Library,

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Birmingham; Audrey Ward, Reigate Priory Museum, Reigate, Surrey; and Lesley Webster, Librarian, Library of the Institute of Alcohol Studies, London. I extend a special thanks to the librarians of the Arts Library, University of Waterloo, Ontario, who supplied me with a constant stream of inter-library-loan material, which enabled me to reduce the number of my travelling days. During the period of my research for this biography, I was able to draw upon the assistance and expertise of many scholars who generously shared aspects of their work with me. I wish to express my appreciation to Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford, Research Associate, Gender Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, who shared with me her extensive knowledge of the WCTU and women’s history, offered insights into my topic, and meticulously examined my manuscript. Certain individuals assisted me in a variety of ways, guiding me to relevant material, contributing from their own publications, and suggesting possible avenues to pursue in my research: Dr. Ian Tyrrell, Professor, School of History, University of New South Wales, NSW, who also graciously agreed to read my manuscript; Dr. Ruth Bordin; Virginia Surtees; and Dr. Rosemary T. VanArsdel, Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus, University of Puget Sound, Washington. I am obliged to the late William A. Hutchinson, Reigate and Banstead Heritage Trust, Reigate, Surrey, who provided me with a constant flow of knowledgeable information and personal anecdotes pertaining to the Lady Somerset Homes at Reigate. Others who have assisted me in my work include Winifred Brown of the Canadian WCTU; S. Bywater, Secretary to His Grace the Duke of Beaufort; Barbara Strachey Halpern; Gail Heidemann; Alan Moore; John Norsworthy, Cathedral Registrar, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford; Amy Peyton; Major, The Honourable N. H. Villiers; and Michael Vitucci of the NWCTU. I wish to acknowledge the special efforts of Irene Major, Department of History, University of Waterloo, who guided me with unending patience and humour through the long process of preparing this manuscript, and also Janice Willwerth, Department of Information Systems and Technology, University of Waterloo, who rescued me from the many word-processing crises I experienced. I wish to thank Elizabeth Munns, Corresponding Editor, I.B. Tauris Academic Studies, and Nicola Denny, Production Manager, for their professional assistance and the patience and courtesy with

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which they guided me through the publication process. I thank Angela Wingfield for preparing the camera-ready copy of this book. The process of researching and preparing this biography has been a lengthy one and has involved the contributions of many individuals and institutions. If I have failed to mention any of those who have assisted me, I thank them and apologise for inadvertently omitting their names here.

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1. The Somers Cocks Family. Reprinted from Eastnor Castle: Guide with permission of James and Sarah Hervey-Bathurst.

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2. Isabel (Lady Henry) Somerset. Photo courtesy of National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

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PREFACE

‘In loving memory of dear Lady Henry Somerset, and of the good work she has done for her country.’1 Queen Alexandra’s message attached to her floral tribute to Isabel Somerset

As benefited the daughter of an earl and a member, through marriage, of one of England’s ducal houses, the funeral of Isabel, Lady Henry Somerset, on 15 March 1921 was attended by mourners from the aristocracy, and floral tributes included wreaths from Queen Mary and the dowager Queen Alexandra, both personal friends of the deceased. In the congregation were also representatives of political, reform, philanthropic and women’s organizations, there to pay tribute to a woman who had worked tirelessly in support of their interests. In reporting Isabel’s death, the press lauded her devotion to temperance work, social reform, and women’s causes.2 Writing in the Daily Telegraph, T. P. O’Connor, MP, observed that her passing ‘would bring grief to thousands of friends and admirers in all classes, but especially in those classes whom she helped to uplift from despair to hope’.3 The sentiments and the diverse backgrounds of the mourners reflected the life and work of Isabel Somerset. Although born to wealth and title and groomed to take her place in the aristocratic and fashionable social circles of nineteenth-century England’s leisured classes, in her early thirties she resolved to withdraw from Society. Following the collapse of her tragic marriage to Lord Henry Somerset and inspired by a profound religious experience, Isabel sought a new role in life, with the help of spiritual guidance.4 Her

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quest would transform her into a leader of social activism and a campaigner for women’s rights within the late-Victorian and earlytwentieth-century temperance and other reform movements, and she would become internationally recognized and fêted for her contributions to the advancement of social and moral issues. When Isabel stepped onto the national temperance stage in 1890, campaigns to curtail insobriety had been underway since early in the century, when age-old, excessive drinking habits had begun to conflict with the demands of an increasingly industrialized and urbanized society and the emerging concept of Victorian respectability. Drunkenness came to be regarded as both ‘sinful’ and as a threat to middle-class family life, and temperance then became a social and moral issue. Anti-spirits societies promoted abstinence from spirit drinking and moderation in the consumption of other alcoholic beverages. These groups were quickly challenged, and eventually eclipsed, by the more militant, predominantly Nonconformist teetotal organizations who campaigned for total abstinence from all alcoholic beverages. The movement gradually expanded, and temperance societies were formed by a wide range of professional and occupational groups, including the armed forces, physicians, and postal workers, along with all the major religious denominations.5 The British Women’s Temperance Association (BWTA) was established in 1876, and later, as its president, Isabel would reform, expand, and promote it, securing her place in temperance history.6 By the late nineteenth century, faced with the challenges of international competition, insobriety was viewed as a social and economic threat to English national life and as a key factor in both the maintenance of poverty and disease and the increasing outbursts of working-class disorder, which were seen as potentially destructive to social stability. There was also concern over the possible physiological effects of drink upon future generations and the consequences for ‘national efficiency’.7 These concerns and the slow progress of the moral suasion movement prompted some temperance reformers to campaign for legislative suppression of the drink traffic through direct veto, most notably, the prohibitionist United Kingdom Alliance. This organization became a formidable political force, successfully infiltrating the Liberal Party to secure the introduction of temperance bills into Parliament and the inclusion of proposed anti-drink legislation into the Liberal govern-

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ment’s platform for the 1895 general election—witness to the importance of the temperance question in Victorian society. ‘Given the magnitude of the task it set itself the remarkable thing about the Alliance campaign was not that it failed . . . but that it so nearly succeeded in placing permissive prohibition upon the statute book.’8 Isabel Somerset played a significant role in both the temperance movement’s ascendancy in Britain and the international anti-drink community.9 Yet, today, her name is largely unrecognized, and her contributions to temperance and inebriate rehabilitation, social reform, and the women’s movement have been virtually forgotten. On the other hand, many nineteenth-century female social activists, including Josephine Butler, Millicent Fawcett, Octavia Hill, and Elizabeth Blackwell, continue to receive recognition for their reform activities. Their campaigns were crowned with success, while Isabel became identified primarily as a temperance worker promoting anti-drink measures, reforms that were generally unpopular with contemporaries and, ultimately, stillborn. By the early twentieth century, temperance had become a waning cause and has now passed into history as an abortive crusade. ‘Because the movement failed to achieve its objectives it has left no obvious imprint on contemporary society’ (save perhaps for amused contempt), as the American prohibition experience ‘demonstrated to modern eyes the futility of this approach to social reform and clothed it in a faint aura of ridicule’.10 A biography, Lady Henry Somerset, penned by her former secretary, Kathleen Fitzpatrick,11 appeared shortly after Isabel’s death, at a time when her name still commanded respect in British society and reform circles and in the international temperance movement. Thereafter, her accomplishments, like the cause she championed, faded into obscurity. The renewal of English academics’ interest in the temperance movement, beginning in the 1960s, subsequently produced several new histories on the topic, but these largely ignored Isabel’s contributions.12 She has fared better at the hands of non-British historians,13 whose studies go some way to reinstating Isabel Somerset in the pantheon of English female reformers. It is hoped that this biography will contribute to her restoration.

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INTRODUCTION

Commenting upon the death of Lady Henry Somerset, a British parliamentarian compared her to the heroine in George Eliot’s Middlemarch: ‘Young, very beautiful, very rich’; in the wake of an unsatisfactory marriage ‘she found herself offered the alternative between selfish grief and useful service; she chose the latter path, though she knew it to be narrow and thorny and dark’.1 This and other obituaries in the English national press paid tribute to a woman of noble birth who had achieved international recognition and acclaim for accomplishments rarely associated with her position in society.2 Aristocratic socialite turned social activist, Isabel Somerset was a novel figure in British late-Victorian upper-class society. As one contemporary biographer of women leaders noted, ‘it was a rare thing to see a woman reared in the circle of royalty, giving her life to the poor and the despised, leaving fashionable society that she may have time to work for reforms, forgetting the ease and luxury of rank to accept the hardships of a devoted leader in the uplifting of the race’.3 Many Victorian aristocratic women engaged in direct charitable work, a traditional duty associated with noblesse oblige, the notion that privilege entails responsibility. This activity involved close contact between benefactor and beneficiary, predicated upon an existing degree of acquaintanceship between them. The absence of such familiarity generally precluded the women’s participation in personal philanthropy outside their local areas. Consequently, virtually all such benevolence was restricted to tenants on the women’s country estates. Charitable work in urban centres was conducted by middle-class philanthropists, their assistance mainly provided via organizations rather than through acts of personal

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charity. Gradually, aristocratic women became actively engaged in organized philanthropy, providing financial support and the selective use of their names to promote favourite charities. Many became fundraisers, their positions and social contacts giving innumerable opportunities for the solicitation of donations and sponsorship of charitable events.4 Isabel Somerset’s benefaction extended far beyond the boundaries of traditional aristocratic philanthropy. Her altruism is evidenced in lifelong private and public largesse, from diverse acts of personal charity,5 to financial support for the British Women’s Temperance Association (BWTA) and kindred temperance societies,6 to international relief efforts,7 to funding for her pioneering rehabilitation home for inebriate women.8 Her generosity, indifference to personal wealth, and devotion to the public good were such that she ended her life divested of virtually all her assets.9 In addition to her financial support, a large proportion of her charitable acts involved her in active, ‘hands-on’ work, in contrast to many within her class who ‘obtained a reputation for philanthropy by assuming credit for charitable works conducted by organizations he or she nominally led’.10 Isabel’s personal service to alleviate poverty was condemned as traitorous to her class by many within her social circle.11 Christian piety inspired Isabel Somerset’s beneficence. Her parents were practising Anglicans, of unaffected but deep religiosity, and they imbued their children with a strong respect for the virtue of charity.12 From her father, Earl Somers, a Biblical scholar, Isabel Somerset acquired a broad understanding and deep love of the Scriptures,13 which guided her throughout her life. A pupil of F. D. Maurice, co-founder of Christian Socialism,14 Lord Somers seemingly endowed his daughter with a fundamental appreciation of its tenets, as they remained the motivating force behind her ‘living’ faith and social philosophy. To be a true Christian was ‘to despise no smallest opportunity to make the way of life safer and better for all about us’. The ‘higher life’ was to be found, not in visions of a celestial paradise but in ‘the here and now, in the redemption of the tempted, the regeneration of the home, the purification of our social life, and the rehabilitation of the State.’15 Isabel Somerset’s belief was tested by the trauma associated with her marital separation. It was renewed and strengthened by a profound spiritual reawakening,16 and her doubts were replaced by a ‘firm assurance

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of the presence of Christ’ and His call to humanitarian service.17 Isabel temporarily abandoned the denomination for Methodist worship when she found the sect’s ‘practical Christianity’ of poverty relief more in keeping with the Bible’s message,18 but later resumed full communion with the Church of England.19 Although wealth and status were factors in her ascendancy, Isabel Somerset’s fame resulted from her position within the lateVictorian, British temperance and women’s rights movements. Her radical presidency of the British Women’s Temperance Association (BWTA)20 in the period 1890–1903 was a rarity in a movement almost exclusively dominated and controlled by men.21 The contemporary widespread debate surrounding alcohol’s impact upon the nation’s social fabric and economic efficiency sparked growing demands for a reduction in drink consumption. In this environment the temperance movement achieved the peak of its social and political influence. Its campaigns in support of legislation to curtail the drink trade pressured the Liberal Party into making temperance a plank in the 1895 general election, which was regarded as a contributing factor in its subsequent defeat.22 This agitation was organized and led by the overwhelmingly male temperance organizations, whose members were largely enfranchised. Isabel Somerset greatly increased the BWTA’s role in these efforts by raising the members’ levels of political awareness and participation. The organization was in danger of stagnation when she took office,23 and she successfully rejuvenated and restructured the narrowly focussed association, raising its effectiveness and public profile. Her considerable talents as organizer, speaker and fundraiser, plus her personal magnetism, expanded the Association, making her years in office the most successful period in its history.24 The political failure of the anti-drink movement reduced its credibility as a reforming influence in British society, but not Isabel Somerset’s leadership reputation. In her obituary in The Times, T. P. O’Connor, MP, noted, her ‘services to temperance and to women received world recognition by her election as President’ of the BWTA and the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,25 and historian Ian Tyrrell observes, ‘Somerset was one of the two most important woman temperance reformers in British history’.26 Without her innovative and forceful direction the BWTA would likely have remained on the margins of the temperance and women’s movements.

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Isabel Somerset was a dedicated abstainer, but her views on the drink question were moderate compared with those of the majority of her contemporaries in the temperance movement. She did not oppose temperate drinking and believed prohibition was ‘impractical’ in Britain,27 and sobriety would be best promoted by education and legislated reduction of the drink traffic by direct veto.28 When this measure proved stillborn politically, she modified her aims in pursuit of the practically possible in temperance legislation—advocacy of public management of the trade to reduce alcohol sales—in order to eradicate drunkenness, particularly British society’s pervasive female insobriety.29 Contemporaries considered Isabel Somerset’s pioneering work in the rehabilitation of female inebriates to be her most important and enduring work of temperance reform.30 She assessed temperance workers’ greatest challenge to be the halting of the rising incidence of drunkenness among women,31 and dedicated herself to the reclamation of female inebriates. In the late nineteenth century, insobriety was considered criminal behaviour, overwhelmingly and inefficiently controlled by prison sentences.32 Somerset viewed alcoholism as a disease and treated it therapeutically with a curative programme designed to completely reorder the inebriate’s lifestyle, a philosophy far in advance of the contemporary position on the subject. The published 70 per cent success rate of women who completed their treatment at her Farm Colony for Female Inebriates, Duxhurst, is unverifiable, but her pioneering programme marked a new departure in substance-abuse therapy. The scheme was sanctioned by the government of the day and her ground-breaking colony licensed to accept patients under the aegis of the Inebriates Act 1898, legislation establishing reformatories for the voluntary rehabilitation of recidivist drunkards.33 Isabel Somerset’s prestige was not derived solely from her temperance work. Her BWTA presidency became a vehicle for her participation in other social-reform initiatives, galvanizing female reformers of the day. Despite almost three decades of failed campaigns, women’s suffrage remained a burning issue in the lateVictorian, British women’s movement.34 Support for the cause was slow to develop within the conservative BWTA, but from the mid1880s, it was advocated by a minority within the organization who believed women’s votes would be powerful weapons in the fight against the liquor interests.35 In 1885, then president Margaret

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Bright Lucas argued, ‘Had the time not come when it becomes a duty to claim the right to vote on the side of temperance?’36 In the firm belief ‘that the woman’s vote would be the “open sesame” to the great social and political reforms that are needed’,37 Somerset, an executive member of the Central National Society for Women’s Suffrage, personally lobbied politicians and delivered public speeches in support of the cause and induced the BWTA to officially sanction women’s suffrage and participate in political action. Using the skills they had developed in temperance work, members applied their organizational abilities to suffrage activities, petitioning MPs to champion suffrage legislation in Parliament, lobbying women to exercise their municipal vote, swelling public demonstrations in support of female enfranchisement, and operating a suffrage department to promote the issue.38 This new direction was achieved with considerable reluctance by a large proportion of the BWTA membership. Fears that the non-party organization would be drawn into party politics and that the Association’s effectiveness as a temperance organization would be weakened by support of votes for women39 rendered the adoption of women’s suffrage a contentious, prolonged, and difficult process.40 The BWTA membership comprised women of different religious denominations, political allegiances, social backgrounds and priorities, making it virtually impossible to achieve the total consensus required to establish itself as a dominant leader in the reform. Thus, the Association functioned largely as a pressure group for women’s enfranchisement, to further anti-drink legislation, not as a competitor to established suffrage organizations. Nevertheless, ‘in terms of numbers’, the BWTA did become ‘one of the most influential suffrage supporters’.41 By the final decades of the nineteenth century, the Victorian women’s movement had achieved notable advances in female education and property rights and a limited franchise at the local level. Now, social issues took a prominent place alongside the continuing campaign for women’s suffrage. Feminists and reformers were on the march in the ranks of the social purity movement,42 ‘one of their key objectives the “purification and civilization” of both public and private worlds’,43 particularly with regard to relationships between the two sexes. To a certain degree, these goals reflected their classes’ anxiety over the potential for working-class insurrection at a time when economic volatility coincided with the growth

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of trade unionism and socialism. To foster social order, proprietary classes employed a mixture of philanthropic and legislative methods to coax the ‘respectable’ segment of the working class to adopt middle-class morality. The ‘dangerous’ casual poor suffered morecoercive regulation, and their conduct was subjugated to additional intervention.44 In the 1880s, purity reformers turned their attention to child prostitution, in the wake of Pall Mall Gazette editor W. T. Stead’s revelations of ‘white slavery’ within London’s chic society.45 Purity workers and female reformers conducted a nationwide campaign for legislation to raise the age of consent for girls to 16 years, and increase the police’s summary powers to suppress brothel-keeping and prosecute pimps. They achieved victory with the passage of the Criminal Laws Amendment Act 1885. This crusade prompted the formation of the National Vigilance Association, established as a watch dog to police the Act’s implementation and comprised feminists and leaders of women’s organizations. The NVA’s agenda focussed upon the reform of male sexuality and coercive legislation to enforce public morality and included surveillance of the press and the entertainment industry; it pressured public authorities and police to curb the sex industry, and city councils to close bawdy theatres.46 Isabel Somerset was a vice-president of the NVA, taking an active role in lobbying for restrictions on theatre licences for those establishments seen as offering degrading performances and fostering prostitution.47 The British Women’s Temperance Association (BWTA) as a whole was reluctant to embroil itself in matters of social purity. She succeeded in establishing a functioning department for this work but only after a protracted period of intense lobbying, and the issue did not receive universal support within the Association.48 One notable exception to the above general rule was the BWTA’s participation in the 1890s campaign against the revival of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which had been repealed in 1886 following a prolonged campaign by the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (LNA), led by Josephine Butler.49 Implemented in the 1860s as a method for reducing the high rate of venereal disease in the armed forces, the Acts had required women suspected of prostitution (but not their male clientele) to undergo registration and medical treatment. In 1896, concern over the rising incidence of venereal diseases among

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troops in India prompted the British government to consider reinstating the Acts in the cantonments as a means of controlling the infections. The government’s proposals re-ignited the repeal organizations’ campaign against regulation. Repealers condemned the proposed return to the control and inspection of Indian women as being state promotion of vice with disregard for the immorality of institutionalised prostitution and for the threat of possible contagion to wives and children by returning infected soldiers. The Acts were damned as discriminatory because regulation exacted a double standard of morality on sexual behaviour, contrary to a core tenet of the contemporary women’s movement. Fears that the reintroduction of regulation in India might herald its restoration in Britain added a sense of urgency to the campaign.50 An LNA member and active participant in the revived campaign, Isabel Somerset successfully recruited the BWTA membership to add its support. Her priorities were eliminating the double standard and protecting women and children from contagion.51 In the face of the government’s firm stand on its proposals, she advocated compromise measures to secure equitable rights for women and their protection from infection under the proposed laws.52 Her action drew worldwide condemnation from the repealers and women’s temperance organizations and proved temporarily detrimental to her reputation and credibility as a reformer.53 In the final quarter of the nineteenth century, the economic and social problems associated with endemic impoverishment among the working classes prompted increased relief efforts by philanthropists and growing demands by social reformers for legislation to alleviate poverty.54 Rising public disquiet over the relationship between alcohol and pauperism now increasingly linked temperance reform with the ‘condition of the people’ question. Drunkenness was regarded as a key factor in the maintenance of both poverty and disease.55 These developments bolstered demands for legislative measures to reduce alcohol consumption and anti-drink organizations’ political clout.56 Isabel Somerset’s charitable and temperance work among the poor familiarized her with the privations endured by the working classes and persuaded her that their inadequate housing, poor diet, and poor working conditions provided the stimulus for their drunkenness, particularly for female inebriety.57 Her conviction that temperance reform was inextricably connected with the alleviation of such conditions

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drew her into the labour movement, and she urged the British Women’s Temperance Association to embrace the cause, ‘the main object of work being to rouse the national conscience’ to an awareness of the problems.58 She actively campaigned for workers’ rights, donated and raised funds for striking workers, and rallied the Association to support pro-labour and anti-poverty legislation.59 Somerset’s work placed her ‘among the vanguard of those who embraced the cause of labour in the British women’s movement’.60 Aristocracy, Temperance and Social Reform provides an indepth narrative of Isabel Somerset’s life, examines the ways in which it reflected the feminist ideals of the period, and assesses her contributions to the various reform movements underway in lateVictorian and Edwardian British society, in order to substantiate the claim that she is worthy of a place within the pantheon of notable women reformers of the period. The Introduction outlines the context within which these themes will be developed. Chapter 1 (1851–72) provides an overview of her family background, her childhood and adolescence, and the influences therein which formed her character and beliefs. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 (1872–8) focus upon Isabel Somerset’s failed marriage, its traumatic repercussions, and the role these events played in crystallizing her humanitarian spirit. Chapters 5 and 6 (1878–92) examine her initiation into philanthropic and temperance work, her assumption of the presidency of the BWTA, and her vision for reinvigorating the organization. Also discussed are her attendance at the American Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 1891 conventions in the United States; the commencement of her close personal and professional relationship with the American union’s president, temperance icon, reformer, and women’s rights’ activist Frances Willard; and the impact of these events on both their organizations and the AngloAmerican temperance movements. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 (1892–4) scrutinize Isabel Somerset’s campaign to transform the BWTA from a reactionary, single-issue entity into one committed to female emancipation and broader social reform; the dissension created by opponents of the new direction; her overcoming of this obstacle; and her efforts to implement her new policies within the reorganized Association. Chapters 10 and 11 (1893–6) are concerned with the problems and stresses Somerset experienced in her efforts to restructure the BWTA while shouldering presidential duties,

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fundraising for her projected treatment centre for female inebriates, and being burdened by personal financial difficulties—all exacerbated by her absence of several months spent supporting Frances Willard in the United States. Also considered are two unexpected undertakings by Isabel Somerset in 1895–6: her son’s marriage, and her rescue mission among Christian Armenian refugees in Marseilles, accomplished along with Willard. Chapter 12 (1894–8) is devoted to Isabel Somerset’s involvement in her inebriate-home project, Duxhurst. It considers the evolution of the scheme and the difficulties she encountered in bringing it to fruition. The philosophy behind Duxhurst’s treatment programme and the innovative methods it employed are examined in relation to contemporary approaches to the problem. Chapters 13 and 14 (1895–6) analyse two critical challenges to Isabel Somerset’s presidency of the BWTA: a rekindled opposition to her policies from within the Association; and a more critical, international in scope, and potentially damaging repudiation of her stance on a social-purity issue, connected with the British government’s plan to reintroduce regulated prostitution in Indian cantonments. Chapter 15 (1898–1921) examines Somerset’s closing years in office and, thereafter, her continued reform efforts in the years leading up to her death.

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1 LADY ISABEL

The birth of Isabella (Isabel) Somers Cocks on 3 August 1851 in London caused some consternation within the family circle. ‘We have been in great anxiety about Lady Eastnor, who gave birth to a little girl on Friday last and has been in a dangerous state since yesterday’, the infant’s uncle, Charles Cameron, reported to a friend.1 Isabel’s personal world, into which she made so arduous an entry, was welcoming and privileged. The first-born of a romanticlove marriage, a member of an aristocratic, wealthy, and socially prominent family, and a potential heiress to its considerable assets, she appeared destined for a life of ease and luxury. Although the Cocks family had held estates in Kent at the beginning of Edward I’s reign, and the Somers family had held estates in Worcester in the fifteenth century, the Somers Cocks family owed its wealth and eminence to John Somers (?1650–1716). A member of a minor Worcestershire family, he had propelled the Somers Cocks’ lineage to prominence through his legal and political acumen. He entered the House of Commons in 1689 as MP for Worcester and was instrumental in the framing of the Declaration of Rights. It was subsequently incorporated into the Bill of Rights which declared William and Mary as king and queen, laid down the principles of parliamentary supremacy, and established the Protestant succession. In the government of William III, Somers was appointed Attorney General and knighted; he served as Keeper of the Great Seal, was appointed Lord Chancellor, and created Baron Evesham, obtaining extensive properties from the King and £2,100 annually from the Crown.2 Upon bachelor Somers’ death in 1716, his peerage expired and his fortune passed to his sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, the latter

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having joined together the Somers and Cocks families through her marriage to Charles Cocks, who was MP for Worcester in 1692 and for Droitwich in seven parliaments. The Somers Cocks family continued to prosper in land ownership and flourish in politics, banking, and the professions in the eighteenth century. Lord John Somers’ great-nephew, Charles Cocks, MP for Reigate, was created a baronet in 1772 and elevated to the peerage as the first Baron Somers in 1778; the family entered the nineteenth century with enhanced wealth and a revived barony. Charles’ son and heir, John Somers Cocks, 2nd Baron and MP for Reigate (1790–1806), further increased the family’s fortunes and ranking. His finances enriched by a judicious marriage to a wealthy heiress, Margaret Nash, he commenced a tactical advance into the loftier ranks of the peerage. He adopted the opulent lifestyle of the higher nobility and replaced the family’s relatively modest ancestral home, Castledich, with the palatial, Norman-revival-style Eastnor Castle. He used his position as a Member of Parliament to cultivate the ruling elite, among whom his services to political party causes were duly noted and appreciated. The 2nd Baron’s efforts produced the desired results. In 1821 he was created Earl Somers and Viscount Eastnor, titles that would later be assumed by his second son, also John, who became heir to the peerage and family estates upon the death of the first son in the siege of Burgos in 1812. The 1st Earl Somers was also appointed High Steward of Hereford and Lord Lieutenant of the county of Herefordshire. Ostensibly, his new title and appointments were granted for political services, but ‘it is tempting to see in it a reward for his massive building enterprise’.3 Upon Earl Somers’ death in 1841, his son John Somers Cocks, MP for Reigate (1812–18) and for the City of Hereford (1818–32), succeeded to the earldom and also assumed his father’s former position of Lord Lieutenant of Herefordshire. He married the former Lady Caroline Yorke, daughter of the Earl of Hardwicke, and fathered one son and four daughters; the eldest, Caroline, became maid of honour to Queen Victoria and the wife of Charles Courtenay, who was Canon of Windsor and Chaplain to the Queen. One innovation introduced by the 2nd Earl into his branch of the family was the formal assumption by royal licence of the surname Somers Cocks, previously used by custom only.4 The 2nd Earl Somers’ only son and heir, Charles Somers Cocks (father of Isabel), was of a distinctly different strain than his father

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and grandfather. Born 14 July 1819, he attended Harrow and obtained a bachelor of arts degree at Trinity College, Oxford. Shortly after his grandfather’s death in 1841, Charles, now Viscount Eastnor, was elected Conservative MP for Reigate. Although he thereby followed in his family’s political footsteps, at 21 years of age he appears to have been a reluctant participant in politics. Extremely modest and inclined to indolence, Eastnor was indifferent to public life and worldly success, a characteristic which intensified following a disabling riding accident during his first year in Parliament, and he held his Commons seat only until 1847. According to Isabel, Charles Somers Cocks’ ‘natural self-deprecation . . . made him a student and a scholar rather than a politician and statesman’ and prevented him from achieving the higher echelons of government in England—an opinion also shared by such luminaries as Lord Palmerston and Lord Lansdowne.5 The 3rd Earl Somers was intellectual and artistic, the latter talent apparently inherited from his mother, a watercolourist, who nevertheless discouraged him from pursuing a career as a professional painter. Obliged to settle for the role of a gifted amateur and an art connoisseur, he travelled extensively in Europe and Asia Minor, painting landscapes, searching out objets d’art to adorn Eastnor Castle, and collecting seeds and rare plants to embellish the estate. He joined Sir Henry Layard’s 1845 expedition to Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrian Empire, and sketched the excavated ruins; he accompanied Robert Curzon, 14th Baron Zouche, a traveller and collector of manuscripts, in his search to unearth the Greek monasteries. Lord Somers’ circle of friends included painters J. M. Turner and G. F. Watts, and writers John Ruskin and W. M. Thackeray, and in 1860, Charles became a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery and of the British Museum, serving in both capacities until his death in 1883. A student of the Bible, he was for a time a pupil of F. D. Maurice, a Church of England clergyman, theologian, and co-founder of Christian Socialism. A devotee of the Italian scene, Charles became ‘a friend of Cavour and had the cause of Italian unity deeply at heart’.6 It was Charles Somers Cocks’ association with the artistic world that brought him into contact with his future wife, Virginia Pattle. While viewing the Royal Academy’s 1849 exhibition, he became captivated by her portrait and, following a seemingly chance meeting at Lord Palmerston’s house, wooed and married her within a

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few months, much to his family’s consternation. The successful wooing of his bride by Charles, who was small in stature, with homely features, was something of a coup. Pursued by a host of suitors, and the subject of the adulatory prose of such notables as Edward Lear and William Makepeace Thackeray, she reportedly had earlier spurned sixteen marriage proposals. The wedding, on 2 October 1850, produced ‘a chorus of lamentations’ from her admirers, and thoughts from one Pattle family member regarding the wisdom of Virginia’s union with this ‘unattractive man’.7 Virginia Pattle descended from an Anglo-French family with a colourful heritage. It is plausible that her maternal grandfather, the Chevalier Ambroise Pierre Antoine de l’Etang (1757–1840), had dallied with Queen Marie Antoinette, prompting King Louis XVI to banish him to India. There the offender married the Indian-born Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Theresa Josephe Blin de Grincourt, in 1788 and served in a variety of equestrian occupations until his death in 1840. His wife, who bore him two sons and three daughters, returned to France some years prior to his demise and died in 1866 at age 98.8 Following a French education, her daughters, Julie, Adeline, and Virginie, returned to India to marry and take their places in colonial society. Adeline married a wealthy Englishman, James Pattle, who was a director of the East India Company and possibly used his position for personal enrichment. He was an influential member of Calcutta’s European community and, reputedly, an inebriate, a perfidious husband, and an inveterate liar. Upon James’ death in 1845, an ailing Adeline sailed to England with two of her surviving seven daughters, Sophie and Virginia, but succumbed to her illness en route and was buried with her husband at sea. Sophie and Virginia went to live with their elder sister, Sarah Prinsep, in London and were reunited with their remaining, married sisters. The seven siblings, collectively named ‘Pattledom’ by William Makepeace Thackeray, were unconventional, independent women who enjoyed celebrated and interesting lives in prominent AngloIndian and English circles. One, Julie Margaret Cameron, was a renowned pioneering portrait photographer, and another, Maria Jackson, became the grandmother of novelist Virginia Woolf, painter Vanessa Bell, and distinguished historian H. A. L. Fisher, who was Lloyd Georges’ President of the Board of Trade and an architect of the Education Act 1918. At Sarah Prinsep’s celebrated

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London salon, the Pattle sisters fraternized with distinguished personalities from Victorian artistic, literary, intellectual, and political circles, including painters Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt, Sir John Millais, Dante Rossetti, and G. F. Watts (who had his studio at the Prinseps’ house for 25 years); writers Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, and W. M. Thackeray; and poets Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson.9 Acknowledged by London Society as the family’s crowning beauty, Virginia was lionized by a host of admirers to the point of idolization, and it has been suggested that her decision to marry Charles Somers Cocks was prompted by a combination of the desire to escape constant male adulation, the assurances that his devotion transcended mere physical attraction, and the lure of his title. However, it can be argued, Virginia saw beyond his unprepossessing exterior, recognized his many qualities, appreciated their compatibility of interests, and followed her heart, a view supported by the pattern of their married life. Their union appears to have been a happy one, based upon reciprocal love, parental devotion, and the mutual enjoyment of shared friendships, travel, and the arts. Virginia was a perfect soul mate for the aesthetic Viscount Eastnor. An interesting, amusing companion, she enlivened him when he was dispirited, and was at all times attentive to his needs. She was, undoubtedly, the dominant partner in the relationship, and her decisions took precedence, sometimes even overruling his wiser judgement, in matters of consequence.10 Three months after their wedding, Charles and Virginia travelled to Madeira, returning in time for the birth of their first child, Isabella Caroline, on 3 August 1851. On 24 September 1852, a second daughter, Adeline Mary, arrived, followed three years later by another girl, Virginia. At the time of Isabel’s birth, Viscount and Viscountess Somers were living in London at 45 Grosvenor Gardens. When Isabel was one year old, her grandfather, John Somers Cocks, 2nd Earl and 3rd Baron, died, and her father acceded to the titles; her mother became Countess Somers. Included in Lord Somers’ inheritance were the properties of Somers Town (a district of London) and the family estates of Reigate Priory (Surrey) and Eastnor Castle (Herefordshire), and the couple eagerly set about beautifying the latter property. During the residency of the 1st Earl, the interior of the castle had remained largely unadorned, as befitted the building’s medieval style. Shortly before his death,

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the 2nd Earl, encouraged by then Viscount Eastnor, had engaged A. W. N. Pugin to refurbish his drawing room in the Gothic-revival style currently in vogue. Now, under the direction of the artistic Charles Somers, Eastnor underwent a renaissance.11 Earlier, the Somers had furnished and decorated their London home, he ‘never doing more than suggesting, she always deciding’.12 However, at Eastnor, although the embellishment was mutually discussed, Charles appears to have been at the helm. Reflecting his fascination with classical antiquities and his attachment to the Mediterranean, the Castle was gradually filled with Italian furniture, Flemish tapestries, fifteenth-century Renaissance art, and medieval armour. However, Virginia may have been instrumental in the decision to assign the decoration of some of the Castle’s rooms to her friend from ‘Pattledom’ days, G. F. Watts. Although he and the Earl shared an affinity for the composition and radiant hues of Venetian painting,13 not everything he executed met with the approval of his patron—one of Watts’ frescos was ‘finally washed out by Lord Somers’ orders’.14 Shortly after acceding to the earldom in 1852, Lord Somers became Lord-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, a position he held until 1857. When not on their frequent travels abroad, he and his wife divided their time among Eastnor Castle, Reigate, and their London home. Lady Somers, ‘with a certain genius for the luxury of existence’,15 revelled in the social life that accompanied her status. At Eastnor, guests were entertained at early summer parties and again for shooting in the autumn. Now a married woman and a mother, she was free to enjoy the attention and companionship of selected male friends without incurring the public adoration that had dogged her prior to her marriage. Virginia developed friendships with several men, including the Marquis of Lansdowne, who took time out from his Cabinet duties to arrange concerts at his home to suit her convenience; he also met with her to discuss the works of Tennyson and Ruskin and to engage in political gossip.16 Charles Somers’ cousin, artist Sir Coutts Lindsay, was a constant companion of both Virginia and her husband and became her devoted admirer and confidant. For over twenty years she was the dominant influence in his life, even in selecting his bride, an incident that gossips suggested was a ploy to mask an affair. However, there is no proof such intimacy existed, and Virgina vigorously denied any intrigue,

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declaring that she loved only her husband and that Coutts was her ‘dearest friend’ for whom she felt but sisterly affection.17 In the midst of all her various activities Virginia found time to enjoy ‘constant flights to Paris in search of new clothes’.18 Along with all the Pattle sisters, she took a keen interest in fashion and considered it a duty to display her beauty in the most attractive way possible. One envious contemporary of hers noted, ‘She was the first woman in London to drape herself. The rest of us only dressed’.19 In-between overseeing their country estates and enjoying the London ‘Season’, the Somers spent a great deal of time travelling, much of it yachting in the Mediterranean, or in Italy escaping the English winters—a pattern that was to continue throughout their married life. The arrival of their three daughters barely interrupted this routine. As was customary in Victorian upper-class families, the day-to-day care of the children was largely consigned to nannies or governesses, permitting the couple to continue to pursue their interests, unencumbered by the more mundane parental duties. Shortly after Isabel’s birth, the Somers enjoyed time among the Bedouins, the winter of 1856 was spent in Rome, and the following year found them sailing around the Mediterranean. There Lord Somers and a companion (frequently his cousin, Sir Coutts Lindsay; sometimes Edward Lear) sketched, and Virginia used her time ashore to explore the various localities. During their prolonged absences abroad, the children were often dispatched to relatives or to seaside vacations in the company of servants.20 The allocation of child care to servants was traditional and universally accepted in Victorian aristocratic families, and the practice did not in itself reflect a lack of affection for one’s offspring nor a disregard for his or her welfare. Although this delegation of authority was in part devised to increase parental freedom, the nursery environment was also designed to provide children with highly structured, methodical, and well-regulated routines, which were considered essential for character building and to prepare the child for assumption of the duties and responsibilities of adulthood. The nursery or schoolroom, segregated from the rest of the household and having separate and distinctive routines, normally constituted the child’s world; daily contact with parents was restricted largely to the mother’s short visits to the nursery, to receiving parental

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approval at prescribed times, and to participating in family gatherings or prayers.21 Isabel’s childhood followed the traditional pattern prescribed for upper-class offspring, but because of the Somers’ frequent absences abroad, she saw even less of her parents than would normally have occurred under this regimen. When she was five years old, she lamented that she ‘should enjoy life very much if it were not that I have too many parents’.22 By this age, she had undergone the supervision of seven governesses; by age eighteen, the number had risen to twenty. As many Victorian nannies and governesses developed close relationships with their charges and remained with them throughout childhood, one can only speculate as to why the Somers found it necessary to continually change their nursery and schoolroom staff. There is no reason to believe that Isabel and Adeline were so unmanageable that their behaviour alone prompted the departure of their various parent substitutes. Adeline was an exemplary child, and though Isabel showed ‘occasional traces of the “enfant terrible”’, exhibiting ill temper and, occasionally, outright disobedience, these lapses in behaviour were of the kind associated with normal childhood rebelliousness. On one occasion Isabel was captured by the camera ‘in her sulkiest mood, . . . furious that she had not been allowed to put on her prettiest dress’. On another, when attending a children’s party at Buckingham Palace, she refused to join her fellow guests for tea; instead, ‘she stayed behind alone, wandering round inspecting everything with deep interest’. There is evidence to suggest that the youngest daughter, Virginia, was an unruly infant. Apparently, Isabel ‘remembered her as the naughtiest child that ever lived’, and on one occasion Lady Somers felt obliged to apologise to her motherin-law for ‘Virginia’s behaviour in scratching your face and making such an attack on you’.23 As Virginia died from diphtheria three months before her fourth birthday, her behaviour could not have accounted for the succession of governesses which subsequently served the Somers household. In all likelihood, Lady Somers’ own misguided approach to motherhood contributed significantly to the problem. Although she was willing to delegate care of her daughters to servants, she nevertheless dominated the child-rearing process, a situation which must have been intolerable to those deputized to take her place. A loving but over-protective parent, she zealously controlled every

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aspect of her children’s upbringing. From their earliest years, she devised restricted daily routines for the ‘training of her March Lambs’, supervising personally or by proxy every detail of their lives—‘their health, their food, their morals, their manners’, their activities—effectively denying them any freedom of movement or expression.24 Not surprisingly, given the regimented nature of Isabel’s early childhood, her fondest memories of these years were the pleasurable events associated with temporary escapes from her restricted regimen: excursions to London’s Green Park to observe a cow being milked, and especially, visits with her French great-grandmother in Versailles. The first of these visits took place in the company of her sisters when Isabel was five years of age, en route to their parents’ winter home in Rome. This, and later sojourns with Madame de l’Etang, were times of particular joy for Isabel. There she was not banished to the nursery or schoolroom but was welcomed into her great-grandmother’s salon to enjoy her companionship and share refreshments; on occasions she was taken by her to experience a French Punch-and-Judy show, replete with scandalous jokes—so alien to a conventional English childhood.25 The death of Lord and Lady Somers’ youngest daughter, Virginia, on 9 January 1859 while they were abroad struck the couple a devastating blow. Lady Somers’ grief was so intense, she retreated into denial, erasing virtually all evidence of the child’s existence— including destroying all letters of the period—until the only trace of the child which remained was a portrait by Watts. This loss was rendered even more tragic by the circumstances surrounding the child’s demise. Her complaint had not been immediately diagnosed as diphtheria, and the specialist’s consultation was obtained too late for effective treatment. The tragedy intensified Lady Somers’ concern for the health of her surviving children, prompting her to increase even further her already oppressive vigilance over them. To protect them from infections, she denied Isabel and Adeline the company of other children unless absolutely necessary; robust play and stimulating activities were forbidden, to discourage overexcitement; and their diet was so controlled that in the nursery years a hungry Isabel would pay Adeline two pence for her breakfast egg.26 When, despite all precautions, the girls developed a childhood illness or displayed signs of lethargy, they were dispatched to the

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seaside to recuperate under the punctilious supervision of their attendant governesses and other servants. One such excursion was undertaken to Brighton in 1866 when Isabel was 15 and Adeline 14. As was the case whenever she was away from her children, Lady Somer’s stringent superintendence continued unabated. Her daughters were inundated by a continuous stream of letters, containing not only explicit instructions for their daily routines, diet, and convalescence but also endless queries regarding the state of their health, and precautionary measures to be adopted against further infections. To this correspondence her daughters dutifully responded with reassurances that all was in order. Isabel assured her mother, ‘We are both well and flourishing’, and Adeline wrote, ‘We do our lessons regularly. . . . We have nice evenings, when we work, talk, and read. So darling you must imagine yr March lambs contented and happy but longing to go to their own Moo’.27 Lady Somers’ obsessive preoccupation with her children’s health was matched only by the degree of attention she paid to their education. As was customary for mid-Victorian, upper-class girls, Isabel and Adeline were kept apart from other children and educated at home, which was a protection from unsavoury influences as well as infections. Under the tutelage of her grandmother, Madame de l’Etang, Virginia herself had received an unorthodox education, one that emphasised housewifery and hostess duties rather than ‘the more conventional accomplishments of a lady of the period’.28 For her own daughters, however, she chose precisely the latter course, a training in the ‘acquirements such as belong to the cultivated or fashionable classes’, designed to enable them to fulfil their future roles as ‘great ladies’ in Victorian society.29 In contrast with the casual instruction Lady Somers had received at Versailles, the curriculum she designed for Isabel and Adeline was narrow and often dull, and their timetable was demanding. A great deal of emphasis was placed on language training. French being the mother tongue of the Pattles, Isabel acquired fluency in that language at an early age, her competence increased by visits to her great-grandmother in Versailles. In the schoolroom she was trained to be almost equally competent in Italian and German,30 albeit minus the ease and pleasures associated with the acquisition of la langue française. Instead of Madame de l’Etang’s teas and the delights of French Punch and Judy, Isabel and Adeline experienced dreary hours, subjected to ‘dull governesses . . . and the woeful

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3. Portrait of Isabella and Adeline Somers Cocks, 1861, by G. F. Watts. Courtesy of Eastnor Castle Collection Photograph Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

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drudgery of German translation and Chambers Questions’. Entire days were devoted to the study of a single language. A typical day of German instruction began at 9.30 a.m. and included one hour of translation and four half-hour periods of poetry, music, reading, and Chambers Questions. Following lunch and a three-hour hiatus for rest or supervised, sedate recreation, the lessons recommenced at 4.30 p.m. with one hour each of Grecian History and letter writing. A half-hour of singing concluded the day’s instruction at 7 p.m.31 A more relaxed approach appears to have been taken with the English language. Isabel’s punctuation was erratic and her spelling faulty, even as an adult, though these deficiencies may have resulted, in part, from the frequent choice of European nationals as governesses. However, no laxity was permitted with English literature. Lady Somers closely supervised her daughters’ reading material. Their governesses were instructed to censor all books entering the schoolroom, and when away from her ‘March Lambs’, Virginia would write to enquire what books they were reading and were having read to them by their governess. When she disapproved of the choices, Virginia insisted the books be discarded in favour of titles of her choosing.32 Lord Somers did not entirely approve of his wife’s decisions in this case. Although he applauded her choice of Sir Walter Scott’s work, he protested that the Tractarian Charlotte Yonge’s religious, sentimental stories which Lady Somers had selected offered ‘views of life and duty . . . more false and artificial than many trashy novels of a much inferior order’.33 To no avail. Virginia preferred sentimental fiction over exposure to ‘the poison of romantic ideas’, which might undermine her controlling influence, and as often occurred in other matters, Lord Somers’ objections were swept aside.34 There is little evidence that Isabel received any training in the sciences beyond simple arithmetic, but her education did include riding, piano, and drawing lessons. She inherited something of her father’s artistic talent. In adulthood, her letters were often enlivened by ‘cartoon-like’ images, and her illustrations for a book of her poems for children, which was published in 1884 to raise money to support a home for workhouse girls,35 display a considerable ability. Although Lady Somers cherished her daughters, her aspirations for their future made her an exacting taskmaster, and Isabel’s apparent lackadaisical approach to learning was a source of con-

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stant anxiety for her mother. Throughout Isabel’s schoolroom years, Lady Somers was constantly reproving her for lack of diligence and urging her to greater efforts: ‘I believe entirely that you wish to do right and to exert yourself to be industrious but wishing is not doing—and days, weeks and months slip away, and if the half hours are not turned to good account as they are portioned out to be used, a whole life time is frittered away before you have acquired any of the habits that you have from day to day wished to possess. . . . I don’t think you ever bring your whole mind and attention to anything but the reading of an interesting story book’.36 Her closely supervised social life, combined with the boredom of the schoolroom, was irksome to Isabel, ‘rather like living on a chain held at the other end by the most . . . exacting mother’.37 Unlike the docile Adeline, Isabel was occasionally moved to minor rebellion: questioning a governess’s instruction; reading the ‘unauthorized’ work of John Stuart Mill, Essay on Liberty; or going alone on brief, unsanctioned excursions to visit an aunt. However, these assertions of independence were infrequent incidents, and Isabel reacted to her mother’s vexation with expressions of contrition, promising to do better in the future: ‘I hope I shall not disappoint you, but I will try to please you more and more every year as I grow older’.38 Isabel’s restrictive and closely supervised existence continued, virtually unchanged, until she ‘came out’ into Society shortly before her nineteenth birthday. As this milestone drew near, Lady Somers’ vigilance over Isabel’s life intensified. Concerns over diet, and precautions to be adopted against sickness, were as frequently expressed as in earlier years, and fearful that Isabel’s almost-completed formal education may prove wanting, her mother urged her to acquire ‘ambitions and put her shoulder to the wheel day by day without flinching for my sake’.39 By age 18, Isabel had become an attractive young woman. One observer was ‘particularly struck by the brilliance of her complexion, a vivid geranium pink, and the glory of her hair which was a rich chestnut’.40 Isabel’s physical attractiveness, combined with her status as a wealthy heiress, was a potential magnet for fortune hunters as she approached marriageable age. Lady Somers deemed it essential that no undesirable influences be allowed to threaten the fulfilment of her grand design for Isabel’s future as a ‘great lady’, and consequently, Isabel remained largely isolated from

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society, with few contacts outside the family circle. The delivery of pensions and food to the elderly and sick on the Eastnor estate was permitted, in accordance with her mother’s training in noblesse oblige; as a very special treat, Isabel could make an occasional, brief visit to the village night school just outside the Castle gates. Meals continued to be taken largely in the schoolroom, save when, in Lady Somers’ absence, Isabel and Adeline were expected to entertain their parents’ friends—sometimes as many as thirteen people for dinner—a task which Isabel found to be ‘an awful ordeal’.41 The companionship of people their own age was largely denied the sisters, save during the infrequent visits of one cousin or another. With males of their peer group Isabel and Adeline had virtually no association. Thus, during Isabel’s eighteenth year, the arrival at Eastnor of the Duke of Beaufort’s youngest son, Lord Edward Somerset, to study with the parish rector created some anxiety for their mother. While recognizing that protocol demanded her daughters must meet and entertain the young nobleman, Lady Somers cautioned Isabel not ‘to take it upon yourself to pay him any little attention in word or manner . . . and don’t put yourself forward for any civilities . . . attend to what I say in the spirit as well as the letter’. Isabel assured her mother that she and Adeline would conduct themselves ‘as you would like’, and despite her inexperience, she handled the situation with Lord Edward comfortably.42 This meeting represented the initial contact between Isabel and the family of the Duke of Beaufort and would have a momentous effect upon the future of both families.43 Given her sheltered and socially restricted childhood and adolescence, Isabel likely faced her impending entry into Society with some trepidation. However, the prospect of a measure of independence and an enlarged social circle was evidently sufficient to outweigh any qualms she may have had regarding her new situation. Isabel plunged into her first London ‘Season’ with gusto. During the spring and summer of 1869, her social calendar was filled with an almost continuous round of balls, parties, dinner engagements, and afternoon teas. Many of these events were lavish affairs. For Isabel’s coming-out ball at the Somers’ London house, tapestries were brought down from Eastnor to decorate the tent which was erected to accommodate the event, and windows in the main house were replaced by trellises of lilies. At the various gatherings Isabel mingled with British and European royalty,

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diplomats, politicians, and aristocrats. Her engagements were conducted at a frenetic pace, frequently reducing her to exhaustion— the balls usually continued until dawn. The excitement produced by, and the enjoyment she derived from, these various activities are reflected in the letters she wrote to her sister Adeline, who was still ensconced at Eastnor. In addition, Isabel evidently obtained particular joy from the opportunities for ‘dressing up’. Her correspondence is punctuated by descriptions of her gowns (‘white tulle with wreaths and wreaths of Jessamine’, ‘white tarlatan’ and ‘white muslin . . . with bows’) and those of fellow guests, indicating a keen interest in couture, which she maintained to the end of her life.44 Isabel’s letters reveal that, in general, she made a smooth transition into her newly expanded social circle, albeit carefully chaperoned by Lady Somers, at whose side Isabel ran like a ‘little foal’. She reportedly approached her presentation at Court ‘frightened and shy’ and minus the ‘calm self-possession’ which she had displayed as a small child45 upon meeting Queen Victoria; then, Isabel had indignantly responded to the monarch’s greeting of ‘This is little Isabel’ with an emphatic ‘Lady Isabel’. However, despite her discomfort, her debut went smoothly.46 Being, from all accounts, intelligent, spirited, and good natured, as well as physically attractive, Isabel very quickly acquired a circle of friends. Days were spent lunching and riding with, amongst others, Lady Elizabeth Campbell, and ‘boating with the 2 Miss Osbornes . . . and Lord Monck’s son’. At the frequent balls she never lacked for partners, often dancing every dance.47 However, Isabel’s prior isolation from males of her peer group, combined with her mother’s continued influence, was to have grave repercussions. Her attitude to members of the opposite sex appears to have been as equally innocent as that to females, with no sense of socalled feminine guile. Though she must have been fully aware that her position and potential wealth would encourage friendships and entice suitors, she seems not to have considered herself personally attractive. Having kept Isabel ‘in complete ignorance of life’, Lady Somers had also kept her daughter ‘unspoilt and unconscious of her attractions’,48 all the better to control Isabel’s future, particularly in the delicate and important arena of romantic involvement and marriage. Thus, in matters of the heart Isabel continued to be guided by her mother, and she carefully followed Lady Somer’s directive never to ‘put herself forward for any civilities’ with males.

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Within these constraints, Isabel enjoyed the companionship of men and appears to have entered into such friendships with enthusiasm. In the early days of her sojourn in Society, she had avowed her greatest wish: ‘to live in the country . . . and to have fifteen children’.49 While this goal may have been ingenuous, nevertheless, given her position in Society, marriage remained Isobel’s traditional future role and one she seems to have accepted without question. Isabel’s innocence and inexperience with men no doubt rendered her receptive to romance, and she appeared to very quickly develop a deep attachment to Lord Lorne, later Duke of Argyll, and he to her. Following their initial meeting a few days after her coming-out ball, they were frequent companions at dinner parties and balls, though always in the company of others.50 The relationship seemingly developed to the point where she anticipated his proposal of marriage, but, apparently, Queen Victoria intervened, commanding him to marry her daughter Princess Louise. This left Isabel hurt and disinclined to further romance and, reportedly, led her to subsequently reject several other suitors, including the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Henry Somerset, Member of Parliament for Monmouthshire and the second son of the Duke of Beaufort. Disillusioned, Isabel accepted the fact that she must marry but resolved that she would ask nothing more than goodness of her future husband. This criterion, coupled with Lady Somer’s desire for the match, apparently proved crucial in Isabel’s decision, a few months after her twentieth birthday, to change her mind and accept Lord Henry’s proposal.51 In that marriages of aristocratic couples were largely arranged with an eye to increasing family fortunes and status, the union of Isabel and Henry followed a conventional pattern. Although Lord Henry was not an heir to his father’s title or to his estate, he possessed the eminence attached to one of the oldest noble families in England. By comparison, Isabel’s family was relatively new to the peerage, her father being only the third Earl Somers, and thus commanded relatively less prestige. However, Isabel was the potential heiress of her father’s fortune and his estates, including Eastnor Castle, Reigate, and Somers Town (London), bringing to the match the financial assets Lord Henry lacked. The fact that they embarked upon married life as relative strangers, having previously spent very little time in each other’s company, was usual within the context of the period. In Victorian Britain, middle- and upper-class unmarried

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girls were closely chaperoned, and single men and women did not normally pursue and share the same types of leisure and intellectual activities to the extent that they do today. Consequently, mutual affection, rather than a deep, passionate love, was often the strongest emotion felt by such couples when entering marriage. Despite its apparent conventionality, Isabel’s liaison with Lord Henry Somerset was an ill-conceived relationship. In the absence of any surviving evidence, Isabel’s dispositions towards Lord Henry and his suit, and the role she played in the scenario leading up to her engagement, must remain matters for conjecture. Her initial rejection of him suggests she felt for him none of the deep emotions aroused in her by Lord Lorne and, thus, considered the potential union unpalatable. From all accounts, her volte-face was prompted by considerations other than those of the heart: his ‘assurance that he shared her ambition to be good, and her mother’s wish that she should marry him’. Lady Somers purportedly ‘hated the thought of parting with her daughter and saw in this marriage with a second son who was tractable a possibility of keeping both her daughter and her son-in-law under her wing’, leading her to actively promote the match.52 In the event, his goodness and tractability rapidly proved illusionary, and Lady Somers’ aspirations misguided, resulting in the tragic consequences which would later mould Isabel’s life. The earlier visit to Eastnor of Edward Somerset, brother of Lord Henry, likely paved the way for Henry’s introduction to Isabel. Henry attended her coming-out ball, but her surviving letters from her debutante year make no further mention of him.53 One assumes, however, that in the months following her disappointment over Lord Lorne, Isabel and Lord Henry’s relationship had progressed beyond that of a passing acquaintanceship, given his initial proposal. By September 1871, Lady Somers, to whom the prospect of uniting her daughter with one of the most powerful families in England was no doubt irresistible, was actively attempting to rekindle the relationship by inviting Lord Henry to visit Eastnor. While thanking her for ‘keeping your eyes on my interests at all times’, initially he temporised, perhaps in the light of Isabel’s earlier rejection. Upon receiving Lady Somers’ assurances of ‘a possible change in Isabel’s feelings towards’ him, he expressed delight but queried if she would find life congenial with a deeply religious man ‘whose thoughts are fixed on another world, whose ideas are

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centred on Churches and Charities, etc’, whose future would ‘never be a very sporting, visiting, amusing life’ but, rather, one spent in the company of clerics. A young wife might eventually find such a situation vexatious, prompting her to regret her choice.54 Lord Henry’s espousal of a religious and philanthropic life, combined with her mother’s pursuit of his ‘interests’, evidently caused Isabel to respond favourably towards him, which prompted him to visit Eastnor in October 1871. He was accompanied by his mother, who was smitten by Isabel. At this meeting, Isabel’s response and Lady Somers’ manifest approval of the proposed match induced Henry Somerset to request Lord Somers’ permission to marry Isabel. However, her father evinced less enthusiasm for the union and agreed only to give the matter further consideration; he stipulated that no proposal should be made to Isabel until his decision was reached. To such a response Lord Henry reacted with illconcealed dismay.55 Lord Somers harboured several concerns with regard to the marriage. He acknowledged Lord Henry’s impeccable character but was disturbed by his predilection for Roman Catholicism. Having only the slightest of acquaintanceships with his prospective son-inlaw, he had little information upon which to assess Lord Henry’s suitability as a husband. His overwhelming concern was for his daughter’s future financial stability. Given that Lord Henry would not inherit the Beaufort estates, Isabel’s father was anxious to procure her continued comfort and security56 and no doubt also wished to assure himself that her suitor’s feelings for her sprang from the heart and not from the pocket. Lord Henry openly acknowledged his inadequate finances but believed that Isabel cared enough for him to live in comparative poverty, should the need arise. He urged Lady Somers to persuade her husband ‘to think of the happiness of his child. Even if for a certain time we were to be rather poor . . . it would be whilst we were young and able to rough it’, should Lord Somers feel disinclined to provided much support. Lord Henry noted that his relative penury was not viewed by other wealthy families as a deterrent to marriage, citing two who were eager to have him for a son-in-law, and that Isabel having ‘so much money in prospect enables you to marry her to the man whom she wishes, however badly off he may be, provided he be of good family, as I am’. Meanwhile, his own father was exploring ways in which he might

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be able to assist the couple, but Lord Henry was ‘not very sanguine as to the results’.57 As Lord Henry had anticipated, the Duke of Beaufort was able to offer very little in the way of financial help to the couple. Upon his death, his son would receive an inheritance of £15,000. Meanwhile, the Duke grudgingly offered to provide an annual allowance of £1,000, the annuity to continue after his demise. He could provide a small house in Monmouthshire, but he and the Duchess preferred to have the couple live with them so as to continue to enjoy the company of their son. Beaufort emphasised that his son was ‘not impatient to marry unless he can find a wife with a certain amount of money’, but modest circumstances would not prove arduous because his duties as Member of Parliament would preclude his participation in ‘expensive amusements’. The Duke expressed confidence that Lord Henry ‘would be very domestic and make any woman he loved very happy’ and welcomed the proposed alliance with the Somers family.58 Prompted by the Duke’s frankness, Lord Somers was equally candid in setting forth his own position to Lord Henry. As Isabel was his likely heir, her marriage was ‘a matter of more vital importance’ than it would be if he had male issue to inherit his estate. Moreover, it was his great desire that his daughter’s marital union would bring him and his wife a son as truly theirs as a natural child, and for this he was willing ‘to make very great sacrifices’. As the income from his Eastnor estate was barely sufficient to support its upkeep, a liaison which brought in additional finances was to be greatly desired; they would not only help to maintain his property and sustain Isabel’s heirs but also provide income for the next Earl Somers (a member of a distant branch of the family) and for Isabel’s younger sister, Adeline. Consequently, his daughter’s union with a man of modest means would involve ‘considerable retrenchment on my part for some years to come’, and on Isabel’s part should he suffer an early death. These considerations would greatly influence his decision regarding the proposed match. However, if he were ‘convinced that I could trust my child’s happiness and the future interests of my family and Estate in your hands, such a conviction would in my mind outweigh any other’, and he promised to provide his decision after a month’s consideration.59 Though impatient with the proposed delay, Lord Henry accepted graciously Earl Somers’ decision. In the meantime, he decided

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to accompany a clergyman friend on a visit to the Continent, from where he corresponded frequently with Lady Somers, describing his visits to art galleries and churches and always including greetings to Lord Somers and Isabel. As his sojourn came to an end, he confirmed his visit to Eastnor, set for 4 December.60 At this meeting, Lord Henry’s presentation of his suit, assuredly supported by a determined Lady Somers, evidently convinced Lord Somers of his sincerity, sufficiently to allow Isabel ‘to act according to her inclinations and her judgement’ with regard to Lord Henry’s proposal, which he was now free to proffer.61 This proposal duly offered and accepted, a ‘very very happy’ Lord Henry avowed that his future behaviour would ‘show how grateful I am for the trust’ placed in him by Lord Somers. Then, the latter having formally informed the Queen of the intended marriage, the couple became officially engaged on 8 December 1871.62 In the deliberations preceding the engagement Isabel appears to have had little active participation. Following Lord Henry’s October visit to Eastnor, the couple did not meet again until the deliberations over the proposed union were completed in early December. During this interval, the correspondence between the two families, establishing conditions for the prospective marriage, was conducted without obvious input on her part, and there is no evidence that the pair exchanged letters on the subject. Beyond her mother’s assurances to Lord Henry of Isabel’s change of heart towards him, there are no recorded references to her feelings or desires with regard to the proposed match. However, the depth of Lord Somers’ love for his daughter ensured that he would apply no pressure upon her to enter the union, the final decision resting in her hands. Some years later, a trusted companion and confidante of Isabel reported that she ‘had fallen into the marriage planned for her more from docility and because he was the first man she had been allowed to know, than from any other reason’.63

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4. Portrait of Isabella Caroline Somers Cocks by G. F. Watts. Courtesy of Eastnor Castle Collection Photograph Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

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2 MARRIAGE

The news of the engagement was received ‘with the greatest happiness’ by the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort, the former now being ‘very anxious to become acquainted with Isabel and the Somers Cocks family’, none of whom he had met. Reciprocal visits were duly made and marriage arrangements formulated. Lord Somers preferred to delay the event until after the Lenten season, no doubt for religious considerations. The Beauforts, however, were eager to have the nuptials celebrated before Easter, and Lord Somers deferred to their wishes: the wedding date was set for 6 February 1872.1 On the matter of the marriage settlement, Lord Somers was less flexible, staunchly defending his proposals throughout the negotiations with the Beauforts. The final document, finalized only the day before the nuptials took place, ensured Isabel’s financial security within the marriage. Under its terms, Lord Somers provided her with a capital sum of £7,500, the investment income to be paid annually to his daughter and to remain her separate property. Under then current law, all property within marriage legally belonged to the husband, a situation not rectified until the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882. Lord Somers also agreed to furnish Lord Henry with an annual allowance of £1,000. He would receive no income from his own father but would be entitled to a bequest of monies from one-fifth of the interest in the Beaufort estate upon the death of his surviving parent.2 The marriage was duly solemnized on 6 February 1872 by the Queen’s chaplain, the Reverend Charles Courtenay, MA, Canon of Windsor, at St George’s Church, Hanover Square, London. Isabel was twenty years of age, her bridegroom two years her senior. The

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bride was attended by seven bridesmaids, including her sister, Lady Adeline Somers Cocks, and Lord Henry’s sister, Lady Blanche Somerset. Isabel carried a basket of snowdrops sent to her by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which he had ‘gathered for her with his own hands’.3 In keeping with the couple’s standing in society, the guest list was a microcosm of the British upper classes. Attending the ceremony were representatives from the peerage, including the Marquis and Marchioness of Hamilton, the Marquis and Marchioness of Queensberry, the Marquis of Worcester, the Earl and Countess of Warwick, the Earl and Countess of Westmorland, the Earl and Countess of Marlborough, and several viscounts and viscountesses, along with other members of the aristocracy. Following the wedding breakfast held at Earl Somers’ London residence, the bridal couple left to spend their honeymoon at Reigate Priory, the Somers’ estate in the town of Reigate, Surrey.4 One observer noted that Isabel ‘clung to her mother as if she were afraid to leave her’,5 a natural response, perhaps, from one so innocent and inexperienced with the opposite sex and about to embark upon the most intimate of partnerships with a man she barely knew. After travelling by train to Redhill, where ‘throngs of people turned out to see’ them, the couple were transported from the station to the Priory by brougham. The streets of Reigate were decorated with flags, and ‘church bells were rung and a gun fired off!’ Inhabitants of the town lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the pair, and the Reigate tenantry presented them with ‘a complimentary address, accompanied by a Wedding Gift’.6 On the surface, at least, the marriage appeared to be off to a blissful start, promising a joyous future. The union was consummated,7 and in letters written during the honeymoon Isabel and Lord Henry assured her parents of their happiness and compatibility. ‘We are so happy dear Mother—so happy’, wrote Isabel, adding, ‘My Penna is more dear every day’. Lord Henry was even more effusive; he told his new mother-in-law, ‘I must . . . tell you how very happy I am with my little Isabel. She is such a little dear, and I feel already as if we had been married years so perfectly do we suit each other in every way’.8 In reality, Lord Henry’s declarations of husbandly affection and marital bliss would prove to be affectations, as Isabel was very shortly to discover. Despite his felicitous pronouncements, on the second day of the honeymoon Lord Henry ‘became restless to have the amusement of guests staying in

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the house’. He was eager for Lady Somers to visit, telling her to ‘come early and stay late’. He also invited Lady Westmorland to stay, but Lady Somers strongly objected and demanded the invitation be withdrawn. A potentially embarrassing situation was avoided when Lady Westmorland declined the invitation because of a previous engagement, before Lord Henry ‘telegraphed to stop her coming’. His plans for entertaining guests having been aborted, Lord Henry ‘was then only anxious to shorten the period of 10 days allotted for [the] stay and to get to Town’. In the event, the couple could not return to London earlier than planned because their accommodations in London could not be prepared ahead of schedule. Concealing the true nature of Henry’s feelings, a stratagem she would adopt repeatedly in the future, Isabel assured her parents that she and Lord Henry were ‘very well contented to stay till Friday or Saturday’ until their London rooms were ready, at the same time urging Lord and Lady Somers to ‘come down between now and then’, no doubt in an effort to mitigate her husband’s discontent.9 The couple remained at the Priory until 16 February, at which time they returned to London and occupied rooms in Park Street. Less than two weeks’ later, ostensibly prompted by his professed religious convictions, Lord Henry proposed they locate themselves in the country and maintain a hospital. Isabel was willing to consider the plan if this was the one role in life he felt competent to assume; she was not, however, prepared to acquiesce to the additional conditions her husband wished to impose on their relationship, namely that they ‘must live separately and have no children’. He emphasised, ‘You must understand, I want no children’. A horrified Isabel adamantly refused to consider such a proposition, declaring that to have children was ‘the one wish of my life’. Her response infuriated Lord Henry, who became ‘vexed and angry’ towards her, displaying an ‘excitable and uneasy state of mind’ and ‘always eluding in a sort of way to atonement for the past’, which she was unable to comprehend. Despite Lord Henry’s preference, the couple maintained conjugal relations.10 Having been denied his preferred marital lifestyle, Lord Henry now abandoned all pretence of spousal affection and brusquely informed Isabel that, for him, the marriage had been one of expediency. He had ‘never been in love’ with her. He had wanted to become a clergyman, but the opportunity of marrying her ‘had been so advantageous that he could not put it aside’: she was the heiress to a fortune; he was

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poor but had rank, and therefore, she ‘suited him very well’. He ‘continued to resent in his mind’ the fact that Isabel had first refused him.11 Lord Henry’s revelation reflected the position of many upper-class bridegrooms, and although her own motives for entering the union were probably less than those of fervent love, her husband’s bald statements shocked the innocent Isabel and shattered any hopes she harboured for a loving, if not passionate, union. Shortly afterward, Lord Henry forcefully reiterated his preference for a celibate and childless marriage, while the couple were en route to Badminton, the Duke of Beaufort’s country seat, to join a party convened for the Bath races. Isabel again rejected his plan as being not only ‘un-natural and absurd’ but also iniquitous. Lord Henry was piqued and, citing fatigue, refused to accompany her to the races. As this was her initial appearance in Badminton Society, Isabel entreated him to reconsider, wishing to avoid the gossip which would otherwise ensue, but to no avail. She was obliged to attend the event with a group of ladies and gentlemen from among the Somersets’ other guests, and she was further humiliated when her husband chose to spend the next day visiting a clergyman in a neighbouring parish. His action angered the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort, prompting the latter to question Isabel about her relationship with Henry. Isabel took the opportunity to disclose his proposals for a segregated, childless union and unsuccessfully implored her mother-in-law to consult the curate regarding these plans in the hope that he might be able to convince Lord Henry of the perversity of his ideas.12 Lord Henry’s treatment of Isabel on the day of the races also attracted the attention of an elderly, male friend of the Somersets, a Mr Baldwin, who, in her husband’s absence, escorted Isabel on an outing and gently told her, ‘Don’t you see he does not care for you, you have thrown yourself away’.13 Mr Baldwin’s assertion so vexed Isabel that she chided her husband for exposing her to such comments by his conduct. Lord Henry reacted angrily and instigated a great scene with his mother, in which he denounced Mr Baldwin for poisoning Isabel’s mind against him. The Duke’s denunciation of his son’s behaviour towards his wife further incensed Lord Henry, who dismissed the criticism as hypocritical. However, in the wake of Isabel’s admonishments, Lord Henry did not adopt total segregation.14 The astounding revelation of her husband’s marital opportunism, and his consequent indifference towards her, stunned Isabel. To

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these blows was now added another jolt in the form of the lifestyle practised at Badminton. From the cultured and elegant atmosphere of Eastnor, where an over-protective mother had shielded her from the infelicitous aspects of life, Isabel was now plunged into the traditional world of the ancient nobility, whose milieu, mores, and pastimes were vastly different in quality and scale than those to which she was accustomed. The refined ambience of her parents’ home, where arts and letters flourished, was replaced by an environment where the earthier pursuits of hunting, horse-racing, shooting, and country weekends dominated day-to-day life and discourse. Books were held in less respect than were the spoils of the hunt, and mundane gossip concerning family and friends appears to have been the only other topic for general conversation. Raised in a home permeated by the mutual love of her parents, how bemused the innocent bride must have been to witness the Duke of Beaufort weeping openly before his family because his mistress, ‘his little Nellie had left him’.15 Despite her unpreparedness for the perplexities of her new life, Isabel recognized that the realities she experienced at Badminton were more representative of the real world than was the rarefied atmosphere of Eastnor, and she gradually adapted to the situation. After the closely supervised existence she had endured until marriage, Isabel welcomed the freedom provided at Badminton where the Duchess demanded only that her daughter-in-law conduct herself with the manners and dignity becoming her status as a lady. Isabel revelled in the liberty to attend church unaccompanied and to have her own horses to drive her there and on other excursions. She found the new experience of social camaraderie with her brothers-in-law to be entertaining, and their tolerance of mind instructive. Intoxicated by the novelty, she initially found the mores and etiquette at Badminton amusing.16 However, as time progressed and aristocratic unconventionality tragically altered her life forever, a disenchanted Isabel observed that ‘vice among the upper classes of the English nobility is something appalling. It almost seems . . . as if they had lost all their moral sense, so that the grossest wickedness looks venial to them’.17 Initially, the excitement of her new experiences perhaps helped Isabel to come to terms with the disappointment of a loveless marriage, to which she responded like many kindred upper-class brides in strategic marriages: accept reality, feign contentedness, and present a cheerful countenance to the

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world. She emulated the demeanour of her mother-in-law, the Duchess, who, when faced with her husband’s public infidelity, behaved as though the situation did not exist. Thus, Isabel adopted the ‘Victorian grace of blindness’18 and for several years remained silent about her marital situation.19 Isabel and the Duke and Duchess developed a deep mutual attachment. She established herself as a model daughter-in-law, assiduously maintaining her role as a dutiful wife, developing an affectionate relationship with her sister-in-law, Blanche Somerset, and writing to the Duchess frequently, when the couple were away from Badminton, to keep her informed of the activities of her son, upon whom she doted. The Duchess’s fondness for Isabel was deepened by her devoted daughter-in-law’s nursing of Lord Henry when he fell ill with one of his frequent fevers while the couple were visiting Italy in the autumn of 1872. ‘You are the dearest and the best of children dearest little Quaily—writing to me so frequently and kindly in the midst of your fatigue. You will know how grateful I am—how anxious about my darling Penna’, wrote the Duchess to Isabel.20 To Isabel’s dismay, in September 1872 just prior to their departure for Italy, Lord Henry had ceased connubial relations, although the couple continued to share a bed, perhaps in order to preserve a veneer of normality. Lord Henry now became dissatisfied with their accommodation and wished to take larger premises. As his income was insufficient to fund such a project, and his parents unwilling to do so, he approached the Somers for an increase in his annuity. He was apparently unsuccessful, for the couple remained at Park Street upon their return from the Continent. His request may have been the source of the Somers’ subsequent disaffection with their son-in-law. By February 1873, they were estranged from the couple, although Isabel herself had ‘given no cause for offence’. The Duke of Beaufort attempted to console her by assuring her ‘that riches do not bring happiness. So long as you have enough to live upon you will be quite happy. As long as the Duchess and I live you may be quite sure of our tenderest love and affection. . . . You will always find a home with us when you like to come to us’.21 Lord Henry was extremely anxious to reinstate himself with the Somers, and in the spring of 1873 he expressed an urgent desire to have a child, in the belief that this might restore him in their favour.

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Accordingly, the couple resumed marital relations, and in September Isabel became pregnant. Her pregnancy evidently had the desired effect upon the Somers, for in the spring of 1874 Isabel and Lord Henry moved to Upper Grosvenor Street, the prospective grandparents perhaps now providing the necessary funding for the rental of more spacious quarters to accommodate their expected grandchild. Immediately Isabel became pregnant, Lord Henry again ended marital cohabitation and, except for three occasions, never resumed it during the remainder of their married life. Following their move from Park Street, he began to go his own way. Although not wilfully cruel to Isabel, he became totally indifferent towards her, refusing even to accompany her for walks on the eve of her confinement, when she was quite ill. On 18 May 1874, Isabel gave birth to a son, Henry Charles Somers Augustus, gratifying the greatest wish of her life—to become a mother. When her husband continued to shun intimacy, Isabel repeatedly reproached him for denying her the fulfilment of her dream to have many children. To this he replied, ‘It is a dream that will never be realized. I want no more than the one I have got & you are lucky to have one . . . you will never have another. I will hear no more about it, but if ever I found that you speak or confide to any one I should hate & loathe you & make your life miserable’.22 In that same year, Lord Henry was appointed Comptroller of the Queen’s Household. Already a Privy Councillor, he and his wife were now drawn even closer into court circles and the whirl of Society life. Isabel, who enjoyed dressing up and socializing, and who was experiencing the joy of motherhood, could now perhaps derive some pleasure from their new circumstances. However, the couple’s finances apparently remained a continuing problem. In August, Lord Henry’s sister, Blanche, now Lady Waterford, funded a seaside holiday for Isabel and her son, who had been unwell.23 With both husband and wife maintaining the charade of conjugal happiness, the marriage continued to exhibit an appearance of normality. The daily strain of preserving this masquerade possibly contributed to Isabel becoming ill in the spring of 1875. Initially, Lord Henry refused to allow her to consult a physician, fearing that his private affairs would come under scrutiny during the examination; he relented only after Isabel promised not to reveal that they were living apart. The ensuing consultation proved unsatisfactory, to Isabel’s physician who was perplexed at her failure to directly

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answer his questions, and to Isabel who found the situation intolerable. By the summer of 1875, Lord Henry was no longer taking the trouble to conceal his indifference towards Isabel. While the couple were staying at the Beauforts’ London home in June, his disparaging treatment of her prompted his mother to rebuke him in Isabel’s presence. In a spontaneous outburst the Duchess declared, ‘It makes your Father frantic to hear the way you speak to Isabel— she cannot open her lips without your snubbing her’, which provoked a heated argument between the Duchess and a furious Lord Henry. Although his mother eventually apologized for chiding him in front of his wife, she reiterated that her observations were the truth.24 Later, the Duke applauded Isabel when she had the temerity to challenge her husband’s treatment, commenting ‘how right of you to pull yourself together . . . and yell at Penna, when you found yourself hard done to’.25 In January 1876, Isabel and Lord Henry moved to a new London home, 48 Charles Street, bought and furnished for them by the Somers. This acquisition had been completed without the knowledge of Lord Henry, who vehemently denounced his wife for her failure to consult him. However, to the Somers he expressed only gratitude, telling the Countess, ‘My Darling Madre, . . . I do hate taking your poor dear money so much. . . . Poor darling, we eat you out of house and home. But you know I am grateful’.26 Shortly after their move, Lord Henry ‘began a system of total neglect never in any way making his day coincide so as to meet’ with Isabel, ‘it being his habit to have his breakfast alone in his bed—late—and going out for the day immediately afterwards’, with the result that she saw him for only fifteen minutes in each day. He rejected her attempts to establish a closer relationship, observing, ‘Many people would be thankful for the liberty you have. . . . I never should interfere in anything you did’. Referring to a divorce case currently involving his family, he warned her that no misconduct on her part would induce him to take similar action against her, though he would lead her a miserable life were she guilty of any impropriety.27 By the summer of 1876, Isabel found herself the victim of her husband’s increasingly unmanageable temper and violent language. Nevertheless, she continued to maintain silence on the situation until questioned by Lady Somers in October. Isabel then revealed the true state of her marriage. She related her husband’s constant disregard for her, such as his commandeering of their

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brougham, thereby leaving Isabel to utilize cabs for transportation. Under her mother’s scrutiny, Isabel unburdened her heart, telling of her husband’s unkindness and neglect and his refusal to cohabit for several years, concluding, ‘I am nothing but his Housekeeper’. Yet, she beseeched her mother not to allow these revelations to ‘make the very slightest difference in her relations towards him’.28 Following her mother’s advice, Isabel also confided in the Duchess, who was appalled and grieved by the disclosures, declaring her son ‘had no business to marry’. Lord Henry no longer troubled to conceal his neglect of his wife and his indifference towards her from his own family. In the winter of 1876, the couple and their son, now nicknamed ‘Somey’, spent two months at Badminton, and Lord Henry’s treatment of Isabel was plain for all to see, which aroused the indignation of his brothers.29 Meanwhile, unaware that his mother-in-law was cognizant of the true facts, Lord Henry continued to sustain the fiction of conjugal happiness, writing to Lady Somers that he and Isabel were ‘really very jolly’. Evidently, Lady Somers’ relationship with Lord Henry remained unaffected by his treatment of her daughter, as Isabel had requested, because no hint of criticism of him seems to have entered her correspondence with him.30 In February 1877, Isabel, Somey, and Lord Henry returned to London, he to take his seat at the new session of Parliament and to attend upon Queen Victoria at the opening ceremonies. The following month, Isabel received a visit from her cousin, Walter Dalrymple, with whom she had enjoyed a friendship since childhood. His call would initiate a chain of events, culminating in the final collapse of Isabel’s marriage. From March on, her husband and Walter Dalrymple were inseparable, the latter dining with the couple and accompanying Lord Henry to the House of Commons in the evenings, until ‘by degrees he was constantly in the house, going up to sit with Henry before he was up in the morning’. As Isabel was accustomed to her husband’s separate lifestyle, she did not immediately find the situation personally disruptive, particularly as she was currently enjoying the almost daily companionship of her sister, Adeline (Marchioness of Tavistock since her marriage in October 1876). Isabel also began to take lessons in china painting, an accomplishment which, later in life, she developed into a successful, small pottery industry to support her charitable endeavours.31 Lord Henry’s close association with Walter Dalrymple continued throughout the spring and early summer. Publicly, Isabel and her

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husband maintained the pretence of marital normality, together entertaining guests, including Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria, and Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, and attending dinner parties, balls, gallery openings, and the theatre. Throughout this period, as was his practice whenever the Somers were absent from England, Lord Henry assiduously corresponded with his mother-in-law, always addressing her as ‘My darling Madre’ and invariably ending with ‘ever your loving Penna’. Writing almost daily to her in France, he appraised her of political developments, Society gossip, and, occasionally, Somey’s doings, and portrayed family life at Charles Street as contented and flourishing.32 In July, Isabel took Somey and Blanche Waterford’s baby daughter for a seaside holiday at Eastbourne. Shortly afterwards, Lord Henry wrote to inform her that Walter Dalrymple had given up his lodgings and was now living at Charles Street, a move which Isabel did not oppose. A few days later, Lord Henry, accompanied by Walter, arrived in Eastbourne for the weekend. The two men were constantly in each other’s company, save for mealtimes, spending their evenings out of the house and returning only after Isabel had retired for the night and all the lights had been extinguished. Isabel, finding it impossible to communicate with her husband in private, waited up one evening until the pair came home; she went up to Lord Henry’s room, only to find him in his night attire and Walter in attendance, prompting her to lament to her maid, ‘What a bore that man is, one cannot have a word with his Lordship night or day’. Lord Henry and Dalrymple returned to Eastbourne for another stay before Isabel returned to London in August. On both visits, Lord Henry’s abusive attitude towards, and unkind treatment of, Isabel often reduced her to tears in Dalrymple’s presence. Isabel was also greatly disturbed and shocked by her husband’s sudden antagonism towards her religion, he dismissing ‘the fundamental Doctrines of Christianity’ as ‘a remnant of Barbarianism’. Fortunately for Isabel, on Lord Henry’s third weekend in Eastbourne, Lord Hamilton came to stay, so Dalrymple was obliged to remain in London. Lord Henry never returned during the remainder of Isabel’s holiday.33 Isabel returned to London to find Dalrymple firmly ensconced at Charles Street. When she arrived, he and her husband were breakfasting together in Lord Henry’s bedroom, he still in bed and Dalrymple, in his dressing gown, sitting beside him. Two days later,

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Isabel and Somey left for the Beauforts’ residence, Troy, in Monmouthshire, followed shortly afterwards by Lord Henry with Dalrymple in tow. The pair were now inseparable, going everywhere together and even wearing identical clothing. Their behaviour generated a great deal of discussion amongst the family and guests at Troy, and Lord Henry’s brothers and several of their male friends developed an intense aversion to Dalrymple. Upon observing them returning to the house, Dalrymple’s arms encircling Lord Henry’s waist, the Duchess remarked to Isabel, ‘What a disgusting Boy that is. . . . It is an extraordinary infatuation of Penna’s’.34 During his visit Dalrymple fell ill and was diagnosed as suffering from an excessive alcohol intake, which, the physician warned, would develop into gastric fever if he continued to so over-indulge. Isabel relayed this information to Dalrymple. For her pains, she succeeded in offending him, incurring the wrath of her husband, who denounced her interference. When the Duchess supported her daughter-in-law’s actions, Lord Henry raged at Isabel and ignored her for several days, refusing to converse with her and directing all his questions regarding Somey to other members of the family. Observing her son’s behaviour, the Duchess told Isabel, ‘It is time for you to put a stop to this, it has gone on much too long, his conduct is atrocious, nothing but a great fight will do him any good . . . you ought to tell him you will stand it no longer and that you will separate, you need not do it, but you ought to threaten it and not be meek any longer’.35 Upon the advice of the Duchess, Isabel reluctantly wrote her husband a letter in which she told him she could not bear her unhappiness much longer and would ‘assuredly eventually separate unless your conduct materially alters towards me. You do not treat me in any way as a Husband should treat his wife’.36 At one o’clock the next morning, in a violent rage Lord Henry stormed into his wife’s dressing room, denouncing her for her audacity in threatening separation and warning the terrified Isabel that he would ‘think it no murder to kill’ her if she attempted to take away Somey from him. He cursed her ‘beastly humbugging religion’, in which he would never permit his son to be raised, and concluded by stating, ‘Do not flatter yourself that I care whether you are alive or dead, I have got my Boy which is all that I want’.37 Following a harrowing, virtually sleepless night, Isabel arose the next morning to discover that Dalrymple, citing business in town,

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had departed by the first train. The Duchess reported that Lord Henry was repentant and unhappy and wished to ask Isabel’s forgiveness. Isabel happily kissed her husband and tore up her ultimatum letter. Lord Henry laughed and assured her everything was fine, murmuring, ‘I hope there may be no more nonsense’, but in private he immediately resumed his former manner towards Isabel.38 Isabel endured his treatment in silence, and Lord Henry regaled her parents with accounts of life at Troy, where guests were so ‘charming and agreeable, night after night, . . . that their fun never palls for an instant’.39 Early in September 1877, Lord and Lady Somers returned to England from France, and Isabel, Lord Henry, and Somey visited them at Eastnor. Isabel now broke her silence and recounted to her mother her husband’s conduct at Troy and his continuing disregard of her. This account was also verified by the Duchess, who expressed her deep regret at her son’s unwarranted behaviour towards her daughter-in-law. Perhaps upon her mother’s advice, Isabel wrote to Walter Dalrymple, accusing him of fomenting discord between herself and her husband. Alarmed that she might openly air her grievances to others, thereby damaging his reputation, Dalrymple insisted that he would have declined the invitation had he been aware of her feelings towards him; he fervently denied having knowingly fostered dissension in the couple’s relationship. He assured Isabel that he would have departed Troy earlier had he been aware his presence was causing conflict between husband and wife. He assured her that he had not divulged any details of the couple’s marital situation that he had observed while living at Charles Street.40 Lord Somers then became seriously ill, and Isabel remained behind at Eastnor for three weeks, while Lord Henry returned to London, at the end of September. During this period, Isabel received correspondence from her servants, informing her that Dalrymple and two other men, a Mr H. Smith and a Mr Orred, were continually at Charles Street, arriving at all hours and dining with Lord Henry. When Isabel returned to London in mid-October, her husband declared that he had never experienced three happier weeks nor enjoyed life to such a degree as in her absence. Lord Somers had earlier requested Isabel to ask Lord Henry to return to Eastnor Castle in late November to organize a shooting party on his behalf, as he had to go abroad because of ill health. When she

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dutifully relayed this request, Lord Henry at once accused her of intriguing to alienate her parents from him, knowing that he intended to remain in London and that his refusal would precipitate a quarrel between himself and Lord Somers. Dumbfounded, Isabel protested her innocence of such conspiracy, while observing that to decline would be an act of ingratitude given the Somers’ generosity towards their son-in-law. Isabel’s stand unleashed Lord Henry’s fury upon her. Proclaiming himself to be tired of Eastnor and the entire situation, he went on to declare that he would be in bondage no longer, concluding, ‘I have made my life and found happiness and consolations elsewhere . . . I am exceedingly sorry you have come back. I wish you would stay away altogether’.41 Following Lord Henry’s onslaught, Isabel went immediately to her parents’ London residence in Chesterfield Gardens and repeated, verbatim, her husband’s diatribe; she then recounted it to the Duchess by letter. The following afternoon while Isabel was visiting her mother, Lord Henry called on Lady Somers and met with a cool reception. Having refused his welcoming kiss, upon his departure and only in response to Isabel’s whispered request she merely shook his hand. This was to be the last occasion on which Lord Henry would enter the Somers’ home. The Duchess, frequently a witness to her son’s conduct towards his wife, was grieved but not surprised to hear of his latest tirade. Nor were she and the Duke critical of Isabel’s disclosure to her parents of Lord Henry’s treatment of her, acknowledging that ‘there is a limit, and we do not wonder at you complaining to them nor of their feeling the resentment every parent would feel’. They found it impossible to defend their son’s actions, or comprehend his conduct, unless it were prompted by insanity. She assured Isabel, they loved her as they would a natural child and emphasised that, ‘whatever altered circumstances Penna’s conduct may bring about’, there would always be a home for her, at Badminton. ‘We are bitterly grieved and ashamed that anyone belonging to us should treat you as Penna has’, she wrote.42 The Duchess’s avowal of affection and support gave Isabel the courage to challenge her husband’s derogatory assaults. Following Lady Somers’ snub, Lord Henry angrily accused Isabel of once again deliberately promoting estrangement between himself and the Somers, and she rejoined, ‘If you mean that they know you do not treat me as you ought, your mother and father know the same,

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and have the same feelings about it’.43 When he disdainfully asserted that his parents did not consider his behaviour improper, Isabel cited the Duchess’s words as proof that the Beauforts’ sentiments were otherwise. However, he alleged that she had been duped by the Duchess, claiming his mother had told him quite the reverse, and he insisted that he had never expressed regret for his conduct at Troy. Consequently, Isabel produced the Duchess’s letter as evidence, and an infuriated Lord Henry angrily retorted, ‘I will never stand for this sort of thing you have been my ruin body and soul’. Then, placing his hand beside a small table knife, he declared, ‘When it is all up there always remains el cuchillo’.44 Shortly afterwards, en route to the theatre he calmly remarked to a terrified Isabel, ‘I think you know I hate you doubly now and shall wait patiently perhaps for years till I can be revenged—it shall be the object of my life only remember when my time comes I will do you the most bitter injury I can’.45 Isabel reported this latest episode to her mother, omitting her husband’s comments regarding el cuchillo. Lady Somers at once summoned the Duke of Beaufort, and he met with her and Isabel that afternoon.46 Isabel related to her father-in-law Henry’s treatment of her throughout their marriage, particularly his behaviour in the weeks since her return to London from Eastnor. The Duke denounced his son as no gentleman, saying that Isabel deserved the reverse of Lord Henry’s treatment, he and his wife found their son’s conduct unjustifiable, and they had previously told him so. He reassured Isabel that he ‘looked upon her as his own child’ and that she had captured his and the Duchess’s hearts.47 Isabel now informed the Duchess that she had divulged the contents of her mother-in-law’s correspondence to her husband, and recounted what had occurred, including Lord Henry’s promise of vengeance, but not the threat involving the knife. Given the Beauforts’ support and kindness to her, Isabel deplored the necessity of imparting particulars which would grieve them, but felt it necessary as she had no resources on which to depend save their affection and her parents’ love. Despite Lord Henry’s violent harangue and his intimation of possible physical abuse, Isabel declared her determination to salvage her marriage: ‘I hope and think I have shown patience, I will have more patience. I have given up going abroad with Pappa and Mamma and they have given up the pleasure of having me with them because I feel and

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they do too, that I must stay in my home and go on trying as long as possible.’ Being as unaware of the el cuchillo incident as were the Somers, the Duchess likewise, though not as explicitly, supported Isabel’s decision to remain with Lord Henry, her two-line response merely expressing her sorrow and her thanks for Isabel’s ‘poor patient letter’, and ending with ‘God bless you, my poor dear’.48 Outraged by the Duchess’s criticism of him, Lord Henry reproached his mother for siding ‘with those who are only now bringing to its logical conclusion that which they have long desired to bring about, namely my ruin which has hitherto been frustrated by a long course of patience and humiliating subservience’, on his part. After six years of playing a ‘difficult and disagreeable’ charade, he was resolved to no longer ‘put up with this intolerable yoke nor submit to any more of these brutal insults and unbearable tyranny’ from them. Playing the emotional card, he thanked God that he would never treat his son with ‘the cruelty and absolute want of loyalty which you are showing to me in this miserable affair’. As one who apparently made his family ashamed, he intended to seek work, if only a ‘humble clerkship’, which would occupy him so fully that he would forget a time when he had their affection as small as his mother now revealed it to have been.49 By depicting the Somers and Isabel as the guilty parties in his dysfunctional marriage, Lord Henry intended undoubtedly to reinstate himself with his parents at Isabel’s expense. To some degree, he evidently succeeded, for, thereafter, Isabel noted that the Duchess’s perception of her daughter-in-law’s role in the couple’s marital discord was less sympathetic—the result, Isabel believed, of Lord Henry’s influence.50

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3 DENOUEMENT

Prior to the Somers’ departure for the Continent in early winter 1878, Lord Henry unsuccessfully attempted to restore cordial relations with them. Although not entirely closing the door to future reconciliation, Lady Somers declined to meet with him; both she and Lord Somers considered that their son-in-law’s behaviour towards their daughter rendered ‘all communication between them impossible’ until such time as he treated Isabel with the respect she deserved. ‘A total and permanent change of feeling and behaviour with regard to her are the only means of restoring to any extent our former friendship’, they asserted.1 The Somers were evidently still hoping Lord Henry would change his conduct and preserve the marriage, sentiments shared by the Beauforts and Isabel herself. The alternatives to reconciliation, separation or divorce, with all the attendant publicity, would produce a scandal affecting both families. For Isabel, the repercussions would be particularly traumatic. The onus for the break-up would fall upon her for, in Victorian Britain, wives were expected to remain at their husband’s side, except in circumstances of physical cruelty, or risk ostracism for deserting him. Of paramount concern was the likelihood that, in the event of a marriage breakdown, under current law the father’s rights of custody would take precedence over the mother’s.2 Given this scenario, no doubt Lord Henry assumed Isabel would continue to remain in their farcical union regardless of the treatment she received at his hands. Despite his protestations to the contrary, he likely welcomed the status quo, which enabled him to enjoy a covert, independent lifestyle behind a mask of marital respectability. Isabel’s patience and fortitude continued to be put to the test by Lord Henry’s behaviour. Dalrymple, Smith, and Orred, and some-

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times a Mr Wedderburn, were at Charles Street daily, coming and going at all hours, individually or as a group. One evening Lord Henry requested that Isabel stay upstairs so he might entertain his friends in the drawing room; he ordered the menservants to bed and the stair lights extinguished. Thereafter he repeated this routine nightly, greatly disquieting Isabel. Eventually, he began dining out every evening, leading her to take dinner with her parents at Chesterfield Gardens. Her disquiet increased when Lady Somers revealed information impugning the characters of Dalrymple and Orred. Not surprisingly, given Isabel’s ignorance of homosexuality, it was only ‘after great difficulty’ that she was made to comprehend ‘they were not persons to be admitted into any respectable society’; however, she did not fully understand the implication of this with regard to her husband. Consequently, she was perplexed by discovery of a jeweller’s bill for diamond and pearl studs, cufflinks, a pearl pin, and a gold box, none of which were in Lord Henry’s possession. Not comprehending the true nature of her husband’s aversion to her and their union, Isabel speculated that his conduct towards her sprang from a woman’s influence.3 In late November 1877, Isabel fell ill and was bedridden for several days. Lady Somers was obliged to bring in a physician because Lord Henry ignored his wife’s condition, addressing her only to arrange a dinner menu for Orred and himself. His brusque manner prompted the cook to remark, ‘My Lord is really a regular brute to my Lady. I shall never forget the way he spoke’.4 Despite her husband’s continuing disregard for her, Isabel attempted to sustain her marriage. For his birthday on 7 December, she purchased a gold and pearl pin and instructed Somey to deliver it to his father with love from them both. Lord Henry returned it to her, in person, declaring, ‘Don’t imagine I am going to take presents from you who have set your father and mother against me and have tried to do the same with my Father and Mother, though you have totally failed’.5 Prior to the Somers’ departure for the Continent in early December, Isabel showed her mother Lord Henry’s puzzling jewellery bill, and Lady Somers convinced her to examine as many of her husband’s papers as possible with a view to understanding his behaviour.6 The Somersets spent Christmas 1877 at Badminton, an event Isabel approached with trepidation, this being their first visit since the acrimonious one of October. She was relieved to be received with warmth by the family; in contrast, Lord Henry was treated

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with coldness by his brothers and with alternating coolness and affection by his mother, thereby igniting his antagonism towards Isabel. In public he treated her courteously, but he reverted to his normal offensive attitude when they were alone. The Beauforts had been on bad terms with their son for several weeks as a result of an insolent letter he had written to his mother and of the Duke’s criticism of his son’s behaviour towards Isabel.7 In an effort to redeem himself with his mother, Lord Henry feigned illness to arouse her sympathy. Isabel exposed the ruse by revealing her husband’s good health and active social life with questionable male companions. To the Duchess’s queries regarding their background, Isabel replied, ‘Men who are in no society’, expressing her apprehension about her husband’s close association with them and repeating the rumours reported by Lady Somers. When the Duchess asked, about Dalrymple, ‘Do you mean he is a bad man in a horrible way?’, Isabel replied in the affirmative, and her mother-in-law declared she had ‘always thought it likely of him’. Having gone this far, Isabel now divulged ‘everything about P.[enna] from beginning to end’, but concluded that the Duchess did not truly comprehend the connotations of Lord Henry’s intimacy with his cohorts.8 As she had sacrificed accompanying her parents abroad, in order to conserve her marriage, Isabel was despondent and heartsick in their absence. Writing to her mother almost daily, she chronicled her husband’s conduct. Lady Somers, who was increasingly concerned for her daughter’s welfare, instructed her maid, Durrant, to send from Badminton written reports on her daughter’s welfare and Lord Henry’s behaviour.9 She convinced Isabel to examine as many of her husband’s papers as possible in order to obtain concrete evidence of his impropriety.10 At the first opportunity provided by Lord Henry’s absence, Isabel, accompanied by Durrant, entered his room and perused his correspondence, which contained instructions that following his death, ‘these papers are to be burnt unread’.11 Amongst these missives were two letters from Orred and one each from Dalrymple and Harry Smith. One of Orred’s, beginning ‘My beloved H.’, advised Lord Henry how to conduct his relations with Isabel at Badminton, counselling, ‘Be more than amiable to Lady H. in public—be full of civility to her in every way. She will not change her manner to you. This will put her in the wrong which is our great

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object . . . you need see nothing of her in private’. Orred wrote that he was ‘counting the hours’ until he could meet with Lord Henry alone, and promised, although ‘I hardly know Wedderburn yet to put to him La Questione . . . will do as you advise me to do and see more of him first’.12 This letter also revealed that the gold box Isabel had seen itemized on the jeweller’s bill had been given to Orred by Lord Henry. She concluded that the correspondence was that ‘of a man who knows life and who has got H[enry] in his power body and soul’.13 Smith’s letter, folded around a photograph of himself, spoke of the writer’s constant desire to be with Lord Henry and concluded with ‘A long kiss from your own Harry’. Another missive expressed unease at the criticism circulating about Lord Henry’s conduct by a woman who, Dalrymple suspected, ‘knew too much’.14 The correspondence contained a compilation of the days on which Lord Henry and his friends would meet in London, and a letter from the Duke of Beaufort warning his son, ‘Pull yourself together before it is too late. You are going straight to your ruin. . . . Isabel’s conduct is irreproachable you will never get the child in any court of law. A man may get tired of his wife but your conduct and language is not that of a gentleman’. Isabel found nothing in the letters to support her earlier theory of a woman’s involvement in her marriage problems, other than a small drawing of a profile in one of her husband’s pocket books, which could be discerned as either a young male or a young female.15 Upon reading Smith’s letter, Isabel suddenly realized its implications, exclaiming, ‘Oh God there is no woman in this, this is too fearful to bear’, prompting Durrant to respond, ‘Oh My Lady, if you had not been so young you would have seen what all this was long ago’.16 Isabel copied sections of the various letters before returning them to Lord Henry’s desk and sent Lady Somers the details. Isabel was now fully aware of the significance of her husband’s correspondence but hoped that her conviction of his homosexuality might ‘be some horrible delusion’. She had little doubt that ‘if that story is really true about W[alter Dalrymple] and O[rred] it is true about P.[enna] also . . . there is something unmistakable in all the letters that there exists something between them’. In placing on paper ‘what P.[enna] is’, Isabel felt she had ‘committed a crime’ but found it necessary to ‘say what is in my heart—good or bad as I see it’.17

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To safeguard Isabel’s correspondence from interception by Lord Henry, Lady Somers henceforth addressed her daughter’s letters to Durrant, who collected them immediately upon the arrival of the mail bag; she also posted Isabel’s letters to her mother. After reading her mother’s letters, Isabel cast them ‘straight into the fire’.18 Lady Somers was concerned to protect the confidentiality of their correspondence, fearing that any leaks would incite retaliatory action by Lord Henry and his friends—possibly the circulation of slanderous letters against her daughter. Isabel thought her best protection was a pre-emptive strike against them. ‘The great thing is to find out and expose the others before P[enna]’s name is hopelessly associated with them—as anyhow they are known everywhere as his intimate friends—and if it were clearly known what they were one could always say “Now am I to know what you are as these are your dearest friends”, if we could only find it out soon.’ Time was of the essence, for Isabel had been informed that Charles Street was being watched and had also observed that one of her husband’s associates appeared to have ‘heard something as he avoids P. and does not care to be with him’.19 Despite her apprehension and Lord Henry’s continuing disregard for her, Isabel endeavoured to conduct a normal daily life at Badminton. She occupied her days by spending time with Somey, visiting friends, walking with her brother-in-law, the Marquis of Worcester, and occasionally playing cribbage with the Duke. She and her son attended a local hunt where Somey was presented with the dead fox’s brush, ‘to his great delight’. She at first declined a ball invitation, being unwilling to travel the twelve miles to the house in a carriage solely with her hostile husband, but relented when the Duchess arranged for another guest to accompany the couple. The evening proved an enjoyable interlude for Isabel. Dressed in a new white gown trimmed with pearls brought earlier from Paris by her mother, she danced all evening with a host of male acquaintances, including a royal prince.20 Two days after Christmas, Lord Henry left to spend a week at Charles Street and was frequently away from Badminton until he ended his holidays in mid-January, much to Isabel’s relief; his absences largely corresponded with the appointments she had seen listed in his correspondence. On these occasions, Wedderburn, Dalrymple, Orred, and Smith were constantly at Charles Street with Lord Henry. Being informed by Wedderburn that the Somers’

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London residence was being prepared for their and Isabel’s imminent arrival, an alarmed Lord Henry demanded that Isabel explain her parents’ unexpected return to England; he rejected her assurances that the Somers were in Cannes, and she neglected to tell him that Charles Street was being made ready for her sister, Adeline, and her husband.21 Lord Henry continued his harassment of Isabel upon his return to Badminton, contriving to provoke her into divulging the ‘truth’ of the situation. He avoided her as much as possible or verbally abused her before his family. He instructed Isabel to cancel their small carriage used in London and announced his intention to reduce expenditure in other areas, including closing up some of their drawing rooms. Refusing to be provoked, Isabel warned him against implementing economies which affected her, reminding him that their residence was her father’s house, and eliciting his rage. Despite her son’s obnoxious behaviour, the Duchess treated him affectionately, showing no disapproval of his conduct, in order to keep things ‘outwardly smooth’.22 The gravity of Isabel’s situation, and the need for urgency in resolving it, was clearly evident to her parents. Lord Somers now contacted a confidant, Dr Chepnell, apprised him of the situation, instructed him to take legal advice on how best to proceed, and proposed initiating surveillance of Lord Henry. The counsel contacted by Chepnell, Mr H. Hussey, suggested that the Beauforts’ butler be ‘judiciously’ recruited to obtain evidence for future legal proceedings, and offered to covertly supply names of agents willing to gather similar information. As Lord Henry’s correspondence was critical to support such a challenge, Hussey urged that Isabel now cautiously procure her husband’s original letters, a step she should have taken earlier, and then, with Somey, immediately join the Somers abroad ‘where she would have been safe in every sense’. Hussey countenanced that all enquiries be conducted prudently to avoid detection by those under observation and that any charge resulting from evidence gained would involve court proceedings and incur publicity. His venue of choice was the privatehearing divorce court, where he believed the evidence would provide for an absolute divorce, with Isabel gaining full custody of her son.23 Lord Somers advised Isabel of the seriousness of the situation and its possible repercussions. Given the nature of Lord Henry’s involvement with his male friends, exposure was inevitable and would produce two possible outcomes. One would be public dis-

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grace, dictating Lord Henry’s dismissal from the Court, forced withdrawal from his clubs, and social ostracism, a disgrace Isabel would share if she stayed with him. They would be required to settle abroad, and once Somey attained seven years of age, Lord Henry would have sole authority over his son. Alternatively, if his activities could be legally proved and criminal charges laid, a separation could be secured, which would be a necessity if Isabel were to avoid sharing his ignominy and were to protect Somey’s and the family’s honour; she would undoubtedly receive sole custody of her son. Securing Lord Henry’s original letters would provide her with an ‘incredible advantage’ in obtaining the best possible outcome.24 Regaining possession of Lord Henry’s incriminating correspondence proved impossible for Isabel while at Badminton. She was able to intercept and read, undetected, one letter from Orred, but it revealed only that gossip was circulating in Society about Lord Henry’s unappreciative conduct towards the Somers, which was dividing the loyalties of the respective families and mutual friends.25 Isabel herself was discovering that the Beauforts’ attitude towards the situation was changing. The Duchess became increasingly affectionate towards her son and receptive to his complaints about Isabel’s disrespect for him; simultaneously she was responding angrily to Isabel’s allegations against Lord Henry and his friends.26 She refused to discuss the situation and took to treating Isabel ‘like a child about it who by being amused, made much of, and kept as she thinks from thinking of it, is made to forget its hurt’.27 The only Somerset family member providing her with any support was her brother-in-law, Arthur, who urged her to obtain evidence against Lord Henry’s friends ‘or tell me where to find anything about them. I feel that all this will end with our names being dragged through the Dirt’.28 The Somers were apprehensive about Isabel’s anticipated return to Charles Street, after receiving new intelligence about the dubious activities of Lord Henry’s cohorts, which appeared to validate his culpability. They warned Isabel of the potential danger posed by these men, urged her to remain at Badminton or come to them at San Remo, and proposed that separation from Lord Henry might be her best option. Reluctant to accept that her marriage was beyond redemption, Isabel rejected the Somers’ new evidence as insufficient proof of the men’s guilt and of Henry’s culpability, and clung to the hope that she and her parents ‘could prove what the

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others are before some-one perhaps does it and He is irretrievably mixed up in it’, which would mean his ruin. She dismissed the suggestion that her husband’s companions were a threat, because their fear of exposure would prevent them from provoking a marital collapse; she felt that a refusal to return to Charles Street would arouse the men’s suspicions and she would never obtain valid evidence against them. Also, she could not join the Somers in San Remo as that would require leaving Somey behind: ‘I cannot leave him out of my sight and feel he is quite safe with me’. Neither could Isabel remain at Badminton indefinitely, because the Duke and Duchess would not support such a decision without a convincing reason, and until Lord Henry’s guilt was proven, she had no satisfactory explanation. She had two choices: truce with her husband or legal separation. The latter would be premature without proof of Lord Henry’s homosexual activities, but should this occur, ‘there is nothing to do but separate but it is the finishing of one’s life—the end of any hope—dreadful as one’s life is now, it would be more hopeless then’.29 Following Lord Henry’s return to London in mid-January 1878, Isabel planned to stay at Badminton for a few weeks, but late January found her temporarily in London, visiting her parents. They had cut short their stay in Italy and returned to the city, likely to more closely monitor Isabel’s situation. Accompanied by Adeline, Isabel arrived at Charles Street, to find the same circumstances prevailing that had existed prior to her departure for Badminton in late December. They found Wedderburn on the staircase, met Dalrymple exiting her husband’s dressing room, and discovered Lord Henry entertaining Smith in the library. Isabel succeeded in intercepting and reading several letters to her husband from his friends. One from Orred rebuked him for his overt attachment to Henry Smith, as this might provoke gossip ‘and the world and the Somers would be agog. . . . Your devotion to HS is all very nice and Arcadian but you are carrying it to such an extent as to let it interfere with ordinary society’. Such constancy would elicit condemnation, and suspicions would be aroused. Prudence was essential ‘when all this slander against you is going on now’.30 Isabel copied the contents, revealing them to Durrant and the Somers, but did not confiscate the original letter, knowing Lord Henry was aware of its arrival.31 Subsequently, she was able to appropriate and copy further pieces of his correspondence, all evocative of the

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unnatural intimacy between him and his friends and including another note from Orred proposing to introduce Lord Henry to ‘a beautiful youth . . . just going into the F.O. [Foreign Office]’; a love sonnet from Wedderburn; and a letter from Smith beginning ‘Dearest and beloved Penna’. With the potentially incriminating evidence against her husband secured, Isabel returned briefly to Badminton to collect Somey before rejoining her husband in London.32 Any hope she still retained for salvaging her marriage and protecting her husband’s reputation was soon to be dashed as a consequence of Lord Henry’s continued exercising of his sexual proclivities and the subsequent repercussions.

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4 REBELLION

When Isabel and Somey returned to London, for good, on 1 February 1878, she found her husband’s friends constantly at Charles Street, individually or as a group, often arriving after midnight, when Lord Henry would order all the lamps extinguished and the servants to bed. Fearing that the men’s late departures would be observed and give rise to scandal, she chided her husband for using his home as a club, deeming his behaviour inappropriate for his marital situation: ‘You must consider that with a young wife you cannot have men about the House at all hours of the day and night. . . . You must consider my reputation.’ Isabel warned that if he failed to protect her, she would do so herself by informing her father of the situation. Lord Henry scornfully declared that he ‘gave a hang for her reputation’ and had no intention of changing his behaviour.1 His defiance was an indication of his determination not to submit to her demands. He had just been warned by Orred that the Somers had ‘returned to England to arrange a separation’ and intended to offer their son-in-law a settlement of £1,000 annually in order to be rid of him. Orred advised Lord Henry to decline the offer, as this ‘would put you in the wrong with the world’.2 An enraged Lord Henry blamed his mother for his wife’s early return to London and demanded that the Duchess reprove Isabel for her criticism of him; he complained that his wife and the Somers were publicly impugning his character. The Duchess was sympathetic but considered Isabel’s complaints legitimate, given his behaviour; however, she said Isabel’s claim to the Charles Street residence was unjustified and absurd since ‘as a married woman nothing is hers, and though your home is her Father’s, as you pay

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the rest and rates and taxes, it is virtually yours. Even her jewels and her clothes are not her own’. The Duchess dismissed his allegations against the Somers as unproven. Wishing to remain neutral in the controversy between the couple, she informed Isabel of this dialogue with Lord Henry and did not rebuke her; she expressed regret that Isabel had ‘gone to Town to cause, apparently, more trouble and misery in your divided home even than existed before’.3 The Duchess having recently assured her that her wifely conduct was ‘exemplary’, Isabel was obliged to conclude that her mother-in-law’s ‘altered tone . . . upon the subject’ indicated Lord Henry’s influence, that ‘he was trying to undermine the affection and confidence which has existed between us, and which has been a great comfort to me in the utter wreck of every other happiness in my marriage’.4 The Duchess received Isabel’s assurance that she would not sever ties with her parents-in-law, should separation occur, because ‘they could never face that’. Isabel also reminded her that ‘blood is thicker than water’.5 Within hours of Isabel expressing these sentiments, events unfolded that would prove her observation prophetic. On Sunday, 3 February, while Isabel was dining with her parents at London’s Alexandra Hotel, her husband entertained Orred and Wedderburn, taking the former into the night nursery to view Somey by candlelight.6 Somey’s nurse reported this occurrence to Isabel, who ‘could not understand the reason’ for Lord Henry’s actions and became ‘alarmed at what this could mean’.7 Isabel’s alarm intensified when she intercepted Orred’s letter to Lord Henry in which he urged her husband to ‘stick to Lady Henry and if necessary make her move from Charles St’.8 Fearing for her own and her child’s safety, Isabel copied the letter and took it to her parents, who at once contacted their counsels, Messrs Humphreys and Hussey. They advised that Somey be removed from Charles Street, although in common law a father’s jurisdiction over his child preceded the mother’s; they appeared confident that the court would find such action justified. Isabel immediately dispatched a note to the child’s nurse, Mrs Young, instructing her to ‘bring Mr. Somey round here at once in a hansom cab . . . don’t change his clothes but come now’.9 Once the child had been safely delivered into her parents’ care, Isabel returned home. Upon discovering Somey’s absence, Lord Henry notified the Duke and then rushed to the Alexandra Hotel, entered the child’s

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nursery, and elicited from Mrs Young the details of Somey’s removal from Charles Street. Having charged into the Somers’ quarters unannounced, he declared, ‘This is an infamous and atrocious outrage, it is a case of Child stealing. I will send for the Police’.10 His attempts to re-enter the nursery were prevented by the Somers and the landlord, whereupon Lord Henry stormed out of the hotel in a fury. Fearing for her daughter’s safety, Lady Somers sent a servant to bring Isabel to the hotel, where she duly arrived at about 10 p.m. ‘in her dressing gown with her hair down’, indicating her hasty departure from Charles Street.11 After spending the night with her parents, Isabel returned home, taking a Mrs Duckworth to stay with her. When Lord Henry arrived that evening, demanding Somey’s return, Isabel informed him that this would be her decision and cited his actions of 3 February and the comments in Orred’s letter as the reasons for removing her son. Lord Henry reminded her ‘there is such a thing as the law. The Habeas Corpus Act will be out tomorrow and he [Somey] will be back in three days’.12 Informed of the situation, the Duke at once telegraphed Lady Somers, demanding that Somey be returned to Charles Street ‘to avoid the scandal of legal and necessary proceedings’. In response, Isabel accepted full responsibility for her actions and justified her drastic step by detailing her reasons. ‘I do not consider that a man who can have friends who advise him to get rid of his wife from her home is yet to be trusted with his child’, she said, reiterating her determination to keep possession of Somey. She warned the Duke, ‘I may add that there are other matters which H. knows may force me to take painful steps’.13 The Duke and Lord Henry now applied for a writ of Habeas Corpus to gain custody of Somey. Isabel’s solicitors prepared a counter-suit, requesting that she be permitted to keep possession of her son; in ‘self defence’, Isabel drew up an affidavit revealing the intimate details of her married life and her husband’s treatment of her. Under pressure from Mr Hussey, she included all that she had observed and learned of Lord Henry’s activities with his circle of male friends. Fearing that any publicity would result in her husband’s ruin and his family’s disgrace, she extracted a commitment from Hussey that none of what she had divulged would be published.14 In support of Isabel’s case, affidavits were submitted by Lady Somers and several of their servants.15 In a desperate effort to get the writ withdrawn, Isabel met several times with her husband’s brother Arthur, Marquis of Worcester,

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and her friend the Earl of Westmorland, begging them ‘for the sake of the Duke and Duchess and their sons’ to use their influence to persuade Lord Henry and his father to withdraw their suit. Her objective was ‘to save her Child and to screen Henry and his family’. To no avail.16 Lady Somers requested Charles Macnamara, who was her brother-in-law and Walter Dalrymple’s physician, to ask Dalrymple to intercede with Lord Henry, but this produced only the latter’s reconfirmation that he ‘would never give up the child’. Despite this intractability, Isabel remained committed to protecting Lord Henry from Society’s censure, not ‘saying a single word to any human being about her misery’; her parents followed suit, believing it was their duty ‘ to assist her in shielding her Husband if possible’.17 The Beauforts were apparently concerned about possible adverse publicity, for shortly before the 20 February hearing of the case, the Duke’s lawyers obtained a week’s postponement and put out feelers for mediation. Lady Somers received a letter from the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, expressing ‘disquiet over what I have heard of the disturbance in your family’ and offering to ‘assist, if possible, in preventing what may be a great injury to Society, and which must greatly distress my Gracious Mistress’ (Queen Victoria). He pressed Lady Somers to take steps to end the custody battle.18 Immediately afterwards, the Duke proceeded with the writ, obliging Isabel and her father to file their own petition in Chancery Court. Lady Somers informed Beaconsfield of these developments, pointing out, ‘We have deferred everything on our side, and kept our lips sealed, but almost the eleventh hour has arrived; [therefore,] we must meet the exigencies of the position, and the legal proceedings which have been forced upon us’. Beaconsfield suggested Isabel provide a written acknowledgment that ‘there had been a complete misunderstanding and consequent misrepresentation of certain passages in the letters referred to in the Affidavit’, in exchange for custody of Somey, with reasonable access for Lord Henry. Lady Somers agreed to have Isabel’s lawyers consider the proposal but reminded Beaconsfield that legal action had been initiated by the Duke, forcing Isabel to ‘defend herself’ against the charges; only the Duke could withdraw them.19 The lawyers for both parties attempted to keep the legal challenges from going to the courts, at the express wish of Mr Justice Field, who had been appointed to give judgment on the Habeas Corpus in the High Court of Justice. Lord Henry’s counsel, Sir

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Henry James, sought to ensure that ‘a sensational press and a prurient public . . . should not have the gratification of becoming acquainted with the innermost life of Lord and Lady Henry Somerset’. He proposed that Isabel have custody of Somey during his juvenile years and that the child maintain his link to the Beauforts through periodic visits to Badminton; this was essential given that he was the potential heir to the dukedom because the Beauforts’ eldest son, the Marquis of Worcester, currently was unmarried. The couple’s separation and financial settlement should be solved by mutual friends of the families, not by respective counsels. Sir Henry James cited a stumbling block to settlement as the Somers’ apparent determination to lay a charge of personal cruelty against Lord Henry. He suggested Isabel consider Somey’s reaction in the future when, as a grown man, he would ‘have to be told that his mother either truly or falsely imputed conduct to his Father which he will not care to form a judgement upon’. He also warned that Lord Henry would ‘never consent to pay too high a price in order to preserve the private affairs of himself and his wife from public discussion’.20 The proposals were rejected by the Somers, who offered alternate terms, which stipulated the swift execution of a deed of separation between the couple, giving absolute custody of Somey to his mother during his minority; Lord Henry would have to renounce all access to his son, and Isabel would have the right to appoint a guardian or guardians for Somey, should she die before he reached majority. The deed also stipulated that after its execution the Duke’s writ and Isabel’s petition were to be withdrawn, legal proceedings halted, and the couple’s marriage settlement cancelled, per the mutual agreement of all the individuals named in the original contract. The document contained no mention of a charge of personal cruelty against Lord Henry, but his counsel was informed that if the petition to the Chancery Court proceeded, it would contain allegations of this nature; thus, Lord Henry might consider the necessity for keeping such revelations secret. The possibility of a divorce action was also intimated. Sir Henry James adamantly refused to counsel Lord Henry to yield to the threat of revelations, recommending he ‘be subject to the consequences’ of any disclosures, as preferable to being ‘compelled to admit that in order to avoid publicity he is willing to compromise a groundless

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charge of cruelty’. James rejected any resort to divorce proceedings, as being ‘an inadmissible condition’.21 Faced with her husband’s determination to proceed with his writ at all costs, Isabel now consented to modify her demands, agreeing not to press charges of personal cruelty against him in exchange for custody of Somey during his minority, and allowing Lord Henry restricted access to his son; but she would retain the guardianship demand. Isabel’s counsel documented the terms, including a clause revising the marriage settlement to provide Isabel with monies for Somey’s support, and the provision pertaining to cessation of court proceedings.22 Lord Henry rejected the proposed terms, particularly his access conditions, the proposed guardianship, and Isabel’s sole custody of his son until majority. ‘I cannot and will not bring myself to accept terms which it is probable many will consider as an evidence of my being unable to do that which I most desire viz. face a public enquiry.’23 With negotiations at an impasse, Humphreys now advised Isabel to consider proceeding with her petition to the Master of the Rolls,24 and Sir Henry James felt he had no alternative but to pursue a legal settlement.25 Negotiations having failed, the case ‘re Somerset’ was heard in camera at Westminster Hall on 6 May 1878, before Mr Justice Field. Isabel’s counsel argued that Lord Henry had forfeited his paternal rights as a result of ‘having been guilty of a foul crime’, the preconditions for which had been established by him with his initiation of sexual abstinence early in his marriage. His behaviour illustrated the physical and moral danger to which Somey would be exposed under his father’s guardianship. Even if these charges could not be fully proven, Lord Henry’s conduct towards Isabel had resulted in an enforced marital separation, making operable the statute which determined a wife’s rights under such circumstances and provided for maternal custody; the latter was necessary to preserve the child’s health and moral and material interests, given his tender age.26 Pleading Lord Henry’s case, Sir Henry James requested that his client’s right of custody be upheld, given Somey’s current position as potential heir to his grandfather’s dukedom with entitlements to ‘the dignities, the honours, and the estates of that ancient lineage’. James alleged that it was Isabel, not Lord Henry, who had initiated cessation of marital intercourse, inducing him to seek the companionship of male friends. These meetings were totally innocent in

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nature, initiated to share their mutual interest in art and music. Where was ‘there any evidence . . . of overt acts’? The copies of Lord Henry’s letters were unlawfully acquired and utilized. Errors had been made in the transcribing of the letters, rendering them inaccurate, and the charges of improper conduct, drawn from some of them, resulted from faulty interpretations of their contents. These missives revealed nothing which would debar Lord Henry from assuming guardianship of his son. ‘A man may be a bad husband, and may be bad in many respects, before you can deprive him of the custody of his child’, said James and warned that in the future ‘it would be a painful thing [for Somey] that he should know that he has been taken away from his father’s custody under circumstances like these’.27 Mr Justice Field outlined his assessments of the arguments and affidavits presented, before announcing his ruling in the case. On the questions of religious opinion and violent behaviour, he concluded there was insufficient evidence in both instances to deny custody to Lord Henry on these grounds. The alleged immoral conduct cited had not been proven ‘to his complete and entire satisfaction’. Field acknowledged that the friends shared ‘an unusual degree of intimacy’ but noted that their meetings had been conducted openly and their designation as cultural events was plausible. He deemed Isabel’s acquisition of her husband’s letters lawful, executed out of a belief they would protect her interests and those of her child, and accepted most of them as authentically transcribed: ‘I do not see how Lady Henry could have invented this.’ The terminology in some of the correspondence indicated ‘at least a greater warmth of affection, than is to be found generally in other respects among men’, but credited this to modern youth’s tendency to use extravagant rhetoric. He concluded that the evidence supporting alleged immorality was insufficient to sustain a guilty verdict and negate Lord Henry’s paternal rights.28 Despite Isabel’s inability to prove her case, Mr Justice Field agreed to grant her custody, a decision he based upon her rights under law, given enforced marital separation, and in the best interests of her child. He dismissed Lord Henry’s claims that it was Isabel’s and Lady Somers’ conduct towards him which had produced marital strife. There was indisputable evidence illustrating Lord Henry’s disregard for, and neglect of, his wife. Given the circumstances prompting Isabel’s removal of Somey from Charles

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Street, the Justice could not rule ‘her custody is improper’ and decided that the child should remain under his mother’s guardianship until the age of 16 years. In the light of Somey’s position within the Somerset family, Field indicated that he should visit Badminton and Troy ‘freely and easily’ to ensure he would be ‘brought up, not merely a Cocks or a Somers, but as a Plantagenet’; Field trusted that the difficult question of access could be arranged amicably between the families, rather than through an hostile order, but he would rule on the issue if such negotiations failed.29 It has been suggested that the Justice tempered his decision on custody with the granting of paternal access because he ‘trembled on the bench at the thought of the great family’ he presumed to offend,30 a view expressed by several contemporaries.31 On the other side of the coin, among English Society, beginning at the very top, there were animosities towards Isabel and her parents for their actions against Lord Henry. The Prince of Wales was reportedly ‘very indignant about Isabel’s behaviour and said she ought to be cut by everybody! Even if it was true—the idea of a wife being the person to spread the report’ about her husband’s supposed offences.32 Lady Somers was castigated for launching the ‘fearful exposé’ without considering its effect upon her family. ‘Does she know that in polluting the child’s father’s name she blasts the life of her grandson’ and ruins his future, while placing Isabel beneath such ‘a cloud of infamy and shame’ as was beyond contemplation?33 Denied exclusive custody, Isabel and the Somers filed their petition in Chancery Court before the Master of the Rolls in an attempt to have Field’s order amended to reflect their wishes.34 Pending the hearing of the case, Isabel had second thoughts, knowing that rejection of her petition would ensure the issue of access would be decided by Field; she anticipated that he would grant Lord Henry and the Beauforts unsupervised visitation rights, to compensate for his custody decision ‘so reluctantly given’. She feared such access would undermine her influence over Somey’s character and upbringing. At Badminton ‘he would be exposed to self-indulgence of every description’, to a ‘coarseness of language and mind’, and to his grandfather’s frequently intoxicated male friends of ‘low birth and manners’; the Duchess could provide no counterweight, she being a ‘cypher’ who had never trained her own children in any way whatsoever. Isabel was prepared to ‘sacrifice almost anything than to see Somey launched alone in such a society’ and decided

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to compromise, agreeing to limited supervision within the child’s home. If accepted, this concession would also prevent the presentation of her petition in open court with all its attendant publicity. Isabel pressed her uncle, Canon Charles Courtenay, to obtain her father’s consent to the proposal, in the hope they ‘might yet succeed’ in forestalling an order from Field.35 Courtenay reasoned that the Beauforts and Lord Henry would appeal any decision limiting access.36 Lord Somers’ barrister, Mr Chitty, QC, and Lord Selbourne, a legal expert on such matters, concluded that such an appeal would result in the overturning of the Chancery decision in favour of Field’s original order. To reverse this would require challenges through successive courts of appeal up to the House of Lords, with no guarantee of success. Selbourne recommended acceptance of Field’s decision as the best option for Isabel, and Lord Somers reluctantly decided not to contest the Justice’s judgement.37 When the case appeared before the Master of the Rolls on 8 July 1878, Isabel retained custody of Somey, and Lord Henry and the Beauforts were granted ‘liberty of access at reasonable times’, including two months each year at Badminton. Chitty succeeded in obtaining some modifications to Field’s order. Somey was declared a Ward in Chancery and accorded the care and protection of the Master of the Rolls, to whom Isabel could make future appeals should she have concerns regarding her son’s visits to Badminton; all subsequent applications for visitation rights were to be directed to the Master of the Rolls. Both parties having agreed to the order, all further litigation was stayed.38 The ordeal of Isabel’s unhappy marital union and custody battle was now at an end, but the repercussions would, in varying degrees, remain with her for the rest of her life. The enormity of the step she had taken in abandoning her marriage prompted her to reconsider the wisdom of her choice. ‘Had she been wise in a decision that had maimed her life? Could she face the long years of loneliness that lay before her? . . . These were the thoughts that beset her’ as she faced an uncertain future.39

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5 TRANSITION

Following her hasty departure from Charles Street in February 1878, Isabel moved to the Somers’ Reigate Priory estate and there endured the months of uncertainty associated with the custody battle. With litigation at an end, her de facto separation was now legalized, and at age 27, Isabel found herself condemned to a life of marital limbo, from which only widowhood, or her own death, could release her; she had reportedly rejected the only other option available to her, divorce, on religious grounds.1 Adding to Isabel’s misery was her distress arising from the ‘calumnies which were spread about’ concerning her legal action against her husband.2 Despite her and the Somers’ efforts to maintain silence on the whole issue, rumours percolated through Society and found their way into the press.3 There had been ‘so much vague statement— so much bad gossip’ circulated about Isabel.4 Lord Somers now printed Mr. Justice Field’s Judgement for private distribution among friends and associates, with instructions that it should not reach the press; his sole intention was ‘to vindicate my daughter from the gross misrepresentations that have been circulated respecting her conduct in this most lamentable matter’.5 Lady Somers gave Princess Christian and Princess Mary, Duchess of Teck, copies of the Judgement for perusal.6 The Somers’ efforts achieved some success. Many of the recipients of the Judgement expressed their sympathy and support for Isabel, along with condemnation of her husband and disgust at Field for failing to attribute guilt to Lord Henry and for permitting him visitation rights to his son.7 The Queen’s daughter Princess Louise expressed her admiration for the way Isabel had conducted herself during her ordeal and attempted to obtain a place at Court

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for her by speaking ‘to several important people about Isabel going to the Drawing room’, which they and Princess Louise felt was Isabel’s right.8 This request was evidently rejected by the Queen, for no such appointment was forthcoming. Among Isabel’s aristocratic set there was widespread revulsion at her ‘temerity’ in accusing her husband of conduct ‘that was only mentioned in the Bible’, thereby creating a scandal; such behaviour was considered indefensible in a society which only tolerated improprieties provided they remained out of the public eye. In the wake of the custody proceedings Isabel was ostracized by a substantial segment of her social circle. She was no longer welcomed into the home of Liberal leader and former Prime Minister William Gladstone; she was cut by Adeline’s mother-in-law, the Duchess of Bedford; and mothers abruptly halted their daughters’ association with Isabel because she ‘had invented a dreadful new sin’.9 Although many of Isabel’s detractors undoubtedly shared the view of the Earl of Daventry and his sons that ‘there had been great folly but no guilt on the part of Lord Henry’, following the printing of the Judgement a degree of unease about Lord Henry’s suitability for public office arose in certain quarters. A correspondent to the Whitehall Review pointedly inquired ‘how much longer Lord Henry Somerset, in view of a recent judgement, . . . intends to represent a constituency’ and if it was true ‘that the Premier, out of deference to the Duke of Beaufort’s political support, has hitherto prevented his Lordship’s name from being removed from the roll-call of Her Majesty’s Household’.10 The Clerk of the Peace’s office in Herefordshire consulted the Judgement because it concerned ‘one of the magistrates of this County’, Lord Henry. As the publication began to circulate among his Monmouthshire constituents, it produced a wave of contempt and revulsion against their MP ‘in both town and country’, and one squire’s wife vowed to continuously speak out ‘against the odious and evil doer and enlist a whole army of County folk against his re-election’.11 By August 1878, concern over his political future had arisen within the Tory Party organization. W. H. Cooke, QC, adviser to the Tories’ national-level electioneering committee and counsellor to Lord Beaconsfield on candidate suitability, thought ‘there may be a difficulty at the next general election’ in retaining the incumbent, and speculation arose about a possible substitute candidate.12 According to one eyewitness, Lord Henry’s ‘exposure ended his career’.13 Whether he was

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pushed or relinquished his seat voluntarily is a matter for speculation, but one year later, the Morning Post reported that Lord Henry had ‘intimated his intention of retiring at the close of the present Parliament’, and he duly did so. Thereafter, he proceeded to ‘maintain the state of a déclassé English peer on a handsome allowance from his wife’s fortune’ and, being ‘socially and politically dead’, decamped to Italy ‘to keep up some show as leader of the exiled English at Florence’; he remained there until his death in 1932.14 Following her separation, Isabel continued to live at the Priory, her favourite among the family’s residences. A substantial Georgian country house, it was surrounded by extensive, wooded parkland interspersed with gardens and ponds. Her main occupation was the raising of four-year-old Somey until he was old enough to go to preparatory school and then Marlborough College.15 Scorned by Society, she lived in ‘comparative retreat’ but not social isolation. She remained ‘a woman of fashion and of the world’, drawing around her a new circle of friends, who were less conventional but more intellectual than her previous ones; they were aristocratic but not as socially prominent as those with whom she had consorted as wife of a duke’s son, Comptroller of the Queen’s Household, and Privy Councillor. Isabel continued to entertain, hosting balls and buying gowns from a Parisian dressmaker, but she spent many hours alone. Perhaps to assuage her loneliness, she took into her home two cousins: the 13-year-old Laura Gurney, who remained at the Priory for seven years; and Blanche Clogstoun, who stayed until her marriage to Herbert Haldane Somers Cocks on 26 June 1883.16 In an attempt to fill her days with purposeful activity, Isabel turned her attention to the management of the estate, renovating areas of the house and overseeing the welfare of her Reigate tenants, and providing the needy with food, clothing, and blankets; when necessity dictated, she took blankets from her own beds.17 Despite all her best efforts, Isabel remained unfulfilled, her public persona of cheerful, gracious hostess masking her inner turmoil. She found herself ‘in the Valley of the Shadow, not of Death, but of Doubt’.18 Barred by her rank and Victorian social mores from pursuing an occupation beyond the domestic circle, alone and without the freedom to remarry, Isabel began to question the path she had taken and to consider the possibility of an annulment, for she had come to know a man she would happily marry if released from her marital bonds. A devout, practising Christian since

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childhood, she was now assailed by religious doubts. She read antitheological speculation and began to question her faith: Had Jesus actually lived? Was God a reality? Did not current scientific knowledge arising from Darwin’s findings, plus her own fate, justify uncertainty about the existence of a loving, Supreme Being?19 As Isabel struggled to come to terms with her life and faith, fate dealt her another blow. On 26 September 1883, her beloved father died of pleurisy at age 64. Lord Somers’ death, coupled with the suicide of one of her young female friends, became the catalyst for a renewal of Isabel’s faith and optimism.20 Grieving and confused, she sat alone in the Priory garden, her mind convulsed by religious doubts and the apparent futility of her existence: Did God exist? ‘Was He? Was He not? If He was not, from whence came I? If He is, what am I doing with my life?’ Suddenly she seemed to hear a voice saying, ‘Act as if I were, and thou shalt know I am’. Isabel, seeking illumination, turned to the Gospel according to St John, and her faith was renewed. She resolved ‘to obey the Voice—to act, to the best of her ability, as if He were’ by fully embracing Christ’s teachings; following His example, she would devote her life to humanitarian service,21 even though this would involve the great sacrifice of remarriage, for she believed the life she now espoused must be pursued alone. She quietly informed her friends that she was withdrawing from Society, and accompanied by Somey, she left Reigate to make her home at Eastnor Castle where ‘she might in privacy find peace and joy in believing . . . and carry out her appointed plan’.22 With the death of Lord Somers the earldom and viscounty became defunct, while the barony descended to his cousin Philip Reginald Cocks; Isabel inherited her father’s fortune and estates, along with the responsibility for their management. Although the day-to-day running of these establishments was carried out by professional agents, she was obliged to involve herself with estate affairs, including the financial accounts, a daunting task for the inexperienced Isabel who became ‘heartily sick of business and letters’ occupying so much of her time.23 Despite her efforts, her inexperience contributed to the decline of the estate, and she was obliged to sell off some of the Eastnor lands.24 In addition to the burden of management, the responsibility for the welfare of her many thousands of tenants passed into Isabel’s hands; she embraced this task naturally, generosity and compas-

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sion being an integral part of her nature. As children she and Adeline often had been given money to spend in town, and ‘Isabel invariably distributed hers along the road to beggars and others, leaving herself little to shop with if any’, recalled one Castle housekeeper.25 Another servant first became acquainted with Lady Henry ‘when she was lighting a fire in my mother’s empty hearth in a London slum’,26 perhaps during Isabel’s residency in that city following her marriage; Isabel had charge of a London poor district, to which she made regular morning visits.27 Her compassion greatly impressed her cousin Laura Gurney when she arrived at Reigate Priory: ‘It was not a sympathy as English people understand the word, just a benevolent attitude towards people in trouble and a general wish to help them’; it was a complete immersion of self into practical relief to the needy, such as including provisions from her own household.28 Philanthropy was neither new nor unwelcome work for Isabel, work that she soon extended outside her village to the nearby town of Ledbury and beyond.29 Within the solitude and tranquillity of Eastnor Castle Isabel had hoped to achieve spiritual fulfilment and contentment in doing God’s will, but she remained beset by fears and doubts as to where her calling lay. With her future seemingly obscure and uncertain, motherhood provided her chief satisfaction and anchor. However, her maternal joy was tempered by apprehension, for in addition to the anxieties associated with the single-parenting of Somey, there was the dread that ‘behind him lowered that curse of heredity; and between him and it what was there if she failed’ as a mother. In her search for relevancy Isabel relied upon her faith and the Bible.30 Finding that the Established Church lacked ‘the salt of reality’, Isabel turned to a small Methodist sect, in Ledbury, for inspiration and guidance. Their work among the sick and poverty-stricken inhabitants of the town demonstrated the sincere, practical Christianity she sought to practise. Accompanying one simple cottage woman, a Mrs Ridley, on her daily ministrations among the poor, drunkards, and prostitutes of Ledbury’s most disreputable neighbourhoods raised Isabel’s consciousness of the disparity between their lot and her own. Distressed by the ‘misery and want and squalor and wretchedness’, she began similar cottage visiting, distributing alms and comfort to the ill, poor, and bereaved in Eastnor and beyond.31 She erected and staffed mission halls on her estate and in Ledbury for religious instruction and worship, in

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which she actively participated, which incurred the wrath of the Established Church’s diocesan clergy.32 Isabel quickly concluded that relief work alone was of little value in improving the lives of the needy because it relieved only the symptoms of their distress whilst doing nothing for the root cause of their poverty, which she initially attributed to the undermining of character by alcohol. She determined to work for the eradication of insobriety, especially after attending a temperance meeting in Ledbury in 1884. She formed a small temperance society at Eastnor village for her tenantry; at the inaugural meeting, she addressed the gathering and signed the total abstinence pledge, inviting those present to follow suit. This occasion marked Isabel’s initiation into both public speaking and temperance work. Her commitment to temperance and social reform became the focal point of her life, alongside motherhood. She held Bible readings in the kitchens of farms on her estate, and mothers’ meetings at Eastnor Castle, with emphasis being placed upon temperance teaching.33 She organized a Band of Hope for local children, encouraging them to sign the pledge—an effort opposed by many local clergy.34 Isabel gradually expanded her work, first within the temperance movement and then to encompass larger social and moral issues, particularly those pertaining to the welfare of women. As a result of her neighbourhood lectures, she quickly gained a reputation as a temperance speaker and was invited to address temperance gatherings in the surrounding villages and towns and then in larger centres around the nation. Shy by nature, Isabel found public speaking an ordeal, a torment further exacerbated by her consciousness of the personal history which the public associated with the name Lady Henry Somerset. She gained confidence by training her voice, positioning her maid in the building’s gallery with instructions to signal with a handkerchief when her mistress’s voice became inaudible. Although voice training and determination eventually enabled Isabel to become ‘one of the most successful platform speakers’ of her time,35 even after years of public speeches she admitted that she remained ‘very nervous before I speak in public. Long experience has not made the work any easier, and sometimes the tension before a great meeting makes me almost ill’.36 Overcoming her diffidence in the public-speaking arena was but one challenge Isabel faced in embracing her chosen course. Some

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of her Methodist associates doubted her sincerity and were reluctant to accept a titled woman into their ranks. One individual conducted psychological warfare against her, accusing her of lacking consecration to Jesus’ work. She claimed to have received messages from God that warned of Isabel’s future contests with the Devil, and predictions that her idolization of Somey would result in him being taken away—until Isabel was ‘terrified’ by her.37 Isabel also fought a constant battle with her own nature. Notwithstanding her sincerity and resolve to pursue the path she had chosen, the life she had enjoyed in society remained an attraction. Despite a continuing struggle to control these desires, she could not completely subdue them. After entertaining guests or visiting her mother, when Isabel again relished dressing in becoming attire, discussing friends and London life, and indulging in a little gossip, she was often wracked by guilt at how ‘the attraction of society gets a firm hold over me. . . . Christ set aside, my life seems to float back so easily into the past’, and she prayed for the strength to overcome temptation.38 Within a few years Isabel had travelled some 15,000 miles, delivering her temperance lectures around the nation and coming increasingly into contact with the labouring population; she frequently lodged overnight in workers’ homes. She journeyed extensively through the coalfields of South Wales, speaking to between 500 and 600 miners at each pit and conducting ten- or twelve-day missions to bring the Word to them. Her increasing familiarity with the privations of the working classes convinced her that lack of nourishment, inadequate housing, poor ventilation, and a monotonous environment, not a lack of character, provided the stimulus for their drunkenness, especially with regard to her own sex.39 Isabel’s philanthropic work convinced her that practical assistance to relieve poverty provided one potent weapon in the battle against drunkenness. At her Ledbury Mission, she organized a cooperative club for the 150 women attending the weekly Mothers’ Meetings, many of whom were burdened by debt as a result of living continually on credit. The club aimed to encourage them to be debt free, by demonstrating that cash purchases would result in cheaper goods because local vendors had agreed to discount sales to Mission accounts by one penny in the shilling. Every Saturday the members deposited their weekly housekeeping money with the club, obtaining chits made out to the shops of their choice, and

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each Monday the Mission collected the chits and paid the trades people. The members bought all their food and clothing through the club, receiving a yearly bonus from the interest accumulated on their annual expenditures, which provided an incentive for the mothers’ participation in the scheme. ‘Not only was thrift encouraged, but all had the real satisfaction of knowing that the substantial Bonus they received was entirely due to their own efforts, and they were not beholden to anyone for charity.’40 To assist her own tenants, Isabel constructed new cottages at Eastnor and gradually improved the housing upon her Somers Town (London) estate, where she had some 20,000 residents. As the leases became available, she renovated properties to sanitary standards.41 For her pains, Isabel’s social peers censured her for being a ‘traitor to her class’.42 Isabel’s interaction with the working-class population awakened her to the ‘condition of the people’ question. The injustice of inequality suggested not that she was disloyal to her class but, rather, ‘that she and her class might be traitors to their fellowcountrymen. Somehow it was wrong, if Christianity was right, that one class should possess all good things of life while another lived in poverty on the border line of starvation’.43 Her concern drew Isabel into the labour movement. She had been introduced to labour issues initially during an 1880 visit to the Isle of Sky, where she had intervened in a crofters’ agitation by assisting a local clergyman to organize employment for the workers, and had mediated with their employer for a settlement of their grievances. This experience had convinced her ‘that much could be done to ameliorate the hardship of life if only those who had the means would use the opportunity’.44 Isabel took one such opportunity in 1889. In the wake of the London Dockers’ Strike, a meeting to organize women workers was held in October at Charrington’s Assembly Hall in London’s East End, and Isabel along with socialist John Burns, a leading organizer of the Strike, were guest speakers. She invited Hannah Whitall Smith, the American Quaker preacher, religious writer, and temperance worker, to join her on the platform. Isabel had long admired Hannah and had arranged to meet her earlier that day through her sister, Adeline, who had become acquainted with Hannah in the summer of 1889.45 Isabel and Hannah formed a lasting friendship, and she was instrumental in bringing Isabel to the forefront of the temperance movement.

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Hannah Whitall Smith had embraced the temperance movement after receiving reports of the 1873–4 American women’s temperance crusade against liquor dealers.46 With her ‘whole soul . . . on fire about this awful evil’, Hannah joined the American Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), established in 1874 in the wake of the crusade, and became a friend and confidante of Frances E. Willard, its progressive president from 1879 until her death in 1898.47 When Hannah and her husband, Robert Pearsall Smith, settled in England in 1888, she joined that nation’s equivalent of the WCTU, the British Women’s Temperance Association (BWTA), and eventually served on its executive as honorary secretary. She also served as superintendent of the Bible Reading Department of the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU).48 Inspired by the American WCTU, the BWTA had been founded on 21 April 1876 at the conclusion of the first British women’s temperance conference, held in Newcastle.49 Women had been engaged in temperance reform in England from the movement’s inception in the early 1830s. Responding to temperance reformers’ revelations of wife and child abuse perpetrated by drunken men upon their families, female temperance workers, during the early decades of the movement, laboured to convert men to total abstinence as a means of alleviating the sufferings of their victimized sisters. The rise of female intemperance after the mid-century provided additional impetus for women’s involvement in the cause. Underpinning all the female temperance reform activity was the call to ‘Christian duty’. Until the final quarter of the nineteenth century, women had functioned primarily as auxiliaries in the maledominated temperance organizations or as individual workers in the field. Although some small women’s temperance groups are known to have existed intermittently prior to the 1870s, a national female organization—one truly independent of male domination and dedicated to protecting women from the direct and indirect effects of insobriety—only became a reality with the founding of the BWTA in 1876.50 At the time of the October 1889 meeting, Isabel was a member of the BWTA, having joined the Ledbury branch in 188451 and become an active participant.52 In February 1888, Isabel had accepted the invitation of the National Executive Committee to become a ‘Lady Patron’ of the Association, a position created in 1877 for titled or famous women as a drawing card for the organization.53 During

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the BWTA’s annual public meetings held in London in May 1989, she had occupied the Chair at the evening session and spoken in support of the Sunday Closing Campaign, a movement to obtain closure of public houses on the Sabbath. Closer to home, Isabel was one of two females chosen to represent the Hereford and Radnor districts at the High Moveable Conference of the Independent Order of Rechabites, a benefit society for total abstainers, ‘the first time (reportedly) that women have been chosen for this post in the Order’.54 Hannah Whitall Smith visited Eastnor Castle in February 1890, and her ‘sympathy and kindness’ gave Isabel the courage to confide in her guest what lay ‘deep down’ in her heart, the sad circumstances of her tragic marriage—witness to the depth of trust she placed in Hannah and justifying the latter’s assessment that they had ‘taken a great fancy to one another’ and ‘formed a real friendship’. Hannah’s interest in her aristocratic temperance colleague extended beyond personal friendship. The days spent at Eastnor evidently convinced her the titled and attractive Isabel would make an ideal Willard-style successor to the recently deceased BWTA president, Margaret Bright Lucas, and one who would incorporate into the conservative British movement the organization and methods of the WCTU and promote the WWCTU, about which the ‘British Women’ (as the BWTA members were commonly known) had been lukewarm.55 When the Association’s National Executive Committee met to discuss the election of a new president, Hannah proposed Isabel be considered in addition to the three other nominees, Lady Sebright, Lady Rachel Howard, and Lady Elizabeth Biddulph.56 When Hannah first broached the subject of the presidency with Isabel, she was reluctant to allow her nomination to go forward until she had received Hannah’s assurances of support. Despite Hannah’s encouragement, Isabel harboured many doubts as to her suitability for the office: ‘When I think of filling such a responsible position I feel as if I must refuse.’ She pressed Hannah to ‘consider well, whether you do not think that it is a great disadvantage to a society like the British Women to have for a president a woman separated from her husband, even though the blame rests not with her. In conventional England does not this tell considerably against influence? . . . I should like the BW to weigh this well’. Isabel questioned her ability to guide the Association, feeling ‘unequal’ to the

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task, but confessed she had felt ‘for a long time, that this work needs some spirit that is lacking, some inspiration I should say, better to express what I feel’, indicating that she was attracted to the possibilities her leadership might provide for renewing the Association. Isabel decided to be guided in her decision by Hannah and by God: ‘I shall feel the Lord will show me what He wishes me to do before I have to decide.’57 At the nomination meeting, Isabel received ten votes against a combined total of nine for the other candidates, and she promised to reply by 5 March to their invitation to serve as BWTA president. In the interim she struggled to reach a decision, often unhappy and ‘despondent about . . . being any real use’ and ‘on the verge of writing to beg the Committee to find someone else’. However, confident of Hannah’s support and convinced ‘He has sent the call’, Isabel accepted the position, subject to her election by the council of the Association.58 Almost immediately, she became the focus of a ‘popular’ attention she disdained.59 On 14 March, she delivered a temperance address in the northern town of Blackpool which was reported in the local press and prominently featured in April’s edition of the British Women’s Temperance Journal.60 Hannah Whitall Smith was delighted by Isabel’s decision, believing she would be an ideal president and confident that under her direction BWTA work would progress. ‘She is a deeply taught Christian, and is also a very talented woman, with a delightful charm of manner, and a great gift for organizing’, Hannah wrote to her American friends. She was greatly encouraged by Isabel’s interest in American methods and work and by her promise to ‘do everything she can do to forward the World’s WCTU’, including, Hanna hoped, a WWCTU convention in London in the future.61 The World’s Union, launched by Frances Willard when an earlier movement faltered, aimed ‘to organize the motherhood of the world for the peace and purity, the protection and exaltation of its homes’.62 Willard had convinced the American WCTU to expand its mandate beyond alcohol suppression to embrace her DoEverything Policy of reform initiatives, including offensives against drugs, prostitution, and gambling, and support for women’s suffrage. In 1883, she reasoned that the rising global drug trade necessitated the extension of the WCTU’s campaigns to the international arena. Temperance women must now fight to save the world, not just America, from depravity. In an age of imperialism, their

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mission now linked social and moral reform with their nation’s Manifest Destiny, the dissemination of America’s Christian ethical values around the globe. At Willard’s instigation, WCTU temperance missionary Mrs Mary Clement Leavitt toured the world in 1884 and eventually established WCTU organizations in Hawaii, China, Japan, India, Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and Europe. She was followed by a phalanx of WCTU-designated World’s White Ribbon missionaries, an effort which raised the organization’s membership to over one million women by the 1920s (according to WWCTU estimates) drawn from every continent except Antarctica.63 While the moral imperative did motivate this expansion, other considerations also prompted Willard’s actions. By the early 1880s, rising beer consumption and the prohibitionists’ weak political clout had provided a gloomy prospect of continuing struggle, and she concluded that the WCTU’s expansion abroad would serve to maintain enthusiasm for the cause at home. Willard also anticipated that WWCTU work would enhance the reputations of herself and of the supporters of her Do-Everything Policy, elevating their prestige and serving to consolidate their power within the organization.64 Willard worked to draw the BWTA into the World’s Union. Britain being at the forefront of imperial expansion, she sought to utilize the BWTA as a conduit for WWCTU expansion via the nation’s English-speaking colonies. With this end in view, she appointed Margaret Bright Lucas as WWCTU’s president in 1885 and named Hannah Whitall Smith as WWCTU’s representative in Britain in 1886.65 At Hannah’s urging, the BWTA joined the world organization that year. Although the British section eventually grew to be the largest affiliate of the WWCTU,66 enthusiasm for the organization was slow to develop among British Women. Thus, in light of Isabel’s expressed interest in the World’s work, the prospect of her election to the presidency of the BWTA gave hope of its increased support for the international movement. Having heard glowing reports of Isabel from Hannah, Frances Willard was equally enthusiastic about the possibility of this English aristocrat becoming BWTA president and, in anticipation of this development, had written to her in late March 1890. Upon hearing the news of Isabel’s nomination, an elated Frances wrote to Hannah, ‘I could throw my cap in the air to think Lady Somerset, with her wide heart is going to head the army of White Ribboners in the dearest Motherland. . . . I can but think a new era opens

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upon us with the incoming of this blessed woman’.67 The warm feelings expressed by Frances were reciprocated by Isabel. Hannah, who longed for the two to meet, had familiarized Isabel with Willard’s work, and this, together with a reading of some of Willard’s speeches and writings, had awakened in Isabel a ‘deep admiration’ of Frances.68 Willard had first come to Isabel’s attention some four years earlier through her reading of the American’s memoir of her deceased sister, Nineteen Beautiful Years. Isabel was immediately attracted by the author’s disposition and character which emerged from the biography’s pages: ‘The simplicity, the quaint candour, and the delicate touches of humour and pathos were a revelation to me of a character that remained on my mind as belonging to one whom I placed in a niche among the ideal lives of whom I hoped to know more, and at whose shrines I worshipped.’69 Isabel’s regard for Willard deepened upon receipt of her letter in April 1890, at a time when Somey’s recent departure for Badminton had disheartened Isabel. This message, ‘full of love and understanding’, gladdened her ‘somewhat already discouraged heart to fresh hope and life’.70 Willard urged Hannah Whitall Smith to bring Isabel to America so that the two presidents could become acquainted, an event eagerly anticipated by Isabel. ‘I long for the time when we shall meet and I can put much before you and you can help me with your advice & experience’, she wrote to Willard in August 1891.71 The two eventually met when Isabel visited the United States in autumn of that year. On 21 May 1890, the BWTA annual council convened in London, and Isabel was unanimously elected president of the Association. From the delegates she received ‘a most enthusiastic and hearty reception’, and she ‘delivered a beautiful address, which completely won the hearts of all present’. However, this report masked the apprehension felt by some within the BWTA about their new president. It had been expressed during the nomination meeting when several of the BWTA National Executive voted for other candidates,72 likely motivated by distaste for Isabel’s progressive approach to social issues and what they perceived as her liberal attitude towards the drink question. Unlike the conservatives in the BWTA who favoured prohibition, Isabel sought only to reduce the power of the drink trade. She believed that a curtailment of alcohol sales, combined with self-restraint, would enable those who

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drank excessively to reduce their consumption, thereby eliminating drunkenness. Although the conservative faction recognized and welcomed the fact that her title, wealth, and beauty, combined with her charisma, would be a powerful magnet for membership and publicize their cause, they evidently feared that she would emerge as something other than the ‘mere figurehead’ they desired,73 a premonition that would prove prophetic. These fears may have played some role in the BWTA National Executive Committee’s move to revamp the Association’s administrative structure, a decision taken at the nomination meeting held 19 February 1890. A new office of president of the NEC was instituted, and control of the BWTA was to be shared between this official and the president of the Association, ostensibly to relieve the latter of ‘the need to take part in usual Executive work’; however, the exact jurisdiction of each presidential officer was left unspecified.74 This omission subsequently created problems for Isabel and the Association, for the first holder of the new office was teetotaller Mary Docwra from the conservative faction, whose approach to BWTA work was vastly different than that of Isabel. Docwra sought to maintain the BWTA as a single-issue organization, concentrating solely on temperance activities.75 Isabel’s inaugural address to the BWTA annual council meeting heightened the conservatives’ fears. She asked her audience to ‘consider that the Temperance Cause today embraces a wide sphere’ and reflected that ‘we are apt too much to limit our efforts and our aims’ to the fight against alcohol when ‘our aim is to set our face against all evil; our end is to fight for all right’. She suggested that the current narrow focus of BWTA efforts was cramping their work and stressed, ‘This Temperance question needs to be united to every form of philanthropic work today’. To this end, she proposed the adoption of the American WCTU’s departmental system of organization, believing this would ‘astonishingly increase our results’, and urged that representatives be chosen from various BWTA committees to co-operate with other existing female organizations ‘to bind together all women’s work. . . . Do not let us be afraid of new methods. Do not let us cling to old ways as if they were in themselves indispensable. . . . We are, let us remember, working for humanity in its fullest sense’.76 Isabel’s reference to ‘old ways’ was directed against the Association’s concentration on the single issue of temperance to the exclusion of other aspects of the

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woman question. She advocated the WCTU’s methods of work, which included the promotion of women’s suffrage and a broad spectrum of social issues; she told the BWTA delegates that the Association ‘cannot drink too deeply of the spirit which is invigorating that New World’, and outlined the benefits of ‘direct affiliation and association’ with the American organization through the WWCTU.77 Following her election to the BWTA presidency, Isabel immediately began to promote the departmental system. The adoption of such a structure had been discussed by the BWTA NEC Subcommittee, without achieving a consensus, early in January 1885, and Hannah Whitall Smith had unsuccessfully urged the establishment of departments at the 1889 BWTA annual meeting; she cited the example of the successful WCTU organizational model and outlined the benefits to be derived from its adoption. A few months later, WWCTU honorary secretary Mary Leavitt, while visiting Britain, had recommended the system to the BWTA National Executive. After the 1890 annual meeting, Isabel urged the formation of a department devoted to special work among the young females who, once they had left the juvenile temperance societies, had no specific organization to serve their needs. She volunteered to serve as temporary superintendent of young women’s work until a permanent one could be trained and appointed.78 The Association’s task ‘must be to lead girls out and make them fit to work for others’.79 Prompted by Isabel’s efforts, a Department of Young Women’s Work was established to promote ‘Y’ (Youth) branches for this age group, under a constitution she had adapted from that of the WCTU.80 Perhaps influenced by her own experience of sheltered girlhood and the subsequent marital disaster, Isabel urged that ‘Y’ branches should include young males as associate members in order that interrelationships between young men and women would be placed ‘on a true basis, of countenancing their intercourse and encouraging all that will tend to elevate and sanctify their relations’. Though ‘Y’ branches grew slowly (only a ‘few’ had formed, and eight had affiliated seven months later81), ‘Y’ work became an enduring and prominent part of BWTA activity. Isabel also proposed the departmentalization of press work. Given the current state of public ignorance on the temperance question, urgent action needed to be taken to publicize ‘facts about their work’. At the NEC’s quarterly conference in June 1890, a symposium was formed to discuss the matter. Prompted by presenta-

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tions on the issue by Isabel and by Julia Ames, an editor of the WCTU organ, Union Signal, the participants successfully lobbied the NEC to establish a Press Department on 2 July 1890.82 Its task was to disseminate temperance intelligence to London and provincial newspapers in the form of a ‘carefully-edited sheet of Temperance news’, the National Bulletin, which would serve as a conduit ‘through which our national societies and organizations may send official news’. The first issue of the National Bulletin was published on 5 November 1890, and by May 1891, 4,000 copies were being distributed weekly to metropolitan, provincial, suburban, religious, medical, and British and American papers.83 During her first year in office Isabel’s presidential duties dominated her life: she addressed Association conferences, attended regular meetings of the National Executive Subcommittee, and travelled the nation to attend branch and other gatherings. By October 1890, she was obliged to decline further requests for such engagements, her calendar being filled for the remainder of the year.84 She liaised between the BWTA and other organizations, such as the YWCA and Young Abstainers’ Union, through letters and interviews, and wrote several articles for the British Women’s Temperance Journal.85 At the completion of Isabel’s first term, the Association was reporting that the previous year ‘had been one of the most progressive in the history of the BWTA’ and that ‘Her Ladyship has by her influence and untiring efforts rendered invaluable help to the Association . . . with the most gratifying results’, including the affiliation of 49 new branches. In the same period, Isabel had also provided monetary support to the Association and individual members86 at a time when it was virtually insolvent. In December 1890, she was unable to respond favourably to Frances Willard’s appeal to the BWTA for financial support of WWCTU efforts in Japan, because ‘the Association has nearly no funds, the temperance societies are penniless’. Association speakers were paid out of Isabel’s own pocket, and she bore the travel expenses connected with her speaking engagements around the country; although she asked only for a collection to be taken up, she rarely received a response, many branches being ‘so poor they look to their collections just to keep them going’. She warned that the Association’s finances, which primarily derived from affiliation fees, donations, and bequests, would not improve ‘until our educated classes see the

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necessity for Temperance work’ and give accordingly.87 Isabel’s largesse gradually expanded to embrace other temperance and philanthropic causes, to the point where it severely reduced her personal income.88 Despite the accolades bestowed on Isabel at the 1891 BWTA annual meetings, dissatisfaction with her ‘forward’ policies still festered within the Association. Following the establishment of the Press Department, superintendent Mary Ward Poole had been obliged to defend this innovation in order to pre-empt criticism that it was unseemly for women to pursue such a masculine activity, emphasising, ‘We think that every effort to get the ethics of the drink question more forcibly before the public is as much a woman’s work as man’s’.89 In an effort to discredit her, Isabel’s opponents publicized the fact that she derived a portion of her income from public-house property; this resulted in a rash of stories in the press which misleadingly described her as living in the lap of luxury on the profits from the liquor trade. To preserve her reputation and prevent any adverse publicity affecting the Association, she explained she had inherited the properties in question and had closed seven upon expiry of their leases, a pattern she would repeat with the remaining pubs. She had closed some of the many on her Somers Town estate as part of her renewal project for this slum district, where she was currently renovating properties, providing social services, such as a food depot and a laundry, and establishing girls’ clubs, ably assisted by Hannah’s daughter, Alys Pearsall Smith.90 Notwithstanding the critics within the ranks of the BWTA, Isabel was re-elected president at the May 1891 annual council. In her address she outlined the progress that had been made towards better organization, with the creation of new departments for press and young women’s work, and argued that the success of this venture illustrated the necessity for centralizing other areas of BWTA work; much of members’ efforts was being wasted ‘because of the isolation of the workers’ from each other. She urged organization of police-court work, to enable members to attend court as missionaries to female inebriates, and her proposal for the appointment of a Police Court Matron was adopted by the council.91 Isabel’s appeal for the Association to more actively pursue the cause of ‘Social Purity’ received little support at this time.92 Undeterred, she declared she would not hesitate to broach this

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subject, stressing social purity ‘must be woman’s work, woman’s responsibility from which we dare not shrink’, and appealed to the membership to take inspiration from the prominent leader of the earlier campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts, Josephine Butler,93 now the superintendent of the WWCTU Purity Department and a BWTA member. Isabel lauded Frances Willard’s and the World Union’s ‘development of every department of women’s work’, noted the reluctance of British Women to involve themselves in this organization, and urged them to support its efforts for the advancement of temperance and social reform around the world; such support included the collection of signatures for the BWTA’s roll of the World Union’s ‘Polyglot Petition for Home Protection’, which portion Isabel intended to personally present to the WWCTU’s first convention in Boston, Massachusetts, in November 1891.94 The brainchild of Frances Willard, the Polyglot Petition, launched in 1885, appealed to the world’s rulers to legislate against the liquor and opium trades and social vices. She envisioned that the petition would demonstrate to international governments how opium and alcohol affected women’s lives around the world, and would simultaneously provide a tangible goal around which support could be generated for the fledgling WWCTU.95 However, Isabel’s proposals and advocacy of the World’s Union gave credence to assertions that she intended to ‘Americanize’ the BWTA, and her efforts to further expand the Association’s fledgling departmental systems were thwarted by her opponents. They delayed a decision on the matter by insisting on adherence to a procedural rule which required the submission of a resolution to the Association’s delegates for consideration a minimum of one month prior to the annual meeting.96 The curtailment of the implementation of the departmental system would prove to be only a temporary set-back to the scheme. For the present, Isabel was enthusiastic about the initial progress made towards the adoption of the Do-Everything Policy and confident the new organizational methods would benefit the Association. She looked ‘for great things through the press department’ and felt that the ‘Y’ branches were the key to the BWTA’s future vitality. ‘I believe our greatest hope lies in their fresh enthusiasm which will revive our moss-grown conventionality’, she wrote to Frances Willard.97

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6 AMERICAN SOJOURN

Her presidency reconfirmed, Isabel entered upon a new phase in her life. On 7 October 1891, she and Hannah Whitall Smith sailed on the Teutonic for America, where she planned to stay until midDecember—a trip Frances Willard had been urging them to take since the spring of 1890.1 The ostensible reason for Isabel’s visit was to attend the WWCTU’s first annual convention and the National WCTU’s convention, being held in Boston in November, and to fulfil speaking engagements in other cities. However, she later told Willard, to make her acquaintance was the principal motivation for the trip. Hannah was also eager for the two to meet and for Isabel to familiarize herself with the operations of the WCTU, confident that after she ‘caught the spirit of our American work, she will be able to make the BWTA march in rank with the WCTU’ and embrace its progressive methods.2 In attending the Boston conventions, Isabel continued a tradition of Anglo-American, transatlantic co-operation between reformers, including women, which had existed since at least the 1850s. This reform fraternity ‘comprised a small but an influential group of British and Americans who looked for liberal solutions to social questions, often held unorthodox religious views and expected leadership in the reforms they supported to come from a moral and intellectual elite’. At mid-century, the reform groups had directed their efforts primarily towards the abolition of slavery and the expansion of liberal religion, though temperance and the woman question were beginning to gain their attention. Following the American Civil War, the nucleus of women reformers in this AngloAmerican community expanded dramatically, and their activism against the ‘drink traffic’ and in support of female suffrage intensified.

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By the late nineteenth century, what had begun as a trickle decades earlier had become a river of women reformers flowing to and fro across the Atlantic, participating freely in all aspects of each others’ organizations. These women’s groups had also gradually widened the scope of their activities to encompass other areas of the woman question, including social purity, and to embrace labour issues, but they retained their attachment to the notion of an elitist, moral leadership. Underpinning women’s reform activism, including that of Isabel and Willard, was religious ideology which, in the 1890s, was identified with the bourgeois evangelicalism that suffused Victorian culture in both America and Britain.3 Members of BWTA and WCTU had co-operated in this transatlantic interaction. The BWTA’s first president, Margaret Parker, had been a delegate of the British Order of Good Templars to its 1875 Right Worthy Order Lodge in Bloomington, Indiana. Eliza ‘Mother’ Stewart, a leader of the American women’s ‘Whisky War’ of 1873–4, had conducted a speaking tour of Britain in the 1870s, generating enthusiasm for a women’s temperance organization, and she joined with Parker to convene the 1876 Newcastle conference at which the BWTA was inaugurated. Stewart’s compatriot, Mary Coffin Johnson, successfully proselytized among upper-class Church of England women, a group normally isolated from contact with American Methodist reformers. In 1880, Parker and her successor as BWTA president, Margaret Bright Lucas, were delegates to the International Temperance Congress in Philadelphia and returned to promote ‘the strong temperance sympathy which prevailed on both sides of the Atlantic’.4 Parker subsequently revisited America and established an immigration scheme which recruited teetotal British female servants for posts in California; she also accompanied them and assisted in their resettlement. In later years Parker resided in California.5 Lucas returned to the United States in 1886 to attend the annual conventions of the Pennsylvania and National WCTU; there she cemented her friendship with Willard. Over the years, WCTU members regularly visited and addressed BWTA’s annual councils. This Anglo-American co-operation was vigorously fostered by Hannah Whitall Smith, who maintained close ties with the American women’s temperance movement.6 Isabel and Hannah Whitall Smith docked in New York on 15 October after a very rough Atlantic crossing, during which both were ‘wretchedly sick’. After receiving a WCTU deputation at the

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Brunswick House Hotel, they spent a few days recuperating at James B. Colgate’s mansion on the Hudson River. Isabel was charmed by her reception here and by the beautiful countryside but found the local roads, like the congested New York thoroughfares, deplorable.7 After speaking in New York on behalf of the West London Mission, Isabel travelled to Washington to deliver her first major speech in America, before an enthusiastic audience of ‘about 3,000 people packed like sardines in a barrel and standing all down the aisles’. She visited the national monuments, attended a session of the Supreme Court, and had a private reception with President Harrison and the First Lady, a woman whom Isabel, with her British sense of class distinction, deemed ‘common’. Her response to black Americans reflected Victorian Britain’s paternalistic attitude towards colonial peoples. Following her attendance at a ‘coloured church’ service, she described the congregation as ‘delightful . . . they nodded their dear woolly heads, and shouted their hymns and were so nice’. Isabel was impressed with Washington’s landscape and public buildings and, especially, by America’s promise. ‘There seems such a future spread out, and such hope everywhere, such little misery and such a happy, bright, joyous outlook everywhere’, a situation clouded, in her view, only by the nation’s ‘hopeless vulgarity which prevails’, albeit ‘of the uninformed rather than the vulgarity of ignorance’.8 Later, Isabel’s biographer, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, was criticized for failing to edit the letters which Isabel ‘hurriedly wrote’ during her first trip to the United States: ‘The reference to her hostess as being common or vulgar could have been deleted without detracting from their interest: the social surface of life must have been a contrast to her, but to read it in print has caused surprise and pain to many unworldly people in America who looked upon Lady Henry Somerset with great admiration and esteem.’9 Isabel arrived at Chicago’s railway depot on 28 October to an enthusiastic reception from a delegation of WCTU members, including Frances Willard’s private secretary, Anna Gordon. Pausing only to lunch at the Auditorium Hotel, Hannah and Isabel then travelled to Evanston, a university town situated close by on the shores of Lake Michigan, for their long-awaited meeting with Frances Willard; she had invited them to stay at her home, Rest Cottage. On the journey to Evanston, Hannah trembled in her shoes, thinking of this rendezvous. Having related so much about

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the WCTU president to Isabel, Hannah now feared that her English friend might be disappointed in Willard, should the latter have changed in the four or five years since she and Hannah had last met.10 In the event, Hannah’s apprehension proved unfounded. Isabel pronounced Willard ‘far, far nicer and lovelier than she ever dreamed’. This empathy was mutual. Willard, who had anticipated her role as host to the English aristocrat with some trepidation, found Isabel ‘lovely—unassuming, cordial, delightful’.11 Thus began a deep and abiding friendship which was to significantly change the lives of both women and the temperance organizations which they led. Following a two-day stay in Evanston, judged ‘delightful’ by Isabel compared with ‘black and horrible Chicago’,12 she returned to that city to fulfil a series of engagements. These undertakings included a stop at the headquarters of the upcoming World’s Columbian Exposition to examine plans of the woman’s pavilion; a visit to evangelist Dwight Moody’s School of Methods; and a tour through the WCTU’s Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association building. Controlled by a board of eleven women directors, the Association published books, pamphlets, and the WCTU’s organ, the female-edited Union Signal. Launched in the early 1880s, the publishing house was producing in excess of sixty million pages annually by the late 1890s. Impressed with this facility, Isabel regretfully noted that the ‘women of England have no publishing establishment approaching this magnitude. It is a grand thing, for of the 150 people employed here most of them are women’.13 After being ‘interviewed by reporters day and night’, she concluded her Chicago visit by addressing a capacity audience of 4,000 admirers at the Central Music Hall, a further 2,000 being unable to obtain admission to the temperance meeting.14 In Chicago, Isabel was reunited with Somey, who with his tutor, Arthur Pollen, had departed England shortly before his mother to undertake a hunting expedition in Yellowstone Park.15 Isabel may have instigated this tour in order to shorten their period of separation, while on her American visit. Given the absence of Isabel’s diaries and of correspondence between mother and son, a complete portrayal of their relationship cannot be fully reconstructed. However, Isabel’s and Hannah Whitall Smith’s surviving letters, and Willard’s journal and correspondence, contain brief passages revealing Isabel’s abiding maternal love and commitment to her

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son. She was constantly anxious about the dangers inherent in his Badminton visits, though his father was no longer in residence. Shouldering the responsibilities of a single mother, she personally discussed with him the facts of life as he was about to enter his public school, Marlborough College.16 When Somey approached his eighteenth year and the commencement of his university education at Balliol College, Cambridge, she concluded that he required the companionship and guidance of a male adviser, and she was delighted to find an ideal mentor in the deeply religious Arthur Pollen. Having protected Somey from the lurid details of her marriage breakdown and his father’s behaviour, she was anxious and uncertain about how and when to acquaint him with the unsavoury facts. Upon Pollen’s advice, she decided to relinquish this task to him, to be carried out at an auspicious time in the future: ‘Whenever it comes it will be a great humiliation and I strongly feel it should come from one he has learned to love and respect and trust, not from me . . . When he feels his footing in the world, and is more sure of his own position, he will look at it from another aspect. He will be at ease about himself and at leisure to consider what it has meant for me and will see I have shielded him from all the humiliations of the position.’ She did, however, dread that their bond might be harmed by the revelations,17 a consequence which would devastate Isabel, for he had become the focus of the love and devotion which normally had an outlet in marriage. Somey and Arthur Pollen accompanied Isabel to several cities until she returned to Boston for the conventions.18 The first of these, the initial convention of the World’s WCTU, was a Willard initiative. Historian Ian Tyrrell has convincingly argued that Willard’s decision to arrange this event in conjunction with the convention of the National WCTU was linked to power politics within the latter. In 1889, dissidents within the American national union had left to form their own Non-Partisan WCTU, headed by Judith Ellen Foster, in protest against the involvement of Willard and the WCTU in third-party politics. Responding to Isabel’s theory that lagging BWTA support for the World’s Union would only improve with the holding of a WWCTU convention, Willard engineered the Boston convention in an effort to strengthen the bond between the BWTA and the World organization and to secure her own position within the WCTU at Foster’s expense. In the event, the World’s 1891 convention launched a new phase in the WWCTU’s evolution.

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A consensus was achieved on the formulation of a new constitution, the levying of dues, and elections conducted for department superintendents, while Willard was formally elected World’s president, with Isabel as her second-in-command. Real power remained in the hands of the World’s executive committee, which, at Willard’s instigation, comprised the presidents of the BWTA and Canadian, South African, and other national WCTUs affiliated with the World’s Union, together with the general officers of the WCTU. The policies carried had actually been formulated by this committee, who had met on the day prior to the convention’s opening and were simply endorsed by the delegates.19 Reportedly attended by representatives from ‘more than ten thousand local societies and half a million women’20 from every continent save South America, the World’s convention showcased the organization’s principles and global expansion. Held in Faneuil Hall, which was hung with portraits of American political heroes and decorated with the banners and flags of the Union’s worldwide affiliates, the gathering was rich in pageantry and symbolism. To the strains of ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Coronation’, Isabel and a Canadian delegate led Frances Willard to the podium, where she received the adulation of her audience. The convention played a pivotal role in the development of the WWCTU. Associated meetings, committee deliberations, speeches, and rallies brought temperance and women’s issues into the world spotlight and strengthened bonds between the leadership and the foreign delegates and, through them, their national membership; the convention highlighted female solidarity and provided inspiration for the onward march of the World’s Union, a substantial proportion of this inspiration deriving from Willard’s personal charisma.21 A huge banquet for 9,000 diners was held to welcome participants from every nation, and despite being ‘frightened to death’, Isabel successfully addressed them on the topic of ‘the Mother Country’.22 The National WCTU’s convention which followed hummed with a corresponding programme of activities. The meetings, conducted in Tremont Temple, ‘were filled to overflowing fullness from 9 am to 10 pm each day, from Thursday to the following Wednesday, and . . . on many occasions crowds were turned away’. Delegates attended from across the nation, representing every aspect of the Union’s Do-Everything Policy, and Hannah and Isabel longed ‘for all the BWTA’s to be here and catch the spirit’.23 The convention

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and Willard’s conducting of the proceedings greatly impressed Isabel. The event was ‘the most remarkable gathering I have ever witnessed. . . . The vast audience and their enthusiastic interest were the seal of the work accomplished by that magnificent organization’. She was awed by Willard’s masterful direction of the meetings, like ‘a master conductor’ leading his orchestra.24 Isabel and Hannah Whitall Smith were much in demand in the wider Boston community as speakers and guests on the social circuit; their appeal was enhanced by Isabel’s title, ‘her rank being a great attraction’, according to Hannah. Despite the pressure of work, they accepted as many invitations as possible, ‘for Boston was so aroused that it seemed a pity not to strike while the iron was hot’. Isabel’s many engagements included attending the Park Street Church to address a male audience on their duty to vote in support of temperance candidates; and the delivery of a Sunday sermon from another Boston pulpit, one of sixty such speeches made by WCTU members that day. She also visited sculptress Anne Whitney and, accompanied by Hannah and Willard, called upon poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Isabel being ‘the bright particular comet’, while the others ‘went in as her tail’.25 Isabel’s Boston visit was a personal triumph. Everywhere she met with enthusiastic crowds. Although her title was undoubtedly a factor in her appeal, ‘she herself is so perfectly charming and winning that everybody has fallen in love with her besides; and as for the WCTU women, they have put her on the same pedestal with Miss Willard and fairly adore her’, rhapsodized Hannah Whitall Smith to her family. Lest they attribute these accolades to her personal bias, she stated, ‘You will think I am enthusiastic; but I am not one whit more enthusiastic than everybody is’, quoting tributes she had received in correspondence from Isabel’s admirers. So enthused were the admirers that Hannah, her self-appointed guardian, found herself waging a constant physical battle to protect her friend from the crowds which overwhelmed her at each engagement. Daily, Hannah was obliged to extricate Isabel from battalions of women intent on bestowing kisses, shaking her hand, and showering her with gifts.26 The conventions over, Isabel departed Boston to undertake an exhausting week of engagements in Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore. While in New York, she undertook a midnight circuit of the city’s slums to ascertain for herself ‘in what aspects, if any, the

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problem that confronted humanitarians in the New World differed from that which she had grappled in perplexity so often’. Accompanied by Hannah Whitall Smith, two other companions, and several plain-clothes police officers, Isabel toured Chinatown and the overcrowded tenements of the Bohemian quarter.27 She was impressed by certain aspects of Chinatown, most notably, a Chinese temple, the cleanliness and atmosphere in the eating houses, and the patient, quiet demeanour of many inhabitants. However, the cohabitation of white women with Asian men and the consumption of opium to the point of stupefaction, by the girls as well as the men, horrified her. Isabel witnessed this behaviour with a mixture of sternness and compassion, until one woman, conscious of the onlookers’ contempt for one insensible female, ‘with an instinct of shame . . . turned and covered the other girl’s face with a newspaper’; Isabel’s sternness dissipated, and she observed to Hannah, ‘She is ashamed yet. Poor thing! God pity her’.28 Her inspection of the tenement slums, which followed, was equally distressing. She found the intense overcrowding as bad as in London, and the presence of men sleeping on boards atop barrels, in cellars awash in water and mud, intolerable. The entire evening sojourn made her ‘feel so low in spirit to think how little we have really done to solve these awful problems’.29 After Baltimore, Isabel spent several days in Hampton, Virginia, with Somey, and then both returned to New York, where Isabel had additional appearances to fulfil. By this stage of her American visit, at her son’s behest Isabel had revised her plans for the upcoming months, cancelling her return passage to England in early December and making arrangements to remain in the United States until the spring. Somey had decided to curtail his upcoming stay in Canada, and travel to the Orient in March 1892, where he ‘was so desperately anxious for her to accompany him’. Isabel agreed to do so. Instead of going to England for a brief, unproductive six weeks and then returning to New York in February to rejoin Somey, she decided to remain in the United States until their departure for Japan. This unscheduled time would be used to attend Dwight Moody’s Chicago School of Methods, a training school for Christian workers, where she expected to ‘learn a great deal’. She and Somey would spend Christmas together in Cleveland, after which he would leave for Canada and she for Chicago. However, by late November, Isabel’s plans had been revised yet again,

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prompted by a deterioration in her son’s health. His doctor advised that Somey be removed from New York’s environment, and Isabel arranged to accompany him to Montreal upon completion of her engagements in early December in order to get him suitable accommodation ‘and put him on a regular course of outdoor, healthy and quiet life’. She would then spend Christmas there before travelling to Chicago.30 Upon her return to New York from Virginia with Somey, Isabel had conducted a meeting at Sing Sing prison at the request of the governor. She was appalled by the unreformed prison’s ‘dark passages, with their cage-like cells’, and the sight of the convicts, with ‘striped dresses and shorn heads and sad furrowed faces’, reduced her to tears. Mingling with them in the chapel, she thought she detected a positive response to her presence and believed that ‘some outside world tenderness’ had been able to ‘touch their hearts’. Exhausted by the demands of her schedule of the previous month, and saddened by the recent death of the young editor of the Union Signal, Julia Ames, Isabel was now glad to leave New York. She and Somey travelled by train to Montreal, staying two days in Niagara Falls, en route, where she was enraptured by the cataract in all its winter splendour.31 The pair arrived in Montreal to find the city in the grip of influenza, to which Somey succumbed, further delaying her reunion with Willard in Chicago. In the weeks Isabel had spent in America, she and Willard had formed a strong bond. At the Boston conventions the two were already ‘as inseparable as two lovebirds’, according to Hannah Whitall Smith, and while on her speaking tour Isabel had thought and talked constantly of Willard. Though longing to be with her friend again, Isabel had felt it her duty to make the detour to Montreal, after which she ‘would have the reward of peace and can with a clear conscience have the infinite happiness of seeing you again—of sitting now and then in the room I have so often pictured of holding your hand and hearing your voice and looking on your face’.32 Although disappointed by yet another postponement of her departure for Chicago and frantic with anxiety after receiving news that Willard was ill, Isabel accepted the delay as God’s will, trusting that by the New Year she ‘would be near the one for whom I thank my heavenly Father daily’.33 Isabel finally travelled to Chicago in early January 1892 and settled into modest rooms obtained for her by Anna Gordon, with

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whom she had formed a close friendship.34 Isabel was now without the companionship of her protecting ‘old Mother Hen’, Hannah Whitall Smith, who had sailed for England in early December. As planned, Isabel attended Dwight Moody’s school to be trained in methods of evangelistic work and Bible study. Hannah was concerned that the institution’s rigorous programme would entail sacrifice on Isabel’s part, believing ‘no other woman in her position would do it! I would shrink from it myself. . . . The students . . . are sent out into active work every evening after the day’s study, about which work they are afterwards strictly catechized’.35 Isabel’s arrival in Chicago coincided with a reorganization of the editorial staff of the Union Signal, permitting her to obtain some first-hand journalistic experience. Mary Allen West, a joint editor, had just begun a six-month leave of absence, and the board of directors of the Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association decided to reorganize their staff. Willard and Isabel were appointed ‘editors’, to serve during West’s absence, and the pair also coedited a memorial tribute to Julia Ames, under the title ‘A Young Woman Journalist’; they wrote a series of personal reminiscences of prominent men and women, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Lord Shaftesbury, for the Union Signal.36 Late in January, Somey tired of travelling and decided to return to England. The trip to Japan was cancelled, but Isabel decided to remain in America until April.37 Early in February, she spent four days in Minneapolis-St Paul, assisting prohibitionist John G. Woolley in establishing the Rest Island Mission for intemperate men, and addressing seven meetings in support of the cause.38 Later that month, she accompanied Willard to the St Louis Industrial Conference, a political convention of representatives of the Populist movement, including prohibitionists, farmers’ alliances, and labour groups, who were seeking new ways to co-operate for the advancement of a more equitable society. As the WCTU had lacked the political clout necessary to obtain national legislation of prohibition and women’s suffrage in the 1880s, Willard had allied herself with the Prohibition Party. In 1882, she became a member of the party’s central committee and successfully lobbied the WCTU rank and file to support the party, in whose platform she secured a women’s suffrage plank. She induced the Union to formally endorse the party in 1885, despite opposition which eventually resulted in the Union’s split in 1889. Two other powerful political

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groups were in attendance at the St Louis conference: the labour unions’ Knights of Labour, with whom Willard had associated the WCTU; and Populist farmers’ alliances which had recently coalesced to form the emergent People’s Party. The latter was poised to appropriate the Prohibition Party’s political influence in the nation.39 This challenge to the Prohibition Party’s electoral strength prompted some of its leaders to seek amalgamation with its new reform-party rival in preparation for the 1892 election campaign, but it was Willard who made the critical move in this direction. In January 1892, prior to the St Louis meetings, she successfully convened a conference of representatives of the interested parties, in Chicago. She hoped to gain joint acceptance of the prohibition and women’s suffrage planks by the Prohibition and People’s parties, which could then be endorsed at the respective party conventions and cement amalgamation of the two groups, thereby furthering her political goals. She succeeded in obtaining a compromise agreement on a platform most of the representatives felt able to support and which she planned to use to obtain acceptance by both parties at the St Louis Industrial Conference.40 Isabel’s participation in the conference captured the attention of the delegates and press and served to publicize Willard’s cause. The pair were granted official status as WCTU delegates, including voting privileges. In the event, Isabel’s prestige and Willard’s politicking proved insufficient to sway the delegates. The fusion proposals were too mild for the Prohibition Party, and the People’s Party regarded the proposed platform as an insufficient compromise on prohibition. Opponents within the Prohibition Party, believing Willard had pre-empted them at the Chicago meeting, succeeded in obtaining rejection of her proposals for a merger, in what was to be the most bitter defeat of her professional career. Jack Blocker interprets Willard’s actions in the fusion process as a positive attempt on her part, albeit it with some expediency, to further her and the WCTU’s goals of obtaining prohibition and women’s suffrage legislation. Ruth Bordin has argued that, temperance and humanitarian reasons apart, Willard’s alliances with these political groupings sprang primarily from her quest for personal power, both in the WCTU and American political life.41 At the close of her American visit, Isabel attended the state of Maine’s WCTU meeting paying tribute to Neal Dow, the temperance icon and author of the prohibition legislation known as the

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Maine Law. While in Portland, she witnessed the Law in action as illegal alcohol was emptied into the sewers; she personally poured liquor from a jug, with an exultant ‘Here goes’.42 Prior to Isabel’s departure for England, the Massachusetts WCTU hosted a farewell meeting for her in Boston’s Tremont Temple, plying her with gifts including a rocking-chair, ‘the women having heard that Eastnor Castle did not possess this American article of comfort’.43 In a commendatory address to her, ‘written on vellum and tied with a silver ribbon’, the women lauded her for ‘inspiring tens of thousands by your gracious speech, stirring the pulses of a yet larger host by your printed words, and scattering blessings everywhere by your manifold kindnesses’ during the close to sixty addresses she had delivered while in America. Despite their fulsome tone, the women’s sentiments accurately reflected the genuine esteem in which Isabel was held in American reform circles. Many succeeded in looking beyond her attractive title, sharing the view of one female reformer who opined, ‘The royalty of the woman . . . is not in her title, it is in her service’.44 In one particular aspect, as Neal Dow noted, Isabel’s status played a key role in advancing WCTU objectives by adding an aristocratic lustre to the temperance cause. In a country where there lingered ‘something of the old feeling—that temperance work is “well enough for the vulgar”[—]the visit of Lady S, with her participation in it will go far to dissipate that [notion]’, he told Willard.45 Isabel departed America aboard the Teutonic in early April 1892. After her six months in America, the friendship which had formed between her and Willard had deepened into a mutually loving, interdependent relationship. Many White Ribboners shared Anna Gordon’s sentiments that ‘the Teutonic tugs at our hearts terribly. The fair lady who sailed away has come to be such a part of our very selves . . . it is no wonder there’s an emptiness when she goes’.46 For Isabel and Willard the parting was deeply traumatic. Knowing the depth of her friends’ feelings for each other, Hannah Whitall Smith wondered, ‘How will Isabel and Frank bear to separate?’ Isabel was accompanied to the ship by Willard, who grieved as she watched it depart.47 ‘My Heart; I sail with thee—my heartbeat in thy sweet breast’, she later wrote to Isabel. ‘No thought, emotion or purpose of thine is different from my own . . . I love— I cherish—I enfold—I am wholly thine own.’48 Isabel’s lost diaries would no doubt reveal the depth of her feelings at the separation.

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To her mother she wrote simply, ‘I am very sorry to leave Miss Willard’,49 but during their separation at Christmas, Isabel had written to Willard, ‘I hunger to see thee . . . to take thy hand and know thee near . . . I love thee so tenderly my darling Frank’. A few days after she arrived back in England, the mere sight of a visiting WCTU member was, by simple association, sufficient to make Isabel’s heart ‘bounce with joy’.50 Their demanding schedules would require many wrenching separations in future.51 In today’s culture, the passionate language exchanged by Isabel and Willard appears suggestive of a lesbian relationship. However, homosexuality repelled Willard, who abhorred ‘Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman as purveyors of obscenity’,52 and Isabel’s experience with her husband’s infidelities had made same-sex liaisons repugnant to her. As she raised her son, she was in constant fear that within him lurked the sexual proclivities of his father. Homosexual behaviour was not only an anathema but sinful within the context of the religiously based morality the two women espoused. The endearing phrases used by Willard and Isabel reflected not physical sexual intimacy but a passionate, emotional bond, expressed in flowery Victorian rhetoric, between two people who shared what Carroll Smith-Rosenberg has termed a ‘homosocial’ relationship.53 These frequently ardent and intense alliances between women were commonly accepted as valid relationships by nineteenth-century society. When men’s and women’s daily lives were largely conducted in separate spheres, married and single women alike routinely formed intimate friendships with other females, oftentimes within the family circle, from which they derived emotional support. These liaisons were especially critical to the functioning of the emerging professional woman as she worked outside the domestic circle. Female relationships often included a physical closeness dissociated from genital sex. They can be viewed as the culmination of the conventional Victorian passage through motherdaughter devotion, sisterly affection, and adolescent infatuations into the emotionally supportive and enduring female attachments of the adult years.54 Female relationships were pivotal to Willard’s existence. Although at certain points in her life she maintained close friendships with certain men—indeed, had been engaged to one of them in her early twenties55 and had never totally rejected marriage as an option in her life—the key liaisons of her adulthood were with

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women. Fatherless since age 21, Willard found her chief source of emotional and physical support in her mother, until her death, only five and a half years before Willard’s own. Her mother maintained a home to which Willard could return from her personal and professional journeys and secured her to family and their shared religious faith. The circle at Rest Cottage gradually expanded to include WCTU officers and friends, bonded by mutual affection and dedication to the cause. Many among them communicated with each other in the intimate terminology used by Isabel and Willard, who customarily employed pet names for each other, sometimes diminutives of their Christian or surnames. In their private correspondence to each other, Willard called Isabel ‘Cosimo’, or simply ‘Cossie’, ‘Cozzie’, or ‘Cos’; Isabel often signed herself ‘Pidgie’, while addressing Willard as ‘Frank’ or ‘Conk’. Prior to meeting Isabel, Willard had formed intimate relationships with several women, beginning with fellow teacher Kate Jackson who was a close companion during the 1860s. Following their meeting in 1876, Anna (Nan) Gordon became Willard’s secretary and remained her devoted consort and confidante for 21 years, assisting her in every aspect of her personal and professional life and providing her with emotional support. However, no one relationship was conducted to the exclusion of other friendships.56 Willard acknowledged that Isabel ‘was for me a blessed consummation but my Little Nan the true & tried, faithful, loving & beloved, nestles always in my heart & always will just the same’.57 Conscious of Willard’s position in the WCTU firmament, early in their friendship Isabel fretted that their intimacy might alienate other women in Willard’s circle, and she told her, ‘I so want thee to remember that there are so many who love thee or so jealously guard thy love. So many ready to feel they want no new comer. . . . Will thee promise me not to say thee cares for me?’58 Unlike Willard, Isabel had little experience of close female relationships beyond her family. She was deeply attached to her mother, corresponding with her almost daily when they were apart; their bond endured throughout most of Isabel’s life, Lady Somers dying only 11 years before her daughter. Throughout Isabel’s sheltered childhood and teens, her constant companion was her sister, Adeline, and the two shared a loving relationship. There is no evidence that Isabel enjoyed intimate friendships with other women during her ill-fated marriage. Only with the advent into her life of Hannah

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Whitall Smith when Isabel was 38 years old did she experience a taste of what women’s friendships could offer. She rejoiced in the reciprocated love and emotional serenity which flowed from her intimacy with Willard, confessing to her, ‘I am so glad, so thankful to my heavenly Father that He has given me thy love—that He has let me love thee; life has been often so terrible to me the sea has been so strong and my life so tossed . . . that to me the rest and joy of knowing thee have brought a great thanksgiving and calm into my heart’. Willard later reflected upon how their friendship had affected Isabel’s life: ‘At 40 she found a woman she could love & trust after a life of loneliness.’59 Viewed within the context of England’s nineteenth-century, socially stratified society, the friendship of Isabel and Willard appears incongruous. The Englishwoman was a wealthy aristocrat, raised in privilege and luxury to take her place within the highest social circles in England, while the American was a farmer’s daughter, risen through personal effort and education to be Dean of Women at Northwestern University and then to prominence as leader of the WCTU and World’s Union. Though from widely different backgrounds, the two women enjoyed equal status in the transatlantic temperance community and espoused virtually identical philosophies. Both were dedicated evangelical Christians, total abstainers, and leaders in the organized struggle against the drink traffic, though Willard was a prohibitionist and Isabel favoured direct veto and strict licensing. She shared the American leader’s commitment to the advancement of women’s rights by means of the Do-Everything Policy and to the achievement of social improvement through co-operation with a broad spectrum of contemporary reform organizations. ‘Their lives and ideals became so intertwined that the story of one is in some measure the story of both’, noted Agnes Slack, WWCTU secretary.60 Following their meeting in 1892, until Willard’s death six years later, the pair were almost constantly together. Willard spent many months in England, interspersed with visits by Isabel to America. Their separations endured because, said Willard, ‘we put our work before our love’.61 The two were partners as well as intimate friends, sustaining each other in their work and sharing the disappointments and successes of their professional lives. Their intimacy helped mitigate the stresses deriving from their positions at the helm of a highly visible and contentious social crusade. Each

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rejoiced in the triumphs of the other and recognized their respective achievements. Willard deemed Isabel ‘a wonderful woman— the great woman of her century. . . . Gifts of oratory, writing and organization are all hers’62 and publicly acclaimed her as ‘the bravest of the brave, she never blinks a thing she has once taken up, but she goes boldly forward. She has done splendid work in America’.63 Isabel described Willard as ‘the heart of this great society’, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and ‘the greatest woman leader of our time’.64 Both women drew upon and benefited from the strengths of the other. From Willard, Isabel learned the intricacies of organization, editorial skills, and the expertise to lessen her dread of public speaking, thereby enhancing her confidence and leadership ability. ‘Dear Cossie bears up admirably under her duties of presiding. How she has grown since ’94 when I sat beside her & prompted at her request. Now she steps out strong and firm . . . and leads her host’, noted Willard, apparently forgetting Isabel’s successes at the 1891 Boston conventions (as Willard’s biographer Ruth Bordin points out).65 She also taught Isabel the potential rewards for the Anglo-American reform movement if together ‘they undertook the leadership of the progressive forces of the world’.66 In turn, as president of the BWTA, Isabel provided a new arena in which the American leader might extend her influence under the WWCTU banner, considering Britain more conducive to the advance of the temperance cause than was contemporary America. Through Isabel’s abundant generosity, Willard enjoyed luxurious accommodations and an extensive secretarial staff, in contrast to her frugal lifestyle in America where she had practised extreme thrift in order to conserve limited WCTU funds for the organization’s use.67 Willard’s decision to embrace Christian Socialism may have been influenced by Isabel’s devotion to the philosophy, as the former adopted the belief ‘during her friendship with Somerset’.68 Willard’s journal and Isabel’s and others’ correspondence bear witness to the extent of Isabel’s largesse to Willard, recording holiday, household, travel, and medical expenses paid on Willard’s behalf,69 as well as funding for a variety of WCTU causes and personnel.70 Their alliance drew their respective organizations closer together, a unity which Isabel generously attributed to Willard’s leadership. ‘We feel that we are bound to those whom the great ocean separates with a tie that neither time nor space can dim, for their

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leader has done more to unify the women of England and America than the Atlantic cables that coil their lengths beneath the tossing billows.’71 However, the British Women’s Temperance Association credited their president with cementing the bond during her American tour.72 Isabel held a seat on the board of the Temple office building, downtown Chicago headquarters of the WCTU, and was corresponding editor of the Union Signal, a position which Willard would later hold on the National BWTA’s organ, Woman’s Signal. Their collaboration was extolled as an example of productive interaction for the advance of the women’s movement. The Woman’s Herald urged its readers to organize and co-operate to achieve their suffrage goals, noting, ‘The American and British Women are working along this line, the two Presidents are joined hand in hand, they change their activities one with another, Lady Henry is in America, now Miss Willard returns with her to England’.73 However, Isabel and Willard’s partnership also had negative effects on their leadership. Their desire to work in physical proximity led to extended periods away from their home bases, absences which generated discontent within their respective organizations and fuelled attempts by their opponents to undermine their positions.74 Each woman also suffered from the backlash emanating from the controversial policy decisions of the other. In 1894, the WCTU president forsook the weak anti-lynching resolution she had authored, which had been adopted at the previous year’s WCTU national convention, but she later reinstated the policy in response to pressure from the British Women. This equivocation was utilized by Isabel’s opponents in the BWTA to embarrass her and challenge her leadership. Similarly, in 1897, when Isabel supported the implementation of a revised Contagious Diseases Act, applicable to the British Army in India, Willard’s adversaries in the WCTU capitalized upon the resulting controversy to unleash a flood of criticism against their own leader.75

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5. Frances Willard (left) and Isabel (Lady Henry) Somerset (right), 1892. Courtesy of National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

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Although distressed at parting from Willard in April 1892, Isabel enjoyed a restful voyage across the Atlantic, accompanied by Somey, Arthur Pollen, and her American secretary, Helen Hood. She arrived in Liverpool on 20 April to an enthusiastic welcome by BWTA colleagues, a salutary demonstration by all temperance societies, and a reception hosted by the mayor and mayoress of the city. ‘No words can tell how glad we are to have her back among us again. The eyes of all the Temperance host are on her as the one person who can lead them on to victory’, enthused Hannah Whitall Smith who was on the dock to greet her friend.1 Her enthusiasm was not shared by the conservative majority on the BWTA National Executive Committee, led by the NEC president, Mary Docwra, which had nurtured a growing resentment against Isabel and her policies during her absence. Their pique at Isabel’s active presidential role was intensified by her leadership. In an effort to partially fulfil in absentia her obligations to the Association, Isabel had continued to oversee BWTA activities through a steady flow of directives to the NEC, some of which raised the ire of her opponents on the committee. When she requested delay of the annual council meetings pending her homecoming from America, the executive declined to postpone, opting to retain the May dates and agreeing only to hold an additional ‘special’ BWTA conference, a public meeting, and a World’s WCTU assembly upon Isabel’s originally planned return in June.2 After much soul searching, Isabel decided to relinquish her presidency, having concluded she ‘must have one of two things, either the extreme limitations of the women among whom I work make it a waste of time, or they must once and for all understand the

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position I mean to occupy, and this will make the future more possible. . . . I took it as no human gift to me & and mean to work for it only in the way in which I think I am faithful to my Master’. However, in her letter of resignation to the members of the National Executive Committee, Isabel offered to continue her leadership if they chose to reconsider their decision. After the NEC’s lengthy and evidently acrimonious discussion, the original pages in the Committee’s minutes were removed and the entries rewritten, and the National Executive decided to acquiesce to Isabel’s request and hold the BWTA annual and WWCTU meetings in late June. Hannah triumphantly asserted, ‘Lady Henry has got the victory. . . . I hope they [NEC] will understand now that they have got a leader and not a figure-head’.3 Much to the frustration of the Committee’s conservative majority, shortly afterwards the meetings had to be restored to the original May dates, following Isabel’s decision to return home earlier when her trip to Japan was cancelled.4 As Isabel’s in absentia instructions had mounted, so had the obduracy of her opponents. Her proposal to allow visiting fraternal delegates to attend the BWTA annual council was rejected by the NEC, which resolved that they should be admitted only to the gallery of the meeting hall. This decision grieved Isabel in view of the generous welcome she and English delegates had received from the WCTU in America.5 The Committee also denied her request for the framing and circulation of a BWTA petition to Prime Minister William Gladstone which opposed the return to Parliament and public life of Liberal MP Sir Charles Dilke, who had been cited as a co-respondent in a lurid divorce case in 1886. Her proposed petition draft and accompanying letter to the branches were, instead, passed along to the National Vigilance Association (NVA), which the NEC said was ‘on the alert and only waiting the right time for taking action in this matter’.6 Isabel’s motivation for raising this issue seems to be linked to her relationship with the investigative journalist William T. Stead, editor of the Review of Reviews. Both were active in the Liberal Party and in labour and social purity movements, and their paths would have crossed at gatherings associated with these interests. Both were on the platform at a conference convened by the British Committee for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice in India, held to consider the findings of a departmental commission into violations of regulations among the army on the subcontinent. Following her return from America,

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Stead interviewed Isabel and published his ‘Character sketch’ of her in his periodical.7 William Stead was then, and continues to be, a controversial figure, considered a fearless reformer by some and a ‘sensationalist’ by others. In 1885, in a successful effort to expose child prostitution in London brothels, he had bought a 13-year-old girl and reported his experiences in an article, ‘Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon’; it was published in the Pall Mall Gazette, of which he was currently editor. His actions led to the raising of the age of consent from 13 to 16, the formation of the National Vigilance Association, and his conviction on a technicality, for which he served a three-month prison sentence.8 Dilke’s biographer, Roy Jenkins, describes Stead as ‘an extreme egotist’, morally intolerant, and a ‘puritan fascinated by sex’, but credits the journalist with having ‘force and courage’. Following Dilke’s trial in the divorce suit, Stead utilized the columns of the Pall Mall Gazette to publicize the case in order to boost the publication’s circulation; his pecuniary interest in the issue was later replaced by ‘an abiding but selfrighteous vindictiveness towards Dilke’. In the name of public morality, Stead waged a fierce but unsuccessful campaign in print and with public speeches to block the ‘adulterer’ Dilke’s nomination as Liberal candidate for the Forest of Dean, blanketing the constituency with his pamphlets and addressing constituents in the run up to the 1892 general election.9 Isabel supported Stead’s crusade by joining him on the platform of Dilke’s Conservative opponent in the election, ‘who was not only a Tory but a brewer to boot’. For her pains she was pursued to the railway station by a mob of Liberal supporters who hurled curses and stoned her carriage.10 In addition to this activism and her proposal for a BWTA anti-Dilke petition, Isabel openly remonstrated at the 1892 BWTA annual meeting against his re-election, without actually mentioning him by name. Noting that the Association was committed to the moral and legal equality of men and women, she declared that ‘when a woman’s fair name has been dragged into disgrace, and a home blighted’, British Women were duty bound to ‘stand firm to the principle that bids us say that, until such a man has cleared himself as publicly as she who has been dishonoured has been condemned, we cannot accept him among our rulers and law givers’.11 Isabel’s antagonism towards Dilke was rooted in home protection, the desire for improved ethics in

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government, and the feminists’ demand for equality of the sexes and abolition of the sexist ‘double standard’ operating in Victorian society; her hostility was no doubt reinforced by abhorrence of his alleged adultery and by empathy with his wife’s humiliation, having herself experienced marital infidelity and the resulting public embarrassment. The most controversial of Isabel’s in absentia directives from America concerned the thorny issue of women’s suffrage, of which the NEC majority did not approve. The question of the female franchise had always been a contentious one within the BWTA, drawing support from those who believed the women’s vote would be a strong weapon against the liquor interests, and drawing opposition from the conservatives who determined to maintain the organization as a purely temperance pressure group. The assertion by suffragists’ leader Millicent Fawcett that ‘Temperance legislation to be successful requires a woman’s vote’ had been endorsed by the BWTA in 1884 and then promoted within the Association by its president, Margaret Bright Lucas. In 1887, National Executive Committee member and lecturer Laura Ormiston Chant had argued for women’s suffrage before Dublin temperance women.12 At that year’s BWTA annual council, the delegates had considered the benefits which the female franchise would bring to their movement, and the issue received a positive response from some NEC members, including a number of the conservatives. A resolution ‘that this Conference of the BWTA considers that justice requires the admission of duly qualified women to the electorate and believes it will place in their hands a powerful instrument for good to the Cause of Temperance’ was adopted with a large majority of votes, but not unanimously.13 In March 1892, writing to the NEC from Chicago, Isabel urged that a petition to Parliament be drafted in support of Sir Alfred Rollit’s and Mr Walter McLaren’s women’s suffrage bills, which were to be debated in the Commons in April and May. The Committee prepared a document incorporating Isabel’s wording and circulated it to the branches for voluntary adoption, and instructing any that supported the petition to forward it to their MP with a request that he vote for the measure. Isabel next submitted a suffrage resolution for discussion at the forthcoming annual council, which asserted, ‘We hold that the spiritual and moral forces of women must be brought to bear directly on the ballot box; that in view of the great moral gain that has been realized by granting the

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municipal and other votes to women, and holding that their vote will always be an enacting clause to all Temperance legislation, we ask that the Parliamentary vote be extended to them’, and declared an intent to establish a department for suffrage work. Concerned that the resolution would prove controversial, the Committee resolved to consult Isabel on the issue, but failed to do so. When opposition to the resolution materialized, they sought to deflect criticism by claiming that lack of time had prevented any discussion of the question between themselves and their president; thus, she was the sole architect of the motion. In actuality, Isabel had met with an NEC Subcommittee in April and had agreed to modify her franchise resolution by deleting the phrase ‘that a Superintendent be appointed [for a suffrage department], lest it should bind the Association to what it might not wish’.14 Subsequently, when the Association was close to schism over Isabel’s pursuit of the Do-Everything Policy, the conservative majority asserted that they had not thought ‘it desirable to take up the question of Suffrage’ in 1892; they had acted upon the women’s franchise petition because having refused to act on the anti-Dilke petition, they did not wish to deny her request. Their aim was to ‘keep the peace and oblige the President’. In fact, the suffrage petition had been discussed and adopted one week before the Dilke issue was debated and rejected.15 Shortly after returning to England Isabel went to stay with Hannah Whitall Smith ‘for a complete time of rest and quiet’ before the BWTA annual meetings of 3 to 5 May and to discuss with her ‘many new ideas . . . gained in America’. Anticipating the controversy that would erupt over her proposals, Isabel decided to be diplomatic, resolving ‘that for the future I shall let the women do all they can and nip nothing in the bud, but only try to organize their efforts into channels that are likely to prove more useful’. She was nevertheless determined to transform the BWTA into a more progressive organization and prepared an annual address ‘far fuller and more complete than anything up to the present’, stating her vision for its development.16 Her six months of exposure to Willard’s leadership and WCTU methods, plus her experiences on the platform in the United States, had matured Isabel. She returned imbued with more confidence in her leadership abilities, increased competence in speaking and organizational skills, a firm resolve to

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overcome opposition to her reform programme, and a determination to make the BWTA an organization for all women’s issues. The 1892 BWTA convention became an arena for the contesting factions within the Association. On one side were the ‘conservatives’ on the National Executive Committee, led by its president, Mary Docwra, and including A. S. Atkinson; A. E. Atherton; suffragist and purity worker Fanny Forsaith; Lady Elizabeth Biddulph; and the Association’s honorary secretary, Jessie Fowler. Opposing them were the ‘progressives’ on the NEC, among them BWTA corresponding secretary, Mrs Aukland; Florence Balgarnie and Laura Ormiston Chant, activists for women’s rights; Mrs Hugh Price Hughes; Mrs Massingberd; and Hannah Whitall Smith. The factions’ competing philosophies produced ‘a most stormy Council meeting’,17 discord which intensified in the months that followed. As the council convened, Isabel’s opponents moved to assert their authority. Suspicious that their president was attempting to manipulate the Association’s rules to her own advantage, her adversaries challenged her seating of certain council delegates, claiming that procedural irregularities rendered them ineligible to attend the meetings. This flexing of the conservatives’ authoritative muscles was a harbinger of resistance to come.18 In her presidential address, Isabel presented her plan for work in the future, expanding the Association’s traditional temperance enterprise to reflect Willard’s Do-Everything Policy. The plan comprised broad moral, social, and political reforms and advocated adoption of the WCTU’s departmental system, which conducted six divisions of work: preventive, political, evangelistic, educational, social, and legal. To make clear her determination to pursue these initiatives, Isabel reminded the delegates that she had accepted the BWTA presidency to provide leadership. ‘To act simply as a figurehead seemed to me then, as now, to be holding a position unworthy of me, and certainly unworthy of you.’ She urged that co-operation and Christian charity reign. ‘Let us with affectionate candour tell each other where we think work can be improved, errors amended, or mistakes avoided. . . . Let self be so surrendered that all we have is invested in this one absorbing enterprise of our life, the profit of humanity.’19 Isabel’s appeal brought no sympathetic response from the NEC conservative majority and its supporters, her proposals provoking a battle royal at the annual meetings. They blocked her attempt to revise bureaucratic procedures to permit resolutions from the floor

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at the council, rejecting Isabel’s justification that ‘there crop up at these Meetings ideas and plans which must be settled by competent Delegates; and it is impossible for this to be done if the Delegates have not a free hand. . . . If these Annual Meetings are to be anything, they must shape the policy of the organization’. A resolution supporting her call for the establishment of the departmental system, particularly a department for political work, was ruled out of order, the conservatives fearing this structure would provide a channel for the introduction of more sweeping reforms, especially suffrage work. Isabel’s claim that the system had been sanctioned and passed at the 1891 council, as witnessed by the already operating Press and Young Women’s departments, was dismissed by Mary Docwra who denied such approval had been given, save perhaps for police-court work. After protracted discussion, it was agreed to create a committee for departmental work, consisting of seven members of the executive, including Isabel as chair, and seven others nominated by the branches and elected by ballot. The committee was empowered to appoint superintendents and implement the departmental system, all decisions to be subject to ratification at the annual council of 1893. Isabel later accused the conservative majority of manipulating elections to the departmental committee in order to obtain members opposed to its mandate, thereby ‘defeating the express wishes of the last Council meeting’, with the result that departmental work existed only on paper.20 The conservatives launched a bitter attack against Isabel’s modified suffrage resolution, though she illustrated it was not breaking new political ground. In Britain’s 1892 county council elections, the NEC had instructed BWTA branches to lobby female electors to cast their ballots for temperance candidates. The NEC’s electoral committee had also included in the BWTA questionnaire for parliamentary candidates in the forthcoming general election the question ‘Are you in favour of the Parliamentary Franchise being extended to Women on the same terms as it is or may be to men?’ Isabel had requested only that this question be placed before the council, and opinions on it expressed.21 The conservatives’ offensive was led by Lady Elizabeth Biddulph, an NEC member and Isabel’s colleague in the Ledbury branch of the Association. In March she had protested to the NEC about the publication in the British Women’s Temperance Journal of a leaflet by the Central National Society for Women’s Suffrage, ‘The Temperance Question and Women’s

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Suffrage’. It asserted that the BWTA leadership, including Isabel, favoured votes for women, evidence that party politics had been introduced into the Association, claimed Biddulph. Mary Docwra had informed Isabel of Lady Elizabeth’s objections and warned that further action on suffrage would likely rekindle her indignation.22 Biddulph declared the suffrage motion at odds with the BWTA’s professed non-political, non-sectarian basis, urging those who wished to support suffrage to join the society dedicated to its implementation and not to ally this work with the British Women’s cause. ‘I consider it most mad—most injurious, to link the movement for Women’s Suffrage with that of Temperance’, and she predicted any such bond would ‘wreck this Association’. Conservatives in the NEC voiced their opposition. Mrs Stewart declared that she would leave the BWTA if the resolution was accepted, a decision echoed by Mrs Servante; Mary Docwra asserted that many members would follow suit and ‘a grave crisis will arise’ in the Association; Mrs Atherton claimed many delegates had stated that their branches would dissolve if the motion was carried. Yet Docwra, Stewart, and Atherton had all supported the call for women’s suffrage at the 1887 annual council meeting.23 The progressives mounted a spirited counterattack to this assault on suffrage work, among them Mrs Jabez Carter who observed that while ‘easy-going’ housewives may fail to appreciate the need for women’s vote, London’s poverty-stricken East End provided thousands of examples of why the female franchise was needed; the women who spurn it ‘are wilfully blind’ and purposely remain ignorant of the vote’s value as tool for reform. Mrs Pearson argued that the Association must consider the issue ‘sooner or later; we cannot escape from it’, the drink traffic being so legally ensconced that only legislation could reduce its hold upon society. Decrying the failure of petitions to influence lawmakers, Miss Guttridge suggested this would not have occurred ‘had we been voters. We shall not receive due attention until then’, and several delegates affirmed their branches’ support of women’s suffrage.24 Isabel emphasized that her suffrage resolution did not require any members to relinquish their position on the issue, nor to publicly utter one word about the female franchise, ‘but you are asked as individual members and Delegates from the Branches . . . to say whether you think that Suffrage would help our Reform’. She acknowledged that the issue posed a threat to the Association’s

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unity, ‘but surely those who hold deep convictions cannot remain silent?’ After protracted debate, Lady Biddulph’s amendment, ‘That it is undesirable, and indeed inadvisable to join an expression of opinion on Woman’s Suffrage with the work of the BWTA’, was voted upon and defeated, 39 to 66, by a reduced number of delegates, many having left owing to the lateness of the hour. Evidence suggests the majority had earlier conceived a strategy to pre-empt the franchise issue at the council, one of their number having stated that inserting the suffrage resolution at the tail end of the agenda would ensure ‘there will be no time for it to come on at all’. The council ended with the franchise question still in dispute, the battle lines drawn, and the progressive and conservative factions unreconciled.25 The NEC subsequently decided that the 1892 council minutes be published in full for the branches only and that a rider be attached stating that although the council had expressed support for women’s suffrage, this approval did not bind the branches to act on the matter unless they so desired.26 According to Hannah Whitall Smith, the NEC majority’s hostility towards Isabel sprang from two sources, the suffrage issue and aversion to her proposed ‘Americanization’ of the BWTA. At the annual meetings, the executive had declined to meet with two WCTU fraternal delegates or permit their presentation to the council. Isabel’s ‘enthusiasm over the despised Americans seemed more than they could bear . . . and they were determined to stamp out all plans that have the dreadful American taint’, asserted Hannah. Mary Docwra denied that the NEC majority’s offensive at the council had created dissension within the Association, insisting defensive action had only been taken to retain the BWTA as a temperance-only organization by rejecting ‘introduction of other subjects . . . which we believe must diffuse the energies of the members’, namely, the Do-Everything Policy. The majority supported the principle of women’s suffrage but opposed its incorporation into BWTA work, ‘whereby many would be alienated from our Association’.27 The conservatives’ aversion to suffrage, and the entire DoEverything Policy, included a political dimension. In 1891, current Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone had endorsed his party’s Newcastle Programme, which embodied direct veto, and temperance forces, who were experiencing a rise of their political influence over the party, were optimistic that anti-drink legislation

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would soon be enacted. Consequently, some BWTA members feared that expansion of their work into ‘progressive’ reforms would dilute their efforts and jeopardize this outcome. ‘With a Government in power pledged to support the Direct Veto, . . . it is the duty of British Women . . . to keep steadily to their Temperance work . . . and not to allow their energies just now to be diverted into other channels, however worthy’.28 Additionally, as Ian Tyrrell has noted, Isabel’s strong links to the Women’s Liberal Federation alienated certain Anglican BWTA members who were loyal to the Conservative Party’s female association, the Primrose League; they were apprehensive that Isabel’s new reform initiatives would create political problems for the BWTA, a situation reminiscent of the split that had resulted from ideological differences between Willard and Judith Foster of the Non-Partisan Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.29 Tory temperance women eschewed any policies they believed would more closely identify the BWTA with the Liberals, already the parliamentary ally of the predominantly Nonconformist temperance movement, and thereby transgress the Association’s avowed non-partisan political stance. The NEC conservatives had previously raised no public objections to political and suffrage issues, and Isabel believed they had deliberately utilized these questions at the 1892 annual meeting to prejudice the Association’s Tory members against her when it became expedient to do so.30 Although power was concentrated in the conservative majority’s hands, Hannah was confident that the Association’s rank and file supported Isabel and that she would carry the day in the end, though Hannah acknowledged ‘it is going to be a hard fight’.31 This struggle began in earnest immediately after the 1892 annual meetings. The majority’s attack was spearheaded by Atherton, Docwra, and Stewart. A letter signed ‘A Lover of Peace’ appeared in the May issue of the Temperance Record, and several temperance journals subsequently printed Mrs Atherton’s speech to the Chelmsford branch of the BWTA; both items accused Isabel of fomenting disunity through her autocratic attempt to implement sweeping reforms and urged those supporting her policies to ‘leave the Association with her’. Atherton thereafter repeatedly echoed her call for division of the organization. Evidence indicated she authored the letter, which she denied, accusing Isabel of knowingly making a false accusation; Isabel persistently repudiated the

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charge. The very public dispute simmered for over a year until Isabel established that the offending letter was sent by Atherton’s personal secretary, which suggested the NEC member ‘was perfectly cognizant of what was written’.32 To dispel rumours, restore harmony, and diffuse concern over decisions taken by the council, Isabel distributed a letter to the branches detailing the proceedings, with particular emphasis on departmental and franchise issues, and again urged the formation of a suffrage department because ‘the results that have been obtained by the woman’s ballot in the municipal elections have placed the argument beyond dispute’. When ten branches responded with protests against the unconstitutional introduction and passage of ‘debatable matter’ at the council, Isabel provided documentation from her lawyer which exonerated her of the alleged unconstitutional behaviour. In a detailed retrospective of established political and departmental work, she illustrated that there had been no innovative or ‘debatable’ matter included in the platform of the BWTA. In an effort to correct a misconception prevailing among the membership, she emphasised that the adoption of the suffrage resolution did not require any member or branch ‘to speak for Woman’s Suffrage’ or bind them ‘to either its principle or its advocacy’.33 The NEC majority conservatives countered with a branch circular refuting Isabel’s version of council events and decrying her efforts to introduce policy resolutions not on the agenda. They accused her of a ‘veiled attempt’ to manipulate the NEC elections and replace current officers with her own nominees, as evidenced by a list of their names which was observed by a delegate (later revealed to be Mary Docwra); they claimed that the suffrage resolution was illegally adopted, having been passed when the council was in an extended session at a changed location with depleted numbers of delegates, some irregular. The progressive minority attempted to block the circular but were unsuccessful.34 The ‘nominees’ referred to by Docwra were revealed to be only Isabel’s suggestions for possible replacement-candidates for retiring officers, and Isabel requested the executive publicly disclose their source of information or issue a retraction of the accusation; she was confident that their ‘sense of justice will lead you to see that a personal attack of this sort ranks in a totally different category from any blame that you may attach to my policy in public work’.35

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When the majority failed to act, the minority issued an explanatory branch letter condemning the majority’s circular as a false assessment of Isabel’s actions and policies, the ‘veiled attempt’ having been proven untrue. Docwra insisted that Isabel’s candidate list was not the one she had seen at council, and Mrs Stewart declared, ‘Of course the one has been destroyed, and the other substituted’, impugning Isabel’s honesty. Though innocent of the charges, Isabel felt the NEC majority believed that the controversy undermined her credibility and warranted her resignation, but she informed the Committee she would leave the decision up to the annual council, where she ‘would tender my explanation to the women who elected me’.36 The majority and minority circulars, together with delegate feedback from the council meeting, generated a flurry of responses from the membership around the country. Minutes of the NEC disclose that the Committee received from the branches a further 98 letters and resolutions concerning the council proceedings. Seventeen recorded in their entirety show that eight branches affirmed their confidence in Isabel’s leadership and policies; three objected to the advocacy of suffrage; three complained of constitutional irregularities at council; two called for reconciliation between the opposing factions; and one simply declared support for the conservative majority. Two correspondents to the Association’s organ, British Women’s Temperance Journal, wrote praising their president’s leadership and supporting the new directions taken at the council; they urged suppression of the ‘individual prejudices’ hampering their work, noting, ‘Our enemies rejoice at this foolishness, and we lose God-given opportunities for action’. Given that the opinions expressed in the bulk of the 98 communications are unknown, this sample cannot claim to accurately reflect the British Women’s reaction to the dissension in the NEC, but it gives some credence to Hannah Whitall Smith’s admittedly partisan claim that the provincial branches ‘are all with her, and . . . from all parts of the country are coming up to the Executive Committee letters and Resolutions endorsing our beloved Chieftain, and rejoicing in her forward movement’.37 Hannah Whitall Smith’s confidence in grass-roots support for Isabel was, however, qualified by her admission that the majority of the British Women had ‘very little idea of what the whole trouble is’. Responding to this situation, both factions launched their

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campaigns to win over the rank and file to their respective viewpoints. The conservatives enjoyed an advantage provided by their control of the BWTA’s official organ, British Women’s Temperance Journal, secured while Isabel was in America. They had obtained four of the five directorships of the Association’s new company which was established in the spring of 1892 to gain sole jurisdiction over the direction and publishing of the journal; these functions had hitherto been carried out under a male proprietorship. After a transition period, the first truly independent edition of the publication was issued in October, bearing the new title Wings.38 The organ functioned as a communication link between the NEC and the membership around the country, furnishing the conservative majority with a direct conduit to the grass roots. This faction first exercised its journalistic control shortly after the 1892 annual meetings, directing the current editor of the periodical to suppress sections of his editorial in the June issue; they claimed it placed their policies in a poor light by suggesting that the BWTA faced a choice between a future which ‘shall be one of real growth . . . or consist of comparatively circumscribed work on somewhat narrow lines’.39 Wings refrained from outright denunciation of Isabel, but its feigned neutrality disappeared with the old year. The January and February 1893 editorials openly attacked her and her policies, and thereafter, the open warfare raging within the BWTA executive was transposed onto the organ’s pages. The competing policies of the rival factions were published, together with reports of support for their respective positions and with editorial imputations of undemocratic manoeuvring by Isabel to facilitate acceptance of her programme in defiance of the will of the majority.40 When the majority had commandeered the British Women’s Temperance Journal, they removed a prominent advocate of Isabel’s leadership and policies, the paper’s editor, Edward T. Bennett, and replaced him with the conservative Miss Forsaith. Bennett’s supportive editorials and exposure of Isabel’s reform agenda, particularly suffrage,41 had provided her with valuable publicity, which was now lost. Consequently, in order to publicize her ideas and to counterbalance the negative criticisms published by her opponents, Isabel acquired Woman’s Herald, a weekly publication linked with the Women’s Liberal Federation (WLF) and focussing on female suffrage and women’s rights, and she gradually transformed it into a mouthpiece for temperance issues. Isabel

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had begun her association with the periodical following the 1892 annual council, assisting the female editor in an unspecified capacity,42 and she assumed overall control in February 1893. Under the co-editorship of Isabel and Edwin Stout, a journalist and colleague of W. T. Stead, their first ‘independent’ edition of Woman’s Herald appeared on 23 February 1893, as the official organ of the British section of the WWCTU, proclaiming that it would ‘in the future be as much identified with the cause of Temperance, and other social reforms advocated by the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, as it is with the cause of the Women’s Liberal Federation’.43 Isabel hoped that colleagues would contribute articles to the Woman’s Herald, to ease the burden of her editorship. Isabel found this task, when added to her already considerable duties, ‘somewhat arduous’ despite the ‘splendid help Stout [brought] to the paper’. She successfully appealed to temperance and feminist activists to submit pieces for inclusion in the paper. Among the many articles appearing in its columns were those of Frances Willard; William T. Stead; Mrs F. Morrison and Miss G. Stewart, treasurer and secretary, respectively, of the Central National Society of Women’s Suffrage; and Florence Balgarnie.44

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When reports of the fractious 1892 BWTA annual council reached Frances Willard, she felt Isabel should simply withdraw from the BWTA and dedicate her efforts to the WWCTU, ‘hoping to carry the Branches with her’. However, Hannah Whitall Smith cautioned that the loyal British Women would not abandon their Association for the World’s Union, and Isabel’s action would make her ‘very unpopular in a great many quarters and would give her enemies some ground for saying . . . she had come into the work to divide it’.1 Isabel herself was determined to make the BWTA the vehicle for WWCTU work in Britain by bringing the British Women into the World’s fold,2 a task which proved fraught with difficulties. Prior to Isabel’s presidency, the BWTA membership had displayed little enthusiasm for the World’s Union, and upon returning from America, she commenced her campaign to increase the organization’s base in Britain. She convened a meeting of the board of the WWCTU’s British section, established by the BWTA NEC in June 1890, and a conference was sanctioned and held on 6 May. The attendees included between 30 and 40 presidents of philanthropic societies which Isabel hoped to draw into the WWCTU for mutual support in advancing social improvement. A subcommittee of the British section’s board formulated a constitution for the section, which was adopted at its first annual meeting on 28 July 1892; a national executive was elected, of which only Isabel was permitted to serve on the BWTA NEC.3 For the NEC majority, the World’s WCTU represented the insidious infiltration of American ideas into the BWTA, and the conservatives used the WWCTU as a weapon against Isabel in their fight for supremacy. When she offered to finance a rental office

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adjoining the BWTA’s Memorial Hall headquarters to facilitate the conducting of her business for both the Association and the WWCTU and provide a location where their respective personnel might supply mutual support, the NEC objected, citing the move as ‘likely to cause confusion with the Branches and others’. Isabel was obliged to locate her office in another part of London, at 47 Victoria Street, where the official opening of the World’s British section headquarters was held on 20 July 1892. It provided ‘a place where our American sisters would be welcome, and where the petty jealousies of the BWTA Executive would not disturb us’, noted Hannah Whitall Smith.4 The NEC majority also condemned the British WWCTU for creating a constitution which increased fees and permitted affiliation of single societies or sections thereof, plus individual memberships, which they claimed changed the Union from an international one to a ‘rival National one . . . planted . . . amongst our Branches and . . . working on our ground’. As Isabel pointed out, the BWTA delegates had voted adoption of these rules at the WWCTU’s 1891 Boston convention, binding the organization to conform, and she denied that the WWCTU was encroaching upon the BWTA’s constituency. The Association had maintained a close relationship with the World’s Union since its inception, under the presidencies of Parker and Lucas; the WWCTU focussed primarily upon the colonies and elsewhere abroad and included reformers working for causes other than temperance. When groups of women requested registration as a WWCTU branch, she directed them to join the BWTA and affiliate to the World’s Union through that organization.5 In September 1892, the NEC suspended the BWTA’s affiliation with the World’s WCTU, pending examination of the new constitution by the 1893 annual council, and without full NEC official authorization or Isabel’s knowledge, its honorary secretary, Jessie Fowler, notified the branches. The NEC minority informed the membership that affiliation could only be ended by action of the annual council, and despite the difficulties produced by NEC antagonism, the WWCTU British section’s London headquarters succeeded in establishing itself as a communication centre for the colonies; it welcomed members from around the world and had distributed a total of 448,100 pages of literature by May 1893.6 The NEC treasurer, Mrs Stewart, issued a circular letter to the branches, condemning the ‘foreign power’ personified in the ‘Willard party’ for

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insinuating the strategies of the WCTU into the BWTA ‘so to acquire this organization for the establishment of their own work of the WWCTU’. Willard emphatically denied the claim. Stewart asserted that American influence was controlling Isabel’s actions, manifesting in her determination to introduce the WCTU’s methods, administer the Association’s organ to ‘make it subservient’ to nontemperance causes, and adopt Willard’s political partisanship and autocratic leadership style. The BWTA president had been drawn into a ‘conspiracy’ to take over the Association for American purposes. The WWCTU for the British Empire was in reality a ‘new’ society, constituted to compete with the BWTA. ‘Lady Henry’s heart is with her American friends and the World’s WCTU party in England.’7 Hannah Whitall Smith concluded that the majority’s antiAmerican stance sprang from their middle-class ‘race prejudice’. In general, being American gave one ‘at once a passport to English hearts’, particularly among the aristocracy, but the NEC conservatives were too parochial and ‘insular in their feelings’ to have interest even in Britain’s colonial possessions. ‘They literally hate the World’s WCTU and lose no chance at sneering at it.’8 However, the chief cause of the conservatives’ animosity towards the World’s WCTU seems to have been not anti-Americanism or cultural bias but their fears that a WWCTU British executive directed by Isabel would emerge as a rival administration, dedicated to converting ‘an international society and its objects and interests into a national society’; they also feared that it would undermine NEC authority and curtail the BWTA’s independence. Evidence of conservatives’ ongoing fraternization with the American movement gives credence to this assessment. One of the majority’s most vigorous protagonists, NEC honorary secretary Jessie Fowler, was a US citizen, and in their fight with ‘the Willard party’ the NEC majority courted the support of Judith Foster’s Non-Partisan Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, a group which had split from the WCTU over policy differences.9 Stewart’s intensification of the anti-American rhetoric, particularly against the WCTU president, greatly distressed Isabel, especially because it followed upon Frances Willard’s arrival in England at the beginning of September 1892. She had come for a brief private visit to recuperate from ill health and the trauma of her mother’s death in August, which had left her completely debilitated. The criticism

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was also in direct contrast to the wonderful welcome Isabel had received from the WCTU on her visit to America.10 According to Willard, Stewart’s comments constituted a ‘sorry reception’ for the WCTU president.11 Isabel, to whom Willard’s mother ‘had committed Frances as a sacred charge on her death bed’,12 received Willard with ‘unbounded love’, preparing rooms for her and Anna Gordon at Eastnor Castle and the Reigate estate.13 Isabel had funded their passages in the hope that the visit would help assuage her beloved friend’s grief.14 Isabel had Willard assessed by a physician, who pronounced her to be ‘on the verge of nervous prostration’ and counselled her against returning to America. As Willard was determined to attend the WCTU annual convention in Denver in October, Isabel felt duty bound to accompany her, assist her with her work, and ensure she returned to England for a complete rest. Hannah Whitall Smith believed that, given the state of the WCTU president’s health, without Isabel’s supporting presence on the trip Willard ‘would have been lost to the work for many years, if not forever’. To accommodate the unexpected journey, Isabel had to quickly rearrange her schedule—not an easy task.15 She notified the branches of the circumstances necessitating her departure for America, which required she postpone her scheduled attendances at their upcoming meetings. She cancelled her appearance at the BWTA autumnal conference in York, pointing out that the unauthorized Fowler circular on WWCTU de-affiliation would in any case have prohibited her attendance at York as she ‘could not cooperate with the Executive Committee in an official capacity when my relation to them as President of the Association has been so utterly disregarded’. The NEC denounced Isabel’s proposed absence: ‘We consider your Presidency of the BWTA should take precedence of your VicePresidency of the WWCTU.’ One executive member publicly claimed that in July, Isabel had already arranged her passage to America, prior to committing to the York meetings, an accusation she successfully refuted with documentation supplied by the shipping line confirming her reservation was made 19 September.16 Undeterred, Isabel sailed with Willard for America on 10 October. They attended the Denver conference, participated in the dedication of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and spent a week in Evanston arranging for the rental of part of Willard’s house, Rest Cottage. On 16 November they left from New

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York aboard the Majestic on their return voyage to England. For the next four years, Willard would make her home with Isabel in England, visiting America only to attend WCTU annual conventions.17 Her stay was made possible through Isabel’s largesse. Willard lived on an irregular, modest salary from the WCTU, which was temporarily reduced by the 1893 financial crisis in America. Isabel provided her friend with lavish accommodations and a phalanx of clerical staff, and funded her excursions in Britain and the Continent, plus transatlantic travel. Willard’s sister-in-law, Mary Bannister Willard, her son and her daughters were guests at Reigate and Eastnor. Isabel also introduced Willard into English upper-class social circles. At the opening of the Royal Institute in May 1893 the pair could be found in company with Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales, other royalty, and prominent individuals like Mrs Gladstone. In January they were entertained to tea at Lady Biddulph’s home and dined with the Archbishop of Canterbury; in June they lunched with Lady de Rothschild and her daughter, Lady Battersea.18 In the months-long contest to win grass-roots endorsement prior to the decisive 1893 BWTA annual council, Willard provided Isabel with support, both public and private, which further ‘fanned the flames of dissension’ raging within the BWTA. As Isabel was already considered by the conservatives ‘to be contaminated by Americanism’, her very visible association with Willard served to escalate the NEC majority’s campaign against their president19 and to increase their animosity towards the WCTU leader. A derogatory item about Isabel and Willard in the English yellow press was sent to British Women at locations in which their president was due to speak, and a derisive article on the Do-Everything Policy, published in the Temperance Record, was also circulated from BWTA headquarters. A re-issued edition of Stewart’s offending circular letter was distributed in Britain and the United States, and she refused to retract any of her statements against Willard. The NEC majority declined Isabel’s request to repudiate the letter or censure its contents, and they again accused Willard of attempting to capture the BWTA for the World’s Union.20 In support of their campaign to discredit Isabel, Willard, and the progressive policy, the conservatives approached Non-Partisan WCTU president Judith Ellen Foster and obtained from her a subjective account of the Do-Everything Policy’s impact on the American movement, which they published in Wings. Foster asserted

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that the adoption of women’s suffrage and political party affiliation had been obtained only ‘after several years of indirect and concealed approaches’, an accurate assessment of Willard’s gradual introduction of her progressive policies, but Foster went on to erroneously claim that their adoption had destroyed WCTU unity and impeded reform. ‘None can measure the discord, the weakness, and the delay which have come to the Temperance cause in the United States’ as a result of the policy21—an assessment publicly refuted by two prominent Americans, temperance stalwart Neal Dow and author and orator the Reverend Joseph Cook.22 The statements of Stewart and Foster were fastened upon by journalists, and criticism of the two presidents and their broad policy appeared in the press. The all-male National Temperance League, which opposed the NEC minority’s progressive policies, repeatedly attacked them in their organ, the Temperance Record. The previously aired accusations that Isabel derived part of her wealth from the proceeds of public houses were again published by several papers, prompting the New York Sun to come to her defence by reiterating that she had closed many of the establishments but was powerless to close the remainder, pending the completion of their leases.23 Despite the conservatives’ public airing of the NEC dissension, and the adverse publicity in the press, Isabel resisted opening up the debate to general scrutiny; however, she felt justified in defending her position in her New Year’s letter to the BWTA membership. She stressed that her aim was only to implement the policy endorsed by the 1892 annual council. She expressed regret at the actions of the NEC majority, by which she and Willard had been ‘wounded in the house of our friends’, but declared she had ‘not one harsh feeling towards the members of the Executive—this is a question of principles not of persons’. She acknowledged the dissension in the executive committee, employing the analogy ‘Mr. Gladstone cannot work with Mr. Salisbury’s cabinet, nor Lord Salisbury with Mr. Gladstone’s’. She reiterated her determination not to resign but to await the decision of the British Women at the next annual council: ‘When we meet, you will render your verdict’, she declared.24 On 9 January 1893, Isabel held an impressive welcome reception for Willard at London’s Exeter Hall, which it was hoped might ‘be made a leverage for the “party of progress” and the ‘wider movement”’. Representatives from between 40 and 50 separate temperance,

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women’s reform, and philanthropic societies, and Liberal groups, together with MPs and members of the London County Council, joined Isabel for the event. Some 5,000 people were in attendance, 1,500 of them being accommodated at an overflow meeting in an adjacent hall, while many had to be turned away. Willard received several standing ovations from the audience, and the event received favourable reports from the press.25 In her address Willard outlined the Do-Everything Policy and urged the involvement of temperance women in politics, social purity, and the campaign for women’s suffrage. As president of the WWCTU, to which the BWTA remained officially affiliated, she could not rightly be accused of overstepping her authority in suggesting these methods of work. American WCTU members had offered British Women advice on organization and methodology since the Association’s inception. Her pronouncements once again provoked accusations of American ‘interference’ in the BWTA, one conservative opining, ‘In the present unfortunate state of the “British Women” not a few are likely to regard with a little suspicion—shall we say—advice which comes from over the water’.26 With the new year, the struggle for control of the Association intensified as both sides openly competed for membership loyalty. Following strategy discussions with Willard, Hannah Whitall Smith, and the executive minority (a combined group that Smith dubbed the ‘Friendly Zulus’), Isabel devised plans for future BWTA work and a reconstruction of the Association’s governmental structure.27 She circulated them to the branches as the Outline of the Progressive Policy, bearing her name and those of the six minority members. The proposals included the seven departmental areas presented at the 1892 annual council, with the possibility of the NEC sanctioning additional departments, subject to annual council ratification. Democratization of the administration’s bureaucracy was to be undertaken, including enlargement of the current Metropolitan-based executive to include provincial members; rotation through the provinces of two or three of the quarterly executive meetings; and the conduct of interim routine business by a subcommittee of five officers and eight of the enlarged executive— all proposals to be in accordance with the Association’s constitution. The reorganization would re-establish countrywide representation on the BWTA central authority, as created by the first executive committee in 1876, giving branches more input into the policy

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decisions and organization of the Association. The document included a listing, compiled by the minority progressives, of proposed officers and candidates for election to the enlarged executive committee; it cautioned, ‘To secure the success of the Progressive Policy you are earnestly requested to vote for all the following names and no others’.28 In February the minority distributed a proposed agenda of work for 1893–4, which retained traditional BWTA work and added five areas: circulation of temperance literature, preventative and reformatory work among women, counselling of barmaids, elimination of licences in places of entertainment, and educating municipal women voters to vote on the side of temperance. The policy embraced none of the controversial social reform aspects which its opponents claimed the minority intended to introduce, and women’s suffrage was not included and would ‘not be pressed upon the Association’.29 The proposed agenda and the Outline of the Progressive Policy were distributed from Isabel’s new WWCTU office in Victoria Street. Though the BWTA majority had instigated her relocation, its members repeatedly accused Isabel of establishing a competing administration by communicating directly with the branches from the WWCTU establishment. However, the majority also had set up an office separate from BWTA headquarters, where they met to plot strategy and from which they too distributed policy papers to the membership. Isabel defended her actions, arguing that the conservatives’ policies had obliged her to develop an alternative method of communicating with the membership. The majority had manipulated the British Women’s Temperance Journal to effectively curtail her contact with the branches by excluding her correspondence from its columns and suppressing material supportive of her agenda, as was done in the June 1892 issue of the organ. Additionally, being located also at BWTA headquarters, the majority enjoyed the advantage of endowing their documents with the appearance of officialdom, misleading many to believe they were NEC-authorized communications.30 The majority distributed its own ‘Progressive Policy’, which embraced the established work the minority had included in its programme and emphasised the necessity of focussing solely upon suppression of the drink traffic; it warned that the adoption of ‘side issues, political and social’, would result in a weakening of the

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Association’s effectiveness and an exodus from its ranks. The programme also set forth the conservatives’ own plan, devised by Docwra, for organizational restructuring of the Association’s administration: the annual council would elect provincial British Women to a 30-member committee which would meet with the NEC six times a year and share in the running of the Association in a ‘consultative’ capacity. The conservatives were opposed to the creation of an NEC subcommittee which they claimed would interfere with the democratic nature of the Association’s administration.31 Isabel’s New Year letter, the minority’s progressive policy document, and Willard’s Exeter Hall speech provoked the majority into an open declaration of opposition to Isabel and her agenda in the columns of Wings, essentially negating her efforts to ‘hold the unity of the BWTA if possible’.32 Editorials attacked the Do-Everything Policy, especially the women’s suffrage plank, and the journal printed Non-Partisan WCTU president Judith Foster’s subjective account of the policy’s role in the division of the American movement. Isabel was accused of autocratic leadership, she not having ‘realized the fact that in England all societies are governed by their executive and not by their Presidents’. Her NEC reorganization plan was denounced as undemocratic, particularly the creation of a subcommittee, which ‘under the direct personal influence of a powerful leader’ would be merely a cipher, transforming the Association’s government into an autocracy. The policy documents of the minority and majority were published, along with pronouncements and correspondence from supporters of the majority opinion. One letter, purportedly from a progressive sympathizer but rejected as such by Isabel, praised her policies and poured scorn on those of the majority, apparently in a covert attempt to repulse its readers.33 Isabel’s new weekly periodical, Woman’s Herald, began publication in February 1893, and she utilized it to counteract Wings’ negative publicity. The first issue outlined her progressive policy, and other temperance components included a brief history of the BWTA plus notes on the WWCTU’s international activities. In keeping with its declared aim to be the independent proponent of the beliefs and sentiments of those women’s societies ‘pledged to religious, social, and political reform’, the journal included reports on the activities of the Women’s Liberal Federation and the Central National Society for Women’s Suffrage; it also included an interview with the prominent activist of women’s trade unions, Mrs Amie

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Hicks, who was secretary of the Ropemakers’ Union in East London. Unlike Wings, Woman’s Herald generally refrained from discussing the dissension in the BWTA, until the edition of 4 May when the annual council was already in session. It then commented briefly upon the majority’s employment of Wings to discredit the American WCTU, and editorialized upon the momentous decision facing the council and the necessity of electing a president and an NEC with shared ideology. Though the dissension might be amicably settled, the paper acknowledged this was unlikely and contemplated the future of a split Association, noting that the successful sundering of other fractious societies illustrated the viability of the resulting separate organizations; however, should the conservatives emerge triumphant, the BWTA would sacrifice ‘the golden opportunity offered by Isabel’s leadership’.34 The discord within the BWTA generated a variety of rumours and newspaper reports, and in an attempt to clarify the situation, the Christian Commonwealth conducted and published separate interviews with Isabel and Mary Docwra, followed by rejoinders. In summing up its view as an ‘impartial’ observer of the situation, the periodical concluded ‘that there are some fundamentally incompatible elements in the Executive of this Association which can never work harmoniously together’, thus a split was inevitable. It opined that rejection of Isabel’s leadership by the BWTA would be a loss to the temperance cause and the Association, ‘for which it would be difficult to find so capable, devoted, and energetic a President’; albeit, she had decided views and an unwavering determination to introduce her policies by educating ‘the members of the B.W.T.A. up to her own and Miss Willard’s way of thinking’.35 When the membership became acquainted with details of the controversy, several of the branches urged that steps be taken to amicably resolve the differences between the two factions of the executive.36 The NEC decided to hold a ‘conciliatory’ conference prior to the annual council to consider whether the BWTA should continue to pursue traditional temperance work or adopt the progressives’ policies, and suggested Good Templar leader Joseph Malins should preside. When Isabel objected to inviting ‘any man’ to perform this function, because she ‘regarded this as an unnecessary expression of weakness in an age when there are so many capable women’, and asked to exercise her constitutional right to preside, the NEC resolved to abandon the conference. In order to

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facilitate the dissension’s prompt resolution by the annual council, Isabel urged it be convened in early April rather than May. Although the majority of the branches voted for April meetings, the NEC opted for May, its decision perhaps prompted by a desire to consolidate majority support prior to the council and by a justifiable suspicion that Isabel would welcome an early council in order to accompany Willard to America in May.37 Isabel’s progressive policies also generated opposition from certain elements of the male-dominated United Temperance Societies’ Standing Committee (UTSSC) who supported the NEC conservatives in the ongoing dispute. With the compliance of the executive majority, in February UTSSC member A. F. Hills, president of the pro-temperance Vegetarian Society, attempted to coerce Isabel into resigning her presidency, warning that her refusal would prompt him and the majority to take the issue before the conference of the United Temperance Societies, currently in session. However, the bulk of the UTSSC condemned his and his supporters’ efforts to interfere in internal BWTA issues, and Isabel pointedly informed them that the British Women ‘look upon such interference as little short of an outrage. We women are wholly competent to conduct our own affairs’. Her sentiment was echoed by Methodist Times, which rebuked the male temperance workers for their interference, noting they could ‘no longer treat women like children in a nursery’.38 Their male cohorts having failed to dislodge Isabel from the presidency, the NEC majority now revived the plan for a conciliatory conference; they illegally rescinded the earlier resolution to abandon it, fixed 14 March for its convening, established its agenda, and appointed a chairman. They informed Isabel of the meeting several days after the branches had been notified. As she had a speaking engagement on 14 March, and given the unconstitutional methods adopted to convene the conference and the partisanship of its protagonists, Isabel declined to attend. She urged the branches not to participate but to allow the annual council to settle the dispute in a democratic manner. The conference, of mainly conservative members, provided the NEC majority with a platform from which to once again attack Isabel and her progressive policies. Mrs Atherton, who had stated ‘she would harass IS until she quits the BWTA’,39 delivered a stinging rebuke of Isabel’s leadership and placed the blame for the NEC dissension squarely on her shoulders. The conference adopted a resolution supporting the

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majority, thus tacitly rejecting the minority position, and sent a deputation to Isabel ostensibly to facilitate conciliation. Given the resolution adopted, Isabel felt the deputation’s gesture was redundant and declined to receive it. She sent a telegraph to the conference as to the reason for her decision and reinforced it with a letter of clarification. Neither was read to the attendees or included in the account of the conference published in Wings, though her rejection of the deputation was included, giving the impression she had rudely dismissed all attempts at reconciliation.40 Despite the dissension raging within the Association, Isabel actively fulfilled her presidential duties. In the year’s hiatus preceding the critical 1893 BWTA annual meetings, two months of which she was in America and one month incapacitated by illness, Isabel travelled some 5,000 miles, addressed an average of 17 to 20 public meetings a month, and held 37 branch conferences; in addition, she wrote letters, articles, and pamphlets for publication by the BWTA or WWCTU, part of 10,000 items of correspondence issued from her office at the British WWCTU headquarters in Victoria Street. A large proportion of Isabel’s engagements were in the Nonconformist and temperance strongholds of northern England, Scotland, and Wales, where her message coupled with her Methodism drew a sympathetic response.41 After Isabel and Willard had returned from the United States in November 1892, the WCTU president had accompanied Isabel to many of her engagements, including a series of meetings in the north of England late that month. She sometimes addressed the meetings, and when the Duke of Bedford died in March 1893, temporarily preventing Isabel from fulfilling her public duties, Willard substituted for Isabel.42 Willard’s presence both aided and hindered Isabel’s cause. The American’s evangelical fervour appealed to the Nonconformist elements, and her American accent, confidence, and oratorical skills provided novelty to the temperance scene and boosted the progressives’ message; at the same time these strengths exacerbated the conservatives’ anti-American stance and opposition.43 In January 1893, the two began an extensive programme of engagements around Britain, including appearances in the metropolis and large provincial cities. A gathering of 4,000 in London’s East End was followed by five meetings in Manchester, including one which drew an attendance of 5,000, and others in Derby, Leeds, Luton, Portsmouth, Preston, Liverpool, Glasgow, and

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Edinburgh. The two were received everywhere with enthusiasm. At one metropolitan meeting Isabel and majority member Atherton shared the same platform, and the conservative found herself ‘hissed down’ by the audience. Isabel and Willard also participated in BWTA county conferences and in the annual meeting of the Woman’s Liberal Federation in Liverpool, at which Isabel addressed the delegates. They met with BWTA branches to explain the NEC minority’s progressive platform and gather support for its adoption, receiving strong endorsements from several branches, including some they were unable to visit.44 Isabel’s immediate concern in the aftermath of the 1892 annual council had been the return to power of the Liberal government in the June general election to facilitate passage of the party’s proposed anti-drink legislation. In a published manifesto to all temperance organizations she urged them to direct their efforts into ensuring a Liberal victory; she proposed that national demonstrations be held by temperance societies around the nation on 18 and 19 June in support of a Direct Veto Bill currently before Parliament,45 and the passage of resolutions in their favour. Isabel simultaneously issued a call to the Anglican clergy and Nonconformist ministers to support the cause. On the demonstration weekend she travelled north to Sunderland to address large afternoon and evening gatherings, including one mass meeting of electors who supported the local Direct Veto candidate. Her appeals met with wide response from temperance and religious groups countrywide in the form of mass demonstrations, resolutions passed, and sermons delivered in favour of the legislation. She personally received notification of some 300 demonstrations held on 18 June alone. In spring 1893, when the Liberal government’s Liquor Traffic (Local Control) Bill came under an organized attack from the drink trade, the United Kingdom Alliance recruited Isabel to persuade the Salvation Army to launch a petition campaign for the Bill; she also promoted a large BWTA demonstration at London’s St James’s Hall in support of the legislation, but was unable to attend, being in mourning for her brother-in-law, the Duke of Bedford.46 The hectic round of appearances exhausted Isabel, and a cold contracted at a January Exeter Hall meeting kept her bedridden for several days that month. The unceasing claims upon her left very little time for family life or leisure activities, but whenever possible,

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she escaped to Reigate or Eastnor to spend time with Somey and entertain friends and occasionally Lady Somers, who was mostly abroad; she enjoyed the countryside with her American friend, though she rarely had a break totally free of BWTA business.47 The rigours of supporting Isabel’s efforts took their toll on Willard, and by spring 1893 her health had deteriorated. Isabel brought in the Prince of Wales’ physician, Mr Broadbent, who diagnosed serious pernicious anaemia and ordered Willard to cease all work; failure to do so could result in her death within the year. He forbade her to take a planned summer trip to America, forcing cancellation of her engagements there and in Britain. In Hannah Whitall Smith’s view, the attention provided by Isabel was critical to Willard’s survival. ‘It is a great mercy . . . she has Lady Henry Somerset to take care of her. I do not know what would have become of her otherwise. Lady Henry has the houses and the money that can provide our beloved Leader with every care and comfort’, Smith wrote to friends in America.48 To hasten Willard’s recovery, Isabel wanted to take her to the Swiss Alps to recuperate, but the crisis in the BWTA required that Isabel remain in England until the annual council in May.49

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9 TRIUMPH

In April 1893, wearied by the disruptive effects of the BWTA dissension, Hannah Whitall Smith expressed the hope that the minority might be defeated at the annual council, enabling Isabel to leave the organization and make a new beginning. ‘We should then be able to form a National WCTU, and fall in line with WCTU’s around the world, and the narrow old BWTA could go on its way undisturbed.’1 Her sentiments were not shared by Isabel, who approached the annual meetings ‘in splendid fighting trim’2 and determined to win the day. Both sides now recognized that concord was unattainable given their irreconcilable ideologies. Following the NEC’s issuing of the council agenda, Isabel acknowledged to the membership ‘that it is useless to hope that amalgamation can be effected’ between the two factions and stressed the necessity of maintaining ‘the solidarity of the majority or minority’ at the council meetings; she appealed for their votes on the side of the progressives.3 The NEC majority issued its own eleventh-hour call to arms in the columns of Wings, denouncing the minority’s design for an enlarged national executive and the proposed abandonment of the BWTA’s concentration on temperance reform; the majority maintained that ‘no person has the power or right to add to the objects for which the Association was formed. Such alteration or addition necessitates really the breaking up of the Association’, affirming that no compromise was possible.4 As there was no way of accurately estimating actual support for Isabel and the minority, the ‘Willard party’ remained uncertain as to the result of the upcoming contest. Anna Gordon admitted, ‘We believe more than we know’, but expressed confidence that Isabel would ‘be completely victorious in everything’ on the fateful day.5

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On the first day of the annual council a capacity audience of 455 delegates assembled at Memorial Hall, approximately double those present in 1892; Willard credited the growth in attendance to ‘the prospect of debate and the opportunity of rallying round a leader who is worthy of our loyalty’. The NEC conservatives had organized the event, and an unprecedented degree of security was maintained. In order to be admitted to the hall, each participant, including Isabel, was required to present a signed ticket and counterfoil to executive members guarding the doors. No reporters were permitted access, but some later reported the proceedings from interviews conducted with participants. Willard did not receive an invitation to the council and was obliged to join Anna Gordon and other American friends in the spectators’ gallery; the executive later rectified this omission, citing oversight for her earlier exclusion. The conference venue, Willard noted with regret, lacked Isabel’s ‘brightening touch’, her opponents having made no provision for flowers, banners, or shields, giving the hall a barren appearance.6 At Isabel’s request, the debate on the respective positions of the two sides occupied the first day of the meetings, which were presided over by non-partisan and total abstainer Mrs Lloyd Jones of Rhyl; a Women’s Liberal Federation member, she was unconnected to any temperance group and ignorant of the BWTA dispute and, thus, acceptable to both factions. In keeping with parliamentary usage, the majority members presented their case first. They condemned the NEC-reorganization plan as an undemocratic transfer of power from the branches to that body which opened the door to the introduction of policies not sanctioned by the membership, even though the minority document stated any such innovations would be ‘subject to ratification by the Council’. The British arm of the WWCTU was denounced as a competing ‘national party’, seeking under American influence to introduce into BWTA branches ‘reforms which thus create popular interest in the wider woman’s work’. They claimed that the introduction of the DoEverything Policy would place the Association’s temperance objectives in jeopardy through the division of work into ‘allied reforms’. The majority members’ most bitter attacks were directed against Isabel’s presidency: they accused her of autocratic leadership, manifested in her direct communication with the branches; rejection of conciliation efforts; and spurning of the traditional figurehead role ‘accepted by Presidents of other philanthropic societies’. They also

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accused her of aspiring to the ‘almost irresponsible position’ occupied by her American counterpart, Willard, whereby Isabel could implement her progressive policies at will. Their exhortations aroused heated emotions among the audience, avowals of support and opposition frequently issuing forth in cries of ‘Hear, hear’, ‘No, no’, and ‘Oh!’ and in scattered applause, requiring the Chair to repeatedly call for order.7 As Isabel stood to deliver the minority’s response, ‘women rose—staid British women . . . who never before, perhaps, made such a demonstration in any audience—waved their handkerchiefs, and cheered—actually hurrahed—for their President’. In a masterly stroke of one-upmanship, Isabel had her address printed as a 152-page annotated pamphlet, 61 of its pages being appendices of reference material, including documents circulated by both majority and minority factions. This publication was delivered to the delegates as she was about to speak, to guard against errors in interpretation of her speech and ‘to facilitate the Delegates in asking questions’ during the session. The majority opposed the pamphlet’s distribution but were overridden by a resolution in favour of the move.8 The document reinforced Isabel’s spoken words and, combined with her poise and eloquence, provided her with a distinct advantage over the majority’s speakers, who lacked her charisma and had neglected to provide transcripts of their speeches to the delegates. In a two-hour address Isabel defended the minority’s position and her own leadership. Her speech was, in Anna Gordon’s words, a ‘masterly defence of her policy and methods and a complete refutation of the charges brought against her by majority of the Executive’,9 complete with corroborative evidence. Isabel countered the majority’s attacks with a step-by-step recapitulation of the evolution of the crisis since the annual council of 1892, supporting her arguments with material drawn from the various circulars and letters distributed by both factions. She denied that her DoEverything Policy represented a dangerous innovation which threatened British Women’s effectiveness, by demonstrating that the BWTA, including members of the majority, had embraced partisan political initiatives and women’s suffrage since the organization’s inception. She illustrated that her restructuring plan for the NEC ensured that the annual council, and thus the branches, retained control of BWTA policies. She insisted the WWCTU was

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not a rival organization, its mandate being entirely different than that of the BWTA. There was a real necessity for international work, particularly in the Empire, as ‘England’s greatness largely consists in those dominions that own [sic] allegiance to her beyond the seas, and . . . if our Temperance work is to be confined only to our own islands, we are limiting our usefulness to a serious degree’. Responding to the majority’s charge of autocratic leadership, Isabel asserted she had been obliged to communicate directly with the branches when the majority curtailed her access to the columns of the official organ and, thus, the membership. The NEC conservatives had also gained control over the entire machinery of the BWTA, its headquarters, offices, records, appointments, and arrangements, and had utilized them to their advantage in their campaign for supremacy in the Association. The evolving crisis had warranted her prompt and decisive intervention, and that which her opponents deemed autocratic her supporters termed leadership. The public criticism heaped upon her and the minority had ‘made it imperative, in the interests not only of the Temperance Reform, but of the cause of woman, that once and for all and before this tribunal we should have set in order our defence’ but she hoped for mutual forgiveness and the restoration of harmony within the organization.10 The delegates were given an opportunity to debate in the afternoon session, which was devoted to a discussion of the two competing policies; the Chair limited individual speeches to five minutes. The NEC majority immediately renewed their assault on Isabel’s integrity, their criticisms eventually provoking some delegates to offer avowals of support for their president and demands to ‘leave these personalities and get to business’. The DoEverything Policy provoked heated discussion, for and against, but many provincial delegates were chiefly concerned with the issue of NEC reorganization and were intent upon gaining ‘enlarged representation of country branches’. Despite the time limitations on speakers, the meeting extended well into the evening. Voting on the issue eventually got underway at 8.00 p.m., the ballot boxes closely guarded by tellers from each faction, and the balloting was only completed shortly before 10.30 p.m. The result was victory for Isabel, the tally being 262 for the minority policy and 192 against. When the result was announced, ‘women clapped their hands, waved their handkerchiefs, pirouetted, embraced, cheered again

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and yet again, and ended . . . by singing the Doxology’. Neither the ballot’s outcome nor the emotional outpourings it produced were witnessed by Willard and Isabel, who had retired exhausted to her home before the voting ended and were informed of the triumph by some of her supporters who came immediately with the news and their congratulations.11 When the council reconvened the next day, the ‘old’ conservative majority attempted to enter an official protest against statements in Isabel’s address. When Docwra and her associates were ruled out of order, they left the meeting and retired to the library to discuss their next move. Isabel suspended proceedings pending their return, which was facilitated by her agreeing, at their request, to personally escort them back to the hall and assuring them that their protest would be entered in the minutes. Accepting the will of the council expressed in the minority’s victory, the conservatives’ nominee for president, Mrs Henry J. Wilson, withdrew her candidacy. There being no other nominees, Isabel was unanimously reelected president. The council responded positively to Isabel’s request for an executive supportive of her policies, electing 56 new ‘progressive’ members, who represented areas nationwide; they amalgamated with the ‘old’ executive to form an expanded NEC of 76, of which only 18 were conservatives of the former majority. In a conciliatory gesture, Isabel urged that the executive cede the choice of subcommittee to the council as a whole and that some of the conservatives be considered for membership. Five officers and eight members were duly elected, including Docwra. In accordance with the minority proposal, the subcommittee was directed to report to the NEC, submitting any new initiative, including the departmentalization policy, to them for endorsement, but the annual council remained ‘the final depository of power’. The thorny issue of the organization’s relationship with the WWCTU was settled with the passing of a resolution giving responsibility for the Union’s fee to the national executive, and the BWTA’s affiliation to the World’s Union was formally incorporated into the constitution.12 The supporters of the former NEC majority later accused the minority of questionable tactics at the council meetings, intimating that illegal balloting and unconstitutional procedures underlay Isabel’s victory. This assessment reveals their failure to appreciate the growth of grass-roots support for their president and her progressive agenda. As Kathleen Fitzpatrick notes, Isabel’s interaction

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with British Women countrywide in the intimate settings of their individual domestic hearths, at drawing-room gatherings, as well as BWTA meetings during her three-year presidency had won over many British Women to her cause; as a result, delegates had been sent to the annual meeting ‘charged to tell the Council that the Branches had doubled or trebled their numbers in the past year, and that a change of President would be nothing less than a calamity’.13 Endorsements of Isabel’s leadership and policies by the membership are evinced in resolutions and reports sent to the NEC, letters to the British Women’s Temperance Journal, and as recounted by Hannah Whitall Smith, giving validity to Fitzpatrick’s claim of substantial approval within BWTA ranks of Isabel and her programme.14 Her intensive round of appearances immediately preceding the 1893 annual council meeting, many held in the provincial Nonconformist strongholds receptive to her appeals, likely increased Isabel’s following. According to Christian World, the bitterness of the conservatives’ attack on Isabel during the debates prompted some of the delegates ‘who had come up fully committed to the “Majority” policy’, to switch their votes to the minority, while some undecided delegates were won over to her side by the conciliatory nature of her concluding remarks, the clarity of her arguments, and her convincing refutation of the majority’s charges.15 These eleventh-hour conversions may have provided the necessary margin of support to tip the scales in Isabel’s favour. On 6 May, two days after the conclusion of the annual meetings, BWTA office secretary and Docwra supporter Miss M. Holland submitted her resignation to the NEC, followed in rapid succession by all 18 members of the former conservative majority, who were unwilling to accept the council’s adoption of the minority platform.16 Citing requests from numerous BWTA branches and individual members to reorganize the Association ‘for the continuance of purely Temperance work’, the NEC’s former majority formed a provisional committee, chaired by Docwra, to pursue this objective. In June a circular was sent to the branches inviting those committed to the ‘continuance of Temperance work on the lines of the old constitution’ to reunite in a proposed new organization. Though response was lukewarm, an inaugural conference of the Women’s Total Abstinence Union was held on 19 September.17 Thereafter, the WTAU concentrated solely on temperance-related activities, operating in the orbit of temperance-only societies, outside the women’s

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movement, and largely eclipsed by its rival association which became increasingly more progressive under Isabel’s leadership. At the WTAU’s first annual council on 10 and 11 May 1894, the organization claimed 103 affiliated societies, with 69 of them reporting a combined membership of 5,840. Its total membership climbed slowly to a peak of 21,000 in 1903. Following the departure of the conservatives, the BWTA incorporated itself as the National British Women’s Temperance Association and adopted the motto of the WWCTU, ‘For God and Home and Every Land’.18 The NBWTA calculated its membership at 50,000 in 1894, and 104,832 by 1903.19 Released from the conservatives’ constraints, Isabel was now able to activate the Do-Everything Policy. Over the next three years the departmental system was gradually expanded to include a broad spectrum of reforms in addition to temperance. A Department of Prison and Police-Court Work was established, through which British Women successfully lobbied the national and local governments to appoint police matrons to attend female prisoners at police stations. Social purity work received departmental status, its mandate comprising the promotion of public decency, educational missions on the ‘social evil’, campaigns to raise the age of consent, rescue work among prostitutes, and lobbying for the elimination of the double standard which punished these women for prostitution offences, but not their male cohorts. Two rescue homes became affiliated with the NBWTA: the Alpha House in Hornsey and, founded by Isabel in 1884, St Mary’s Home in Reigate. At Isabel’s urging, workers visited London’s entertainment venues and surrounding streets to become personally acquainted with that city’s seamy nightlife. However, the delicate nature of the department’s work permitted only an abridged account of its activities in the Association’s 1896 Annual Report. A Suffrage Department was established to promote female enfranchisement, and Isabel got British Women to adopt resolutions in favour of votes for women, which became a feature of the Association’s annual meetings; to petition their Members of Parliament to promote women’s suffrage legislation in Parliament; and to encourage women to use their municipal vote. Departments were also organized for health and hygiene, prevention of cruelty to children, anti-opium, peace and arbitration, prevention of cruelty to animals, and anti-gambling.20 Although no department dedicated to labour issues was established, Isabel rallied the NBWTA in support of pro-labour and anti-

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poverty legislation, including implementation of the eight-hour day and the law raising the age of child workers to 13 years, ‘the main object of all our work being to rouse the national conscience to a just and reasonable view of the present condition of the people’, temperance and the labour question being ‘intimately associated’. They could not ask workers ‘weighed down by their untold burden of ill-requited labour’, dangerous working conditions, and unsanitary housing to renounce drink, which the workers believed granted them ‘temporary strength and drowns the remembrance of their misery in the poisoned cup of forgetfulness’. She instigated an Association campaign to pressure the government into banning the employment of women as barmaids, citing the moral dangers to which they were exposed and their monetary and sexual exploitation at the hands of their employers and customers. However, she failed to give equal weight to the question of alternative occupations for these untrained working-class women, for whom such work was an economic necessity, though some members of the executive speculated that a legislated end to barmaid’s work might turn ‘them out to something worse’ and deprecated ‘the imposing on women any hindrance in the way of earning their living’.21 During a prolonged dispute in the coal industry in autumn 1893, Isabel engaged the British Women in a relief effort for the lockedout miners. After viewing the situation first hand in Barnsley, Yorkshire, she published a critical appraisal of the disputation and an appeal for funds and food for the miners’ families, some of whom had lost children to starvation. The NBWTA branches were organized to canvass for the cause, and Isabel donated the equivalent of US$600 to the Miners’ Fund. To raise additional monies, she designed and illustrated a Christmas card, depicting a nineteenth-century ‘nativity scene’ of an impoverished husband, wife, and baby kneeling at the door of a mansion, an intentional allusion to the workers’ situation vis-à-vis their wealthy employers.22 Isabel’s response to the miners’ plight reflected her commitment to labour and social justice, a commitment shared by her soul mate, Frances Willard. It is suggested that Willard was converted to socialism by Edward Bellamy’s vision of egalitarian statehood in his 1888 work, Looking Backward; this is in contrast to Barbara Epstein’s assessment that Willard was converted to socialism by Isabel. The two leaders’ socialism derived from their Protestant evangelical beliefs, not Marxist theory. Willard asserted she and

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Isabel were ‘New Testament Socialists’ and claimed they had joined the Fabian Society after investigating ‘socialist’ texts in the summer of 1893. Willard’s membership status is confirmed by Fabian Edward R. Pease in a 21 March 1894 letter to Anna Gordon, but he goes on to state that Isabel had not formally joined the society, and there is no evidence she did so later. Though she was dedicated to Christian Socialism, Isabel apparently did not fully share Willard’s affinity for Fabian ideology, or perhaps she was disaffected by the society’s attitudes towards temperance, even though some of its founders, including Sidney Webb, were temperance workers. After attending one of the society’s lectures on the topic, she described the discourse as being ‘full of fallacious . . . conceited poppycock’.23 Isabel’s participation within a variety of reform organizations, including the Women’s Liberal Federation on whose executive she served, the Central National Society for Woman’s Suffrage, the National Vigilance Association, and the Ladies National Association for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice,24 underscored her commitment to social issues, particularly those pertaining to the ‘woman question’. Her co-editorship of the feminist-oriented Woman’s Herald also reinforced her image as a protagonist for female rights. She forcefully promoted these rights, even within the bastions of male dominance. Before the legal profession’s Hardwicke Society she expounded upon women’s suffrage. When the president of the Wesleyan General Conference rescinded her invitation to address a temperance meeting at his denomination’s London synod, she publicly chided him for debarring women from speaking at such events and denounced the widely practised orthodoxy which permitted women to perform just three roles in their churches—to collect money, constitute the bulk of the congregation, and ‘come in at the rear door and scrub up the place’.25 Conscious of the trepidation with which many NBWTA members approached the Do-Everything Policy, the NEC continued to emphasize that departmental work was optional for branches and affiliated societies, to be adopted only ‘if deemed advantageous to local work’; that ‘political’ action involved no partisan politics; and that the annual councils’ resolutions on women’s suffrage were not to be regarded as binding but only as expressions of the delegates’ personal convictions.26 Despite these assurances, many British Women feared that their president’s highly visible social activism would implicate their Association in the women’s rights movement.

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When Isabel joined a united committee of representatives from women’s organizations which was working to organize a nationwide petition in support of a women’s suffrage amendment to a government Registration Bill, her action created such apprehension that she was obliged to publish a statement reaffirming that she was acting independently of the NBWTA.27 While respecting the reluctance of some Association members to embrace the DoEverything Policy, Isabel worked tirelessly to gather support for it within the organization and so retain the branches after the split. By identifying herself with a host of social issues and promoting them at every opportunity, including her addresses to the annual councils, she succeeded in converting many British Women to her progressive policies. Her activities received widespread coverage in the temperance and general press, where she was heralded not only as a consummate temperance leader, orator, and philanthropist but, ‘above all, as a . . . pioneer worker in the social and moral regeneration of society in all its ramifications’.28 This publicity helped raise the profile of reform issues among the public at large. Following the 1893 annual council, Isabel intensified her campaign to achieve integration of temperance, social reform, and women’s rights. By the 1894 annual meetings she had travelled some 8,000 miles through 20 counties, addressing some 175,000 people at 115 meetings and 27 conferences, and was credited with forming many of the 300 branches established during the year. The NBWTA’s autumnal meeting, the first conference since the split, was a resounding success, with huge crowds assembling to participate in Isabel’s ‘new crusade’. Her ten-day tour of North Wales in December 1893 proved such an attraction that the railways ran special trains to her meeting venues. In the twelve-month interval between the 1893 and 1894 councils, the revamped NEC held five of its six meetings in the provinces, accompanied by mass public meetings of 3,000 to 4,000 at each location;29 many British Women were allowed their first opportunity to see and hear their president, her charisma providing added appeal to her message. Some, however, resisted her magnetism, rejected her policies, and disaffiliated their branches.30 Despite Isabel’s best efforts, the large Yorkshire branch, a stronghold of ‘temperance only’ sentiment, withdrew from the NBWTA and became an independent association. Hannah Whitall Smith claimed that she and Isabel ‘were delighted’ by the defection of the Yorkshire branch because it left them ‘much freer

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to work, than if we were to go on being hampered by their old Executive’. However, this contradicts Isabel’s directive to the NEC Subcommittee which urged all its members to attend the York conference because she believed ‘on that meeting hangs the future of a loyal Yorkshire’.31 Recognizing that enhanced practical skills and heightened personal confidence were valuable tools in the fight for women’s rights and a key factor in advancing the NBWTA cause, Isabel launched an instructional programme designed to stimulate members’ personal growth. In conjunction with NEC meetings and NBWTA annual councils and at special sessions around the country, Isabel and other NBWTA officers conducted workshops in administrative proficiency and public speaking—skills she had acquired at the Moody School of Methods in Chicago. Women received instruction in a variety of techniques, including how to elect officers and serve upon and chair a committee; the intricacies of devising amendments; the writing of educational literature and press releases; and the basics of successful oratory including voice modulation, positive platform mannerisms, and attire. These workshops, noted the NBWTA honorary secretary, Jane Aukland, ‘have proved to be a most valuable educational aid to the successful carrying out of our work and are highly appreciated by our members’.32 Given that the radical Do-Everything Policy remained optional for the branches, temperance work continued to constitute the bulk of the Association’s programme. The regular schedule of education and fellowship and the provision of counter-attractions to drink were continued. In the legislative area, members attended local Brewster Sessions to oppose the granting of grocers’ licences, with some success. Through petitions and demonstrations, they lobbied for a Sunday Closing Bill for the entire United Kingdom and called upon politicians and the government to support the Liberals’ Direct Veto Bill.33 The NBWTA swelled the ranks of temperance workers at a massive Hyde Park demonstration in support of the measure, processing for four hours in horse-drawn wagons through the streets of London. Isabel, riding in a carriage decorated with cornflowers, white carnations, and stands of white lilies and blue iris, received ‘an ovation all along the route from the crowds that lined the sidewalks’ and drew respect from British Women for braving ‘the criticism of her “class” by such a democratic proceeding’.34

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While acknowledging that the Association had ‘always been strong advocates of Prohibition, pure and simple’, Isabel rallied British Women to work for the Direct Veto Bill’s passage, under the organization’s banner and in co-operation with other temperance societies; she believed that ‘human ingenuity has yet to frame a law more likely to be of practical efficiency’ than this measure. She joined a small deputation of temperance notables who met with Gladstone in an effort to obtain his assurances that the Bill would not be dropped; in the 12 months following the 1893 annual council, she held some 100 meetings devoted to the measure and spoke in its favour at various temperance gatherings and demonstrations.35 When the Bill was withdrawn prior to second reading, Isabel urged the British Women to petition the government for its reinstatement. She also asked branches to pass and direct resolutions to the Prime Minister in favour of a women’s suffrage amendment to a pending Registration Bill, and to pressure their local Members of Parliament to support the emendation, arguing that the female franchise would accelerate the passage of the Direct Veto Bill when it was reintroduced.36 In her address to the 1895 NBWTA annual council, Isabel optimistically predicted the Bill ‘was practically sure to pass the House of Commons’ when presented for second reading, but the measure fell victim to the Liberals’ defeat at that year’s general election; the party’s inclusion of the unpopular temperance measure in its platform was widely regarded as an important factor in the Liberal government’s fall.37 Isabel agreed but believed the Liberals, and the temperance movement in general, had exacerbated the problem by failing to publicly explain and defend the measure in the face of the opposition’s vocal misrepresentations on the issue. She believed the key to any future measure’s success was to ‘Educate! Educate! Educate!’ the public on the question, and she urged the NBWTA to continue its struggle but adopt a pragmatic approach to legislation by examining all proposals and accepting ‘even a limited amount of good, if the principles involved do not traverse those basic beliefs upon which we work. We may not be able to have all we require; but let us see to it that we refuse nothing that is not likely to hinder the ultimate end we have in view’. This position was at odds with those in the Association committed to nothing short of total prohibition.38 One year after the BWTA’s split, Hannah Whitall Smith was jubilantly telling her American friends of the NBWTA’s progress: ‘Since

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then we have gone on with leaps and bounds. We have added 300 new societies since last May, we have started a weekly paper (this, however, is entirely due to Lady Henry). . . . We have introduced a great many new lines of work, and have become far more of a force in politics and in social reforms than ever we were before.’ Although admiration for her leader no doubt coloured Smith’s assessment, the Association certainly prospered under Isabel’s presidency, growing in strength each year until her resignation in 1903. (She had been re-elected annually since 1890.) As historian Ian Tyrrell notes, ‘never was that organization to be so successful as it was after Somerset took charge’.39 The introduction of the new NBWTA paper to which Hannah Whitall Smith referred resulted from the 1893 split in the Association. The WTAU retained Wings as its official organ, and the NBWTA had been obliged to create its own monthly paper, The Journal, to function as its official organ, pro tem, until a suitable replacement for Wings could be established. The paper focussed upon Association policies and organizational issues and was a crucial connection to the NBWTA branches it hoped to retain.40 Isabel carried on publishing Woman’s Herald at a financial loss until both it and The Journal were absorbed by her new weekly paper, Woman’s Signal, launched on 4 January 1894. The Signal provided British Women with a paper reflecting the wider outlook that Isabel would have them embrace. Isabel and her supporters hoped to utilize it to garner support for the Association’s new policies, and the Signal subsequently became the NBWTA’s official organ. Isabel’s decision to incorporate the Woman’s Herald was made after its coeditor, Edwin Stout, relinquished it. The merger enabled her to maintain control of the Woman’s Herald and retain its subscription list for Woman’s Signal, for which she was assuming sole reliability.41 Woman’s Signal was co-edited by Isabel and Annie E. Holdsworth until the latter’s resignation in October 1894, and managed by H. J. Osborn. The paper announced itself ‘a weekly record and review of Woman’s Work in Philanthropy and Reform’, dedicated to furthering temperance; women’s moral, social, and political progress; and cultivation of their literary tastes. The publication reflected its stated mandate. It featured articles on political and social issues; interviews with Members of Parliament supportive of the temperance cause; biographical pieces on prominent feminine temperance workers and ‘successful literary women’; and topical papers

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relevant to women’s issues. Literary announcements, correspondence, and political news were also featured.42 Commencing with its July 1894 number, the organ issued a monthly supplement, financed by Isabel, Woman’s Signal Budget, which targeted members who were unable to afford the weekly Signal. The Budget offered articles selected from Woman’s Signal focussing upon women’s temperance work and NBWTA news. The Budget’s modest cost and emphasis on local work made it popular with the membership, prompting some members of the NEC to pressure for its adoption as official organ in place of the more culturally inclusive Woman’s Signal. Isabel opposed this change, deprecating the notion ‘that working women did not require as deep reading as do those who are called the educated classes’; she was reluctant to accept its replacement as official organ by the less stimulating Budget, a publication she heavily subsidized but to which the British Women gave little financial support. She agreed to leave the decision to the annual council but indicated that, if adopted, the Budget would have to become self-supporting, obtainable given the current membership of 80,000.43 Much to Isabel’s frustration and disappointment, Woman’s Signal failed to capture the allegiance of the majority of British Women. The organ was criticized by some for alleged neglect of local issues, a lack of religiosity, political partisanship, and a paucity of temperance content. Isabel defended the journal, stressing that a publication’s survival depended upon its ability to reflect its editor’s individuality; she noted that the Association had elected her president, fully aware of her views and politics, and she ‘must bring into the Paper the same views, because I believe them’. Unfortunately for the Signal and Isabel’s finances, many of the members, financially able to purchase the paper, rejected its feminist progressivism in favour of the conservative Budget, and this was reflected in the Signal’s lagging circulation.44 Despite its popularity, sales of the Budget also languished, the branches failing to adequately support it; the result was an unbearable financial burden for Isabel, though the British Women were convinced Isabel had ‘made a fortune’ on her periodicals. In September 1895, having incurred a personal debt of £2,500 on the journals, she was obliged to relinquish Woman’s Signal to journalist Florence Fenwick Miller, who agreed to include Association news in the third issue of each month and to discontinue the

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Budget.45 Many NBWTA members, including some NEC officers, found this arrangement inadequate for their needs, and they contracted with Fenwick Miller for a new monthly organ to reflect their interests, White Ribbon Signal, the first five issues appearing as supplements to Woman’s Signal. This agreement proved unsatisfying to both parties: Fenwick Miller found the British Women, for the most part, ‘as exacting as they are ungrateful’, their continuing interference a hindrance to the Signal, and their demands for greater representation of NBWTA material excessive, given their failure to provide sufficient financial support for the paper.46 For their part, the executive subcommittee balked at the constrictions imposed by the arrangement, were dissatisfied with White Ribbon Signal’s disappointing circulation figures, and contemptuous of ‘the most idiotic blunders’ in judgement she displayed in her handling of NBWTA material. Isabel acknowledged that Fenwick Miller was guilty of some improprieties, dismissing her article on Mormon Brigham Young’s polygamy as ‘disgusting’ and a threat to the suffrage cause; however, she recognized there were faults on both sides and attempted to remain aloof from the controversy. The desire for an official organ devoted to NBWTA interests and under Association control led the executive to take over White Ribbon Signal from Fenwick Miller after acrimonious negotiations and acquire a publishing company to produce it and the NBWTA’s other publications. The first issue of the new journal, an enhanced version of the Budget, appeared in April 1897, now entitled simply White Ribbon.47 Isabel hoped this venture would satisfy the executive but feared it would ‘reduce the organ of the BWTA to such a milk and water nonsense that even the narrowest and foolish of our women will be pleased’. Dissatisfaction with the journal may have prompted Isabel’s resignation from the paper’s editorship in November 1897, which was noted in the NESC minutes, with no reason given. She denounced the British Women’s failure to support Woman’s Signal as ‘monstrous’, and in an effort to assist Fenwick Miller, Isabel promised to contribute a monthly article to the paper. It had losses of £4,000 by March 1897, and her name continued to appear as ‘corresponding editor’ on its masthead until an unrelated dispute between Fenwick Miller and Isabel ended her participation in the journal in 1897.48

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Isabel’s satisfaction at the NBWTA’s progress since its reorganization was tempered by Frances Willard’s continuing ill health. From the time of her April 1893 arrival in England, Willard’s condition had gradually deteriorated, despite adopting a healthy diet and an exercise regimen of cycling and callisthenics, which was facilitated by Isabel’s provision of a small gym and an instructor at Reigate.1 To Isabel’s consternation, in early summer 1893 Mr Broadbent, the distinguished physician she had engaged, had expressed grave concern about Willard’s health.2 Isabel took Willard to Switzerland in early July 1893, where they remained until the end of August. The vacation was also intended to rejuvenate Isabel, who was exhausted after the rigours of her presidency in the past year and the tumultuous 1893 BWTA annual council. Their time in the Alps was spent sightseeing and walking in the fresh air, and Isabel spent one week visiting her mother in the Savoie. Yet, both leaders were unable to escape the demands of their positions and were much occupied, writing letters, preparing pamphlets, and issuing directives to their respective organizations. Willard also prepared her speeches for the WWCTU and WCTU conventions to be held in Chicago in October.3 Though often laid low with recurring migraine headaches, the legacy of marital distress, Isabel returned to England ‘bursting with health’, but Willard remained ‘very sick’ indeed. Despite her physician’s directive, Willard’s ‘heart was set on going to the WCTU convention’ in October; however, when respite in Switzerland failed to improve her condition, she was obliged to renounce these plans. To ensure she remained in England, Isabel agreed to go in Willard’s place to deliver her presidential address,4 as well as to promote

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Willard’s policies at the convention and to fulfil Somey’s request to join him in Chicago at the completion of his summer-long expedition in northern Canada. ‘I go first for the ransom of your presence (sick or well, they would not let you come back); & I go for the Cause & to meet my boy’, she confided to Willard.5 Isabel’s presence at the WCTU convention was critical to Willard’s bid to secure her presidency, which had been under attack from some elements in the organization. They had focussed upon her absences from America and her decision to involve the Union in the erection by the Woman’s Temperance Building Association of the costly Temple office tower in Chicago, which accommodated the WCTU’s headquarters. The association, an independent corporation, had mainly financed the construction of the building with loans, for which the WCTU was indirectly responsible. The Temple’s poor occupancy rate, combined with the current economic depression, created financial difficulties for the association, prompting opposition by WCTU members to the Union’s participation in the project. At the convention Willard’s opponents hoped to oust her from office, but a combination of her powerful address and Isabel’s demeanour, ‘both regal and simple, composed and caring’, won over most of the delegates. The result was Willard’s re-election, support for the Temple, and the replacement of dissenting officers. ‘How great a thing she has done in these 24 days neither she nor we can realize’, wrote Willard of Isabel’s participation. Her reception in Chicago replicated her triumph at the 1891 Boston convention, and she was made a member of the WCTU executive and confirmed as delegate-at-large at the national convention.6 Isabel was relieved to be reunited with Somey in Chicago, for he had been incommunicado since early July, and she had been planning to organize a search party, should he not arrive as arranged. His silence had been a consequence of his party having been lost in the Canadian wilderness, where rugged terrain had hindered their progress and the delay depleted their provisions. Weak from exhaustion, Somey and his companions arrived on makeshift crutches at a frontier fort, but Somey was undeterred, resolving to return in the future. His tenacity confounded Hannah Whitall Smith: ‘One would think that a fellow like Somers Somerset, accustomed all his life long to the depths of luxury, would never want, after such an experience, to hear tell of any unexplored regions again.’7

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Isabel’s strategy for keeping Willard in England proved to be only a delaying tactic. Following the Chicago convention, she reassured the WCTU president that ‘harmony is restored at headquarters’, but two months later she was acknowledging that opposition to Willard still simmered within some factions of the Union, necessitating the ailing leader’s temporary return to America. Isabel dreaded this step for she found ‘the light of another life is shining in [Willard’s] face’.8 Willard’s leadership was being challenged on several counts. Her policy to expand the WCTU’s political role within a broad reform coalition of parties had been rejected by large numbers of her membership who, like the ‘single issue’ faction in the BWTA, resented the dilution of the temperance cause. The Temple issue also continued to spark discontent.9 Personal jealousies played a role. Willard’s absence from her homeland sparked claims that she had neglected the national organization.10 Mary Clement Leavitt accused Willard of financially draining the WCTU, demanded she forgo half of her meagre yearly salary to relieve stress on the WCTU treasury, and conducted a campaign against the president within the Union.11 Isabel rebuked Leavitt and urged the World’s and National WCTU general officers to take Leavitt to task so that the falsity of her accusations would be revealed. Isabel also signed over to Willard $2,000 worth of shares of the Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association, along with a note for a $5,000 loan Isabel had advanced to it, so that Willard could refund the WCTU for her previous two-years’ salary, allowing her to ‘stand on her dignity with those who . . . grudge her that which she has so well earned’.12 Feeling duty bound to the WCTU and conscious that the situation in the Union demanded she reassert her control over it, by early February 1894 Willard was formulating plans for a spring return to the United States. Hannah Whitall Smith doubted she would be able to leave Isabel. The prospect of being separated from Willard and concern for her well-being in America were undoubtedly factors prompting Isabel’s subsequent decision to follow her friend to the United States, despite the demands of her presidency and the responsibilities and complications connected with the administration of her estates. Not wishing to neglect her son, Isabel persuaded Somey to accompany her on the trip, an interlude he proposed to use to complete a book about his travels abroad.13

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To facilitate her reunion with Willard, Isabel worked at an unrelenting pace throughout the winter and spring of 1894 to complete her obligations.14 Under the auspices of the United Kingdom Alliance, she organized demonstrations in support of the Direct Veto Bill, raising £420 for the NBWTA’s dwindling coffers. She addressed temperance meetings in Lancashire and Yorkshire and undertook a speaking tour, the funds obtained going to defray the Association’s debt, which had been incurred chiefly as a result of the financial disruptions after the 1893 split.15 In June, she was the featured speaker at a massive rally sponsored by the Manchester Society for Women’s Suffrage, in co-operation with the NBWTA, the Women’s Liberal Federation, the Conservative women’s Primrose League, local branches of the Federation of Women Workers, and the Women’s Co-operative League, to support the women’s suffrage amendment to the Registration Bill currently before Parliament.16 The launch and overseeing of Woman’s Signal in January 1894, and the debut of its supplement, Woman’s Signal Budget, in July, required her concentrated effort; she and Willard (until her departure for the United States in June) often worked ‘like slaves’ over their production.17 A major undertaking was the establishment of the Association’s new rehabilitation home for inebriate women, the NBWTA’s former home having been claimed by WTAU after the split. At Isabel’s instigation, the British Women launched an appeal for funds to support a new institution. A plan for its development was drawn up, and a special committee was established to oversee the logistics of the start-up. Isabel inspected several properties, and after her departure for America in August, the committee continued the search for a suitable site. In September, Duxhurst, a property near Reigate, was leased for the home.18 By early May 1894, Isabel was working ‘night and day’ to complete preparations for the NBWTA annual council that month. The public meeting, held at London’s Queen’s Hall, was a farewell to Willard and attracted 3,000 people, with many being turned away. The council meetings bore testimony to the success of Isabel’s presidency in the first post-split year. The NBWTA reported that since the 1893 convention it had acquired 300 new branches, cleared its debt, collected £2,000 for the proposed home for female inebriates, introduced an ‘eminently successful’ department system, and launched Woman’s Signal, which was adopted by the

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delegates as their official organ. Isabel was again re-elected president, receiving 395 votes out of 397 cast, with two scattered.19 These events over, Isabel and Willard held meetings in Dublin, Limerick, and Cork before Willard left for the United States on 13 June. Following a heart-wrenching parting, a forlorn Isabel remained unsure that her plans to join her friend would reach fruition, pending Somey’s commitment to the project. By early July she succeeded in convincing him of the merits of the trip, and after visiting her mother in the Savoie, Isabel sailed to New York on 1 August. She arrived totally weary from ‘the severe strain under which she ha[d] been living for the past year’.20 After resting at Willard’s retreat in Haines Falls, New York, Isabel quickly recovered21 and was soon caught up in a round of activities, including speaking engagements and banquets given in her honour. She went to Portland, Maine, to meet that state’s WCTU president, Lillian Stevens, and to Boston to receive tributes from the Massachusetts WCTU at a specially arranged testimonial dinner. She and Somey took accommodations in that city, but whenever time permitted, they retreated to the quiet of Willard’s mountain refuge to relax and write, she stories and articles, and he a book.22 In November, Isabel was at Willard’s side at the WCTU national convention in Cleveland, where the American president once again successfully overcame renewed attacks on her policies and another attempt by dissidents to unseat her.23 Isabel had gone to America uncertain of the duration of her stay. By early September, Somey’s reluctance to commit to definite plans seemed to dictate that she would have to return home for a short time in early January 1895. However, problems with the NBWTA’s inebriate-home scheme necessitated her making an unscheduled ten-day visit to Britain in November 1894 to iron out these difficulties. According to Hannah Whitall Smith, a woman to whom Isabel had entrusted her affairs for the period she was in America had unilaterally taken an expensive property in connection with the farm home, and Isabel had to unravel the complicated situation. The problem solved, she presided at the NEC quarterly meeting and returned to America immediately afterwards.24 In her New Year’s letter to the NBWTA, written from Boston, she apologized for her continuing absence, promising to compensate for her inactive role upon her return, and citing maternal obligation as her reason for remaining in America. As Somey was to celebrate his coming of age

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in spring 1895, ‘I felt it was my duty to be beside him as much as possible before he goes out into life, and before those separations occur which inevitably come with early manhood’.25 In February, Willard and Isabel, accompanied by the officers of the World’s and the American WCTU, presented the Polyglot Petition for world prohibition to President Cleveland in Washington and then in the following month returned once again to England.26 To atone for her largely inactive role of the previous seven months, Isabel embarked upon a hectic round of appearances. Beginning with the NEC quarterly meeting on 19 March in Leeds, she fulfilled a succession of speaking engagements, including addresses to the spring conference of the Scottish Christian Women’s Temperance Association, a public temperance rally of 3,000 participants in Glasgow’s town hall, NBWTA conferences for workers, the concluding meeting of a nationwide anti-opium traffic campaign, and at demonstrations in support of the Direct Veto Bill at City Temple and St James’s Hall, London.27 High on Isabel’s agenda were the Association’s annual council on 17 and 18 June and the WWCTU third biennial convention in London on 19 June. At the NBWTA council, an attack upon Isabel’s leadership by a small group of malcontents introduced some contentious debate into otherwise productive meetings, angering the majority of the delegates. Isabel successfully met the challenge and was easily reelected, though her opponents recovered to renew their assault on a wider scale.28 No such controversy marked the WWCTU convention, its success prompting accolades to Isabel and the British committee of the World’s Union. The gathering welcomed delegates from some 25 countries, with over 100 coming from America. In addition to attending the regular meetings, WWCTU members gave addresses on Gospel Temperance from the pulpits of over 170 London churches and halls on Sunday, 16 June, and the organization filled the Albert Hall to capacity for a ‘Great Demonstration’, attended by temperance notables, including Sir Wilfrid Lawson, MP; it featured a choir of ‘eight hundred temperance maidens in blue dresses, slashed with white’. The delegates were welcomed at receptions given by the Lord Mayor of London at Mansion House and by Isabel at Reigate. She was immensely satisfied with the British WWCTU committee’s hosting of the convention, as ‘the number of foreign delegates is greater, and the assemblies have been more truly

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representative and international’, reflecting the growth of the movement.29 Immediately after the NBWTA and WWCTU meetings, Isabel and the Association were faced with the challenge of an election campaign. In June 1895 the Liberal government resigned and a general election was called for July. Isabel promptly issued to the branches an action plan for the campaign, calling upon them to identify temperance candidates and actively involve themselves in electioneering. Accompanied by Willard, she travelled to the north of England to support, successfully, incumbent Liberal MP and temperance worker Sir Wilfrid Lawson in his bid for re-election, ‘speaking two and three times a day’ on the hustings.30 The Liberals’ electoral loss and the defeat of the majority of the temperance candidates, including the architect of the party’s Direct Veto Bill, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir William Harcourt, were broadly considered to reflect widespread public repudiation of that measure, though it was but one factor contributing to the defeat.31 The Liberals’ defeat was a severe blow to supporters of the Bill, including the NBWTA. In the post mortem which followed, Isabel and the Association were accused of contributing to the defeat, she by her highly visible promotion of the temperance issue, and the British Women by ‘being too timid’ to campaign in the election or by acting as a sectional interest in urging support for only Liberal candidates committed to direct veto. The Association responded that the sudden calling of the election had pre-empted their planned educational tour in support of this legislation, but a curtailed tour had operated in the south, and that many branches had been active in their local campaigns, drawing commendations for their ‘zeal and efficiency’.32 Isabel agreed that the temperance question played an important role in the Liberals’ defeat but cited the opposition’s widespread and unscrupulous misrepresentations ‘as to the effects of local veto, and as to the principles involved’ as the primary cause of the debacle; in her view, the Liberals had contributed to the result by their timorous defence of the legislation on their political platforms. However, she acknowledged the Association’s failings in the campaign, conceding that it should have anticipated the contest and, in the months preceding it, have had vans ‘perambulating the country, distributing literature; speakers stating facts, and dispelling prejudice’ on direct veto.33

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Given the close ties between the liquor trade and the Conservative Party, the British Women expected little benefit from the new Tory government, whose parliamentary agenda contained no reference to temperance legislation.34 Believing there was currently ‘no likelihood of any reform in the direction for which we have worked and laboured so long’, Isabel advocated compromise on liquor legislation, to secure the changes sought by temperance organizations. She declared herself willing to aid any reform not directly militating against Association principles, and by the 1896 annual council, she was openly advocating support for a proposed bill which combined the reduction of licences with five years of compensation for the publicans affected, to be paid out of a fund supplied by remaining licence holders. Many temperance societies, including the NBWTA, had traditionally been opposed to compensation, which they considered a concession to the liquor interest they sought to nullify. Isabel anticipated the argument that legal precedent had established that annual licences contained no ‘property’ beyond a year’s tenure, making compensation unwarranted. She demonstrated that the law was inconsistent, citing the court’s denial of her application for withdrawal of the liquor licence from a hotel on her estates on the grounds that the licence’s suppression would adversely affect the property value for subsequent leaseholders. Additionally, direct-veto proposals of the late Liberal government had included a type of compensation, a time limit that provided an avenue of escape for publicans who were deprived of their licences under the measure. Was it not time to consider ‘a reduction of public houses pro-rata of the population, with a compensative clause, by which existing publicans pay for their retiring brethren, such compensation to be based upon bona-fide returns of the house for the last five years’? Isabel introduced the author of a United Temperance Bill, A. F. Hills, who outlined its provisions, but the delegates at the 1896 annual council resolved not to endorse the measure. She succeeded in adding an amendment to a resolution, giving local branches the opportunity to examine and discuss his proposals, and the motion passed with a small majority. Thus began her successful campaign to have the Association adopt a more pragmatic approach to temperance reform.35 Witnessing Isabel’s efforts over the summer of 1895, NEC member Mary Ward Poole thought ‘Lady Henry would be ready to lie down and give up. . . . It is not possible for poor frail humans to

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go on in this fashion very long’,36 but Isabel’s schedule grew even more hectic in the succeeding months. She had assumed responsibility for the home for inebriate women, Duxhurst, and its management and financial liabilities fell primarily upon her shoulders. As a result, she devoted herself increasingly to its direction, and the bulk of her speaking engagements raised funds for the expanding project.37 In the autumn and winter of 1895-6, she traversed the nation, addressing groups as diverse as the British Women, Unitarians, physicians, Quaker merchants, and Liverpool businessmen.38 In Scotland she addressed gatherings in Dundee, Glasgow, and Edinburgh within the space of three days; time constraints necessitated she change clothes in the train, go directly to her first meeting from the railway station, and return to London on the third day by overnight express. This tour completed, an exhausted Isabel confided to Willard, ‘The difficulties of Duxhurst are almost superhuman. You can form no idea of what it is to get that scheme started. . . . I sometimes hardly know how to go through with it and yet I must now’.39 In November 1895, Isabel was approached to undertake the presidency of a proposed National Council of Women for Great Britain and Ireland. She did not immediately refuse but cautioned that what many regarded as her ‘ultra views’ might be detrimental to the successful launching of the society. When the selection committee voted unanimously to press Isabel to accept the position, she acquiesced to their request. The British Council would join its counterparts in Canada, America, and around the world as affiliates of the International Council of Women, which was established in the United States in 1888. The councils were non-political, nonsectarian organizations dedicated to the furtherance of women’s rights. Isabel considered the International Council’s greatest potential for good resided in its scope: ‘If one woman’s soul is inspired by a high purpose it transforms not only herself but those who stand next to her, but, if one thousand, or one million women thus transformed will thus stand together for one helpful cause, they form a battery of power through which the spirit of God can send immeasurable blessing to all women everywhere.’40 Isabel fulfilled her multiple commitments cheerfully, but by early January 1896, she was confessing to Willard that ‘complications are . . . the greatest trial. The work is only an item. Estates, family, money, a thousand things enter in that I cannot honourably disre-

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gard’.41 The ongoing financial and social liabilities associated with the stewardship of her estates were a constant and overwhelming concern for her. Being untrained in the art of estate management, she lacked the necessary skills to run her holdings successfully. Maintenance of her estates was costly, particularly the large and prohibitively expensive Eastnor Castle, and she incurred heavy expenditures on extensive renovations at Reigate Priory. During the early nineties alone, Isabel had spent £90,000 repairing her properties, including Somers Town, from which rental units she derived no profits. Her stewardship also involved obligations to estate tenants, local residents, and her Somers Cocks relatives. Consequently, though expansive, her properties were not profitable, and during her tenure, diminishing returns necessitated the sale of some of her land, thereby decreasing her holdings. To reduce costs, Reigate Priory was let to Lord and Lady Curzon for periods in 1895 and 1897.42 Isabel’s finances were further depleted by the mushrooming costs of the Duxhurst colony, to which she ‘gave constantly’; by her support for St Mary’s Home for Girls at Reigate; and by her repeated efforts to provide the British Women with an official journal. Successively, Woman’s Herald, Woman’s Signal, and Woman’s Signal Budget required large infusions of money from her purse.43 She also made substantial contributions to the coffers of the World’s WCTU.44 Not an inconsequential portion of Isabel’s expenditure resulted from her altruism, which garnered her an international reputation as a philanthropist. Her correspondence, that of Willard and Hannah Whitall Smith, Willard’s journal, the minutes and Annual Reports of the BWTA and NBWTA, and numerous contemporary newspaper items and periodical articles bear witness to Isabel’s generosity. In addition to supporting many personal charities and the Church, she frequently stepped into the breach to subsidize the financially strapped British Women, and she supplied cash to individuals and groups in crisis, including workers’ strike funds, Armenian refugees, and kindred temperance organizations. She was a benefactor of the West London Mission, established her own settlement house in Bromley, East London, along with a working men’s lodging house at Blackwell Docks, and funded holidays and excursions for poor city children and women workers, often entertaining them at Reigate or Eastnor.45 She was recipient of countless begging letters, many from colleagues who wrongly assumed her assets were boundless, which she found difficult to resist. ‘Poor

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Isabel, she is prey to the needy on every side’, complained Hannah Whitall Smith. Isabel gave readily, and only when the British Women appeared to take her generosity as a given, did she grumble in exasperation to Willard, ‘With me it is pay, pay, pay and never mind’.46 Despite the demands on her resources, Isabel spent lavish amounts aiding Willard, whose periods of residence in England during 1892–6 would have been impossible without Isabel’s largesse; for most of this period, she was virtually Willard’s only source of funds. In addition to subsidizing her WCTU salary, Isabel provided Willard with food and accommodation; a clerical staff to enable her to conduct her WCTU and World Union work from her English base;47 payment of the expenses connected with her British travels and transatlantic voyages, medical expenses incurred by her prolonged illness, and the English and Continental holidays they shared; and a stylish and expensive wardrobe, including Parisian couture.48 Already in 1893, Somey’s tutor, Arthur Pollen, had appraised Isabel’s situation as bleeding ‘financially at every pore’, an evaluation echoed by James Whyte, secretary of the United Kingdom Alliance.49

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11 DIVERSIONS

Despite the many pressures upon her during 1895–6, Isabel coped successfully with two unanticipated events: the marriage of her son and a rescue mission in Armenia. Somey marked his twenty-first birthday on 18 May 1895, and celebrations were held in his honour at Eastnor Castle and Reigate Priory. In addition to dinner parties for family and friends, the festivities included a dinner for the tenantry of the estates and a tea for their children.1 In September, Somey became engaged to Lady Katherine De Vere Beauclerk, 18year-old daughter of the Duke and Duchess of St Albans, following what appears to have been a whirlwind romance. According to Frances Willard, the two met on 23 June 1895 at a charity fête in London’s Queen’s Hall,2 a report given credence by the fact that Isabel had not met Lady Katherine prior to the engagement, although it can be assumed Somey had informed his mother of his intentions. Late in September, Isabel travelled to Ireland to meet her prospective daughterin-law and her parents for the first time and was evidently well satisfied with her son’s choice of bride and future in-laws. She found Lady Katherine to be ‘a delicate, sensitive pretty little thing with a good deal of character I should think’, and the family ‘extremely cordial & nice and very warm and welcoming . . . very simple and homey and countryfied, not at all airs giving or complicated’. These positive impressions were reinforced by subsequent meetings.3 The marriage date was set for April 1896, but the worsening health of the Duke of St Albans, who was suffering from cancer, necessitated the nuptials be brought forward, first to 14 February and finally to 23 January. The marriage took place at St Peter’s Church, Eaton Square, London, and the ceremony was performed by its vicar, the Reverend S. Storrs, assisted by Canon Wilberforce and the Reverend A. S. Hawthorne.4

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Somey’s wedding followed closely upon that of another Somerset bachelor, his father’s eldest brother, the Marquis of Worcester, who had married on 9 October 1895. The 48-year-old nobleman had been considered an unlikely candidate for the altar, particularly as he had failed to marry his long-time mistress upon the death of her husband the previous year. As the current sole grandson of the Duke of Beaufort, Somey was first in line to inherit the dukedom, a situation that would change if the Marquis and his wife produced a son; they eventually did. Isabel believed Worcester had abandoned his mistress for a younger bride in order ‘to have an heir so that Somey shall never be Duke’, but she expressed great relief that the birth of a son would mean she was ‘well freed of any sort of bond that links me to that family’.5 The preparations and social gatherings associated with Somey’s nuptials encroached upon Isabel’s already busy schedule. In the months preceding the marriage she worked ‘almost every hour’ to fulfil engagements in order to accommodate increasing family obligations, such as paying repeated visits to the St Albans’ home, Bestwood, and entertaining at Reigate and Eastnor (on one occasion, for three weeks at a stretch). The festivities peaked with a ‘Bachelors’ Ball’ at Reigate a week before the wedding, and the Priory was filled with guests until a few days before the event, by which time a weary Isabel longed for it to be over. On the eve of the ceremony, Somey was confined to bed with the grippe, and Isabel moved between her flat and the St Albans’ London residence throughout the day, attending to last-minute details, including the cataloguing and arranging of some 400 wedding gifts. When the wedding-day celebrations concluded, she was obliged to fulfil a speaking engagement at a temperance meeting, to which she had committed before the marriage date was rescheduled.6 Isabel ‘poor darling is dreadfully put upon just now. This wedding is adding to her cares a hundred fold’, observed Hannah Whitall Smith. Prompted perhaps by the youthfulness of Somey and Lady Katherine and the memories of her own naivety upon entering wedlock, Isabel felt constrained to devote as much time as possible to the bridal pair. She believed it ‘essential, she should be close at hand in the starting out in life of two such young things, to help them make the right start, and to give their fresh young impulses the right direction’.7 The wedding was a Society occasion. The guest list included representatives from all ranks of the British nobility and from some

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European houses, as well as the United States Ambassador, the Brazilian and Netherlands Ministers, Members of Parliament, Church dignitaries, the Lord Chancellor and Lady Halsbury, and the Poet Laureate Alfred Austin. Hannah Whitall Smith and Florence Fenwick Miller attended, and 200 NBWTA members viewed the ceremony from the church gallery. For Isabel it was an opportunity to indulge her penchant for dressing up. She dazzled in a gown of mushroombrown mirror velvet decorated with seed pearls and gold embroidery; the skirt opened narrowly in front to reveal white satin, and the bodice was cut to disclose a vest of the same satin, ‘in which were pinned diamond brooches all the way down’. Following the ceremony, a reception was held at the London house of the Duke and Duchess of St Albans, where the wedding gifts overflowed from the dining room, among them ‘enough silver to set up shop with, and more than enough diamond brooches to closely cover an entire bodice like armour!’ Among the jewels were Somey’s gifts to his bride, a diamond tiara and necklace and a turquoise, diamond, and pearl brooch; and Isabel’s present to her new daughter-in-law, a large diamond butterfly brooch and a rope of pearls interspersed with diamonds. Isabel’s gift to her son was a furnished flat. Among the less opulent presents were an oak revolving bookcase, filled with leather-bound volumes of classic poetry, from the British Women; volumes of Robert Louis Stevenson’s work sent by Frances Willard; a china tea service given by the children at St Mary’s Home, Reigate; and silver and china pieces presented by the tenantry of Isabel’s and the St Albans’ estates and the local residents of Ledbury.8 Following the reception, the bridal pair went by special train to Reigate, where they were enthusiastically received by its inhabitants. They were transported into the town in a coach drawn by estate tenants, preceded by the band of the Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment and a marching contingent of police-force members. The town’s buildings were illuminated and decorated with flags and evergreens. A large triumphal arch and the trees on the approach road to the Priory were hung with Chinese lanterns and fairy lights, which glowed in the gathering dusk. As the church bells pealed out, large numbers of Reigate residents crowded into the town square to cheer the newly-weds and see the mayor present them with an illuminated address, to the accompaniment of a trumpet and drum fanfare. Following short stays at the Priory and Eastnor, Somey and his bride left for an extended stay in Egypt.9

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Exhausted, Isabel witnessed the celebration’s end with profound relief. Her schedule during the preceding months had been stressful and a great strain upon her health. Her migraine headaches had recurred with increasing frequency, and she also suffered severe colds and bouts of insomnia and rheumatism.10 Additionally, she was obliged to move several times during the winter, adding to the strain. As with most aristocratic landowners whose estates were a distance from London, Isabel maintained a residence in that city; circumstances had dictated that she temporarily change accommodations from Ashley Gardens to Reigate, prior to the wedding, then move into Somey and Lady Katherine’s new flat, and only in February was she able to settle into a small rented house next to Hannah Whitall Smith in Grosvenor Road, where Lady Somers also took a flat for a few months.11 Most stressful of all was the Somerset family’s reaction to the marriage. When the engagement was announced, Lord Henry ordered Somey to come immediately to Florence, warning ‘much could depend on it’, and Isabel concluded that her husband intended to ‘take this opportunity to be very treacherous’. Somey refused to visit his father and, to save Isabel distress, excluded him from the wedding; out of civility he invited the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort. Incensed by their son’s exclusion, they repeatedly pressured the Duke of St Albans to invite Lord Henry, writing obnoxious letters blaming Isabel for causing her husband unwarranted disgrace, which prompted Somey to rebuke his grandparents for their endless persecution of his mother. The Beauforts’ machinations were resisted by the Duke of St Albans, who fully supported Isabel’s and Somey’s stance. Consequently, the entire Somerset family boycotted the wedding, though the Marquis of Worcester did send Somey a gift. The Beauforts also returned a present they had received from Somey on the occasion of their golden wedding anniversary; it arrived on the day of his marriage. Their ultimate revenge was to cut off the entail on their estates in order to deny Somey an inheritance, should he succeed to the dukedom. They continued to malign Isabel—‘The old skeletons . . . dragged out & dressed up in their filthy grave clothes & discussed everywhere by the idle gaping heartless crowd’—causing her humiliation and distress and social rebuffs reminiscent of former days.12 The months of turmoil experienced by Isabel were rendered more difficult to bear by the absence of Willard, who had returned

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to America in September 1895 to attend the annual WCTU convention and tour the South, entailing a stay of some seven months. Isabel’s plans to accompany Willard had been derailed by pressure of work and Somey’s marriage. She pleaded with ‘Conk’ to return as soon as possible to England: ‘I live for that it holds me up & keeps me going.’13 Isabel’s almost-daily letters to her ‘best Beloved’ are witness to the depth of her feelings and to the anguish of the separation, a constant theme in her correspondence. ‘No words can say how I long for you. I feel ready to say as the days go by, “Alas I always live in pain. . . . Pain in itself not hard to bear. But hard to bear so long” and my whole soul cries out How long! I want thee, I want Thee, I want Thee.’ These sentiments were expressed constantly by Isabel. Their relationship had become the focal point of both their lives, their reason for living. With Somey married, Isabel now found her ‘completeness in the heart of the friend who is the earthly anchor of my happiness’, while Willard held ‘Cossie’ to be the ‘dearest & most adequate companion of them all who are cherished in my heart’s heart’.14 Alone, the fun-loving and sociable Isabel found society banal, ‘like a flock of geese wandering on a very small common, and jostling and cackling with the most consecutive aimlessness’.15 Professionally, the two women continued to be each other’s resource and inspiration, sharing ideas, offering advice, providing comfort during adversity, and supporting each other’s goals and efforts. Isabel’s health remained below par in the winter of 1896, and in February her physician ordered her to cease all work through spring and summer, instructions she followed only briefly.16 Despite reassuring letters and cables from Isabel, some less than entirely honest regarding her health, Willard nevertheless grew increasingly alarmed and returned to England in April.17 She approached the reunion with some trepidation, concerned that the seven months of separation might somehow have altered the pair’s relationship. Though Willard found Isabel to be ‘as lovely and dear as ever’, she was somewhat disappointed to discover that some changes had indeed occurred since her earlier visits to Britain. Some resulted from Willard’s failing health, which restricted her to a largely private role rather than the highly visible public one she had formerly enjoyed in Britain. Where previously she had received star billing on the temperance circuit, she now found herself eclipsed by Isabel, who had matured to become a social

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reformer of note, the pre-eminent female temperance leader in the nation, and an internationally recognized figure in the movement. Willard and Isabel no longer shared the close physical proximity they had earlier enjoyed. Their established practice of residing together fell victim to Isabel’s new living arrangements, necessitated by Somey’s marriage. The Priory was now primarily the young couple’s residence, she retaining only small quarters there, and Willard, Anna Gordon, and their staff had to occupy the Cottage, a separate dwelling on the estate. However, Isabel regularly shared meals with them there, and Willard often dined at the Priory. Isabel’s increasing workload meant that she was frequently away from Reigate, fulfilling her presidential and philanthropic duties, many of which Willard was too incapacitated to share. On these occasions, Isabel maintained contact through daily letters to the Cottage. The new family alliance with the St Albans increased Isabel’s social responsibilities, eating into the time she might otherwise devote to Willard.18 There was also divergence in their religious observances, Isabel having re-embraced Anglicanism, which included daily prayers in a newly constructed chapel at the Priory. The Methodist Willard, who derived no satisfaction from Established Church rituals, credited Canon Wilberforce with achieving Isabel’s reversion, but Isabel explained she had returned to the faith of her youth ‘because I have seen further ahead & feel not bound by iron dogma but can still understand the beauty of obedience and the value of discipline’.19 Willard was at Isabel’s side during the June 1896 NBWTA annual meetings, at which she was once again re-elected president, after which they were both ‘tired and done out’ and eager to escape their routines for a vacation. When Isabel had completed a series of engagements, and a few days after celebrating her forty-sixth birthday on 3 August, they left for a month on the Norfolk coast, returning for a few days to Reigate and London before departing for a bicycling tour of Normandy in early September.20 This venture was soon abandoned to pursue yet another crusade—the relief of Armenian refugees fleeing attacks from Turkish forces. Since their country’s subjugation by the Moslem Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, the Christian citizens of Armenia had suffered periodic persecution and constant discrimination, despite the Turks’ commitment to equitable treatment at the Berlin Congress of 1878. Then, in 1894, rising nationalism in the Turks’

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subject Balkan states, including Armenia, induced Sultan Abd alHamid to end this fervour by, reportedly, launching wholesale massacres against Christian Armenians. Estimates of those slaughtered ranged from a low of 25,000 to a high of 300,000, out of a total population of 2.5 million. Reports of slaying, destruction of property and farmland, looting, and rape began to spread across Europe and beyond, the ruthless ferocity of the attacks heightening the Western nations’ revulsion at the genocide and prompting widespread calls for governments to intervene.21 Organizations were established to provide food, medical aid, and supplies to the victims, and Isabel was actively involved in this movement from its inception; Willard lobbied for the cause in America and served as vice-president of that nation’s Armenian Relief Committee.22 By early February 1895, many branches of the NBWTA were deploring the Turkish court’s ‘continued violation of the principles of humanity and defiance of International obligations’ and called upon Lord Salisbury’s government ‘to take the initiative in insisting upon the immediate introduction of definite and thorough reforms’ in Armenia. A resolution to this effect was passed by the NEC in March and by full NBWTA council in June. Four members of the National Executive Subcommittee (NESC), including Hannah Whitall Smith, served on the Committee of the Women’s Armenian Relief Fund, and the British Women launched their own fundraising campaign to support this endeavour, as did the American WCTU. In November, in a letter addressed to Isabel, Armenian women in Constantinople issued an appeal to the women of England to come to the aid of their ‘Suffering Sisters’ who had lost their entire families in a recent massacre and were now living in destitution and ‘deep consternation and terror’. To Isabel’s dismay, monies collected by the end of 1895 remained unused, the relief efforts stymied by the seemingly sluggish pace of British diplomacy regarding Armenia. She complained to Willard and lamented to the NBWTA about the apathy of Britain and Christendom to the Armenians’ plight.23 Throughout the winter and spring of 1896, Isabel strived to bring the Armenian situation to the public’s attention, arranging a women’s meeting at Queen’s Hall and speaking at fundraising gatherings. She attempted to use her political contacts to rouse the Liberal opposition in the Commons, to pressure the Conservative government into intervening with European powers on Armenia’s

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behalf; she used her professional and social connections to facilitate the relief efforts. Despairing at Prime Minister Lord Salisbury’s apparent inaction on the issue, she concluded the situation could only be redeemed through American intervention, a solution shared by Salisbury, she claimed, ‘on very good authority’. ‘I believe that if America could brace herself up to take the initiative, Russia, England and France would be at her back to support her’, Isabel reasoned.24 A humanitarian and ‘advocate of universal peace’,25 Isabel was prompted to act on behalf of the Armenian question by her abhorrence of conflict and of the horrors inflicted upon the population of the beleaguered nation, particularly defenceless women and children. The reports of Christian women being killed and raped by Moslem ‘infidels’ also fed Isabel’s and Willard’s religious prejudices and their commitment to the concept of sisterhood. Both women were convinced that Armenians were being victimized primarily because of their religion and their defence of feminine purity and monogamous marriage within an hostile Moslem environment. Isabel’s and Willard’s views, Ian Tyrrell notes, tended to ignore the possible patriarchal attitudes of Armenian males and the negative activities of the Armenian revolutionary movement of the 1890s.26 Addressing a national demonstration in May 1895 against the Turkish atrocities, the only woman speaker among a bevy of male notables, Isabel stated, ‘The martyrdoms of the first century in Jerusalem have been suffered again at Sassoun. The hills and valleys of Judea are hardly more sacred than the blood-saturated hills and valleys of Armenia’; many women of that country had resisted their oppressors and perished ‘that the untrammelled, beneficent, consecrated life of England’s purest womanhood might slowly come to women in their own beautiful and pleasant land’. Symbolizing thousands of White Ribbon women, she said, ‘I stand here trying to represent their holy indignation and burning love for their sisters yonder in the clutch of the harem despot at Constantinople’.27 Before departing England for their bicycling holiday in France, Isabel and Willard issued letters to the press, calling upon women in their respective countries to aid the Armenian cause. ‘To the women does it especially belong to succour their sisters in their dire hour of need’, Isabel urged, and the Woman’s Signal Armenian Refugee Fund was established, the monies to be distributed by her.28 After embarking at Calais, the two women travelled to Amiens

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and then to Rouen, where they read in the London Daily News of the increasing numbers of destitute Armenians arriving in Marseilles. Prompted to cut short their vacation in order to assist the refugees, after two days in Paris they travelled south to Marseilles where they found some 1,000 refugees; most of them existed in rough shelters, on basic rations supplied by the French government. Isabel and Willard immediately bought and distributed to the refugees bread, figs, and grapes and gave assurances of improved accommodation. The following day, aided by David Crawford, the special correspondent of the London Daily News, they commandeered a disused hospital and organized a work crew of refugees to assist in the cleaning of the rooms. After ‘six hours of feverish activity’, they had established a kitchen and sleeping and eating quarters, had rented cooking pots, appointed a manager and a cook, and welcomed into the refuge the first 150 Armenian occupants. Their numbers doubled within days. Later, a chapel was established to serve their religious needs. Seeing the decrepit state of the Armenians’ attire, the pair purchased clothing for them and provided fabric, needles, and thread for additional garments. Isabel supplied the funding for all these initial efforts.29 The two women’s ministrations in Marseilles drew gratitude and praise from the Armenian community in Paris and recognition in the press: ‘Lady Henry is unequalled as an organizer, and is worth all the officials of Marseilles put together’, reported Crawford in the London Daily News. She ‘bought all the provisions and did her marketing. She spared herself no trouble. . . . She and Miss Willard have been indefatigable’.30 As a result of their appeals, money began to flow into their respective funds, enabling the work to continue. In early October, the two women were joined by Miss Fraser, an American missionary, and Colonel Stitt, head of the Salvation Army’s Social Department, which would take over the Marseilles effort when Willard and Isabel returned to England.31 As Willard’s biographer Ruth Bordin notes, the mission at Marseilles was more in keeping with Isabel’s hands-on approach to social problems than with Willard’s philanthropic style. This assessment of Isabel was shared by one contemporary journalist, commenting on her contribution in the Armenian crisis: ‘It is in the acquisition of an unrivalled acquaintance with the lot of the suffering poor that the bulk of Lady Henry’s life has been spent. The cottages of the country peasants and the slums of the London wastrels

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have been her school, years of ungrudging personal service her training.’32 The Armenian project followed naturally upon Isabel’s previous rescue experience, from the early days of her Ledbury Mission and St Mary’s Home for Girls to the more recent Docklands hostel and the Duxhurst Industrial Farm Colony for Female Inebriates, all funded to a large degree by her personal wealth. Lacking any such financial resources, the often impecunious Willard worked to mitigate social ills through legislation, political activism, and WCTUfinanced charitable endeavours. While Isabel oversaw the daily operation of the Armenian refuge, Willard negotiated by letter and cable with the American Consul, immigration officials, and her contacts in America and succeeded in obtaining permission for some refugees to enter her homeland; others were settled in England and other European countries. Opposition from some sectors of the American population to the proposed Armenian immigration plan delayed their resettlement in the United States, causing Isabel and Willard several weeks of anxiety following their return to England on 6 October. Confirmation of the refugees’ entry into America was received later that month. During the delay, Isabel housed some 20 refugees at Reigate, turning the servants’ hall into sleeping quarters and providing a kitchen in which the Armenians could prepare their meals.33 Isabel and Willard had delayed their return to England as long as possible because refugees continued to arrive in Marseilles, but with engagements in England and America waiting to be fulfilled, they turned the refuge over to a committee in October. Its members included Stitt, Fraser, and Crawford, who were committed to continuing the work with donated funds. Willard’s efforts had further sapped her already depleted strength, and upon her return to Reigate, she was confined to bed in order to regain her energy for her return voyage to America on 31 October to attend the WCTU annual convention. Despite restrictions placed upon her activities by her physician, she continued to promote the relief effort and to monitor the negotiations being conducted to facilitate the refugees’ entry into America.34 Heartbroken once again at being parted from ‘Conk’, Isabel was inundated by an increasing volume of Armenian relief work, but coping with the added burden helped to ease the pain of the separation. Frustrated by the constant squabbling between the differ-

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ent relief agencies, she organized a single committee of representatives from the various organizations to centralize assistance for the refugees and to systemize the work, which involved all her diplomatic skills and powers of persuasion. At Isabel’s invitation, leading members of the groups involved in the rescue work met in London in mid-November, and an international central committee was established, with Isabel as secretary, to co-ordinate the work in England with that of all other countries. She pressed Willard to encourage the American relief societies to co-operate with the committee. The bulk of the organization, however, remained in Isabel’s hands. ‘Armenia presses almost night and day, the work is so hard, the responsibilities are so great and there are so many to conciliate and please’, she told Willard, as the individual committees continued to wrangle about their different schemes; ‘I am trying to drive this curiously difficult team, which requires all the ingenuity and strength that can be brought to bear’.35 Isabel’s commitment to the Armenian project reflects her humanitarian ideals, but they did not prevent her vision from being clouded, to some extent, by the cultural prejudices of the period. When relief workers in the field advised that the most merciful solution to the problem of mixed-race, illegitimate orphans in the Armenian interior was to allow them to perish, Isabel apparently accepted this view. ‘It is an awful thing to say, but it is better to let them die. Letters have come from Miss Shattuck and others stating this. They say that the children that are being born now, half Turk and half Armenian, the result of the outrages, are so awful that a race will be created that ought to be destroyed before it is born. Idiots, maimed, and otherwise doomed children.’36 Contributions continued to flow into the Woman’s Signal fund, and Isabel received donations from NBWTA members and £2,000 from American women. Demands upon monies increased as the French government began to turn away some refugees, America curtailed the numbers entering the country, and the work expanded beyond Marseilles. Laura Ormiston Chant, an NBWTA lecturer, volunteered to go and organize the relief effort for the Armenians stranded in Eastern Europe, and she was dispatched there by Isabel in late November. Isabel hoped relief camps could be set up along Armenia’s borders, in Van (eastern Turkey), Russian Armenia, and Bulgaria to shelter refugees over the winter, but the delicate political situation regarding Armenia meant that the necessary assistance

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from the British government did not materialize; consequently, Chant’s efforts were restricted to helping in Vienna, Belgrade, and Bulgaria.37 In the latter country she supplied numerous Armenian refugees with food, clothing, and medical assistance and was instrumental in establishing a refuge for some 800 of their number.38 The Woman’s Signal fund accepted donations until March 1897, by which time it had received a total of £563. The modest sum was sufficient to support 100 Armenian orphans for one year as part of Isabel’s rescue scheme for these children. Correspondents in Armenia, including the US Consul in Erzurum, reported that up to 50,000 children were without any male relatives, and many thousands of these were also motherless. Isabel resolved that the relief effort should now focus upon these orphans. She was opposed to the opening of orphanages, first, because buildings would involve capital expenditure, be costly to maintain, and be vulnerable to Turkish attack; and second, because she believed that in Protestant missionary institutions the children’s religious beliefs would be changed. She preferred to ‘have the Armenian church strengthened and helped and the Armenian teaching given where the children were already of that faith’, and she instituted a ‘boarding out’ system of care, where the children would be known as White Ribbon children. Under the direction of a Doctor Reynolds, an American missionary working in Van, widows were paid to house the children, whose care and education were financed by Isabel’s fund; the money was sufficient for her to pledge that the work would continue for at least three more years.39 In early December 1896, Isabel had considered returning to Bulgaria and Russia to assist the workers on the ground. However, she decided she would be more profitably employed organizing and lobbying for the relief effort in Britain, and so she sent out a woman physician and three nurses to establish, under WWCTU jurisdiction, a rudimentary hospital to serve the many refugees living in sickness, dirt, and destitution.40 Her decision to remain in Britain was also influenced by the need to oversee her rescue work at home, the running of her Farm Colony for Female Inebriates, Duxhurst.41 She was constantly engaged in the organization and treatment programmes at the colony and with the fundraising required to maintain them, tasks that would consume her time, energy, and finances for the remainder of her life.

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Isabel had undertaken the Armenian enterprise when already overburdened with NBWTA work, particularly her special project, the Farm Colony for Female Inebriates. The financial appeals for the Armenians had encroached upon those for the home, which was desperately underfunded. In the wake of the 1893 split, Isabel had suggested the rescue work be continued in a replacement home, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the American temperance women’s ‘Whisky War’ of 1873–4, which had sparked the formation of the BWTA; an appeal would be launched to raise £1,000, the estimated cost of starting up the new establishment.1 It was Isabel’s hope that the farm home would become an officially sanctioned reformatory under proposed government legislation for the treatment of inebriates, which she anticipated would be passed in the near future.2 At this period, habitual drunkards arrested for intoxication were usually handed short penal sentences; most of them repeatedly reoffended following their release. The 1879 Habitual Drunkards Act allowed local authorities to license inebriate rehabilitation retreats and permitted habitual drunkards to apply for entry to such institutions as an alternative to prison, but this alternative was rarely utilized. The Society for Promotion of Legislation for the Control and Cure of Habitual Drunkards (SPLCCH), founded jointly by the British Medical Association and the Social Science Association, decried the 1879 Act’s provisions that empowered only the drunkard to initiate rehabilitation, and it spearheaded a campaign for legislation containing a mandatory-treatment clause for non-criminal inebriates. There was no consensus among reformers as to the overriding cause of inebriety. Opinions ranged from feeble-mindedness

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to moral rectitude or disease, or a combination thereof, but reformers shared a general desire to control insobriety by strengthening the criminality of drunkenness. An amended Inebriates Act was enacted in 1898, enabling, but not compelling, local authorities to set up two types of reformatories: government-funded State Inebriate Reformatories for convicted criminals found to be habitual drunkards; and Certified Inebriate Reformatories, financed from a combination of government, local authority, and/or charitable funds, to rehabilitate recidivist inebriates for a maximum of three years. The system proved to be a small-scale, short-term venture, ending at the onset of the First World War. The experiment’s demise is attributed to a variety of factors: a reluctance on the part of local authorities to finance reformatories; the resistance of many inmates to rehabilitation; the overcrowding of State Reformatories with mentally ill inebriates who were better suited for psychiatric hospital treatment; and the unwillingness of magistrates to utilize the 1898 Act since it required referral to the Crown Court, or because they believed the mandatory length of the sentence violated personal liberty.3 Isabel was a member of the SPLCCH and among those lobbying for a more effective law and participating in a deputation to the Home Secretary, Herbert Asquith, in December 1893. She shared the society’s belief that compulsory detention was an important element in the treatment of inebriate delinquents, and after the 1898 Inebriate Act was passed sans a mandatory-treatment clause, she continued to hope for future legislation to ensure that habitual drunkards ‘are no longer free to ruin their lives and the lives of those who belong to them, but for the benefit of humanity will be consigned to places where they will be saved from themselves until such time as they can stand alone’.4 At the NBWTA annual council in May 1894, Isabel announced that the British Women had contributed double the estimated £1,000 required to start the inebriates’ colony. In September, Duxhurst, a 200-acre estate with manor house near Reigate, was leased for the facility. In the months since the launch of the appeal, the need for a replacement home had become ever more urgent. No longer having their own inebriate retreat, the NBWTA had been compelled to seek placement of intemperate women in facilities of other organizations, but were frequently obliged to withdraw their applications because of the excessive cost. Isabel considered the

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6. Isabel (Lady Henry) Somerset. Courtesy of Audrey Ward Collection, Reigate Priory Museum.

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most critical problem faced by temperance workers was the halting of the increasing rate of inebriety among women, and the inebriates’ rehabilitation. She lamented that England possessed the unenviable distinction of being almost the sole nation with a ‘drunken womanhood’, which she attributed to women’s close association with the commercial dispensing of liquor. The question they must address was ‘not only how are we to stem the evil, but how are we to deal with those that fall?’5 Isabel’s concern over rates of women’s drunkenness was shared by many reformers. By the close of the nineteenth century, female inebriety was rising at an alarming rate. Of the 4,590 cases committed to reformatories under the 1898 Inebriates Act, 3,741 (81 per cent of the total) were women; however, 82 per cent of offences were actually perpetrated by men. Men were routinely given shortterm prison sentences rather than the long-term reformatory alternative because magistrates were reluctant to commit male breadwinners, with dependants, to lengthy periods of incarceration in the reformatories; in addition, there was a deficit of institutions for men, and men were also regarded as more capable of physically restraining their drunken behaviour than were women, but were less amenable to rehabilitation. Contemporary attitudes towards women, particularly working-class women, appear to have largely dictated the differential treatment of drunkenness. Diagnoses of mental defectiveness, construed from the ‘hysterical’ behaviour of drunken women, coupled with prevailing fears over the apparent deterioration of working-class physiques in a period concerned with national efficiency, cast female inebriety as a threat to society because of the detrimental physiological effect women’s drinking could have on their progeny. To this was added the danger that their moral weakness, displayed in their idleness, slovenly household practices, and inability to control their habit, would also be transferred to their children. Thus, the higher incidence of committal of female inebriates to reformatories for curative and rehabilitation treatment.6 Duxhurst’s treatment scheme provided an alternative to the deleterious, short-term prison sentences from which drunken women were released to quickly re-offend. The basic programme, later radically expanded under Isabel’s direction, was prepared by American physician Sarah Anderson-Brown and patterned upon reportedly successful methods used at the Sherburne Prison,

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Massachusetts, which had been observed and studied by Isabel. The scheme was based upon the conviction that reclamation of the inebriate woman required her removal from temptations of the outside world to undergo a lengthy period of treatment, within an environment and regimen conducive to her recovery. It required a rural, relatively isolated location and the provision of moderate exercise, healthy diet, and creative and useful work in a cheerful, home-like, and supportive milieu—underpinned by ‘all that love which is the core of Christ’s Gospel’. Two separate remedial centres were to be established. One would be a farm home for inebriate working women who were able to afford a small fee, with free places for women sent by magistrates for treatment; residents would follow a regimen of outdoor agricultural pursuits and indoor craft activities which would help supply their needs. This programme conformed to growing medical opinion that such tasks had more curative powers than continuous sewing and laundry work, and Isabel and Anderson-Brown were confident their system would enable inmates to return to society ‘stronger mentally, morally and physically to resist evil, . . . better fitted for the battle of life, and able to regain a footing in the world’. A second, separate dwelling, the Manor, would serve ‘ladies’ mainly referred by their physicians and able to afford full payment for care, but unwilling to enter an institution designated an ‘inebriate home’. These residents would follow a programme of carefully supervised exercise, occupational therapy, and recreational pursuits, combined with a nutritious diet, designed ‘to restore a healthy tone to the nervous system’.7 While Isabel was in America in the autumn and winter of 1894–5, the scheme remained largely in limbo. As a temporary measure, a few inebriates were taken into the manor house, pending its completion for ‘lady’ guests. Although the British Women continued to contribute funds, and Isabel raised cash for Duxhurst in the United States, much more money was required to construct and furnish the buildings before the scheme could be fully launched. In her New Year’s letter to the NBWTA, Isabel called upon local branches and societies to redouble their fundraising efforts, and by March, a further £2,365 had been collected. Following her return to England that month, Isabel urged the Association to devote all their afternoon meetings to fundraising for the home and to adopt the WCTU’s successful coin-collecting

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methods. ‘If we only have courage and carry this through as a large scheme we shall set a standard all over the country as to what Inebriate Homes ought to be in the future.’ The NEC, concerned with the potential magnitude of the scheme, created a separate department for the home and successfully pressed Isabel to become superintendent and assume responsibility for all arrangements and the entire management of Duxhurst, including financial liability. Hannah Whitall Smith correctly prophesied that this charge would constitute a burden upon Isabel ‘for years to come’.8 By the NBWTA annual council in June, Isabel’s expanded scheme was underway. The Manor, to be directly supervised by her, was due to open in August, and a holiday home, the Nest, was already operational, offering two-week vacations for impoverished children from the London slums. Isabel hoped the Manor’s ‘lady’ residents would develop an interest in working with the children, as ‘nothing so helps those whose morale has been impaired by drink as to make them feel that they are useful’. Construction had begun on the inebriate-village cottages, one being financed by Isabel in honour of Somey’s coming of age. Several NBWTA branches had raised cash to furnish one or more of these dwellings, or simply one room therein. A third building, for feepaying patients unable to afford the Manor’s rate, was almost filled. The NEC pledged to collect the £250 required to build and furnish an ‘Isabel Somerset Cottage’ and resolved to change the colony’s name to the Somerset Village to honour Isabel, ‘mark it as a new scheme for the treatment of Inebriates’, and distinguish it from old methods. At Isabel’s request, the re-naming decision was rescinded because of opposition to the move, the details of which went unrecorded in the committee minutes. According to Hannah Whitall Smith, it was Somey who objected to the adoption of the Somerset appellation, fearing ‘it may make him more responsible in the future than he cares to be’.9 The completion of Duxhurst was delayed by a succession of problems, but Isabel was determined to bring the experimental programme to fruition. Her relentless pace resulted in persistent fatigue, insomnia, and debilitating bouts of migraine, exacerbated by a constant anxiety over the difficulties hampering the colony’s progress and the yoke of responsibility she carried. ‘Duxhurst is a burden beyond words to relate. The scheme develops and develops, and is entirely on my shoulders’, she ruefully reported to

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Willard. Isabel eased her situation by hiring a land agent and an agricultural superintendent to oversee farm operations, but the logistics involved in organizing the staffing, provisioning, government liaison, and treatment programmes remained her preserve. The superintendent proved unsatisfactory and had to be replaced, and disagreements among staff members created friction for Isabel to allay.10 Inadequate finances were Isabel’s most urgent problem. Sufficient funds had been collected to commence the construction of some buildings, but the scheme required ‘heaps of money to carry it on’. The building which housed intermediate patients had proved inadequate, necessitating the renting of larger quarters a mile from the colony, and a hospital was required, plus improvements to the water supply and road system—all unanticipated expenses.11 The NBWTA continued to provide funds, but individual and branch donations seldom exceeded a couple of pounds; however, three of the larger associations, Birmingham, Derby, and Plymouth, each raised the cost of building a cottage for the farm home, while Kent County financed the hospital. British Women’s contributions were ‘like drops in a bucket to the sum total needed for the initiating and carrying on such a tremendous scheme’, and Isabel was the only one capable of raising the enormous amount of cash required. Faced with this daunting task, she undertook speaking engagements around the country. A few audiences gave large amounts, London businessmen presented her with £200, but most meetings brought in around £20. The £1,000 she raised between October and November 1895 bore witness to her untiring efforts.12 Isabel also solicited her social circle. Lady Somers financed the building of the children’s home, and Isabel’s personal appeals to wealthy friends and associates produced some substantial contributions, one totalling £500. However, donations alone proved insufficient for the demands of the scheme, obliging Isabel to personally subsidize it with several thousand pounds and, together with NBWTA stalwart, Mrs Massingberd, to stand security for a £2,000 loan.13 The demands of Duxhurst pressed so heavily that Isabel had to reluctantly forgo her hoped-for visit to Willard, who was currently spending seven months fulfilling her WCTU duties in the United States. Despite the American’s constant appeals to end their separation and Isabel’s overwhelming longing to see her friend, she

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dejectedly informed Willard, ‘It would be wickedness for me to go as it would mean the absolute failure of the Duxhurst scheme. No one seems to have an idea about it’. Isabel pressed her, ‘Come to your Cossie soon. Please come soon. I try to be brave but there is much that weighs me down’, an appeal that brought Willard back to England in spring 1896.14 By summer 1896, sufficient funds had been raised to enable Duxhurst to become completely operational. The Farm Colony for Female Inebriates comprised six fully occupied thatched cottages, a hospital, a chapel, the Nest, and several agricultural buildings, all situated around a green in a village setting. A main building contained a central dining room, kitchen, laundry, bathrooms, a meeting room (Willard Hall), and a room each for the matron and Isabel. The tight financial situation had resulted in cessation of the farm home’s free-bed policy, save for applications from the subscribers who had given £250 to construct a cottage. All others paid weekly a five-shilling maintenance fee, but residents who were willing and able to work for their keep were reimbursed any earnings above this cost when they left the home. The manor house sanatorium for ladies was open, and ‘Hope House’ for intermediate patients was filled to capacity. On 30 May 1896 the chapel was dedicated by Canon Wilberforce, and on 6 July the colony was officially opened by Princess Mary, Duchess of Teck (the future Queen Mary), an event widely covered in the national press.15 Princess Mary’s presence at the opening ceremony, and support given to the Duxhurst scheme by Princess Louise, the Queen’s daughter, reflects their friendship with Isabel, indicating there had been a relaxation of the social barriers erected against her following her separation scandal, eighteen years earlier. This new attitude apparently extended to Queen Victoria, who may have been influenced by Lady Somers with whom the monarch was on ‘intimate terms’, according to Isabel’s cousin, the Reverend E. F. Russell. In June 1897, Isabel presented her new daughter-in-law, Lady Katherine, at the Queen’s Drawing Room reception, Isabel dressed in ‘black net, exquisitely embroidered with long curved sprays of cream-tinted lace sewn with silver sequins, her train, . . . black and silver moire velours lined with white satin’. The following month she attended the monarch’s Diamond Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace, which she described as ‘pretty dull and rather bad music’.16

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Methods employed at Duxhurst represented a radical departure from the short-term punitive treatment customarily afforded habitual drunkards. The colony rejected the notion of ‘reforming sinners’, regarding alcoholism as primarily ‘the result of physical conditions’ which ‘must be treated as a disease’. Having experienced rejection, humiliation, and loneliness in the wake of her marriage breakdown, Isabel aimed to restore the women’s self respect as well as their physical health. The residents were ‘patients’, not inmates, and she ‘never heard any word which would seem to imply they were a degraded class’.17 The minimum one-year programme incorporated methods to achieve gradual rehabilitation of each resident’s mind and body, combined with ‘fresh air and hard work, kindness, sympathy, and, above all, the atmosphere of home’. Discipline was tempered with the calming and humanizing effects of empathetic care in a normal, healthy, and serene environment, and Duxhurst eschewed the state reformatories’ method of controlling and punishing an inmate’s behaviour through the giving or withholding of food. The colony’s meals were basic, but adequate, approximating those in an average working-class household.18 The most important aspect of the scheme was its recognition of each woman as an individual person within the community and her right to be treated accordingly as the first step in her journey to regain self-worth. ‘Individual dealing with the women, the influence of individual character, individual happiness and individual thought, must in the end tell for nothing but good.’ This philosophy was an integral part of the colony’s programme. Each cottage group of six or seven women was under the care of a Church Army nurse-sister, supervised by a sister superintendent, ‘where each individual feels herself of importance in her own circle’. These living arrangements also aimed to replicate conditions in a ‘selfrespecting’, working-class family unit and present ‘an ideal of life’ to follow in the future.19 Most of the inebriates entered the farm village in a debilitated condition. After treatment for physical problems, each was assessed to determine her character and temperament and placed within a cottage containing congenial fellow inhabitants and supervised by a sister deemed best able to empathize with her new charge.20 These ‘gentle-spirited and devout’ sisters were guardians, rather than warders, to whom the patients were encouraged to bring their problems. Isabel was deeply involved in the treatment aspect of the

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scheme, giving Bible classes, counselling the patients, and seeing ‘each woman separately to hear complaints’. Many patients attributed their ‘cure’ to Isabel’s influence. In 1896, she spent the first of many Christmas Days at the colony, ‘where she would sooner be than anywhere else’, celebrating dinner with the patients and giving each one a gift. In 1897, she built a cottage for herself there, which gradually came to be used as her base of operations and in 1905 became her primary residence. ‘There is an atmosphere of helpfulness and peace’ at Duxhurst, she told Willard, ‘and I know I am some use—about which I am uncertain at any other time’.21 Individual choice of occupational training was incorporated into the village labour schedule to facilitate severance from association with former lives and to provide employment in the future. The residents helped care for the children at the Nest, whose presence further enhanced the ‘family’ atmosphere, as did the babies under 15 months who were admitted to the farm home with their mothers. The daily interaction between children and residents isolated from their respective families was conducted for the benefit of both groups—the child received the comforts of ‘mothering’, the woman the joy ‘of being loved and the infinite peace of feeling that she is trusted and revered’—benefits Isabel considered crucial to the reclamation process. The women were closely supervised to ensure they did not succumb to their alcohol cravings. Each began her residency ‘practically a prisoner’ in the village, but after a few months of reliable behaviour, was deemed a ‘trust patient’ and permitted to go outside the colony, be sent on errands, and receive other liberties. In this way, she was gradually introduced to the temptations of ‘freedom’, rather than meeting them unprepared at treatment’s end; her resolve was strengthened by degrees for the continuing struggle against insobriety.22 ‘Christlike service’ and spiritual guidance underpinned the entire Duxhurst scheme. Isabel stressed that ‘spiritual work is the real foundation upon which we build, . . . without it our plan would be of little success.’ A complete cure required each woman unburden her soul to God and be reborn in Christ. To aid this transformation, ‘we must appeal to that which is divine in human nature,’ by placing human nature ‘in direct contact with the Divine which overshadows all’; Christ’s redeeming love could be best illustrated to the patients by the example of ‘those who are living epistles of God’.23 The colony’s chapel was at the centre of farm-village life, ‘a

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true sanctuary, open at all hours to those . . . in need of solitude and silence for prayer’.24 The building was modelled upon one Isabel had visited in Engelberg, Switzerland, but she designed its interior to bring the colour and brightness of nature indoors. Her own rare fourteenth-century, embroidered wall hangings decorated one area, and chapel ornaments donated by Adeline graced the altar. The chapel had been erected as an alternative to the parish church, to spare the patients exposure to ‘a certain amount of disagreeable notice’ they experienced when attending worship there. The local rector conducted Sunday service, daily matins and evensong for the women at the chapel, and Gospel Temperance meetings and a choir were also features of the colony’s spiritualguidance programme.25 Isabel was satisfied with Duxhurst’s progress after one year of operation, but admitted there had been ‘trials and disappointments’. Advancement had been made towards solving the perplexing problem of reclaiming inebriate women, and she tentatively concluded that ‘the methods we have adopted are likely in many cases to succeed’. Many of the patients had been sent by magistrates after choosing treatment as an alternative to being sentenced as ‘drunk and disorderly’; others arrived after completing a prison term; and some had come voluntarily from their own homes. Despite the number of ‘difficult cases’ treated, the women had proved co-operative, embracing the outdoor work to a point where they had a thriving business in garden and greenhouse produce. The ‘cottage system’ had proved particularly effective in eliminating the ‘institutional spirit’ and in developing the women’s sense of pride in their maintenance of the spotlessly kept ‘little homes’. The experiment of combining the care of the Nest’s slum children with therapy for the patients had been a singular success. There were cases ‘of lives that we believe to be wholly changed, and women whose outlook has been totally altered’, reports which were supported by written testimonials from family members. Positive physical results of the treatment were affirmed by the regularly attending medical practitioner, who noted the remarkable ‘restoration to new health and vigour’ of patients formerly suffering from disease or apparent permanent enfeeblement. Duxhurst’s methods garnered the approval of London court personnel and prison officials and the attention of the British government, which consulted Isabel concerning the scheme with a view to conducting

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their proposed reformatories in a similar manner. The innovative outdoor work programme was thereafter adopted by many inebriate retreats.26 Privately, Isabel acknowledged the difficulties Duxhurst personnel faced in operating the scheme. Some women ‘come to us animals and not human, and how to manage them is the greatest problem that can be solved’, she reported to Willard.27 One such case was former house and parlour maid Jane Cakebread, recipient of some 300 convictions for drunkenness. All previous attempts at reformation having failed, in autumn 1895 she was taken to Duxhurst by Isabel, who thought success with this notorious inebriate would give the colony a ‘trump card’ in its quest to become a state-licensed facility. Initially, Cakebread appeared to be ‘getting on quite contentedly’, but after a few weeks she complained of being ‘buried alive’ in the country, and her deteriorating behaviour became a threat to the farm-village community; she was noisy and abusive, disrupted chapel services, fought with a fellow patient in the dining room, and attacked another with a fire shovel, obliging Isabel to reluctantly remove her from the colony. As she had displayed no craving for strong drink, Isabel concluded Cakebread was not a habitual drunkard but a mentally deranged individual who was rendered intoxicated and violent by even small amounts of alcohol and, thus, was untreatable at Duxhurst. In Isabel’s view, this condition afflicted many recidivists and required workhouseasylum care, not repeated penal convictions. Following assessment at Holloway Women’s Prison, Cakebread was removed to the workhouse; after a vicious rib-breaking assault on the institution’s doctor, she was sent to a ‘lunatic asylum’, where she died in 1898.28 The episode generated some unfavourable publicity for Isabel and Duxhurst when a Pall Mall Gazette correspondent wrote a derogatory article claiming her ‘mischievous interference’ was responsible for both Cakebread’s insanity and her committal to a ‘lunatic asylum’. Isabel had ignored the paper’s previous personal attacks upon her but this latest one reflected upon the colony scheme and the NBWTA, and she responded with a libel suit against the paper’s editor, Lord Astor. The suit was settled in Isabel’s favour, and Astor published an apology in his and other papers and paid all costs. He privately confided in Lady Jeune that he had sanctioned the offensive article in response to Isabel’s supposedly unfriendly remark about him at a speech delivered in Chicago. Astor

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seemingly held no grudge as, thereafter, relations between them were amiable and she attended a house party at his estate.29 The ongoing operating costs and accumulated debt of the colony were a constant concern for Isabel at a time when she was struggling with financial problems at her Eastnor estate and when the property rents at Reigate were in arrears. With the death of Mrs Massingberd early in 1897, Isabel assumed sole responsibility for their shared loan, and as she bore financial liability for the scheme, the situation demanded she continue with her fundraising meetings and soliciting donations from personal friends. This was an uphill task. ‘Finances are perfectly terrible this year; there is not a penny to be got anywhere as everything is given to Jubilee things’, to celebrate Queen Victoria’s diamond anniversary. Discovering that afternoon fundraising meetings were attended only by women without ready money, she ‘exhibited the wisdom of a serpent’ and arranged for certain gatherings to be held in the evenings after dinner, when cash-rich men would be not only in attendance but in an expansive mood. Some of her burden was eased in September 1897 by Adeline’s gift of £3,000 to clear the colony’s building debt, but Isabel remained liable for £2,800 of arrears and had also paid out £2,100 in other subsidies. She anticipated that the Manor and the farm home would soon become self-supporting, and once all debts were cleared, the colony would not have to depend upon donations; annual deficits would, in future, be ‘very small’.30 The British Women continued to contribute to Duxhurst but, fearful that the NBWTA might become responsible for the colony’s support, requested that trustees be appointed to assume liability in the event of Isabel’s death, despite her reassurances the Association would never be held to account.31 To Isabel’s regret, the colony’s maximum capacity of 42 patients had necessitated the refusal of some 3,000 applications during its first fully operational year. Despite financial uncertainties, by summer 1898, two further cottages were being erected to house the increased numbers of patients arriving from the police courts; their construction was funded by Royal Navy temperance sailors and the Hastings branch. Following the passage of the 1898 Habitual Inebriates Act, a deputation from the government’s Home Office visited the colony and was ‘greatly impressed with all the arrangements’, and Duxhurst was licensed to accept women under the legislation’s provisions. The farm home experienced ‘considerable

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difficulty’ with some of these patients from the police courts, the result, Isabel believed, of the courts’ failure to discriminate in their classification of habitual inebriates: the recidivist offending directly as a result of intoxication, or the hardened criminal. However, the colony environment and programme had succeeded in producing some positive effect upon even these latter intractable cases.32 Reviewing the Duxhurst scheme after six years of operation, Isabel reported that the colony was virtually debt free, but maintenance costs required the NBWTA continue its fundraising efforts. The Nest was now a permanent home for children ‘rescued from drunken and vicious surroundings’, who, after a few months of care, displayed strikingly improved physical and emotional health. The farm-village work programme had expanded to include the cottage industries of basketry; weaving of fabric for carpets, table linen, and clothing; plus the production of agricultural produce for sale in local and London markets. The value of outdoor work had been demonstrated to improve the health and morale of the patients. The gradual establishment of state reformatories under the Inebriates Act allowed Duxhurst to reduce its intake of police-court cases, eliminating the problems associated with integrating them with the non-offending residents. The farm village was now concentrating upon non-criminal, voluntary patients ‘whose drunkenness is desolating their homes’, for whom very few treatment centres were available. The medical officer reported that out of a total of 239 patients, 110 were cured, a claim Isabel supported with their written testimonials and with ‘encouraging reports’ received from former patients; these results were echoed by local branches who monitored individual ‘successful’ graduates of the scheme. Of the remaining 129 treated, 76 failed, 11 died, 8 were deemed insane, 17 had ‘doubtful’ results, 7 absconded, 5 were declared incorrigible, and 5 were removed because of ill health. Isabel acknowledged that Duxhurst’s tally of ‘successes’ must be regarded as tentative, but the colony’s results called into question contemporaries’ assertions that the habitually drinking woman was beyond redemption. Isabel defended the scheme against criticisms that its treatment of some 70 or 80 women annually did little to relieve the national problem of female inebriety, while providing standards of ‘comfort and ease’ and ‘freedom from temptation’ which were impossible for the patients to maintain post-treatment. Duxhurst had a two-fold mission: even if only a few women were reformed,

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‘we are doing a valuable work, for every soul is precious; if we establish a principle that these cripples in the march of progress can be saved and cured, we have shown by our example what the State may be able to do on a larger scale’. It did not raise too high a standard for the patients, only ‘restore to them their ideal’.33

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The Duxhurst scheme was not embraced by all British Women. Some questioned Isabel’s methods and management of the colony, and others criticized the exclusivity of the chapel’s Church of England services, though other denominations declined to build their own churches at Duxhurst. A vocal faction within the Association, prodded by the Women’s Protestant Union, agitated against her erection on the farm’s village green of a donated statue of Christ the Saviour; they supported their arguments with Old Testament texts on ‘graven images’ and unleashed a ‘fusillade of criticism about Popish statues’. Isabel was inundated with letters claiming that the image broke the Second Commandment and afforded ‘opportunities for idolatry’. Attempting conciliation, she explained her position to the Women’s Protestant Union, but privately denounced the criticism as a childish, un-Christian expression of extreme Protestantism. Determined that ‘this narrow spirit of bigotry must be overcome’, Isabel retained the statue. The criticisms continued through winter and spring 1897, and to avoid dissension at the May NBWTA annual council, she did not refer to the issue in her address but offered to answer related questions. In her report on the farm colony, Isabel defended her methods, making clear her determination to continue their implementation and clarifying that she alone bore the financial responsibility for Duxhurst. Delivered with a ‘dignified attitude’ and reinforced by many delegates’ spontaneous testimonials to ‘cures’ of former patients, her speech diffused the criticisms and completely won over the council to her position; the result was the unanimous adoption of her report, accomplished without ‘a single bit of wire pulling or backstair business’, according to Mary Ward Poole.1

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The Duxhurst disputes illustrated that dissension had continued to simmer among British Women in the wake of the controversial 1893 split. Under Isabel’s direction, the NBWTA had expanded from a single-issue temperance society to a feminist-oriented organization, embracing a broad spectrum of female-oriented political and social issues; it echoed the American WCTU model, a development not palatable to certain of the NBWTA’s more conservative members. This discontent, when combined with the resentment some of the middle-class officers and members felt towards Isabel’s active presidential role, produced several open attacks upon her leadership after 1893. During Isabel’s 1894–5 visit to the United States, her opponents in the NBWTA organized an assault upon her presidency, utilizing a race-related dispute which was raging within the American WCTU in the early 1890s. These years had witnessed an intensification of racial conflict, segregation, and the lynching of AfricanAmericans in the southern United States which peaked in 1892.The following year, the anti-lynching campaign got underway in Britain. It was the product of co-operation between domestic reformers, predominantly women, and the African-American activist and journalist Ida B. Wells, who had instigated the American crusade for racial equality and an end to unjust lynching of black males accused of sexually assaulting white women. In 1893, Wells had visited England on a lecture tour at the invitation of Scottish novelist Isabelle Fyvie Mayo and Quaker Catherine Impey.2 Impey was an anti-imperialist activist, temperance worker and founder and editor of Anti-Caste (later called Fraternity). This monthly news sheet campaigned to end racial intolerance against coloured peoples worldwide, especially in British non-white colonies and America. Impey was a member of a circle of middle-class reformers, many of whom were members of Quaker families, dedicated to racial equality, advancement of women’s rights, and temperance reform. They formed part of a ‘transnational network’ which had originated in the earlier anti-slavery crusades and now facilitated a liaison between the British women campaigners for the rights of coloured people and the American anti-lynching movement.3 Wells hoped her revelations of racial oppression would rouse British public opinion against the barbarous practice of lynching in America. Impey looked to exploit this sentiment to foster antiimperialism at home, in opposition to Britain’s rapidly expanding

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empire. Wells hoped to use British support as a leverage to advance her anti-lynching campaign in the United States. Both Impey and Wells looked to their partnership to provide momentum for their respective reform movements.4 In Britain, Wells spoke out against the injustices suffered by blacks and attacked American hypocrisy in sanctioning a racial double standard in sexual relationships, one which ignored white men’s degradation of black women but designated as rape the cohabitation of black men with white women. Her message inspired the formation of the Society for the Recognition of the Brotherhood of Man (SRBM), which was opposed to all racial separation and lynching. Reports of her tour, published in the British press including Impey’s Anti-Caste, were publicized in America, providing ammunition for Wells’ campaign and boosting her status and credibility. Wells’ second English tour, in 1894, heightened antilynching sentiment on both sides of the Atlantic. Through her dispatches to the Chicago white-American publication Inter Ocean, she broadened her audience in the United States. In Britain, a group of prominent citizens, including Members of Parliament, newspaper and journal editors, and public dignitaries, established the London Anti-Lynching Committee to secure, verify, and disseminate facts on lynching incidents and be a mouthpiece for public outrage against the practice.5 Wells’ tour provided for widespread dissemination of her message among religious, philanthropic, and women’s organizations, several of whom endorsed her work. However, gaining such support proved difficult. Some within the religious fraternity were unreceptive to, and critical of, her claims that American Protestantism was silent on the lynching issue, in some cases acquiescent in the practice. To help authenticate her claims, Wells targeted Frances Willard’s record on race relations as a prime example of this indifference. She hoped to convince and gain the support of the numerically powerful evangelicals within the Anglo-American temperance movement.6 On her first tour, Wells had not directly referred to Willard’s position on lynching. She did respond to direct questioning on the subject, believing she had no option ‘but to tell the truth: as I knew it’, namely, that at no time had Willard condemned the practice and at least on one occasion had appeared to condone it.7 This was a flawed assessment. Willard considered lynching unacceptable under any circumstances, and at her urging, the WCTU’s 1893

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annual convention in Chicago passed a resolution condemning lynching, and Willard expressed sympathy for the Southern blacks’ situation. However, she appeared to accept the WCTU Southern, white membership’s claims that the lynchers’ actions were a justifiable response to African-American males’ raping of white women, which dismissed the possibility of consensual interracial sex—a concept inconceivable for the WCTU’s white membership. Willard struggled to reconcile her dual position with her unflagging support for African-American causes. Her equivocal stance was an attempt to simultaneously placate both Northern civil rights workers and Southern, white WCTU members, her ambiguous posture lacking the level of moral authority required of a prominent reformer.8 Wells’ 1894 tour coincided with Willard’s extended stay in England, and on her lecture circuit Wells gained substantial press coverage and public attention with her attacks upon the duality of Willard’s position on the lynching issue, placing the WCTU president on the defensive. In an article published in Fraternity in mid-May, Wells assailed Willard’s stance on lynching and the WCTU’s segregationist policies. She used as evidence comments made by Willard in an 1890 published interview in which she had apparently sympathized with Southern whites, obliquely casting aspersions on AfricanAmericans’ character and justifying lynching on the basis of the need for protecting white women against attacks from black males.9 Later, Wells claimed that she was informed of a phone message containing ‘the statement from Lady Henry’ that she would exert her influence to deny Wells any further lecture engagements in Britain if the article were published.10 To counter Wells’ attack, Isabel conducted an interview with Willard for publication in the Westminster Gazette, in which Willard offered no apologies for her published remarks and chastised Wells for so publicly misinterpreting her statements. She acknowledged that killings outside the law were a serious injustice, and defended the white Christian workers’ opposition to lynching, but repeated her earlier allusions to the inferiority of African Americans and glossed over the current rise in racism in the United States. Isabel suggested Wells herself was guilty of the racial bigotry of which she accused Willard, because of Wells’ earlier statement, reported out of context, that she was ashamed of her mixed race, ‘taint of white blood’.11 Wells responded with a rebuttal, accusing the American president of pandering to Southern WCTU members by tolerating their segregationist

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policy of separate associations for African-American members, and castigated her for failing to publicly support her condemnation of lynching before the NBWTA annual council earlier in the month.12 She did not mention that Willard had drawn up the anti-lynching resolution subsequently adopted by the council, which voiced sympathy for Wells’ objectives and condemned ‘such forms of retribution’.13 Although lynching was an American not a British matter, after Isabel left for her American visit in August 1894, NBWTA malcontents utilized the publicity generated by Wells’ campaign to attack Isabel, in an attempt to discredit her and weaken her hold over the Association. The annual council’s resolution provided Isabel’s critics with the opportunity to nurture the British Women’s antilynching sentiment and exploit it to their own advantage. The leading protagonist in this assault on Isabel was Florence Balgarnie, suffragist, honorary secretary of the London Anti-Lynching Committee, NEC member, and superintendent of the NBWTA’s Police-Matron department.14 Balgarnie was closely associated with both Wells and Impey in the British anti-lynching campaign. According to Wells, it was Balgarnie who had transmitted to her Isabel’s phone-call threat to thwart Wells’ campaign in light of her Fraternity article.15 Balgarnie had previously been supportive of Isabel, publicly endorsing her progressive policies at the divisive 1893 annual council.16 Balgarnie appears to have appropriated the lynching controversy as a means of increasing her influence in the Association, at Isabel’s expense, a claim supported by correspondence between Isabel and Balgarnie and the observations of Hannah Whitall Smith.17 Given the equivocation of Willard and the WCTU on the issue, Balgarnie’s criticisms of them were justifiable, but her efforts to embroil the NBWTA in the dispute can be viewed as self-serving. At the end of January 1895, while Isabel was in America, Balgarnie orchestrated a branch resolution condemning lynching and calling upon ‘American sisters’ of the WCTU branches to ‘speak out against it in unmistakable terms’.18 The resolution was printed and circulated to all NBWTA branches, requesting support for its presentation at the annual council. Several branches, including the Scottish Union, backed the resolution, leading Anna Gordon to notify Isabel of these developments.19 Concerned over these attacks upon the WCTU and its president, before leaving America Isabel obtained the signatures of several reformers, includ-

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ing abolitionists Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, to a statement protesting the smear campaign being conducted in Britain against Willard and her association, and attesting to her steadfast pursuit of racial equality and integration; the statement was circulated to the press upon Isabel’s return to England in March 1895.20 Balgarnie presented her anti-lynching resolution at the NEC quarterly conference in March 1895 and requested it be placed upon the annual council’s agenda. She accused the WCTU of succumbing to pressure from its Southern white delegates at the 1894 Cleveland convention by adopting a weakly worded resolution against lynching, as a substitute for the more forceful one passed at Chicago in 1893. She failed to note that Willard had voted against the weakened motion. Balgarnie stressed that adoption of her strong resolution would ‘strengthen the hands of the Northern women, especially Miss Willard, to cope with this evil’. Isabel defended the Cleveland resolution, observing it had been passed by full convention and adopted only as a result of Willard’s success in bringing Southern white delegates on side—‘a gigantic task’ English women could not comprehend, being unaware of the difficulties involved in overcoming the entrenched cultural prejudices of Southern women. She echoed the words of Southern, AfricanAmerican Bishop Turner that ‘it was considered a wonderful thing that any resolution was passed at all’. Isabel asked that any NBWTA statement on the issue be diplomatically worded to encourage rather than condemn. ‘If we give the American women credit for what they have done they are likely to do more, but the moment you hold up your fist and say “you shall do this”, they get back into their shells and do nothing’, she warned. Isabel asked that the wording of the resolution not offend American delegates to the NBWTA’s upcoming annual council. Her concerns were echoed by the NEC’s Helen Bright Clark, a member of the former anti-slavery Clark family, who urged the document should not be ‘needlessly offensive’ but offer sympathetic encouragement. ‘With the great tact and policy of our dear President I think it might be managed without giving offence.’ After much discussion, Balgarnie’s resolution, amended to eliminate its critical references to the WCTU’s Southern membership and modified to read ‘to continue to speak out’ against lynching, was adopted for presentation at the annual council.21

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Prior to the council meetings, Balgarnie prepared a document purportedly vindicating the now-deceased Frederick Douglass for his actions in supporting Isabel’s statement document. Balgarnie claimed that Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison had been misled into signing the declaration, in the mistaken belief that the WCTU 1894 resolution spoke out ‘squarely for lynching’, when in fact it was merely an ‘apology’ for, not a denunciation of, the practice. This claim virtually accused Isabel of having procured the signatures on false pretences. Balgarnie promised publication and distribution of her document prior to the annual council unless Isabel explained ‘the mistake which was made in not forwarding the whole details to the signatories’ of the declaration.22 Despite Isabel’s assurance that the entire issue would be fully addressed at the annual meetings on 16 to 18 June, Balgarnie printed her ‘vindication’, which included a letter from Garrison apparently substantiating her claims (but later discredited) and warned Isabel that the document would be released to the national press unless a full discussion on the lynching issue was permitted at the first day’s meeting. Balgarnie’s intimations of subterfuge by Isabel were false. Isabel and Douglass had fully discussed the Cleveland resolution. Her good faith was attested to by Douglass’ widow and by Garrison, who asserted Balgarnie had misrepresented his views by giving only extracts from his letter to her. To save Willard and the WCTU delegates from so public an assault, Isabel acquiesced to Balgarnie’s wish to address the delegates.23 Balgarnie’s ensuing criticisms of the position of Willard and her Union prompted a threehour debate on the issue, during which several African-American WCTU members ‘gave warm and unmistakable testimony to the strong championship of Union on the side of their race, and especially emphasised the unfailing efforts of Miss Willard on their behalf’. The debate concluded with the unanimous passing of an anti-lynching resolution, which expressed confidence in the WCTU’s position on the question and was supported by all the delegates24 except Balgarnie.25 When the NEC was subsequently criticized for devoting time at the meetings to ‘a subject foreign to its legitimate business’, it censured Balgarnie for forcing Isabel to grant time at the council for personal attacks upon the WCTU and Willard; for standing for reelection to the NEC, given her attitude towards the Union; and for being ‘prepared to influence the press in a sense hostile to our

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organization’.26 Balgarnie declined to resign, and she and her supporters sustained the controversy in the succeeding months with an ongoing battle against Isabel and the NEC. Balgarnie’s local branch, Muswell Hill, appealed for arbitration on the issue. The National Executive Subcommittee stated it had no authority to negate a decision made by the nationally represented NEC to reject arbitration, which was a committee matter and in no way personal to Isabel. The Muswell Hill members now refused any further discussions of their grievances with the NESC.27 Muswell Hill and Hull branches distributed nationwide to their counterparts circulars condemning the executive for ‘arbitrary and discourteous action’, and the NEC countered with its own explanation of the issue.28 Balgarnie herself supplied the details of the NEC’s actions for the Hull branch circular, publicly aired her version of the controversy in the columns of the periodical Fraternity, and presented the quarterly NEC meeting with arbitration resolutions, all unanimously rejected by a body increasingly dismayed by her continuing public attacks on the Association and its president.29 By autumn 1895, many NBWTA branches were expressing support for Isabel’s and the NEC’s stance regarding Balgarnie, and several papers, including Christian World and Westminster Gazette, were advising Balgarnie to abandon her pursuit of arbitration, as she had been unable to prove her case against the NEC. She ignored the advice.30 Acting as a private individual rather than an NEC member, Isabel attempted to achieve an amicable settlement of the issue, meeting with both Balgarnie and her father and offering an inquiry of the matter by representatives from both sides, but to no avail.31 Balgarnie chose, instead, to appeal to the 1896 NBWTA annual council for outside arbitration. Isabel prepared a printed account of the entire dispute, which was distributed at the meetings. The Hull branch’s arbitration resolution was rejected by an ‘overwhelming majority’ of the delegates, who also chose not to re-elect Balgarnie to the NEC; they reaffirmed their confidence in Isabel by again choosing her president, by 533 out of 540 votes,32 the seven opposed being cast by ‘the little Balgarnie faction’, according to Frances Willard.33 The annual council’s decisions ended the bitter anti-lynching controversy within the Association, but the episode reflects negatively on both Balgarnie and Isabel. Isabel successfully demonstrated she had conducted the matter of the Douglass statement and the

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official and private negotiations with Balgarnie in good faith. However, she allowed her judgement to be clouded by her devotion to Willard in the matter of the WCTU’s and its president’s equivocation on race relations and lynching. Isabel broached no criticism of her beloved ‘Conk’ and steadfastly defended her actions throughout the controversy. Florence Balgarnie was dedicated to the anti-lynching cause and, as a feminist, particularly troubled by the rape justification of the practice with its repudiation of consensual interracial sex.34 Her persistent efforts to obtain British Women’s endorsement of Wells’ campaign was in itself admirable but, in light of the Association’s response, excessive. A largely foreign concept for the majority of the NBWTA branch members around the country, lynching remained a side issue for the Association, as witnessed by members’ unfavourable response to the debates on the issue at the 1895 annual council. Balgarnie’s escalating pursuit of her objective in face of this opposition, accompanied by prolonged personal and public attacks on Isabel and refusal to accept her private overtures of conciliation, may have been partially a loyalty issue engendered by her close relationship with Impey and Wells. Nevertheless, Balgarnie’s conduct suggests her purpose went beyond principle and loyalty to include the desire to discredit and damage Isabel’s presidency. In the apparent absence of evidence providing Balgarnie’s own interpretation of the issue, any assessment of her motivations remains speculative.35 Isabel subdued her opponents within NBWTA ranks, only to see them return to the offensive with a vengeance in the spring of 1897 in the most serious dispute she had faced since the Association split in 1893. The controversy centred upon one of the NBWTA’s most contentious areas of work, social purity. Kathleen Fitzpatrick claims that previously Isabel ‘had given all her attention to Temperance and had left the Purity question to the women who had a taste for it’ and that she had been drawn into the matter against her will, an assessment echoed by Josephine Butler’s biographer, E. Moberly Bell.36 In reality, from the beginning of her presidency Isabel had urged British Women to ‘champion the cause of Social Purity no less than Temperance . . . in the interests of the purity of our children and for the safeguard of our homes’, and successfully lobbied the NBWTA to establish a department for this work, despite the reticence of many members. Her address to the 1896 NBWTA annual council had focussed upon the purity question, attacking the

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sexual double standard of morality, promoting the ethic of chastity for both men and women, and urging her membership to increase their participation in rescue work among prostitutes.37 Isabel was a vice-president of the National Vigilance Association, an organization working to ‘enforce and improve the laws for the repression of criminal vice and public immorality, to check the cause of vice, and to protect minors’. In the summer of 1895, she had launched a public campaign to halt a London music hall’s performances of ‘living pictures’, in which women clad only in fleshcoloured body stockings adopted a series of ‘artistic’ positions upon the stage, gaining extensive attention in the press and public support for the cause. While visiting America later that year, she was accused of leading a similar crusade against the entertainment there, a role she refuted, though she acknowledged the WCTU had launched a national campaign to end the tableaux.38 The resurgence of her opponents’ attacks in 1897 was prompted by Isabel’s position on state-regulated prostitution. During the 1860s, the British government had passed the Contagious Diseases Acts aimed at regulating prostitution in the nation’s ports and garrison towns in order to halt the spread of venereal diseases among enlisted soldiers and sailors. These laws directed plain-clothes policemen to identify women as prostitutes, who were then subjected to examination and, if infected, confined and treated in special ‘lock hospitals’. Their names were entered on a register of common prostitutes, effectively stigmatizing them and causing them to be shunned by their communities. Many innocent working-class women suffered the humiliation of being detained and examined during police monitoring of the locales covered by the Acts. As the prostitutes’ male clients were not required to be examined, the Acts sanctioned a double standard of morality. A spirited campaign to rescind the legislation, led by feminist Josephine Butler and the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (LNA), had succeeded in obtaining abolition in 1886. However, state-licensed prostitution continued to operate among the military in British army garrisons in India under the ‘Cantonment Acts’ (the old Contagious Diseases Acts in another guise) and in defiance of an 1888 House of Lord’s resolution against the practice. Enacted by the Indian government in 1889, this legislation sought to halt the spread of venereal disease by curtailing prostitutes’ mobility. It stipulated that individuals thought to

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be infected, but gender not stated, must enter hospitals for treatment and those disregarding the law could be excluded from the cantonments. A surge of agitation against this continuing regulation of prostitution was the catalyst for Isabel’s imbroglio.39 Isabel participated in the renewed campaign against ‘legalized immorality’. She worked with the British Committee for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice in India and was a member of the LNA’s executive committee.40 Speaking at the first annual meeting of the British section of the WWCTU in July 1892, she urged the membership to support the anti-regulation movement, stressing ‘women must be vigilant, working on all sides, that the hydra-headed monster of State-legalised vice shall never again disgrace our lands’.41 The abolitionists’ case was bolstered in 1893 by evidence supplied by WWCTU missionaries Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Dr. Katherine (Kate) Bushnell. Encouraged by Frances Willard, Bushnell had left America in 1890 to promote social purity worldwide on the behalf of the World’s Union. Willard calculated the exercise would strengthen the cause of both temperance and purity globally and consolidate the position of the WWCTU within the emerging international women’s movement. In England, Bushnell joined forces with Andrew, former journalist for the Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association, and in 1891 the pair embarked upon a fact-finding tour of the Indian cantonments, endorsed by Josephine Butler and the British Committee for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice. The committee recognized that evidence from two respectable American missionaries with exemplary credentials would be difficult to refute. Following an extensive tour of Indian military stations, the two prepared a report for the committee showing that regulated prostitution was flourishing in the Indian cantonments. The committee covertly utilized the information as leverage to obtain from the newly elected Liberal government a departmental committee to examine the whole issue. In spring 1893, Andrew and Bushnell testified before the committee and made public the results of their investigations, which revealed not only that regulation was entrenched but also that prostitutes were frequently subjected to physical abuse, deceived into entering the ‘trade’, and intimidated into remaining silent about how they were treated. After initially challenging the validity of the report, the military authorities conceded the authenticity of most of

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the American women’s claims, and the retiring commander-in-chief of the Indian Army, Lord Roberts, apologized to them after initially asserting the old system of regulation had been totally eliminated. The departmental committee’s report acknowledged that licensed prostitution and compulsory examination continued in India, requiring its government in 1895 to grudgingly enact legislation halting these practices.42 The revelations of the missionaries energized reformers. The WWCTU and the British Committee for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice in India combined to sponsor the American missionaries on a speaking tour of British cities. The LNA held an ‘indignation’ meeting in London, at which Isabel and Willard were featured speakers, and a special public conference organized by the British section of the WWCTU drew large crowds to hear Andrew and Bushnell relate their experiences and to listen to Isabel, Willard, and Josephine Butler speaking on the ‘Bitter Cry from India’. In an impassioned speech Isabel condemned those who declared legalized vice in India necessary for the protection of the soldiers and who held the practice was excusable because the women were not ‘highborn’. ‘Every woman is highborn in God’s sight’, and vice could never be a necessity. India’s daughters must be freed from their bondage, as England’s daughters had been released from theirs by Butler’s campaigns, and Isabel called upon ‘all in happy homes to listen to the wail of their unfortunate sisters, and with tongues of fire proclaim the liberty and equality of womanhood’. Although they had previously avoided purity issues, delegates to the 1893 annual council of the Women’s Liberal Federation were sufficiently roused by the American missionaries’ evidence, and Isabel’s moving appeal to them on behalf of the abolitionist cause, to pass a resolution denouncing the continuation of state regulation in India; the resolution also applauded the government’s appointment of a departmental committee to examine the operation of the Cantonment Acts—moves which were ‘unique in the annals of the Women’s Liberal Federation’.43 As Willard had envisaged, the release of the missionaries’ sensational report produced positive benefits for the World’s and American WCTU. Purity reformers now acknowledged Willard as world leader of the women’s movement, albeit temporarily; Andrew and Bushnell were lionized as heroines; and the national union accorded greater weight to social purity work.44 Members of

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the NBWTA were slower to embrace the cause. At its 1894 annual council, the superintendent of the Preventative Department, which supervised purity efforts, announced she had very little to report, but the revelations about conditions existing in the Indian cantonments did serve to heighten British Women’s awareness of stateregulated vice in India.45 This issue would later become a weapon in the hands of Isabel’s opponents. The Andrew-Bushnell report evidenced the successful co-operation of purity reformers with temperance women, but the friendly alliance of Isabel, Willard, and Butler soon fell victim to ideological differences and personal rivalries. Annoyed that Butler and purity workers were receiving most of the public credit for the disclosure, Willard complained the reports of the British and American secular press were minimizing the WWCTU’s role in the revelations by generally ignoring the missionaries’ connection with the World’s Union and by failing to sufficiently acknowledge that Butler was the WWCTU social purity superintendent as well as a purity reformer.46 Isabel reminded the public that Andrew and Bushnell had been dispatched by the World’s WCTU ‘to organize and strengthen the auxiliaries of that society’ around the world, and their investigations in India on behalf of the British Committee had been undertaken ‘simply as an incident of the Social Purity and Temperance work they had been sent out to do’.47 This minor display of self-promotion by Isabel and Willard was the initial challenge in a contest for ascendancy between the temperance leaders and Butler that would later precipitate a full-scale crisis within the women’s temperance movement48 and threaten Isabel’s position within it. Josephine Butler’s ties with the WWCTU were tenuous. She had agreed to become superintendent of the Union’s Purity division only out of gratitude for the work rendered by Andrew and Bushnell to the LNA and because ‘she did not know how to refuse’ the request to serve.49 She rejected one of temperance’s basic tenets, the assumption that drinking indubitably led to impure acts, and asserted that it was the abuse, not the use, of liquor which was the problem. Butler believed the American purity movement lacked dedication to the cause of abolishing the state regulation of vice because of the country’s unfamiliarity with the large-scale stateregulation system experienced by certain European nations, and she feared the purity cause would suffer once subsumed within the

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World Union’s wide-ranging Do-Everything Policy.50 She was relieved to discover that other purity reformers were cognizant of the danger inherent in collaboration with the American temperance movement, and she warned her workers, ‘We must work freely and quietly along our own lines and not hesitate to tell them frankly where we disagree with them’.51 Butler’s scepticism extended to the WWCTU’s officers. She considered both Isabel and Willard to be less informed on the abolition question than on temperance issues: ‘They dwell too much among general truths about “Social Purity” and do not yet realize the political and aggressive character of our work.’ She claimed Isabel had confessed she ‘could not argue this repeal question with anyone’.52 Butler suspected that Isabel and Willard supported legislative suppression of prostitution. She opposed any government intervention, believing any scheme would operate under male control and would, in practice, institutionalize and not eradicate the ‘evil’, in effect reinstating the old system of de facto regulation.53 Butler’s scepticism did not prevent her from accepting funds raised by the two leaders, nor personal donations from Isabel, to support the LNA’s campaign.54 Butler’s misgivings increased when she discovered that Willard and Isabel intended to actively proselytize their views while on their proposed world cruise with the Polyglot Petition. She was apprehensive that her own purity campaign would be absorbed into that of the WWCTU, allowing the two temperance leaders to be acclaimed as protagonists of a worldwide purity movement and overshadowing her own achievements.55 Though Butler professed to have ‘no objection to their carrying flags and blowing trumpets’, this was patently not so. Her umbrage is revealed in her correspondence with an LNA colleague in which she airs her sister’s criticism that Willard and Isabel ‘would have all the credit and triumph, when it is you who have sown the seed’.56 Butler’s worst fears were realized in 1895 when representatives of the Danish and Norwegian WCTU sections advocated continuing the mandatory examination of suspected prostitutes and requested Willard and Isabel judge if they or Butler held the correct position on the question of regulation. Willard’s willingness to ‘consider both sides of the question’ was the final straw for Butler; for her, any compromise on abolition amounted to heresy.57 She now concluded that the purity movement ‘has not gained, but is suffering sadly from

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the union with it of the WWCTU and my own position is rendered painful and difficult’. Butler remained WWCTU purity superintendent, but these developments marked the beginning of the end of her association with Isabel, Willard, and the World’s Union,58 though the break would not occur for another two years. The final breach came as a result of their divergent views on the purity issue. In November 1896, the government of India published statistics indicating that more than half of British soldiers on the subcontinent were now infected with venereal disease, prompting Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of State in Britain’s new Conservative government, to appoint a departmental committee to investigate the problem. The committee’s report supported the Indian government’s figures and gave graphic accounts of young British soldiers suffering and dying from syphilis. The national press publicized the report to successfully woo British public opinion in favour of the reinstatement of regulation. Indian Army officials and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons urged the reinstatement, an action Hamilton had espoused even prior to the committee’s findings. Confident of parliamentary support for such a move,59 on 25 March 1897 Hamilton issued a dispatch outlining ‘measures to be adopted for Checking the Spread of Venereal Disease among the British Troops in India’, which he subsequently forwarded to Isabel60 for her to ‘comment upon it’.61 The new policy treated VD as any other contagious disease, without requiring mandatory examination of prostitutes, though the latter’s failure to voluntarily submit to this procedure would result in expulsion from the cantonment—effectively compulsion in another guise.62 In an attempt to mollify the purity movement, Hamilton’s proposals directed army officials to ensure soldiers had access to recreational activities other than prostitution and to avoid encouraging ‘immoral’ behaviour.63 The infection in military cantonments had disturbed Isabel before the publication of the VD statistics and Hamilton’s dispatch. In February 1896 she had discussed possible regulatory measures with Agnes Weston, the founder of the Sailor’s Rests temperance centres for seamen, who, though an ‘old repealer’, felt the ‘virulence of the disease’ required some steps be taken to restore soldiers’ health and safeguard wives and children from contagion. She offered suggestions which were later reflected in Isabel’s proposals on the issue.64 Despite her concerns, in early 1897 Isabel decided

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not to become involved in the purity movement’s battle against restoration of the Cantonment Acts. ‘I have fought my fight on those subjects in my own career, and I have too many irons now to make it possible to take up another’,65 being burdened with financial difficulties, regular NBWTA duties, family commitments, the problems of Duxhurst, and the gathering of evidence for her appearance before the Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing, at which she was to present her arguments against the current system of licensing.66 She was also recovering from the effects of a carriage accident. In January, when her brougham was struck by a runaway horse and van, she sustained injuries to her head and eye and later developed an abscess in her side which required surgery. Her convalescence necessitated a curtailing of her schedule.67 Despite her reluctance, Isabel was drawn into the controversy by Hamilton’s communication to her. Evidently fearing agitation, he was ‘most anxious’ to know her position on his proposals and dispatched James Knowles, editor of the Nineteenth Century, to ascertain her views; the government sent its own representative, ‘hat in hand’, on a similar mission.68 Though praising its general tone, Isabel reacted negatively to Lord George’s dispatch. She was principally concerned with eliminating the ‘double standard’ applied to morality and with protecting women and unborn children from contagion. From her perspective, his remedies were ‘fallacious’ and doomed to failure because they were inadequate from a hygiene standpoint and morally unsound, applying only to one sex. Isabel warned Knowles that any revival of the Cantonment Acts would raise ‘a howl’ across the nation. However, if the government would acknowledge the failure of the old regulation scheme in India, cease procuring for the army, and adopt a system of equal inspection and registration for men and women based upon ‘the minimum of sin and the maximum of protection’, the proposals might receive sympathetic consideration.69 As Ian Tyrrell suggests, Hamilton may have anticipated that support from Isabel would ‘split the purity movement’,70 for she herself believed that the ‘open-minded and fair’ within its ranks must separate themselves from ‘ultras’ among the repealers in order for progress to be achieved.71 Butler also concluded that the abolitionists’ victory in the regulation battle required division within the purity movement, ‘& the sooner the better’.72 Isabel considered her role that of a mediator between the advocates of regulation and the

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abolitionists, and she felt much depended ‘upon how each side meets the other on this awful question’.73 She consulted with individuals from both camps, including repeal activist Percy Bunting and newspaper proprietor Alfred Harmsworth; Harmsworth believed the continuance of the status quo in India would decimate the British troops. She headed a delegation to present Hamilton’s views to the British Committee.74 According to Isabel, this body, including Walter and Eva McLaren and James Stansfield, was appalled by the Indian government’s report on VD infections and felt a ‘negative policy only is impossible’ when formulating a response to Hamilton’s proposals.75 ‘Even the staunchest of the Committee . . . say something must be done’, that some compromise was needed, she told Willard, but, ‘How shall we deal with it, how equalise it for men and for women—I have to take a line & a strong one. Pray God it may be the right one’.76 After consultations, extensive reading about the issue, and agonizing over its complexities ‘almost night and day’, Isabel concluded, ‘There is now a physical side as prominently as a moral, and . . . these two are separate and have to be dealt with separately’.77 Without some form of regulation, the cantonments would be inundated with prostitutes, resulting in the continual devastating rise in army infections, with the accompanying contagion of wives and children. Concluding that the forces promoting state interference had both parliamentary and public support to implement some measure of state regulation, an assessment echoed by The Times, Isabel judged that only through compromise would purity reformers achieve some measure of satisfaction; this opinion was shared by many of those with whom she had consulted. However, if regulation was inevitable, there must be no double standard applied, and she concluded a ‘judicious’ approach might achieve a measure offering ‘protection and be a distinct step for the equality between men and women’.78 The moment had arrived ‘to strike for equal morality in a way we never could at any other moment, and that is what I mean to go for here’, she told Willard.79 Isabel drafted her proposals in a formal letter to the Secretary of State, declaring she alone was responsible for the opinions expressed, and her views bound only her. She diplomatically applauded the government’s decision to treat VD as any other communicable disease, which she believed was ‘the only rational and scientific principle on which its eradication can be attempted’. Acknowledging

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the necessity for some form of examination for infection, she urged adoption of the only ‘scientifically defensible’ method of protection, one which guarded men and women equally. Recognizing that the total exclusion of women from military stations was ‘well nigh impossible’, she proposed each cantonment restrict women to a specific area of numbered rooms, where their residency would depend upon their submitting to periodic inspection by female physicians; those infected would be expelled. Visiting soldiers should be strictly supervised and subjected to the same medical examination as the women; the particulars of their attendance should be recorded in a register, with stringent penalties imposed upon any soldier found fraternizing with women outside the quarter. Challenging Hamilton to fulfil his stated intention of raising the army’s ethical standards, Isabel pressed him to make moral character, as displayed by an absence of contagion, a factor in the army’s promotion system. ‘It is a temptation to applaud any proposal that promises even a partial mitigation of the evil. But I cannot be blind to the fact that all efforts hitherto have wrought deep injustice on the women of India who already bear alone the brunt of an iniquity wrought by two. A system as stringent for men as for women would not only remove this inequality as far as possible, but would institute a safeguard that may save the unborn from a devastating curse.’ Under such a system, the shame associated with infection would work as a ‘great deterrent’ to immorality.80 For this scheme ‘I am going to pledge my life’, Isabel told Willard, ‘and whether the Old Abolitionists join with me or not I am going to fight the Government on it every inch of the way’. She was convinced if women supported and agitated for her equality measures, the government would drop the proposed Regulation Bill ‘like a hot potato’ and reconsider their position.81 Unfortunately for Isabel, the support she sought from women, including NBWTA members, proved largely unforthcoming. The British Women who had endorsed her progressive policies, albeit often diffidently, were unwilling to sanction this radical departure from their traditional opposition to the state regulation of vice, and the resulting dispute reverberated beyond Association ranks to encompass the American WCTU and the World Union’s membership, calling into question Isabel’s leadership. More seriously for Isabel, her proposals were directly opposed to Willard’s position on the regulation of prostitution, placing them in opposite camps in the controversy and causing

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each of them profound heartache. Isabel had hoped that her advocacy of sexual equality and protection for women and children from contagion would win Willard’s approval, but on this issue the American president was unable to compromise her principles, despite the depth of her affection for her beloved ‘Coz’. In the end, it was left to Isabel to resolve the situation by willingly placing her devotion to Willard above all else.82

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Isabel’s proposals to Lord George Hamilton were received with approval by regulationists. The Times applauded her recognition of ‘the necessity’ to protect ‘innocent women and children at home’ from the contagion, noting her views reflected the current ‘tendency of the public mind’. Her recommendations were translated into several languages and widely circulated in the European press by supportive newspaper editors, one of their number ‘glorifying’ her as the ‘Saviour’ of English women’s reputation.1 Her proposals prompted a group of some 120 notable ladies, including the Queen’s daughter Princess Christian, the duchesses of Connaught and Teck, several viscountesses, and reformers Florence Nightingale and Mrs Humphrey Ward, to memorialize the government in favour of the re-introduction of regulation in India.2 Speaking in the House of Lords, Lord Onslow bragged about ‘this influential’ petition, against which, he claimed, there had been no protest made in the House.3 Isabel anticipated her proposals would get her ‘into terrible hot water . . . and create a great deal of difficulty’ with the abolitionists,4 and reaction from her opponents in the purity movement was swift and vocal. Butler, Andrew, and Bushnell were joined by other adversaries, including Mary Leavitt, in launching a campaign against Isabel’s recommendations and leadership; these four antagonists’ attacks were fortified by their class-based antipathy towards the aristocracy and rendered more powerful by their exemplary reputations within the international temperance and purity commonwealth.5 Appalled by Isabel’s scheme, Josephine Butler declared it ‘a pitiful hybrid monster . . . proposing the most rigorous and perfect State regulation of harloting and fornication’ ever

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conceived, and Butler’s professed intention never to ‘publicly or privately’ display any bitterness towards its author was very rapidly abandoned. Describing her as a misled, ‘fascinating but cold-hearted, deceitful woman’ and one ‘grossly ignorant’ of repeal history, Butler launched a campaign to discredit Isabel and her proposals and purge the purity movement of her followers.6 In an ‘Open Letter’ she acknowledged there was disunity within the ranks of the abolitionists, but she deplored the publicity given to the ‘Princess’ memorial; she declared that its signatories and Isabel had been deluded on the issue by regulation proponents. She denounced proposals to reactivate the Cantonment Acts and claimed Isabel’s recommendations had ‘induced’ many women to support regulation. As age and impairment prohibited her from physically directing the campaign, she called upon purity workers to lead the battle against state-licensed vice.7 Rallying behind Butler, the British Committee for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice condemned Isabel’s position and published in Shield a reply to her ‘remarkable and repulsive scheme’, discounting the validity of the Indian Army statistics upon which she had based her proposals and castigating them as ‘hygienically wrong’ and morally corrupt—sentiments echoed by the Friends Association for Abolishing the State Regulation of Vice.8 Aware that Isabel’s positions and influence within the NBWTA and the World’s WCTU could give credence to, and generate acceptance of, her scheme amongst their membership, Butler, encouraged by some British Women to act, prepared a denunciation of regulation for delivery at the June 1897 NBWTA annual council. However, its presentation was prevented by ‘slip-shod’ organization, according to Butler.9 The NBWTA had approached the contagious diseases question prudently, believing ‘it should not be hurriedly entered into’. In November 1896, the NEC had passed a motion expressing its ‘indignation’ at the government’s decision to reconsider regulation in India, and at the committee’s meeting on 7 April 1897, it approved the drawing up of a resolution declaring ‘continued opposition to the re-establishment of the C.D. Acts in India’, for consideration at the NBWTA’s upcoming annual council at the beginning of June; the final draft was to be completed after consultation with the British Committee.10 In the interim, Isabel’s proposals to Lord George Hamilton were published, and both Hannah

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Whitall Smith and Mary Ward Poole warned Willard the scheme would likely produce a ‘stormy time’ at the council. At the request of some abolitionists, Isabel agreed not to present her views on the contagious diseases issue at the meetings, in response to their promise to refrain from commenting upon them. They disregarded such a commitment. On the first day of the meetings, they circulated the Shield article containing the British Committee’s biting criticisms of her ‘deplorable scheme’, and her old adversary Florence Balgarnie, ‘unable to resist the chance of avenging herself’ (in Hannah Whitall Smith’s view), attempted to lead a ‘revolt’ among the delegates; Balgarnie sought to amend the NEC’s contagious diseases resolution to remove wording which (opponents claimed) implied that the NBWTA would tolerate some form of regulation. She was thwarted. Certain ‘representative women’ in the Association had decided not to permit debate on the motion as it ‘was one everybody could endorse’ and to avoid supplying Balgarnie with fodder for her attack. However, visiting WCTU officer Lillian Stevens believed the debate on the resolution was halted ‘to please Lady Henry’, and Isabel’s secretary, Mary Ward Poole, reported some women would have relished an open ventilation of the question.11 Isabel did not comment on the resolution, nor ‘endeavour in any way to influence’ the delegates’ vote. Although many of her supporters felt she should clarify her views in her annual address, she made no reference to her scheme.12 Without a contrary vote, the council adopted the original NEC resolution, sans any reference to the president’s proposals, enabling British Women to effectively distance themselves from Isabel’s policy and allow her to ‘hold her own views of the matter quite independently’. The British Committee later claimed many delegates had accepted the ‘misleading’ wording and supported the resolution because they understood that it had been drafted in consultation with Walter McLaren; thus, they erroneously believed it had the approval of the British Committee.13 Assuming the contagious diseases question had been settled amicably, Isabel told Willard that the council had proceeded smoothly, ‘with no hitches at all’, but later acknowledged she was experiencing ‘difficulties’ over the issue, along with bitterness from the British Committee and attacks from Butler. Following the council, discussion and press reports about Isabel’s proposals began to generate criticism of her position on regulation, within the NBWTA

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rank and file. Combined with criticism by her traditional opponents, it created ‘a great stir’ within the organization and brought to headquarters letters of ‘inquiry and censure’ almost daily. Some critics, including the pioneering female physician Elizabeth Blackwell, believed Lord Roberts had ‘misled’ Isabel on the contagious diseases issue.14 Isabel’s adversaries on the NEC courted this dissent. Butler and the Ladies National Association drafted an anti-regulation ‘Memorial’ to Lord George Hamilton and the Conservative government and distributed it to NBWTA branches for adoption, along with signature forms on which members might register their support for it. Isabel asked British Women to defer action until she explained her position on the issue, and the NEC Subcommittee voted to support her request as she had made it in her ‘personal’, not ‘official’, capacity. Butler believed the LNA had been ‘checkmated’ by Isabel’s request, but seven of Isabel’s opponents on the NEC drew up their own informal circular, urging branches to move at once on the LNA memorial; the latter was endorsed by 43 of the 91 committee members approached, who believed the circular was official. Upon discovering they had been misled, many of the signatories apologized to Isabel for their actions and rallied to her support. Those who refused to sign likely agreed with Hannah Whitall Smith that the annual council resolution should be abided by as the contagious diseases question was not the organization’s ‘special line of work’ but merely a ‘side issue’; to further agitate the largely uninformed members was ‘short sighted and fanatical folly’. Others, including NBWTA corresponding secretary Agnes Slack and WCTU officer Lillian Stevens, did not uphold Isabel’s proposals but supported her out of loyalty and because they feared the Association would lose many members unless attention were diverted away from the CD question and towards NBWTA organization.15 Florence Fenwick Miller fuelled the fires of discontent with repeated attacks upon Isabel in the pages of Woman’s Signal, adopting a ‘caustic tone’ to condemn her for being a turncoat on the CD question; she described her action as a ‘sorry spectacle’ which would take many ignorant women ‘to the side of the Acts with her’, and prominently reported Butler’s and the British Committee’s campaign against Isabel’s proposals.16 Though she found them offensive, Isabel resolved to ignore Fenwick Miller’s attacks; however, she quipped that should the journalist personally

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address her on the issue, she would reply, ‘I don’t read the Signal’, noting ‘it is much the best punishment’.17 Although she appreciated their viewpoint and regretted that her proposals alienated Butler, purity workers, and many British Women, Isabel remained convinced of the merits of her scheme, arguing ‘vice can never be made easy, wrong can never be made right, but you have to see how you are to make the right easy and the vice difficult’. In response to many questioning letters from NBWTA members, she issued a circular to the branches, reiterating that her scheme did not represent a reinstatement of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which had penalized women, nor did it ‘make vice safe’; it would establish equality of the sexes, ensure that those infected were isolated and treated, and protect the unborn.18 Support was offered by the Bishop of Hereford, ‘hitherto the Great Champion of the Anti C-D movement’, who was now persuaded that some form of regulation was necessary and sent her his own proposed CD scheme, one almost identical to hers. Reportedly, Isabel’s proposals had found favour ‘with thinking people of both sexes’ who, though not completely in accord with her scheme, asserted some steps must be taken to alleviate the Indian situation.19 Isabel had resolved to weather her opponents’ attacks, but the NEC minority’s action on the LNA anti-regulation memorial prompted her to reconsider. She decided to submit her resignation to the national executive because ‘my views are out of harmony’ with a substantial proportion of the Committee and workers, and ‘my explanation is not required’. She doubted it would be accepted but believed this was the only way to ‘stem the treachery and wirepulling and put things on a straightforward basis’. She was willing to openly dialogue with her opponents, but ‘it is this scheming in the dark . . . which is unendurable and to which I will not be a party’, she told Willard. Isabel empathized with her opponents within the Association’s rank and file because only the fully informed could appreciate the complex nature of the CD question, ‘and when these dear women have quoted the Bible about making no provision for the flesh etc. they think they have boxed the compass’.20 Isabel’s supporters were shocked by her resignation, some unable to contemplate the NBWTA without her. ‘To think of all the good our President has done to us and for us, . . . how the Association has gone forward & prospered under her leadership, how we have all trusted & loved her & been won by her persuasive

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gentleness many a time to different & higher ways of thinking, . . . if Lady Henry resigns finally . . . we shall be a sheep without a shepherd.’ These sentiments were shared by Hannah Whitall Smith, who believed if Isabel resigned, ‘our Association is done for, as far as any onward progress means; and it will sink back into the little old tuppenny-ha-penny affair it used to be’; many members would leave with her as they ‘could not bear to sink back to the old level’. When the news of Isabel’s action reached the branches, she was ‘inundated’ with letters from British Women ‘entreating’ her to remain their leader.21 Isabel resolved to withdraw her resignation only if ‘by far the larger proportion’ of the national executive asked her to continue in office, and she clarified her position to the members at a special NEC meeting. They did not diverge on principle, only on methods concerning ‘what is the greatest deterrent from wrong’. Those who, ignorant of circumstances in India, clamoured against any action being taken to deal with the CD problem were ‘taking a short and easy cut to bring peace to their consciences’ by associating with a campaign ‘which is perfectly plain sailing and which causes them no real burden or pain’. The military situation in India required exceptional deliberation. To avoid infringing upon personal liberty, legislators could not make ‘immorality’ intrinsically a punishable offence, and thus, the solution was to make the contracting of venereal disease punishable. Turning the purity movement’s criticism to her advantage, she noted Josephine Butler had ‘hit the nail on the head’ when discrediting Isabel’s proposals. Butler had argued, ‘none but the coarsest, the most stupidly animal and shameless of the men’ would engage in prostitution in full sight of the military police and the cantonment troops. Isabel asserted this was exactly the point of her scheme. She reiterated that her views bound only her, the membership being at liberty to work against regulation if they chose, but if she remained in office, she must be entitled to the same freedom of action as was extended to others. Having been so ‘misunderstood and misrepresented’, she could not agree to the Committee’s request ‘not to make a propaganda of her views’. ‘She gave place to no one in her advocacy of purity of life, and she could not rest under the imputation of being on the side of impurity.’22 Of the 39 absent NEC members, 22 had communicated their support for Isabel’s presidency, as had several branches, including

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Manchester and Birmingham Unions, and only one absentee had welcomed her resignation. After intense debate, the majority of the NEC concluded that as only temperance reform was constitutionally binding upon the Association, Isabel’s diverging views on the purity issue did not disqualify her from the office of president. They drafted a resolution affirming the NEC’s ‘uncompromising hostility’ to state-regulated vice, but stating ‘its continued confidence in Lady Henry Somerset as the President’ and the hope ‘she would remain in office’. The dissidents’ attempt to have the term ‘continued confidence’ removed from the wording failed, and the motion passed, 38 in favour and 8 against. Assured that the Committee’s decision was based upon its ‘confidence in my motives’, Isabel withdrew her resignation. She had achieved her objective: to force the NEC to contemplate the Association’s future without her, with no suitable replacement in the wings. This potential vacuum, not personal ambition, was her chief motivation for continuing in office.23 Willard grieved that her failing health prevented her from hurrying to England to assist Isabel, as she had in the crisis of 1893.24 Apart since autumn 1896, they found their letters an inadequate substitute for the exchange of confidences and advice enjoyed when they were physically together, and their correspondence of the period reflects their frustration with this situation. Willard had been briefed by Isabel as to her possible recommendations on the Indian question, but her final proposals greatly dismayed Willard, a CD abolitionist, who believed Isabel’s relative inexperience in purity work had caused her to be misled by the male and female reformers she admired. Willard wrote to Elizabeth Blackwell, requesting she urge Isabel to recant.25 Wishing to avoid adding to the ‘cares and worries . . . around the one I love best’, Willard resolved not to publicly criticize Isabel: ‘it is not my business to question her motives’. Apprehensive that the attacks of Butler and her supporters would erode the NBWTA president’s following, Willard asked some of her purity associates in England to be cautious when responding to Isabel’s stand; she voiced regret that ‘good people will not allow other good people to differ from them without casting them out of their synagogue’.26 Willard sought to contain the crisis with her silence, sharing Lillian Stevens’ hope that WCTU women would follow suit and not ‘meddle’ in the dispute; Willard feared their criticism would intensify dissension and prompt Isabel to abandon ‘white ribbon work’,

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which would be a ‘calamity’ for the movement in America. Also, Isabel counselled Willard to be prudent, asking that reports concerning the Contagious Diseases Acts be omitted from the WCTU organ, Union Signal, ‘as long as possible’ because they would only ‘open a storm and the conditions are so little understood’.27 However, Isabel’s position as vice-president of the World’s WCTU ensured the contagious diseases dispute extended beyond Britain’s national boundaries. The Atlantic proved to be a ‘very small lake when controversies involving the reform community of the women question were concerned’, and Willard was placed on the defensive by the CD issue, as Isabel had been by the WCTU lynching dispute in 1895. Fuelled by their envy of Isabel’s affluence and social position and, particularly, of Willard’s attachment to the Englishwoman and her homeland milieu, certain elements within the American WCTU utilized the controversy to embarrass her and discredit Isabel.28 Her perennial adversary, Mary Leavitt, penned an ‘Open Letter’ to the Union, demanding Isabel’s resignation, to prevent ‘the odium which now rests upon her’ from engulfing and sullying the WCTU worldwide.29 Among the most scathing American attacks on Isabel were those emanating from Andrew and Bushnell, who initiated a campaign to oust her from office: they prayed for this goal ‘daily, hourly’ and, certain they had God’s ear, were confident that soon this ‘miserable woman’s public career will be ended’. They blamed Isabel for fuelling the Indian government’s drive to reinstate state regulation of vice, by her ‘championship of the Pro-fornication party’, and castigated Willard for her silence on this ‘treacherous betrayal’, for which she would have to answer to God and American women. ‘Oh, that you had never met that woman of fatal fascination, to whom you swore that nothing would separate you from her . . . and nothing has separated you, as far as it appears—not even infamy.’30 They published ‘A Fatal Mistake’, a formal rejoinder to Isabel’s scheme which they alleged maintained inequality by keeping women as prisoners while permitting men their freedom. They dismissed her contention that regulation was necessary to prevent soldiers from being ‘literally forced’ into feral ‘debauchery’ by the demands of male physiology. Their criticisms were given credence by Bushnell’s status as a physician. They claimed Isabel’s proposals supported a double standard by upholding the presumption that the male constitution dictated men could not ‘be held to the same

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standard of morality as women’. Moreover, as Tyrrell points out, having ‘fully imbibed the sexual morality of the Victorian women’s movement’, they considered her regulation scheme ‘a concession to vice’.31 Underlying Andrew and Bushnell’s genuine moral and feminist indignation was a personal animosity towards Isabel which had little to do with her scheme. Following their 1893 report on conditions in India, the two missionaries had received from her both financial and professional help, participated in policy sessions with her, and been frequently her guests at Reigate and Eastnor. They abruptly disengaged themselves from her without explanation in 1895, their congeniality replaced by acrimony. Isabel was perplexed by their sudden about-face and the disparaging remarks they now directed against her, given she had ‘never been other than kind to them both’; she could only conclude that their minds had been ‘poisoned’ against her by the ‘viper’, journalist Rossiter Willard, the former manager of Woman’s Signal.32 The real reason for the missionaries’ hostility was apparently their resentment at being overlooked by Isabel and Frances Willard in their selection of superintendent for the WWCTU’s European purity work. The position had been given to another worker, a manipulating, ‘clever, pushing, ambitious woman’ who was ignorant of purity work but had ‘played her cards well’, according to Josephine Butler. Andrew and Bushnell felt ‘shamefully slighted’ and would have relinquished WWCTU work had they not been dependent upon the Union for funding.33 However, when they eventually resigned from the organization in 1896, purity work was only one of several policies with which they took issue.34 To Willard’s antagonists, her failure to openly denounce Isabel’s proposals was tantamount to acquiescence to her views. Moreover, her opponents believed the American WCTU’s president had manipulated the organization to contain criticism of Isabel and to counter calls for her resignation from the World Union’s vicepresidency; she had thereby given the appearance these organizations also endorsed her scheme, posing a threat to the stability of the American WCTU.35 Willard was unable to quell all public criticism of Isabel and her proposals. ‘Our papers from ocean to ocean took up the matter and so they did in Canada and had everything that the friends of Mrs Butler could set going against our Ladye and against me’, she told Hannah Whitall Smith, and Willard was

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accused of accepting $5,000 from Isabel as compensation for supporting her position. The Union Signal declared that WCTU women were ‘totally opposed’ to Isabel’s scheme and believed her guilty of a ‘grave error of judgement’. The Sentinel reported that Andrew and Bushnell had convinced the WCTU and YWCA of Almeda County to adopt a motion condemning ‘any system of laws for the suppression of decency’ and imploring English people to dissociate themselves from ‘any man or woman advocating such abominable legislation’.36 The issue came to a head at the WWCTU convention in Toronto in late October 1897. Isabel was too ill to attend, and neither Leavitt nor Butler were present, but both issued letters to the delegates protesting Isabel’s position on regulation and objecting to her continuance as vice-president. Butler stated she would ‘sever her connection’ with the Union if it compromised on the CD issue or if Isabel were re-elected by ‘any undecided leaders or committees’.37 Objections to Isabel’s scheme were also voiced by White Ribbon women in New Zealand and Australia, and opposition emerged at the convention. Consequently, Willard found herself confronted by her critics, who sought both an ‘accounting’ for her apparent ambivalence on the CD issue and the removal of Isabel from the WWCTU’s vice-presidency. As election to this office was the constitutional prerogative of the executive, Willard was able to ensure her friend’s retention of the position, though not without harsh criticism from opponents and questioning, by some delegates, of the executive’s lock on the process.38 Faced with this discontent, Willard disavowed Isabel’s scheme as a ‘grievous mistake’ but acknowledged the sincerity of her intentions and repudiated ‘any personal attack upon or severity of language’ against her.39 Willard had hesitated to issue even such a mild censure, but the public controversy could not be ignored. ‘Much that was in my addresses was written at the last moment when this storm had been brewed by the press’, she confessed to Hannah Whitall Smith, who had questioned Willard’s action.40 Although a resolution denouncing any form of state regulation of prostitution was passed, Willard successfully used her influence to formulate a wording which avoided offending Isabel, while ‘making clear the fact that the W.C.T.U. and its president, Miss Willard, are unalterably opposed to the State sanction of vice’.41 Proponents of regulation were elated by the ideological disunity evinced at the convention.

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They proclaimed Isabel’s re-election a triumph for her supporters and utilized the press to promote her views as justification for the maintenance of the Cantonment Acts in India.42 At the 1897 American WCTU annual convention in Buffalo, New York, there was no public rejection of Isabel, the CD question being eclipsed by the financial crisis associated with the Woman’s Temple. Nevertheless, opposition did intensify in the wake of the WWCTU conference in Toronto. The Dominion WCTU of Canada threatened to resign from the World’s Union, following a campaign against Isabel’s re-election to office which had been orchestrated by the organization’s vice-president, Amelia Yeomans. She had launched the most strident of the opposition’s attempts to unseat Isabel at the Toronto convention. The WWCTU affiliates in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden seceded from the Union, being unwilling to continue their alliance ‘under the present circumstances’ of the leadership.43 Dissatisfied with the outcome of the meetings in Toronto and Buffalo, Butler formally resigned from her office of superintendent of the WWCTU’s Purity department and from her membership of the NBWTA. She cautioned British Women to concentrate upon temperance and undertake purity work only in groups or as individuals, ‘not as a Union’; she warned that the Anti–State Regulation of Vice departments established by several branches and unions would be ‘infected’ by Isabel’s influence to adopt ‘a wavering or compromising position’ on the question.44 Appalled by the proceedings at the Toronto convention, Andrew and Bushnell went ‘on the warpath’ against Isabel. Using personal contact and correspondence, they conducted a campaign within the NBWTA to discredit her and prevent her from succeeding the ailing Willard as WWCTU’s president. They hoped to pressure the NEC into withdrawing the NBWTA from the World’s Union, believing the problem over Isabel would then ‘be about ended for England’.45 Individual British Women and several NBWTA branches expressed regret at Isabel’s stand. In early January 1898, some 30 members of the Association issued a ‘Call to Duty’ circular to British Women, advocating Isabel not be re-elected president at the annual council in May, so the organization would not be associated with her regulation scheme.46 Diagnosed with a heart problem in August 1897, Isabel had been forbidden by her physician to attend the Toronto convention and was obliged to take temporary retirement from the NBWTA presi-

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dency. Her continuing ill health induced her to resign the office on 5 January 1898, but she remained the vice-president of the World’s Union.47 Freed from the constraints of her presidency, she now resolved not to allow ‘the horrible conduct of the Purity people (Bushnell, Andrew, & and [sic] the English workers) to bias what I have long intended to do when I was stronger, and that is tackle the Government’ on its failure to establish egalitarian standards in the Cantonment Acts. She made it ‘perfectly clear’ she would not ‘be deterred from doing right’ by the knowledge that her motives would undoubtedly be misconstrued, but would challenge the authorities at once with the free hand afforded by her resignation. This would preclude any future recantation being interpreted as either a ploy to regain the NBWTA leadership or a capitulation to ‘outside pressure or influence’, particularly Willard’s. In making the decision to obtain equality, Isabel was evidently swayed by Millicent Fawcett’s views supportive of regulation, which she found ‘exceedingly strong, calm and well judged’ and which impressed her ‘far more than anything that has yet been said on the subject’.48 Isabel’s proposed confrontation with the government was forestalled by developments in America. Hoping to be sufficiently restored in health to embark upon a visit to Isabel, Willard had moved to a New York hotel in January 1898 from where she planned to sail for England ‘at once’ if Isabel’s health failed to improve, otherwise in the spring.49 Willard’s anxiety over Isabel’s situation was compounded by concern regarding the possible impact of the contagious diseases controversy upon the WWCTU. As defections from the organization mounted, she feared that internal squabbling would jeopardize the Union’s very existence, and though loyalty prevented her from personally appealing to Isabel to renounce her stand, Willard sanctioned pleas sent by WWCTU officials.50 Since the onset of Isabel’s illness, her correspondence to Willard had become largely restricted to weekly cables and intermittent dictated letters, and by mid-January 1898, Willard was worriedly querying Lillian Stevens on the situation in England. ‘Do tell me if there is any trouble that I am not aware of. Anything wherein I have been called into question? It is better to know now for there are paragraphs in the paper every few days that are most trying. . . . How pitiful and passing pitiful it all is! . . . Between you and me it has about used me up.’51

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Willard’s health continued to decline, and when Isabel received this news, along with reports of her beloved friend’s anguish over her controversial stand, ‘Miss Willard’s distress was more than Lady Henry could bear’, and she decided to rescind her proposals.52 On 27 January 1898 she cabled Willard, ‘Private. Retracting C.D. Await mail. Better Cos’, to which Willard replied, ‘O joy! Blessed Cos Thank God’.53 In her follow-up letter to Willard, enclosing a draft of her retraction statement, Isabel wrote she was sorry if she had taken ‘a wrong view, though I most honestly believed in it. . . . I have come to the conclusion that which is scientifically true cannot be religiously defended. Any how, here is my offering to right and I make it fully and willingly. God forgive me the trouble I have caused from that belief, my own one’.54 In order to spare Isabel distress, Willard’s associates initially shielded her from the reality of Willard’s rapidly deteriorating condition. As late as 8 February Isabel was anticipating her arrival in the spring, but shortly afterwards, she received word from Anna Gordon of the gravity of Willard’s illness. Despite her own ill health and the imminent arrival of her first grandchild, Isabel was prepared to go at once to Willard’s side if she worsened, but the American’s death on 17 February ended any chances of a reunion.55 Gordon wrote immediately to Isabel, recounting Willard’s final days and hours, relating how she had murmured, ‘Cossie, Cossie, I should have loved to see you again, but isn’t it good Cossie has retracted’. Gordon described how the ‘Chieftain’ had passed away, clasping in her hands a miniature of Isabel, ‘the one she loved best on earth’. Isabel was devastated by Willard’s death but accepted it as God’s will and took comfort in the belief they would be reunited in eternity, an event she eagerly anticipated. ‘Life can never be the same again—but Heaven is more home-like because she is there and our faces are set towards it. It seems to me, I hear her saying “If ye loved me you would rejoice” and I try to forget how big and lonely the world is.’56 In her letter of retraction to Lord George Hamilton in January 1898, Isabel emphasised that her recommendations had been made in the belief any new regulation system enacted would be instituted ‘as an odious but possibly effective auxiliary to moral efforts’, but government policy had persuaded her that regulation would ‘always be accepted as a convenient substitute’ for ethical behaviour; consequently, she was convinced ‘of the inadvisability and

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extreme danger of the system that in April last I thought might be instituted’, and she was withdrawing her proposals. Her letter was made public on 8 February, and she later issued a statement to NBWTA branches explaining her action.57 The NEC responded to Isabel’s retraction with ‘deep thankfulness’ and expressed the hope she would resume her presidency. Isabel agreed to allow the branches to propose her re-election if they considered it ‘of value’, and 248 did so. When some 17 branches suggested leaving the office vacant for one year, and 3 opposed her reinstatement, Isabel reversed her decision ’in the interests of unity’. Given so many branches had nominated Isabel, the NEC resolved to allow the annual council to settle the question, which they did by re-electing her with a wide margin of 530 votes, out of 603 cast. Two votes were scattered and 71 left blank, being cast by her opponents to register their disagreement, ‘actuated by principle not personal feeling’, after their vocal objections to Isabel’s presidency had failed to sway the delegates.58 Isabel’s recantation prompted a mixed response from Josephine Butler. She ‘rejoiced’ at Isabel’s action and commended her for her ‘real act of humility’ in publicly admitting her error, a gesture which raised the abolitionist reformer’s regard for Isabel. Nevertheless, Butler thought the retraction ‘clumsy and marred’ by Isabel’s attempts to justify her original proposals and was ‘disgusted’ by the accolades she was receiving from ‘wretched flatterers and wild admirers’ for taking ‘one halting step back from a position of moral ignominy’. Butler considered it an anomaly for her to succeed to the WWCTU presidency by ‘Hereditary Succession’. She expressed satisfaction that the ‘foolish’ women who had supported Isabel would now be obliged to follow her ‘in her professed hostility to regulation’, and regarded the controversy surrounding her to be now at an end.59 Other abolitionists were less generous, their ‘bitterness and suspicion’ prompting their continued censure of Isabel. The Christian declared that her about-face would not negate the immense damage rendered the purity cause by her scheme, and that her retraction was undermined by its mistaken premise that her proposals were morally sound—criticisms promulgated throughout the abolitionist press.60 Isabel’s reversal failed to mollify Andrew and Bushnell, who intensified their efforts to prevent Isabel succeeding to the WWCTU presidency. They continued to denigrate her and in

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their agitation employed propaganda designed to illustrate her ‘heretical utterances’ on temperance, which they claimed lowered the standards of the World’s Union.61 In this they were supported by Mary Leavitt, who issued a circular to American White Ribboners, incorporating excerpts from Isabel’s evidence before the Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws. Isabel had admitted she saw no wrong simply in drinking, ‘should not wish to interfere with anybody who chose to take alcohol in moderate quantities’, and declared she was ‘not in favour of any law for Prohibition by Act of Parliament’ at that time because she thought ‘it would be altogether and absolutely impracticable’; she preferred ‘inanition of the trade’ through education. These attitudes, claimed Leavitt, betrayed WWCTU principles and rendered Isabel unfit to be the Union’s president.62 Leavitt’s efforts proved futile. American White Ribboners severely criticized her for sowing dissension in their ranks with her attacks upon Isabel, whose recantation had lifted her to ‘the high plane where we would have her stand’. Butler rebuked Andrew and Bushnell for prolonging the controversy. The NBWTA remained ‘strong for Lady Henry’, as did the influential reform activist Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle, plus many temperance women in the Women’s Liberal Federation, and this support undermined the two reformers’ campaign.63 In April 1898, Isabel issued a letter to WWCTU members, denying allegations of unfaithfulness to the Union’s principles and asking them to co-operate with her in cementing the bonds of the organization until a new president was elected at the next convention. Her appeal and letter of retraction won over the Dominion WCTU of Canada, which had come so close to secession following the Toronto convention. Its national executive committee endorsed Isabel’s presidency of the World’s WCTU, with only one dissenting voice, that of Amelia Yeomans, who resigned over the issue, and the endorsement was supported by local branches and provincial unions. At the WWCTU’s fifth biennial convention, held in Edinburgh in 1900, Isabel was confirmed as the Union’s president, a position she held until her resignation in 1906.64

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Isabel’s already fragile health was severely strained by the upheavals of the contagious diseases controversy and the trauma resulting from Willard’s death, prompting her to observe, ‘It will be only such a little while until I go to her’, even though in spring 1898 she was only approaching her forty-seventh birthday.1 Isabel would go on to live almost 23 more years, but all of them were marred by a variety of ailments and diminishing strength. For much of 1898 she was obliged to curtail her activities, including her NBWTA fundraising and presidential duties.2 Nevertheless, she continued to execute the Association’s mandate, including the pressing problem of its response to the British government’s inaction on temperance reform, which had occupied her since the defeat of the Liberal Party and the election of a Conservative government in 1895. The close alliance between the liquor trade and the Conservative Party, and the absence of temperance initiatives in its parliamentary agenda, had prompted Isabel to advocate compromise on liquor legislation as a means of obtaining the reforms sought by temperance advocates.3 The Conservative Party had strongly opposed the Liberals’ proposed Direct Veto legislation but, bowing to pressure from Anglican bishops and the Westminster Licensing Reform Committee, had appointed a Royal Commission to examine the liquor-licensing issue in 1896.4 Isabel again demonstrated her flexibility on liquor regulation before this Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing in 1897. The NBWTA had been unable to obtain the appointment of women to the commission, but Isabel was invited to present evidence.5 In her testimony she blamed the slow pace of licence reduction on the magistrates’ indulgence of the liquor trade, arguing this practice

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had led to the creation of a great vested interest; the protection of its prosperity currently took precedence over the need to control the public nuisance of the drink trade. Consequently, she was in favour of reform with compensation, and certain conditions, rather than no reform at all. To prevent the surviving licensees’ profiting from increased trade, ‘something less than freehold value must be given’ to those deprived of their licences, with recompense provided by surviving publicans. These measures should be accompanied by the right of direct veto, so as to limit demand in accordance with the wishes of the local population. Isabel supported her condemnation of the lax application of licensing laws with statistical evidence she had gathered in certain London districts, showing licences had constantly been granted without reference to public needs; this had resulted in competition and the stimulus of demand and contravened current legislation.6 One contemporary observer reported, ‘Lady Henry . . . obviously astonished the Commission by her moderation’, while Isabel informed Willard that ‘Lord Peel and some of the principal commissioners told me . . . that the argument that I had produced to-day had really given them a light through the subject that they had never before elicited’.7 Isabel’s evidence may have contributed to Lord Peel’s ‘conversion to drastic temperance reform’ during the course of the inquiry.8 The commission had contained representatives from the trade and the temperance movements, and, not surprisingly, dissension ensued, resulting in the publication of both minority and majority reports in 1899. Although both reports endorsed a reduction in licences, and compensation for affected vendors, the two diverged on how these measures should be applied. Reflecting their partiality for the liquor trade, the majority commissioners proposed granting generous compensation to those deprived of licences, together with a continuation of the current slow rate of reduction. The minority, headed by chairman Lord Peel, recommended acceleration of licence reduction and a limit of seven years for compensation payments; the latter were to be derived from taxes levied upon the remaining licence holders. The Peel report also advocated direct veto be gradually introduced in Scotland and Wales but postponed in England. Temperance reformers welcomed the reduction of licences and an end to the permanent vested interest in them, but were dismayed that these reforms would require acquiescence to compensation and delay of veto. Consequently, the proposals

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were not supported unanimously by temperance organizations. Following Liberal leader Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s public avowal of an augmented version of the minority’s recommendations, a pivotal section of the movement banded together and issued a temperance manifesto, created by Liberal MP Thomas P. Whittaker, supporting the measures.9 Addressing the May 1899 NBWTA annual council shortly before the widely publicized reports were issued, Isabel urged temperance forces to put aside their differences and unite to combat the liquor trade’s interests promoted in the majority report. She suggested reformers consider as a weapon a new ‘scheme of revolutionary nature’ developed by anti-prohibitionists Joseph Rowntree and Arthur Sherwell and outlined in their work, The Temperance Problem and Social Reform. The scheme was designed ‘to eliminate private self interest entirely from the business and sale of alcoholic intoxicants’ and ensure that liquor vendors ‘gain nothing from pushing the sale’.10 This would be achieved through the adoption of disinterested management, a system to remove the profit motive from the sale of drink by making publicans salaried employees of the trade. The authors advocated widespread utilization of the scheme, except in staunchly prohibitionist districts, where direct veto would prove a more practical option.11 At the NEC’s October 1899 meeting, Isabel pressed British Women to ‘work for measures upon which they could agree, even though they might not be all they might ultimately hope to secure’. A resolution was passed supporting Peel’s recommendations, albeit with some dissentients, and asking NBWTA branches to assist reformers to ‘secure legislation on these lines’, provided it included Sunday closing of public houses and the direct veto,12 but without raising any objections to compensation.13 The resolution carried unanimously at the Committee’s March 1900 meeting and was adopted by the NBWTA annual council in June.14 At the council, Isabel devoted almost her entire presidential address to clarifying Peel’s recommendations and arguing that with a general election imminent, temperance forces must ‘follow the path of least resistance’ and back the Liberals’ proposals for limited compensation and graduated introduction of direct veto; it was ‘the only way to our goal open to us today’, given that a Tory victory would likely lead to legislation based upon the majority report. The Liberals’ defeat in the October election gave an added edge to Isabel’s

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argument. With adoption of majority proposals a distinct prospect, British Women relinquished their earlier objections to the deferral of veto legislation and welcomed Peel’s recommendations as adequately ‘embodying the principle of direct veto’.15 The NBWTA became one of the ‘strongest backers’ of the minority scheme.16 Given her position as president of the WWCTU, in promoting Peel’s proposals and ‘disinterested management’ Isabel risked provoking a worldwide membership revolt akin to the 1897 contagious diseases dispute, but none materialized. Although both the World’s Union and the powerful American WCTU were professed prohibitionists, neither group objected publicly to her stance. The Dominion WCTU of Canada applauded Rowntree and Sherwell’s scheme and wished ‘Godspeed’ to those seeking its adoption. The American WCTU, while not defending Isabel’s views, withheld criticism, thus tacitly sanctioning the existence of cultural adaptation within the World’s Union. Isabel had long supported such diversity,17 maintaining that ‘prohibition by statutory law . . . would be practically impossible, in England’, direct veto being more ‘in accordance with the legislative spirit’ of the nation.18 This conviction was fortified by Sherwell and Rowntree’s criticisms of American prohibition legislation and further reinforced by her own observations of these laws19 while she was visiting the United States for the national WCTU annual convention in October 1902. Despite their reservations about Isabel’s views, the American White Ribboners welcomed her as of old. ‘Great audiences greeted her whenever she spoke. The people pressed to clasp her hand or touch her garment’, and upon her first appearance before the WCTU delegates, ‘the entire convention rose spontaneously with a joyous flourish of American flags’.20 Isabel’s American visit taxed her already weakened constitution, and upon her return in November 1902, she succumbed to serious illness; only specialist treatment and ‘constant, careful nursing saved her’. Early in February 1903, upon the advice of her physicians she decided to resign from the NBWTA presidency, a step she had earlier determined to take in 1904. Her current health would in future prevent her from adequately fulfilling her duties, she told the NEC, and she was unwilling to hold the office ‘as a sinecure’. She must accept ‘it is God’s will that I should not, as heretofore, lead your society’. Most NEC members had been unaware of the severity of Isabel’s illness, and her resignation was received with

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shock and grief: ‘Some who rose to speak were unable to proceed and those who did speak said what they had to say through tears.’ The Committee passed a resolution expressing the hope that Isabel would eventually regain her health sufficiently ‘to enable her to resume the office of president’.21 Isabel bade farewell to the NBWTA at the 1903 annual council with a call to arms. Given the current heightened public awareness of the licensing issue, and the liquor trade’s campaign to obtain legislation favourable to its interests, she warned, ‘Change in the licensing system is inevitable’. It would be achieved by their opponents unless temperance workers laboured to ‘guide reform into the right direction, even though they do not arrive at their ultimate goal’. She made a passionate appeal for their support of disinterested management, now her preferred remedy for halting the aggressive retailing of liquor. She believed the situation in England could only be satisfactorily met by removing the monetary advantage from the sale of alcohol; through public control embracing ‘both the veto and the public management of the liquor traffic, under explicit safeguards’; combined with the provision of ‘counterattractions to the public house’ to fulfil the ‘social instincts of the people in healthful and helpful ways’.22 In 1903, Isabel collaborated in the launching of a new national temperance manifesto which supported a scheme of public management modelled upon the Gothenburg system, pioneered in Scandinavia. Thereafter, she campaigned for the scheme.23 Isabel’s actions alienated prohibitionists in the NBWTA, who believed disinterested management would inevitably lead to the promotion of drinking.24 At the forefront of this group was Isabel’s successor as NBWTA president, Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle, and Isabel’s and Carlisle’s conflicting views led to a cooling of their previously cordial relationship.25 Carlisle concluded that Isabel’s opinions had prompted her to formulate a farewell address aimed at undermining Carlisle’s candidacy, which Isabel emphatically denied. The speech had been printed prior to Isabel receiving notification of Carlisle’s nomination, precluding such action on Isabel’s part, and she did ‘nothing to influence anyone by a single word’. At the subsequent annual council Carlisle was not the delegates’ unanimous choice for president, which she may have interpreted as resulting from Isabel’s stirring appeal on behalf of disinterested management.26

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Following the issuing of the new national temperance manifesto, Isabel was accused by Carlisle of sowing dissension within temperance ranks at a time when a united front was required to battle the forthcoming government licensing legislation, which was favourable to the trade. She claimed the manifesto had provoked ‘uncompromising opposition’ on the part of most temperance organizations and was supported by only ‘moderate’ reformers, a group who were ‘not the fighters you need behind you, if you are to rouse the masses in the country to defy and defeat this government’. Additionally, Carlisle feared that American White Ribboners’ hostility to public management would create conflict within WWCTU ranks.27 Isabel countered that the signatures to the manifesto demonstrated the scheme was ‘whole-heartedly’ endorsed by ‘some of the most eminent among the Temperance ranks’ and indicated wide-ranging support for those proposals designed to achieve a ‘measure of reform’ which ‘would be immediately practical’. She denied division existed between Carlisle and herself with regard to the government’s impending legislation, which she would fight, side by side with other temperance workers. With regard to the WWCTU’s possible reaction, prior to its 1903 convention Isabel had notified the organization that she preferred not to continue as their leader, but that ‘if they re-elected me they would fully understand that I should consider myself absolutely at liberty to advocate any policy I thought best for England’.28 Carlisle’s allegations apparently validated reports of her aversion to Isabel, so the latter avoided confrontation by distancing herself from the Countess, maintaining contact solely by correspondence; their letters reflected the tension underlying their relationship.29 Carlisle was ‘in deadly earnest opposed’ to Isabel’s ‘new policy’ and vowed to ‘warn others against it’,30 and she rallied the NBWTA in opposition to public management. When Isabel lobbied the organization to adopt the scheme,31 she was unable to repeat the success she had achieved with Peel’s recommendations. British Women considered disinterested management collusion with the trade, and this they would never sanction, declared Carlisle. The Association remained resolutely opposed to the strategy.32 In the event, neither leader succeeded in leading her supporters to victory. Following the passage of the Conservatives’ 1904 Liquor Licensing Act, which gave those publicans affected by licence reduction a legal right to financial compensation, the NBWTA

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resolved to battle for reversal of the Act, throwing their support behind the Liberal Party’s licensing proposals;33 they included the application of a time limit to compensation and the enactment of new laws based on Lord Peel’s recommendations. Upon the Liberals’ return to power in the 1905 election, their legislative proposals were embodied in Asquith’s 1908 Licensing Bill, which perished in the Conservative-controlled House of Lords.34 Subsequent attempts by early-twentieth-century Liberal governments to obtain liquor licensing reform were derailed by a combination of Tory opposition, the constitutional and Ulster crises, and the advent of the First World War.35 Isabel was obliged to curtail her campaigning for licence reform in 1906 when her deteriorating health dictated the re-ordering of her priorities. Already, in December 1905, she had informed the NBWTA she would not seek re-election as WWCTU president,36 and she was succeeded by Rosalind Carlisle, the following year. Relations between Carlisle and Isabel remained strained at the time of her departure from the WWCTU presidency. According to Hannah Whitall Smith, Carlisle declined to donate NBWTA monies to a World WCTU testimonial fund for its departing president. However, after Carlisle’s election to the office, Isabel’s congratulatory message and offer to familiarize her successor with the operation of the World’s Union apparently initiated a reconciliation between the two leaders.37 As her many charity and rescue endeavours demonstrated, Isabel had always preferred personal service to organizational work, and after resigning the NBWTA presidency, she determined to expend her diminishing energies largely upon her philanthropic obligations, which were making increasing demands upon her time and finances. These responsibilities included the White Ribbon Settlement House she had established in East London in 1900, which was designed to unite Frances Willard’s idea of a WWCTU settlement with an English version, along ‘Christian Socialist lines but essentially Church lines’. The settlement was supervised by Miss Evelyn Bateman, who had overseen the Ledbury Mission, but Isabel ‘lived the Life with the settlement ladies’, occupying a bedroom in the building. Two adjacent properties were subsequently rented. In one, Isabel established an emergency hospital for the parish, and in the other, a restaurant providing hot meals for factory girls and needy children. The settlement was in the parish of

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the Reverend Henry Sanders, formerly vicar at Eastnor, and Isabel was able to utilize the church hall for the settlement activities of Bible reading; recreational clubs for men, women, and children; and Band of Hope meetings.38 She had hoped to build a mission hall in conjunction with the settlement, using the testimonial funds subscribed by British Women at the time of her resignation from the NBWTA presidency. However, as the construction costs far exceeded the amount collected, the money was subsequently used to build a recreation hall and lecture room at Duxhurst.39 Following some two years at the East London settlement, Isabel settled permanently at her cottage at Duxhurst40 but retained her modest flat at 4 Grays Inn Square, London. The privilege of living at the Inns of Court had been granted to her as a descendant of Lord Chancellor Somers. Her ancestral home, Eastnor Castle, had been let ‘for good’ in 1901.41 At the colony, Isabel lived a life of relative simplicity compared to the luxurious and elegant environment she had enjoyed in former years. She had one servant, who was a personal maid and ‘cook and parlour maid in one’, and Isabel’s stylish dresses were replaced by a grey uniform and simple white cap. As at the White Ribbon Settlement, Isabel fully embraced community life, undertaking her quota of mundane household tasks and sharing with the residents the recurring discomforts arising from their inefficient household skills—among them, unlit fires and no hot water.42 Her days were fully occupied ministering to patients’ emotional, spiritual, and, if need be, physical needs, and her nights were sometimes given over to attending a dying patient or contending with a resident who was the worse for drink: ‘Fetched at one o’clock this morning to the woman in D.T. and had to stay there until 5.30 a.m. A terrible night, Doctor came and gave her chloroform with good results—but she was nearly gone and her contortions were most terrible and shrieks heart-rendering. I shall never forget the horror of the long hours’, she recorded in her diary.43 Following Isabel’s relocation to Duxhurst, treatment was extended to drug addicts, mainly women, whose recourse to pain-killing narcotics had progressed from habit to dependence. Isabel ascribed the prevalence of this addiction, in large measure, to the ‘shameful ease’ with which the drugs were available, and she criticized the national government for not moving forward on the recommendations of a departmental committee which had been summoned to examine the question; she had given evidence at the inquiry. The

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results of the programme cannot be accurately calculated, as the colony was unable to collect precise statistics on long-term patient outcomes, but Isabel estimated a 72 per cent cure rate for alcoholism and drug addiction combined, based upon numbers of patients abstaining during the two-year treatment.44 The expansion of Duxhurst’s mandate helped ensure its operation at full capacity, but the colony continued to be a strain upon Isabel’s finances. ‘Money matters very trying and un-restful. I want to do right but always seem to have managed to do wrong.’ In an effort to raise funds for the colony, she undertook speaking tours around the country, used her social contacts to tap aristocratic audiences, and built a pottery workshop in the grounds, successfully marketing the products; a large proportion was sold at Selfridges, the prominent London department store. She also published and sold an illustrated book, Beauty for Ashes, describing the farm colony and its work.45 Despite her commitment to Duxhurst and its residents, Isabel often struggled to overcome the many frustrations arising from her situation, all of which she accepted as stemming from her own inadequacies. When impatient with a resident, angered by incompetence, dismayed by the relapse of an inebriate, or depressed by the tedium of her routine, she suffered pangs of guilt, ascribing her behaviour to her lack of ‘humility, gentleness, forbearance’. Isabel was isolated from her social circle, and overcoming loneliness and the monotony of her days was perhaps her most difficult mental challenge. During rare visits from friends, or an occasional attendance at a social event in London, she relished the pleasures of Society; afterwards, she was remorseful, judging her enjoyment as weakness: ‘The draggings of the things I want to do—the longings for the world of art and literature—and the aridity of the uneventful life—as I write I am ashamed of the words but they are in my heart all the time.’ When discouraged, Isabel, as always, found strength in her faith: ‘I had felt terrible depressed when I got up, today. . . . I looked up at the crucifix . . . this suffering of Christ that takes in the whole world—and so suffering with Him is the one big thing. . . . Everything looked small and petty we call big beside it—it alone endures for ever.’ She feared her deficiencies barred her from receiving God’s love, believing she had failed to achieve her full potential in life and be ‘all He meant me to be; it seems impossible to believe He will still have patience’.46

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Isabel’s life now centred on Duxhurst, its operation and management requiring the bulk of her time and energy, with little of either remaining to expend elsewhere. Yet, she somehow integrated into her busy schedule many additional responsibilities, to the detriment of her health. Shortly after Isabel’s move to the farm colony, her mother began to fail. Lady Somers had lived largely abroad since the death of Lord Somers, but she was now back in England and in a frail condition. In 1906, she became seriously ill, and during the next three years Isabel travelled frequently back and forth between Duxhurst and London to be with her. In 1909, Lady Somers’ condition worsened and she was taken to Duxhurst, where Isabel nursed her mother through what proved to be her final illness, the end coming on 29 September 1910. Sitting by her mother’s deathbed, devastated Isabel ruminated upon the bond broken forever: ‘She is gone, who never failed in love, to whom I, old as I am, was as her little child, to whom I brought so much of my troubles . . . darling, darling mother.’ Lady Somers was buried beside her husband in the Somers chapel at Eastnor. Despite her grief, Isabel resumed her duties immediately after the funeral. ‘Then, as ever, no thought of herself, . . . careworn and fatigued, regardless of her need for rest,’ she journeyed to London to fulfil a commitment.47 Isabel had always been ‘reckless of her health’.48 Her usual response to fatigue and sickness was to ignore the symptoms and continue her work until she could no longer function. This disregard for her own well-being jeopardized her constitution. In autumn 1908, she was obliged to retreat to Baden Baden, Germany, for ‘mild heart treatment’.49 In spring 1912, her neglect resulted in far more serious consequences. During a winter of recurring illness she had continued her routines until, at a friend’s insistence, she finally consulted her surgeon. ‘Horrified at her condition’, he brought in a colleague for consultation, and both insisted upon surgery.50 The operation was successfully performed on 11 May at her London flat, where she then convalesced for three months. While recuperating, Isabel became extremely distressed by the ‘indescribable’ circumstances and suffering of London workers embroiled in the current dock strike. Despite her indisposition, she invited its leaders to lunch and gave them ‘her thought, sympathy and help for their funds’. Isabel was impressed by the spirit and intuitiveness

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of the labour leaders, and she envisioned that from their ranks would emerge the nation’s future rulers; therefore, society must nourish this potential by extending to their class the opportunities enjoyed by the more fortunate in society. ‘There is a new order coming, a new order with much that we shall dislike . . . but that probably will make for the greater happiness of the greater number, and it is this new order we have to look to, and the self-denial of life is I think, to mould that, instead of to love the old ways that are gone.’ Appalled by the ‘starvation and sickness’ generated by the strike, when she returned to Duxhurst, she took with her five babies to recuperate at the Nest. ‘It is all I can do, but at any rate it is five out of perhaps fifty thousand’. Isabel’s recovery was slow, and ‘there was always a threatening of trouble, exhaustion and strain after engrossing public duties’. In late July she returned to her cottage to continue her work, but in the succeeding months she began to suffer from bouts of neuritis and developed severe rheumatism in her arm and hand, which plagued her for the remainder of her life.51 Duxhurst flourished after Isabel assumed its superintendency in 1905. By the end of the decade, the homes were ‘proving their success’, but the advent of the First World War brought dramatic changes to the farm colony. Its relative proximity to Dover, other ports on the south coast, and the railway hub of Redhill made Duxhurst an ideal location for a Red Cross casualty hospital, and the homes were commandeered by the government for this purpose in July 1915. The inebriate women were removed from the premises, and most of the buildings were given over to the nursing of casualties from the front. The Nest remained undisturbed, its small residents now being primarily illegitimate children, and was always filled to capacity. Isabel stayed to care for her small charges and was later assisted by Father Powell and three religious Sisters of the Anglican Order of St. Anne, a congregation devoted to caring for needy children. Father Powell founded the Order in Arlington, Massachusetts, and Isabel had become an Associate of the Order. War-related upheaval filled the Nest with increasing numbers of ‘war babies’, and to accommodate as many of these as possible, Isabel made places available at the manor house, vacated by inebriate ‘ladies’. After the war, Duxhurst resumed treating inebriates, but on a much smaller scale, and the operation of the Nest remained the colony’s main function. Isabel’s responsibilities

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required her to be constantly at Duxhurst, obliging her to decline invitations which would absent her from her duties; however, she still fulfilled the occasional charity engagement.52 Isabel had thought war unlikely because of the strength of the German Socialists and France’s concern for its economy,53 and she was devastated by the carnage of the ensuing conflict. As 1914 drew to a close, she recorded in her diary, ‘In some ways this has been the saddest year I have known—other years have been sad but then those only affected myself—this year my heart has been torn—day and night it is before me. The agony of the struggle— the wretchedness—the cold the wet the wounded and dying’.54 She shared the fears experienced by all families with loved ones in the armed forces. Somey, who had served as The Times correspondent and dispatch rider in the South African War, joined the Army General Staff, with the rank of captain. In October 1915, the eldest of his three sons, 18-year-old Henry Robert Somers Somerset, entered the war as second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards, and subsequently was awarded the Distinguished Service Order ‘for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’ under fire.55 Isabel almost fell victim to the hostilities. On 12 October 1915, she decided to return to Duxhurst one day earlier than planned. Overnight, a German Zeppelin bombed her flat in Grays Inn Square, destroying her bed and sitting rooms, which would likely have resulted in her death had she remained in town. Isabel thought the damage inconsequential compared to ‘the suffering and death in other places’, and immediately organized repairs to restore the structure to its original condition for her re-occupation.56 At this period, Isabel decided to end her estrangement from the Beaufort family. She had not encountered Lord Henry since leaving him in 1878. When he returned from Florence to attend the coronation of Edward VII in 1901, she had declined to be seated at his side at the ceremony. ‘For the two shadowed weeks he was in London she quietly suffered the torture of her separation over again.’57 Perhaps moved by the trauma of war, or her failing health, she now resolved that with God’s help she would try to overcome any bitterness, praying that should she come into contact with her husband, ‘it might be in the spirit of love that suffers and is kind— that I might have some opening to say how freely I forgive’. Such an opportunity never arose, but in 1917 she met with the Beaufort family for the first time in 39 years when she attended the wedding

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of Lord Henry’s niece, Blanche Somerset. The meeting apparently achieved the reconciliation she desired and also reinforced her conviction that her chosen path in life had been the right one. ‘It seemed as though I had just this glimpse of the old world to make me see how good for me it was I should have been taken from it— pleasure loving, ease loving, loving to be loved. How good God had been to snap the cord that bound me to so much that for me was dangerous.’58 Monetary difficulties, particularly Duxhurst’s finances, remained burdens for Isabel. As 1919 came to a close, she was experiencing ‘a time of much care and worry . . . money, money, always seems the dull refrain’.59 The greatly reduced numbers of inebriate patients at the colony meant a decline in revenues, and money now had to be found to compensate for this deficit. In 1920, the colony’s financial woes increased when the Nest was completely destroyed by fire. No children or staff were hurt, but the flames consumed all the contents of the orphanage along with the structure. Thereafter, the children were housed in other colony buildings, their relocation being intended as a temporary measure pending the rebuilding of the Nest. Unfortunately the insurance proved insufficient for this purpose. Isabel ‘contemplated a widespread campaign of lectures and meetings, to raise the necessary funds’, but circumstances conspired to scuttle this project.60 On 12 April 1920, six months prior to the Duxhurst fire, Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, had died unexpectedly,61 devastating Isabel, who was ‘already overwhelmed with care and increasing weakness’ and saddened by the divorce of Somey and his wife, Katherine, that year. Thereafter, close friends observed that a bereft and frail Isabel appeared to be ‘approaching her own eventide’, but she continued to fulfil charitable engagements. In spring 1921, she attended a London fundraising bazaar, though in a state of great fatigue and ‘with grey shadows over her face’, observed her companion that day, Mary Ward Poole. She arranged to meet again with Isabel shortly afterwards, ‘but the night was closing in’. On 10 March, Isabel underwent an emergency operation, which revealed a ‘grave condition, long and patiently borne’. Two days later, after receiving Holy Communion and during the recitation of prayers for the dying, she passed away peacefully, aged 69. Her final words: ‘Rest at last’.62

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The official cause of death was given as heart failure following an appendectomy. On 15 March a Solemn Requiem was sung at St Alban’s Church, Holborn, London, which was filled to capacity with mourners. Somey and his sons Edward and John were accompanied by members of the aristocracy and by representatives of the many philanthropic and temperance organizations with which Isabel had been connected, including the Salvation Army, the Guild of St Barnabas, the NBWTA, and the United Kingdom Alliance. Among the floral arrangements were wreaths sent by Queen Mary, who held Isabel ‘in high esteem’ and had supported her causes ‘generously out of her private purse’, and by the dowager Queen Alexandra, whose cross of white carnations, lilies, and orchids was inscribed, ‘In loving memory of dear Lady Henry Somerset and of the good work she has done for her country.—From Alexandra’. Following the service, Isabel was buried at Brookwood Cemetery in a grave she had selected a few months earlier. She had declined to be buried within the chapel at Eastnor, choosing instead a ‘quiet corner’ outdoors, near the burial ground of the parish church she attended when in London.63 Tributes to Isabel appeared in the national, religious, and temperance press. She was eulogized as a great orator and ‘valued temperance propagandist’, for her selfless contribution to philanthropic causes, and for her efforts towards the advancement of women. She received special accolades for her pioneering work in the treatment of female inebriates, Duxhurst being heralded as the first institution of its type in England. ‘If ever there were a case of sanctified dedication of a whole soul and a whole life to a sacred cause, it was that of Lady Henry Somerset’, declared the Daily Telegraph, which placed her efforts at the colony on par with Florence Nightingale’s leadership role in the nursing profession.64 Isabel’s personal kindliness, known only to its recipients and perhaps a few close associates, remained unheralded, observed Mary Ward Poole: ‘Lady Henry’s spare hours were packed with small acts, making hats for the orphans of St. Mary’s Home, superintending the little pall and funeral of a village baby, arranging for the dying whim to be granted of her son’s valet, who desired that his coffin may be carried down the grand staircase at Eastnor Castle— choosing the simple white dresses . . . for the village girls who were privileged to sing in the Eastnor Church Choir, sending a black dress and hat to the impecunious daughter of her old

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housekeeper, who died at the Castle, to enable her to come to the funeral.’65 Isabel’s generosity is reflected in the state of her finances at the time of her passing. She died intestate, leaving unsettled property valued at only £2,593. At her death, Eastnor Castle and its lands passed into the hands of her cousin, Arthur Herbert Tennyson Somers Cocks, the 6th Baron Somers, who found maintaining the estate a burden. Isabel’s largesse had diminished the value of the holdings. Reigate Priory and the Reigate town real estate, comprising some 400 buildings, had been signed over to Somey by Isabel soon after his marriage, and in the year following her passing, Somey disposed of all the Reigate properties.66 After Isabel’s death, Duxhurst was renamed Lady Somerset Homes in her honour, and the trustees launched an appeal for monetary contributions to rebuild the Nest as a public memorial to Isabel and her sister, Adeline, who had supported the farm colony since its inception. Lacking Isabel’s charismatic appeal and the social cache of her title, the fundraising effort failed to obtain the necessary funds, and the manor house was reconstructed to serve as the children’s home.67 The superintendency of Duxhurst was now assumed by Miss G. Cass, OBE, who, like Isabel, used her own funds to support the colony. The community gradually fell into decline, and an unsuccessful attempt was made to sell it in the 1930s. During the Second World War, Duxhurst was again requisitioned by the military for use as an army base, and when the soldiers departed after the war, it fell into decay. The property was finally sold to a local farmer in the 1950s, but the buildings were not restored. Today, the only surviving material remnants of Duxhurst are the cottages once occupied by Isabel and the colony chaplain, and two or three other dwellings, along with a handful of almost obscured burial sites in the tiny graveyard. Though there is no concrete memorial at Duxhurst to the innovative work and ideal pursued by Isabel, and the social, medical, and psychological advances in the treatment of alcoholism have eclipsed Isabel’s pioneering work at the colony, it is possible that living testimonials still exist. As one chronicler of Duxhurst has observed, ‘there are families in Canada or perhaps still in London, which can with pride flourish because of her influence. A different approach to both alcoholism and alcoholics may in large part be one of her legacies’.68

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IN HER ADDRESS TO THE 1891 NBWTA annual council Isabel had told British Women that in pursuing their mission they must be ‘ready to go forth with no lagging footsteps or half-hearted zeal, no fearful looking backward at forsaken conventionalities, or the surrendered idols of ease and luxurious leisure’.69 This was the path chosen by Isabel in the wake of her religious crisis and acceptance of the Divine call to duty, and one she steadfastly followed until her death. A woman who in early life had enjoyed the delights of aristocratic society at Eastnor Castle and other ancestral family estates, she lived out her final years in a modest cottage at Duxhurst, serving the needs of impoverished children and inebriate women, ‘none too lowly, none too vicious, none even too degraded to affright the valour of her hopelessness and love’.70 In the intervening decades, Isabel had tirelessly pursued the goals to which she had committed herself as a young woman, ‘to act, to the best of her ability’, to fully embrace Christ’s teachings and follow His example by devoting her life to humanitarian service.71 Her initial philanthropy having pointed her in the direction of temperance work, she embraced the cause and successfully utilized the movement as a vehicle for advancing wider social reforms and women’s rights. Contemporaries saluted Isabel as ‘an eminent philanthropist . . . and a pioneer worker in the social and moral regeneration of society’,72 and as a possible successor to renowned social reformer Lord Shaftesbury.73 William T. Stead characterized Isabel as a nineteenthcentury Britomart ‘couching her lance in the cause of Temperance and Womanhood, Labour and Democracy’;74 he concisely elucidated how completely her philosophy and mission were in accordance with the social and feminist reform currents of her day. Although couched in somewhat effulgent nineteenth-century prose, these tributes attest to the widespread recognition and appreciation of Isabel’s contributions to contemporary reform and women’s rights movements. She was acclaimed as ‘one of the most remarkable women of the present day’.75 One national newspaper journalist even assessed her public recognition and popularity as second only to that enjoyed by the Queen and the Princess of Wales76—albeit with a good measure of exaggeration, one must assume. Nevertheless, when in 1907 the London Evening News had polled its readers on their choice for a woman prime minister, Isabel had topped the list of 18 preferred candidates which included such illustrious names as suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett;

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Ishbel Hamilton-Gordon, Lady Aberdeen, founder of the Victorian Order of Nurses; suffragist and biographer Lady Frances Balfour; Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle; Margaret MacDonald, wife of the British Labour Party politician and future prime minister James Ramsey MacDonald; and public-housing activist Octavia Hill.77 Several of the women reformers mentioned above, along with other feminists, have received historical recognition in keeping with their roles in the Victorian reform movements.78 American temperance and woman’s rights icon Frances Willard is the subject of numerous studies and is honoured with a marble figure in Washington’s Capitol Building.79 Isabel Somerset and her achievements have faded into undeserved obscurity. In life, she perceived herself to be deeply unworthy of God’s love and of failing to fulfil His calling.80 In death, she chose a simple grave over a family tomb. Perhaps obscurity is what Isabel would have chosen as her legacy.

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NOTES

Sources I first encountered Lady Henry Somerset while preparing a PhD field paper, ‘Temperance and the Women’s Movement in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain’, which was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, Montreal, 1985. When I began my initial research, colleagues in the temperance field warned me that others had contemplated writing a similar biography but had been discouraged by the apparent dearth of Isabel Somerset’s personal papers. Fortunately my research coincided with the discovery of material hitherto unavailable to scholars. The Eastnor Papers were found at Eastnor Castle, Ledbury, Herefordshire, Lady Henry Somerset’s ancestral home. They consist of a selection of the correspondence of Isabel Somers Cocks (Lady Henry Somerset); her parents, Earl and Countess Somers; and Lord Henry Somerset, husband of Lady Henry Somerset. The entire correspondence is designated collectively as the Eastnor Papers (EP). The letters provide details relating to Isabel Somers Cocks’ early years before her public life as Lady Henry Somerset. The material discovered in the archives also includes several manuscripts concerning Lady Henry Somerset’s failed marriage and custody battle, and the ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, reminiscences by her personal secretary, Mary Ward Poole. The Eastnor Castle Archives (ECA) contain a miscellaneous assortment of printed materials, including newspaper cuttings, pamphlets, and articles relevant to Lady Henry Somerset’s life. Unfortunately, the elusive diary of Lady Henry Somerset was not among the materials found. My second piece of good fortune was the unearthing of a previously unopened package of personal letters from Lady Henry Somerset to Frances Willard, at the Frances Willard Memorial Library, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) Headquarters, Evanston, Illinois. This correspondence is cited as the Lady Henry Somerset Correspondence (LHSC). It illuminates the private and professional relationship enjoyed by the two temperance leaders, along with insights into their involvement with their respective temperance organizations, the WCTU, the British Women’s Temperance Association (BWTA), the National BWTA (NBWTA), and the World’s WCTU (WWCTU). A second source for such information is the Frances E. Willard Correspondence (FEWC), also housed at the Frances Willard Memorial Library, which contains letters of Lady Henry Somerset and those of Frances Willard and her associates in the women’s temperance organizations. Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Files (WCTUF), in the library archives, contain an assortment of

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letters, scrapbooks, temperance periodicals, circulars, leaflets and newspaper cuttings relating to Willard, Somerset, and the NBWTA, WCTU, and WWCTU. Also on deposit at the library is ‘The Journal of Frances E. Willard, 1855–96’, a complete transcription by Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford. The entries for 1893 and 1894 were written when Willard was mostly resident in England. They constitute an almost daily record of Willard’s reflections on her personal routines, NBWTA and WCTU matters, and many anecdotes on Somerset and selected events in her life during the two periods. A copy is also held in the Northwestern University Archive. A modified version of this manuscript is available in published form: Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart: Selections from the Journal of Frances E. Willard, 1855–96 (Chicago, 1995). The Hannah Whitall Smith Correspondence (HWSMSS) is a rich source of data on Hannah Whitall Smith, Lady Henry Somerset, and Frances Willard, their shared relationship, and their collaboration in the temperance movement. I accessed this collection in the two following locations. The Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky, holds the Hannah Whitall Smith ‘religious’ or ‘fanaticism’ papers and also has available many of her personal letters on computer disk; these holdings are identified in this book as HWSMSS Asbury. The entire Hannah Whitall Smith correspondence is located at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana (HWSMSS Lilly). In the absence of Lady Henry Somerset’s diary, the Lady Henry Somerset, Frances E. Willard, and Hannah Whitall Smith Correspondences together provide some glimpses into Isabel Somerset’s private thoughts and personal life. They reveal the depth and intensity of her relationship with Frances Willard, her aspirations for the BWTA and NBWTA, her responses to the problems encountered in her leadership, along with her political and religious philosophy. The letters also reflect her dedication to motherhood and the closeness of her relationship with her son, Somey. The Rosalind Carlisle Papers (RCP), at Castle Howard, York, North Yorkshire, include a small collection of correspondence between Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle, and Lady Henry Somerset for the years 1894–1914. The letters largely pertain to NBWTA matters, particularly following Rosalind Carlisle’s election to the presidency of the organization in 1903. The Josephine Butler Papers (JBP), deposited in the Women’s Library, Metropolitan University, London, are a valuable source of pertinent material relating to Isabel Somerset’s controversial role in the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Act between 1891 and 1898. The correspondence contains letters between Josephine Butler and a group of her associates in the repeal movement, including Fanny Forsaith, secretary of the General Federation for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice; sisters Mary and Anna Priestman, suffrage and anti-CD activists; and WWCTU missionaries Elizabeth Andrew and Katherine Bushnell. The interchange of comment between these reformers provides insights into the repeal campaign and the purity reformers’ opposition to Somerset’s proposals for the regulation of prostitution in the Indian cantonments. The archives of the National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union (NBWTAU) contain a variety of invaluable sources for data on Somerset, the British Women’s Temperance Association, and the National BWTA for the years from the inception of the Association in 1876 to the NBWTA’s amalgamation with the Women’s Total Abstinence Union (WTAU) in 1926. The minutes of the National Executive

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Committee (NEC) and the National Executive Subcommittee (NESC) during the period offer detailed information on Somerset’s leadership, tactics, and policies and the opposition she encountered within the Association; the minutes also reveal the machinations of her opponents and provide a record of the general workings of the organization. The archives include files containing many unpublished manuscripts and printed sources pertaining to the organization and its leadership; these include BWTA and NBWTA annual reports, circulars, pamphlets, documents, and policy papers. The archives are situated at the relocated NBWTAU headquarters, Rosalind Carlisle House, Solihull, West Midlands. As with other nineteenth-century reform movements, the era’s temperance movement was supported by a specialized press. Victorian and early twentiethcentury temperance periodicals and magazines, particularly those of the women’s temperance organizations, contain a mine of information on temperance leaders, personalities, activities, and the temperance movement in general. I made extensive use of these publications, the majority of which are held at the British Library, Newspapers (Colindale), with a selection at the main British Library, both situated in London. Detailed information on the temperance press is available in Olwen C. Niessen, ‘Temperance’, in J. Don Van and Rosemary T. VanArsdel (eds.), Victorian Periodicals and Victorian Society (Toronto, 1994), 251–77.

1. 2.

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5.

6.

Preface Morning Post (London), 16 Mar. 1921, p.7. See, for example, Graphic (London), 14 Mar. 1921; Observer (London), 13 Mar. 1921; Brothers and Sisters Magazine, Apr. 1921, ‘Treasures of Dicíe’, newspaper cuttings, Eastnor Castle Archives, Eastnor Castle, Ledbury, Herefordshire (ECA); Morning Post (London), 14 Mar. 1921, p.7. Daily Telegraph (London), 16 Mar. 1921, p.8. William T. Stead, ‘Character sketch, June: Lady Henry Somerset’, Review of Reviews (London), 6 (June 1893), pp.606–22; Frances E. Willard, ‘Lady Henry Somerset: a character sketch’, Young Woman, 1 (May 1893), pp.255–8. For an overview of the nineteenth-century temperance movement, see Henry Carter, The English Temperance Movement: A Study in Objectives, vol. 1, The Formative Period, 1830–1899 (London, 1933); Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815–1872 (London, 1971); Lilian L. Shiman, The Crusade Against Drink in Victorian Britain (Basingstoke, 1988). There is currently no full-length history of the British Women’s Temperance Association, but overviews of the organization are given in the following studies: Mrs. Henry J. Osborn, ‘The National British Women’s Temperance Association’, World’s Temperance Congress: Journal of Proceedings (London, 1900), 236–41; Lilian L. Shiman, Women and Leadership in Nineteenth-Century England (New York, 1992), 103–6, 151–70; and Lilian L. Shiman, ‘Changes Are Dangerous: Women and Temperance in Victorian England’, in Gail Malgreen (ed.), Religion in the Lives of English Women, 1760–1930 (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), 193–215. The development of the BWTA is also chronicled in the National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union’s A Century of Service

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7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

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(London, 1976), a slim paperback published to mark the organization’s centennial. David M. Fahey, ‘Drink and the meaning of reform in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain’, CITHERA, 13 (Feb. 1974), pp.46–56. A. E. Dingle, The Campaign for Prohibition in Victorian England (London, 1980), 221–2; D. A. Hamer, The Politics of Electoral Pressure (Hassocks, Sussex, 1977), chaps. 9–13. Dingle’s term ‘permissive prohibition’ refers to direct veto. The direct veto permitted local communities who obtained a two-thirds majority in a vote on the issue to refuse to issue licences to drink shops and to deny renewal of existing licences, after a three-year grace period. See, for example, Ruth Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), 181–82, 192, 195–200, 202–3, 205, 210–12, 221, 225–37; Mary Earhart, Frances E. Willard: From Prayers to Politics (Chicago, 1944), 327, 345–50, 361; Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart: Selections from the Journal of Frances E. Willard, 1855–96 (Chicago, 1995); Shiman, Women and Leadership; Shiman, ‘Changes Are Dangerous’; Ian Tyrrell, Woman’s World/Woman’s Empire: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in Historical Perspective, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), 30–33, 43, 45, 47, 55–6, 59, 72, 73, 78–80, 96–7, 118–20, 127–8, 202–11, 242–3, 47–8, 263–9, 270–4. Dingle, The Campaign for Prohibition, 7–8. Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset (Boston, 1923). See, for example, Dingle, The Campaign for Prohibition. See, for example, Bordin, Frances Willard; Earhart, Frances E. Willard; Shiman, Women and Leadership; Shiman, ‘Changes Are Dangerous’; Tyrrell, Woman’s World.

Introduction T. P. O’Connor, MP, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, Daily Telegraph, 14 Mar. 1921, p.8. Brothers and Sisters Magazine, Apr. 1921; Graphic (London), 14 Mar. 1921; Observer (London), 13 Mar. 1921, newspaper cuttings in ‘Treasures of Dicíe’. Sarah K. Bolton, Famous Leaders Among Women (New York, 1895), 250. K. D. Reynolds, ‘Many to Take Care Of: Charity, Philanthropy, and Paternalism’, in Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1998), 101–28. See, for example, ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, ECA, 146–7; ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, Christian Standard and Home Journal, 13 July 1893, p.6. ‘Keepsakes of Memory’ is unsigned, but the annotations in the text and accompanying note are in the handwriting of Isabel’s friend, co-worker and secretary Mary Ward Poole, thereby suggesting she is the author. See, for example, ‘What is the relationship of the WWCTU to the BWTA?’, Woman’s Herald, 8 June 1893, p.249. Evidence of Isabel Somerset’s financial support for the BWTA and NBWTA may be found throughout this biography. See Chapter 11. See, for example, ‘Keepsakes of Memory’; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 55. See also Chapter 12. ‘Estate of Lady Henry Somerset’, Morning Post, 8 Dec. 1921, newspaper cutting, ‘Treasures of Dicíe’, ECA; O’Connor, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, 8; conversation between the author and the late John Patrick, 8th Baron Somers, May 1990.

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10. ‘Temperance women leaders’, untitled periodical article, Hannah Whitall Smith MSS, Asbury College Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky (hereafter cited as HWSMSS Asbury). 11. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 128, 148. 12. See, for example, Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 144. 13. Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Recollections of noted men and women. IX, Charles Somers-Earl Somers’, Union Signal, 14 Apr. 1892, pp.7–8; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 606–22; 14. For F. D. Maurice and Christian Socialism, see Edward R. Norman, The Victorian Christian Socialists (Cambridge, 1987). 15. Lady Henry Somerset, ‘What is it to be a Christian?’, Young Woman, 2 (Nov. 1893), pp.44–6. 16. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 615; Willard, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, 255–58. Stead’s and Willard’s accounts of Isabel’s ‘conversion’ were subsequently seized upon and repeated by her contemporaries until it achieved legendary status. See for example, Bolton, Famous Leaders, 251; Jennie Chappell, Noble Work by Noble Women (London, 1900), 63–106; W. H. Noyes, ‘Notable men and women. IV, Lady Henry Somerset’, Surrey Magazine, 2 (Feb. 1901), pp.369–71. 17. Stead, ‘Character sketch,’ 615. 18. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 129. 19. Willard claimed it was Canon Basil Orme Wilberforce who drew Isabel back into the Anglican fold. See Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 1 May 1896, p.408. In the apparent absence of any evidence to refute this claim, it must be accepted at face value. Isabel does not mention Wilberforce’s role in her reconversion in any of her personal papers. Nor have I found an alternative explanation to Willard’s claim in any of the personal papers of Isabel’s correspondents or associates or in any published primary or secondary materials I have examined. Her diary, now assumed to be lost or destroyed, which was used by Kathleen Fitzpatrick in her biography of Isabel, The Life of Lady Henry Somerset, could perhaps have shed some light on the issue. Wilberforce was an Anglican clergyman and a member of two temperance organizations, the Church of England Temperance Society and the United Kingdom Alliance. 20. In 1893 the British Women’s Temperance Association (BWTA) split into two organizations. The minority of the organization’s membership formed the Women’s Total Abstinence Union (WTAU), and the majority of the members remained with the Association, which was renamed the National British Women’s Temperance Association (NBWTA). Although, following the division of the organization, the NBWTA generally continued to be referred to as the BWTA by members and the public, the Association’s documents and stationary used the designation NBWTA, and this is the terminology employed in this biography. For details of the Association’s division in 1893, see Chapter 9. 21. David M. Fahey, ‘Rosalind (Stanley) Howard, Countess of Carlisle’, unpublished paper, p.9, cited in Shiman, ‘Changes Are Dangerous’, 193–215. 22. Dingle, The Campaign for Prohibition; Fahey, ‘Drink and the meaning of reform’, 46–56. 23. ‘Address of Margaret Bright Lucas’, BWTA, Annual Report (AR), 1885 and 1890, pp.9, 11–12. 24. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 78–80.

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25. O’Connor, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, 8. 26. Ian Tyrrell, ‘Somerset [née Somers-Cocks] Lady Isabella Caroline (Lady Henry Somerset) (1851–1921)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). The other woman temperance leader to whom Tyrrell refers is Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle, who succeeded Somerset as NBWTA president in 1903. For Rosalind Howard, see D. H. E. Henley, Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle (London 1958); C. Roberts, The Radical Countess: The History of the Life of Rosalind, Countess of Carlisle (Carlisle, 1962); Virginia Surtees, The Artist and the Autocrat: George and Rosalind Howard, Earl and Countess of Carlisle (Salisbury, South Wiltshire, 1988). 27. Report of the Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws (Cmd. 8693), vol. XXXVI, Minutes of Evidence, Parliamentary Papers, 1898, pp.177, 184; Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 184, 207–8; The Times (London), 14 Mar. 1921, p.10. 28. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Someret, 184. 29. Report of the Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws, 177; ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.17–19; Lady Henry Somerset, ‘The present position of the temperance movement’, Woman’s Signal, 21 Nov. 1895, p.323; ‘A question for consideration by temperance women’, Woman’s Signal, 20 Aug. 1896, pp.120–6; ‘Law or persuasion with regard to temperance’, Woman’s Signal, 17 Dec. 1896, p.392. 30. Chappell, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, 55–60; Alfred Poins, ‘Lady Henry: five minutes with a fair reformer’, Daily Mail (London), 5 Mar. 1897, p.10; ‘A Lady Henry Somerset memorial’, Evening Post (London), 9 Nov. 1921, newspaper cutting, ‘Treasures of Dicíe’, ECA; ‘Lady Henry Somerset: Duxhurst as a memorial’, Daily Telegraph (London), 7 Aug. 1922, p.11. 31. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, p.48. 32. J. Mellor, G. Hunt, J. Turner, and L. Rees, ‘Prayers and piecework: inebriate reformatories in England at the end of the nineteenth century’, Drogalkohol, 10 (1986), pp.193–4; R. W. Branthwaite, ‘The Inebriates Act, 1898’, British Journal of Inebriety, 25 (1927), pp.5–16. 33. NBWTA AR, 1900 and 1902, pp.110–13, 128–34; Bertram Bousfield, ‘The touchstone of St. Francis: an interview with Lady Henry Somerset’, The Treasury (Sept. 1913), pp.485–91; Daily Mail, 5 Mar. 1897, p.10; Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Duxhurst’, parts 1 and 2, Surrey Magazine 1 (Jan. and Feb. 1900), pp.20–3, 50–3; Lady Henry Somerset, ‘The Duxhurst Farm Colony for Female Inebriates’, The British Journal of Inebriety, 10 (1912), pp.81–5; John M. Norsworthy, ‘Beauty to Ashes: An Introductory Description of the Lady Henry Somerset Homes, Duxhurst, Reigate’, unpublished manuscript, 1981. 34. J. Liddington and J. Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us: The Rise of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain (London, 1978); Martin Pugh, Women’s Suffrage in Britain, 1867–1928 (London, 1980); Constance Rover, Women’s Suffrage and Party Politics in Britain, 1866–1914 (London, 1967); David Rubenstein, Before the Suffragettes (Brighton, Sussex, 1986) and A Different World for Women: The Life of Millicent Garrett Fawcett (London, 1991); Sophia A. van Wingerden, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain, 1866–1928 (London, 1999).

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35. Lady Henry Somerset, Origin and Early History of the British Women’s Temperance Association, BWTA pamphlet, n.d., 10; ‘President’s Address’, BWTA AR, 1884 and 1885, pp.8–10, 9; AR, 1887, p.28; ‘Letter from the President of the World’s Union’, British Women’s Temperance Journal (BWTJ), 4 (Nov. 1886), p.125. See also BWTJ, 4 (Feb. 1886), p.7; and BWTJ 5 (Jan. and June 1887), pp.5, 61–4. 36. ‘President’s Address’, BWTA AR, 1885, pp.9–10. 37. Woman’s Herald, 8 June 1893, p.24. 38. See, for example, ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, BWTA AR, 1892, pp.34–5; BWTA AR, 1892, p.23; NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.53, 112; NBWTA AR, 1895, pp.24–5, 52–3, 176; NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.57, 107; NBWTA National Executive Subcommittee (NESC) minutes, National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union Archives, NBWTAU headquarters, Rosalind Carlisle House, Solihull, West Midlands (NBWTAUA), 29 May 1894, pp.231–34; BWTJ, 9 (Sept. 1891), pp.100; ‘Shall women have the vote?’, Shafts, 2 (June 1894), pp.266–7; Woman’s Herald, 22 June 1893, pp.286; Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Jan. 1895), pp.37. 39. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 79; Wings, 11 (Jan. 1893), p.152. 40. NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.53, 115, 184; AR, 1895, p.25; AR, 1896, pp.57, 106–7; ‘British Women’s Temperance Association: Report of the Annual Council Meeting held May 4 and 5 in the library of the Memorial Hall, 1892’, unpublished manuscript, National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union Files, Rosalind Carlisle House, Solihull, West Midlands (NBWTAUF); this typescript was edited for publication in BWTA AR, 1892. Our Position and Our Policy: A Reply to Charges Made Against the Minority of the Executive of the British Women’s Temperance Association, by Its President Lady Henry Somerset, at the Annual Council Meeting, 1893, pp.28–38, NBWTA pamphlet, NBWTAUF, subsequently printed as part of BWTA AR, 1893. 41. Liddington and Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us, 240. 42. ‘Social purity’ was an all-embracing term used to describe efforts to preserve decency in society, rescue prostitutes, and eradicate the sexual double standard by making men as responsible as women in acts of prostitution; efforts included participation in the campaign against the revival in India of the Contagious Diseases Acts, legislation which was originally passed in the 1860s for the state regulation of vice and rescinded in the 1880s. These Acts, enforced in ports and garrison towns, required women who were suspected of prostitution to undergo registration and medical examination. Opponents of the Acts argued that they were discriminatory because they exacted a double standard of morality— only the women and not their male clientele were subjected to examination— and that the legislation directly involved the state in the promotion of prostitution. See Glen Petrie, A Singular Iniquity (New York, 1971); Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State (Cambridge, 1980). 43. Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast: Feminism, Sex and Morality (London, 2001), 97. 44. Bland, Banishing the Beast, 97–8; Gareth Stedman Jones, ‘Working-class culture and working-class politics in London, 1870–1900’, Journal of Social History, 7 (1973–4), pp.460–508.

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45. William T. Stead, ‘Maiden tribute of modern Babylon’, Pall Mall Gazette, 6, 7, 8, and 10 July 1885. 46. Bland, Banishing the Beast, 95–123; Patricia Hollis, Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government, 1865–1914 (Oxford, 1987), 50–51; Frank Mort, ‘From State Medicine to Criminal Law: Purity, Feminism and the State, 1880–1914’, in Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-moral Politics in England Since 1830 (London, 1987), 103–50. 47. Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Living pictures: to the women of England’ and ‘Press comments on the appeal to women of England’, Woman’s Signal, 2 and 16 Aug. 1894, pp.63, 109; Woman’s Herald, 29 June 1893, p.299; ‘Lady Henry’s Plans’, New York Sun, 29 Nov. 1894, p.1, cited in David Pivar, The Purity Crusade (Westport, Conn., 1973), 235–6. 48. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, BWTA AR, 1891, pp.34–6; BWTA AR, 1892, pp.37–8; NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.101–4; NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.96–8, 103–7; Woman’s Herald, June 1893, p.251. 49. For Josephine Butler see A. S. G. Butler, Portrait of Josephine Butler (London, 1952); Josephine Butler, Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade, new ed. (Westport, Conn., 1989); E. Moberly Bell, Josephine Butler: Flame of Fire (London, 1962); Nancy Boyd, Three Victorian Women Who Changed Their World: Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill, Florence Nightingale (Oxford, 1982); Barbara Caine, Victorian Feminists (Oxford, 1992). Butler was secretary of the Ladies National Association (LNA), which was founded in 1869 to campaign for repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. The repeal was achieved in 1886. 50. For an overview of the campaign to abolish the Contagious Diseases Acts, see Paul McHugh, Prostitution and Victorian Social Reform (London, 1980); Glen Petrie, A Singular Iniquity: The Campaigns of Josephine Butler (London, 1971); Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society. For the situation in India, see Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class Under the Raj (London, 1980), chaps. 2 and 3; Antoinette Burton, ‘The White Woman’s Burden’, in Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994), 128–69; and Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (London, 2003). 51. BWTJ, 9 (Sept. 1892), p.103; Woman’s Herald, 1 and 8 June, 1893, pp.227, 223–4, 249, 251–2. 52. Isabel Somerset to Lord George Hamilton, 13 Apr. 1897, EP. An edited version of this letter appeared in The Times (London), 21 Apr. 1897, p.10, and in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 198–9. 53. See Chapters 13 and 14. 54. Bentley B. Gilbert, The Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain: The Origins of the Welfare State (London, 1966); J. F. C. Harrison, Late Victorian Britain, 1875–1901 (London, 1991), chaps. 7 and 9; F. K. Prochaska, ‘Philanthropy’, in F. M. L. Thompson, The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950 (Cambridge, 1990), pp.iii, 357–93. 55. Fahey, ‘Drink and the meaning of reform’, 46–56. 56. Ibid.; Dingle, The Campaign for Prohibition. 57. ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, BWTJ, 10 (Aug. 1892), pp.91–2; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 619. 58. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.33–41.

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59. ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 48; ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.33–4; ‘Lady Henry Somerset’s tour of the west of England’, Woman’s Herald, 5 Oct. 1893, p.523; Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Is it starvation or surrender?’, Westminster Gazette, 10 Nov. 1893, p.8; Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Miners and misery’, Woman’s Herald, 16 Nov. 1893, p.611, see also 647; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 119. 60. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 243.

1.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Chapter 1: Lady Isabel Quoted in Brian Hill, Julia Margaret Cameron: A Victorian Family Portrait (New York, 1973), 161–6. Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Recollections: Charles Somers’, Union Signal, 14 Apr. 1892, pp.7–8; Eastnor Castle: Guide (hereafter cited as Guide), n.d., 14. John A. Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage and Baronetage (London, 1916), pt. 2, pp.1873–4; Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. ed. (London, 1987), 239, 286; John Vernon Somers, A History of the Cocks Family: Part VI (Teighnmouth, 1967), 117–30; William L. Sachse, Lord Somers: A Political Portrait (Manchester, 1975), 1, 21, 24–25, 61, 69, 90–2, 113–15; David Ogg, England in the Reigns of James II and William III (Oxford, 1957), 226. Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History, pp.1873–4; Guide, 5–6, 13; Somers, A History of the Cocks Family, 119. Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History, p.1874; Somers, A History of the Cocks Family, 121. Somerset, ‘Recollections: Charles Somers’, 7–8; Somers, A History of the Cocks Family, 122; Virginia Surtees, Coutts Lindsay (Norwich, 1993), 60. Quoted in ‘Daughter of a thousand earls’, from untitled periodical, ECA; Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 10; Somerset, ‘Recollections: Charles Somers’, 5; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 606–22. Hill, Julia Margaret Cameron, 30, 50, 63–5, 161; Somerset, ‘Recollections: Charles Somers’, 8; Surtees, Coutts Lindsay, 60. Hill, Julia Margaret Cameron, 19–21. Bolton, Famous Leaders, 251; Alan Gregory, Lord Somers: Something of the Life and Letters of Arthur, 6th Baron Somers (Victoria, Australia, 1987), 8–9; Hill, Julia Margaret Cameron, 24–6, 32–3, 40–50, 58–64, 183, 188–9; Somers, A History of the Cocks Family, 122; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 607. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 11; Hill, Julia Margaret Cameron, 64–6, 161. Guide, 14; Gregory, Lord Somers, 12; Somerset, ‘Recollections: Charles Somers’, 7–8. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 32. Ibid. 32; Guide, 14, 17. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 32. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 607. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 29–33. Charlotte de Rothschild to Leopold de Rothschild, 22 July 1864, quoted in Surtees, Coutts Lindsay, 113; see also 115–116, 63. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 29–30, 33.

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19. Quoted in Hill, Julia Margaret Cameron, 61. 20. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 13, 15, 18, 25–7, 33, 37–8; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 608. 21. F. M. L. Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society (Fontana Paperback ed., 1988), 125–7; James Walvin, A Child’s World (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1982), 99–100. 22. Quoted in Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 608. 23. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 14, 18–19, 20–1; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 608. 24. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 13, 37. 25. Ibid. 15–16, 22. 26. Ibid. 18–20. 27. Lady Somers to Isabel Somers Cocks, 13 Feb. 1866; Isabel Somers Cocks to Lady Somers, 5 and 19 Mar. 1866; Adeline Somers Cocks to Lady Somers, 1866, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 38–40, 46. 28. Hill, Julia Margaret Cameron, 28–9. 29. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 35; see also 33. 30. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 608. 31. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 34–6. 32. Lady Somers to Adeline Somers Cocks, 1866, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 64. See also Lady Somers to Isabel Somers Cocks, 1866, pp.52–3; Isabel Somers Cocks to Lady Somers, 1866, p.64, see also p.72. 33. Lord Somers to Lady Somers, 1866, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 64–5. 34. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 65. 35. Lady Henry Somerset, Our Village Life (London, 1884). 36. Lady Somers to Isabel Somers Cocks, 28 Apr. 1866, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 41. See also Lady Somers to Isabel Somers Cocks, 26 Apr. 1866 and Lady Somers to Isabel Somers Cocks, n.d., pp.44–5, 52. 37. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 66. 38. Isabel Somers Cocks to Lord Somers, 13 Aug. 1868, Eastnor Papers (EP), Eastnor Castle Archives, Eastnor, Herefordshire; Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 67– 8, 72, 78–9. 39. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 73; see also 74–5, 81. 40. Quoted in ibid. 94. 41. Isabel Somers Cocks to ‘My darling, darling Mum’, 25 June n.y., quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 69; see also 70, 75. 42. Lady Somers to Isabel Somers Cocks, n.d., and Isabel Somers Cocks to Lady Somers, n.d., quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 77–8. 43. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 18 May n.y., Lady Henry Somerset Correspondence (LHSC), Frances Willard Memorial Library, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Headquarters, Evanston, Illinois (WCTU). 44. Letters of Isabel Somers Cocks to Adeline Somers Cocks, 1869, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 84–93. 45. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 83, 93. 46. Quoted in Bolton, Famous Leaders, 252. A slightly different report of this incident appears in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 14. 47. Letters of Isabel Somers Cocks to Adeline Somers Cocks, n.d., quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 84–93.

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48. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 93. 49. Quoted in ibid. 87–8, 93. 50. Letters of Isabel Somers Cocks to Adeline Somers Cocks, n.d., quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 84–91; see also 94. 51. ‘The Journal of Frances E. Willard, 1855–96’, complete transcription by Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford, copy deposited at the Frances Willard Memorial Library, Woman’s Christian Temperance Headquarters, Evanston, Illinois, and at Northwestern University Archive, Evanston, Illinois (hereafter cited as Gifford [ed.], ‘Journal’), entry for 11 July 1896, p.54. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 613; Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 94–7. 52. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 97–8. 53. See letters of Isabel Somers Cocks to Adeline Somers Cocks, n.d., quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 84. 54. Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, 14 and 24 Sept. and 4 and 13 Oct. 1871, EP. 55. Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, 20 and 22 Oct. 1871; Duke of Beaufort to Lord Somers, 24 Oct. 1871, EP. 56. Duke of Beaufort to Lord Somers, 24 Oct. 1871, and Lord Somers to the Duke of Beaufort, 26 Oct. 1871; Lord Somers to Lord Henry Somerset, n.d., EP. 57. Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, 20 and 22 Oct. 1871, EP. 58. Duke of Beaufort to Lord Somers, 24 Oct. 1871, EP. 59. Lord Somers to Lord Henry Somerset, n.d., EP. 60. Lord Henry Somerset to Lord Somers, 2 Nov. 1871, and Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, 2, 5, 10, 16, and 20 Nov. 1871, EP. 61. Lord Somers to Lord Henry Somerset, n.d., EP. According to Kathleen Fitzpatrick, on the marriage issue, Lady Somers’ desires had once again overruled Lord Somers’ judgement. However, Lord Somers’ correspondence indicates that he arrived at his decision after careful consideration of all aspects of the situation and that, ultimately, his desire for Isabel’s happiness led him to agree to the match if his daughter desired it. In her assessment, Fitzpatrick may have been influenced by the desire to retrospectively place the responsibility for the calamities that ensued in the marriage squarely on the shoulders of Lady Somers, a view later expressed by a close friend and secretary of Isabel, Mary Ward Poole. See Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 98; ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 2. 62. Lord Henry Somerset to Lord Somers, 8 Dec. 1871, and Lord Somers to Queen Victoria, Dec. 1871, EP. 63. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 34, 14 Feb. 1890, Hannah Whitall Smith MSS, Lilly Library (hereafter cited as HWSMSS Lilly), Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. This may be simply Hannah’s retrospective interpretation of the situation, coloured by subsequent events, rather than a recounting of a confidence shared. However, Lady Somers’ expressed desire for the union, and the control she exercised over her inexperienced and tractable daughter, strongly suggests that the above assessment is an accurate one. Moreover, Hannah’s letter was written during a visit to Eastnor Castle, suggesting that this confidence was shared with her at the time.

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3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

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Chapter 2: Marriage Duchess of Beaufort to Lady Somers, 9, 11, 13, 14, 18, 19, and 29 Dec. 1871; Lord Somers to William Rackham, 18 Jan. 1872, EP. William Rackham to Lord Somers, 1, 13, and 20 Jan. 1872 and Lord Somers to William Rackham, 18 Jan. 1872, EP; ‘Epitome of the Settlement made on the marriage of Lord Henry Richard Charles Somerset M.P. with Lady Isabella Caroline Somers Cocks of the funds appointed by The Duke and Duchess of Beaufort and Earl Somers’, 5 Feb. 1872, EP. I am indebted to Hilde English, BA, LL.B, for clarifying this document for me. Stead. ‘Character sketch’, 606–22. The Times (London), 7 Feb. 1872, p.7. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 98. Meeting of the Tenants at Old Town Hall, 17 Jan. 1872, printed notice, and Isabel Somerset to Lord Somers, 7 Feb. 1872, ECA. ‘Deposition of Lady Henry Somerset’, 1878, ECA, 1. Hereafter cited as ‘Deposition’. Isabel Somerset to Lord Somers, 7 Feb. 1872; Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 12 and 14 Feb. 1872; Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, 7 Feb. 1872, EP. ‘Penna’ and ‘Penkins’ were Somerset family nicknames for Lord Henry. ‘Deposition’, 1. Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, n.d. and 7 Feb. 1872, EP; Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 9 and 12 Feb. 1872, EP. ‘Deposition’, 1–3. ‘Deposition’, 8, EP; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 34, 14 Feb. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly. ‘Deposition’, 3–4. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 5. ‘Deposition’, 5–6. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 103, 99–102. See also Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 613. See Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 102–5. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 34, 14 Feb. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 106–7. ‘Deposition’, 8. Duchess of Beaufort to Isabel Somerset, 15 Nov. 1872. See also Duchess of Beaufort to Isabel Somerset, 13 and 22 Nov. 1872, and Blanche Somerset to Isabel Somerset, 5 May and 20 Nov. 1872, EP. ‘Quail’ and ‘Quaily’ were nicknames for Isabel, coined by the Duke because with her brown hair and plump figure she reminded him of a quail. See Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 106. Duchess of Beaufort to Lord Henry Somerset, 5 Nov. 1872, and Duke of Beaufort to Isabel Somerset, 25 Feb. 1873, EP. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 7; see also 6. Lady Waterford to Isabel Somerset, 12 Aug. 1874, EP. ‘Deposition’, 11, 14. Duke of Beaufort to Isabel Somerset, 30 Dec. 1875, EP. Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, 8 Nov. 1876, EP; see also ‘Deposition’, p.15 and un-numbered page on back of p.13. The text on this page has been crossed out and annotated by Isabel, ‘This page all out’, indicating it was to be omitted from the final copy, which has not been preserved. This page begins

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27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50.

1. 2.

3. 4.

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‘and had bought a furnished house for us in Charles St.’. Although the name of the purchaser does not appear, the text of the above letter included paid receipts signed by Lord Somers, indicating he was the likely purchaser of the property. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 15; see also 16. ‘Deposition’, 18; see also 8, 17. Ibid. 18. Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, 24 Dec. 1876, EP. ‘Deposition’, 18; Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, 1 and 14 Feb. and 19 Apr. 1877, EP; Norsworthy, ‘Beauty to Ashes’, p.4. Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, 1, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 26, and 30 Apr. and 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 20, and 23 May 1877, EP. ‘Deposition’, 18–19. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 20. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 21. ‘Deposition’, 21–2. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 22. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 23; see also 22. Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, 27 Aug. 1877, EP. Walter Dalrymple to Isabel Somerset, 1 Oct. 1877. See also Walter Dalrymple to Isabel Somerset, 25 Sept. 1877, EP; ‘Deposition’, 23. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 25; see also 26. Duchess of Beaufort to Isabel Somerset, 28 Oct. 1877, EP; ‘Deposition’, 26. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 27. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 27. See also Isabel Somerset to the Duchess of Beaufort, n.d., but 30 Oct. 1877 as Lord Henry refers to Isabel having read extracts from the Duchess’s letter ‘last night’ in his letter dated 31 Oct. 1877. See Lord Henry Somerset to the Duchess of Beaufort, 31 Oct. 1877, EP. El cuchillo is the Spanish phrase for ‘the knife’. Quoted in Isabel Somerset to the Duchess of Beaufort, n.d., EP. Lady Somers to the Duke of Beaufort, 30 Oct. 1877, and the Duke of Beaufort to Lady Somers, 30 Oct. 1877, EP. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 28. Isabel Somerset to the Duchess of Beaufort, n.d., and the Duchess of Beaufort to Isabel Somerset, 1 Nov. 1877, EP. See also Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 109. Lord Henry Somerset to the Duchess of Beaufort, 31 Oct. 1877, EP. Lady Henry Somerset to the Duchess of Beaufort, 4 Feb. 1878, EP.

Chapter 3: Denouement Lord Henry Somerset to Lady Somers, 7 Nov. 1877, and Lady Somers to Lord Henry Somerset, 13 Nov. 1877, EP. For parental rights in effect at the period, see Lee Holcombe, Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women’s Property Law in Nineteenth-Century England (Toronto, 1983). ‘Deposition’, 30; Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 22 Dec. 1877, EP. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 31.

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19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

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Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 32. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 32. Quoted in Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 20 Dec. 1877. See also Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 18 and 21 Dec. 1877, EP. Quoted in Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 20 Dec. 1877, EP, and in ‘Deposition’, 35. A. Durrant to Lady Somers, 29 Dec. 1877, EP. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 32. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 22 Dec. n.y., EP, and ‘Deposition’, 32–3. Quoted in Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 22 Dec. 1877, EP. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 22 Dec. 1877, EP. All quotations in Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 22 Dec. 1877, EP. Duke of Beaufort to Lord Henry Somerset, n.d., and Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 22 Dec. 1877, EP. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 33. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 22 Dec. 1877, EP. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 30 Dec. 1877, EP. See also Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 24 and 28 Dec. 1877, and A. Durrant to Lady Somers, 1 and 10 Jan. 1878, EP. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 24 and 30 Dec. 1877, EP. See also Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 22 Dec. 1877 and 6 Jan. 1878, EP. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 24 Dec. 1877 and 1, 4, and 6 Jan. 1878, EP. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 22 and 28 Dec. 1877, and 4, 6, and 8 Jan. 1878, EP; ‘Deposition’, 34. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 30 Dec. 1877, and 4, 6, and 8 Jan. 1878, EP; ‘Deposition’, 36. I. W. Chepnell to Lord Somers, 31 Dec. 1877, and H. Hussey to Lord Somers, 2, 5, 9, and 12 Jan. 1878, EP. Incomplete letter to Isabel Somerset, n.d., EP. It contains no letterhead, addressee, or writer’s signature, but the handwriting is that of Lord Somers, the letter is contained in his correspondence, and Lord Henry is referred to as ‘Henry’, indicating a close relationship between him and the writer of the letter. Quoted in Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 4 Jan. 1878, EP. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 36–7. See also Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 8 Jan. 1878, EP. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 8 Jan. 1878, EP. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 37. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 4, 8, and 14 Jan. 1878. EP. Charles Orred to Lord Henry Somerset, 25 Jan. 1878, EP, and ‘Deposition’, 37. ‘Deposition’, 38–9. Charles Orred to Lord Henry Somerset, 26 Jan. 1878; A. W. Wedderburn to Lord Henry Somerset, n.d.; Harry Smith to ‘Dearest and Beloved Penna’ [Lord Henry Somerset], 2 Feb. 1878, EP. ‘Deposition’, 38–9.

Chapter 4: Rebellion Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 39–40; see also 37–8. Charles Orred to Lord Henry Somerset, n.d., quoted in ‘Deposition’, 39.

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NOTES 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

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Duchess of Beaufort to Isabel Somerset, 3 Feb. 1878, EP. The copy of the Duchess’s letter to Lord Henry was incorporated in her letter to Isabel and not included as a separate letter. Isabel Somerset to the Duchess of Beaufort, 4 Feb. 1878, EP. Quoted in ‘Deposition’, 36. ‘Declaration of Harriet Ferris, 3 Feb. 1878’, ECA; Isabel Somerset to the Duke of Beaufort, n.d., EP; ‘Written Account of Isabel Somerset’, n.d., EP. ‘Deposition’, 41; Isabel Somerset to the Duke of Beaufort, 5 Feb. 1878, EP. Charles Orred to Lord Henry Somerset, 5 Feb. 1878, EP. See also ‘Declaration’ of W. Hepburn, footman to Lord and Lady Henry Somerset, 5 Feb. 1878, and Isabel Somerset to the Duke of Beaufort, 5 Feb. 1878, EP. Memo [from Lord Somers?], no signature but in Lord Somers’ handwriting, n.d., EP; ‘Deposition’, 42; Isabel Somerset to J. Young, n.d., EP. Quoted in ‘Statement of Lady Somers’, n.d., ECA. Quoted in ibid. See also ‘Deposition’, 42. Quoted in ‘Declaration of Isabel Somerset’, 6 Feb. 1878, ECA. In citing Habeas Corpus, Lord Henry was stressing the current regulations governing the custody of children. Through a writ of Habeas Corpus in a court of common law, a father could assert his irrefutable right to guardianship of his child and gain custody, with no consideration given to a father’s disreputable character nor to a mother’s unsullied one. See Holcombe, Wives and Property, 33. Duke of Bedford to Lady Somers, 5 Feb. 1878, and Isabel Somerset to the Duke of Beaufort, n.d., EP. Isabel Somerset to the Marquis of Tavistock, 8 Feb. 1878; Lady Somers to Cas, 18 Feb. 1878, EP. See also ‘Deposition’, 1–42. ‘Statement of Lady Somers’, 6 Feb. 1878; ‘Declaration of Harriet Ferris’, n.d.; ‘Statement by Mary Gladstone’, 11 Feb. 1878; Note of William Hepburn, n.d.; ‘In the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division, Master of the Rolls. re. Somerset. Order’, 6 July 1878, ECA (hereafter cited as ‘re. Somerset’). Isabel Somerset to the Earl of Westmorland, 8 Feb. 1878; Earl of Westmorland to Isabel Somerset, 18 Feb. 1878; Lady Somers to Cas, 18 Feb. 1878; Isabel Somerset to Charles Humphreys, n.d. but 8 Feb 1878, as it refers to her having just received a telegram from the Earl of Westmorland, which is dated 8 Feb., EP. Charles Macnamara to Lady Somers, n.d.; Lady Somers to Cas, 19 Feb. 1878, EP. Charles Humphreys to ‘My Dear Sir’, 13 Feb. 1878; Lord Beaconsfield to Lady Somers, 23 Feb. 1878; Lady Somers to Lord Beaconsfield, 1 Mar. 1878, EP. Lady Somers to Lord Beaconsfield, 25 Feb. and 1 Mar. 1878; Lord Beaconsfield to Lady Somers, 28 Feb. 1878, EP. Sir Henry James to Charles Butt, 5 Mar. 1878, EP. ‘re. Somerset’; Sir Henry James to Charles Butt, n.d., EP. ‘In the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division, Master of the Rolls. re. Somerset. Order: Original Terms’, 30 Mar. 1878, corrected 1 Apr. 1878, ECA. See also Lord Somers to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, 30 Mar. 1878; Lord Somers to Colonel Lindsay, 8 Apr. 1878; Isabel Somerset to Colonel Lindsay, 8 Apr. 1878, EP. Lord Henry Somerset to Sir Henry James, 9 Apr. 1878, EP.

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24. Charles Humphreys to Charles Butt, 12 Apr. 1878; Messrs Watkins, Baker, Baylis, and Baker to ‘Dear Sirs’ [Messrs Humphreys and son], 17 Apr. 1878; Charles Humphreys to Isabel Somerset, 18 Apr. 1878, EP. 25. Sir Henry James to Charles Humphreys? (no initial page with addressee), n.d., EP. 26. Westminster Hall, 6th May, 1878. Before Mr. Justice Field. In re Somerset. Judgement. [Transcript from the shorthand notes of Messrs. Hodges and Son, Chancery Lane], privately printed by Lord Somers, 8–11, 21–3, EP. Hereafter cited as Judgement. 27. Judgement, 4, 12, 20–6, 28, 30–1, 33–5, 46, 59. 28. Judgement, 1, 10, 11–47. 29. Judgement, 47–62. ‘Plantagenet’ was the nickname of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, father of Henry II of England. It was used as a surname by the royal house that occupied the throne, 1154–1399. The Beauforts were descendants of the Plantagenet house through an illegitimate line of the family. 30. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 112. 31. To Lord Somers, no signature, 22 July 1878, and Sir Gilbert Lewis to Lord Somers, 9 Aug. 1878, EP. 32. Adeline, Marchioness of Tavistock, to Frank, Marquis of Tavistock, Feb. 1878, EP. 33. T. K. Nichols to ‘Diatal’?, n.d., EP. 34. Observer (London), 25 May 1878, p.7. 35. Isabel Somerset to Charles Leslie Courtenay, 23 June 1878, EP. 36. Charles Leslie Courtenay to Isabel Somerset, 24 June 1878, EP. 37. Lord Somers to Charles Leslie Courtnay, n.d., but 9 July 1878, as it refers to the final hearing before the Master of the Rolls on the previous day, 8 July; Lord Somers to Charles Humphreys, n.d., EP. 38. Lord Somers to Charles Leslie Courtnay, n.d., and H. Hussey to Lord Somers, 8 July 1878, EP. See also ‘re. Somerset’, 8 July 1878, ECA. 39. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 126.

1.

2.

Chapter 5: Transition Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 113–114. Fitzpatrick reports that Isabel consulted her uncle, Charles Courtenay, and Lord Selbourne as to whether divorce would be more beneficial than separation for Somey, citing a letter Isabel wrote to Courtenay, now lost, and reproducing one purported to be his reply, dated 10 July 1878. This letter does not speak specifically about divorce, simply referring to his views differing from hers and applauding her decision to follow Lord Selbourne’s advice in the matter. The letter follows, chronologically, the exchange of correspondence between Isabel and Courtenay dealing with her proposal for Lord Henry’s visitation rights. See Isabel Somerset to C. L. Courtenay, 23 June 1878, and C. L. Courtenay to Isabel Somerset, 25 June 1878, EP. The only written reference to divorce as an option appears in Sir Henry James’ rejection of it during the unsuccessful negotiations which preceded Field’s Judgement. See Sir Henry James to Charles Butt, n.d., EP. Sir Gilbert Lewis to Lord Somers, 9 Aug. 1878, EP.

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7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

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Vanity Fair, 23 Feb. and 9 Mar. 1878, in magazine cuttings, ECA; Morning Post (London), 1 July 1878, p.7. Letter fragment, no addressee, no signature, n.d., EP. Lord Somers to Mr Lewis, n.d., EP. See Lady Somers’ notes on the rear of the two following communications: H.R.H. Princess Christian to Lady Somers, 30 July 1878, and H.R.H. Mary Duchess of Teck to Lady Somers, 27 July 1878, EP. See, for example, Viscount Torrington to Lord Somers, 12 July 1878; Jane Somers to Lady Somers, 16 July 1878; N.B. to Lady Somers, 20 July 1878; Henry Taylor to Lord Somers, 22 July 1878; Earl of Albemarle to Lord Somers, 26 July 1878; Leslie Stephen to Lady Somers, 26 July 1878; Mrs Lewis to A. Burr, 28 July 1878; J.S. to Leslie, 2 Aug. 1878; Jane Lewis to Lady Somers, 5 Aug. 1878; Rev. Henry Higgens to Lord Somers, 7 Aug. 1878; Gilbert Lewis to Lord Somers, 9 Aug. 1878; Dr Hilbers to Lord Somers, 11 Aug. 1878; J. I. Cocks to Lord Somers, 13 Aug. 1878; J. Mitchell to Lady Somers, 22 Aug. 1878; Reginald Cocks to Lord Somers, 12 Oct. 1878; Edward Lear to Lord Somers, 16 Jan. 1879, EP. Princess Louise to Lady Somers, 9 Nov. 1878, EP. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 115–16; see also 119–120. Countess of Daventry to Lady Somers, 30 July n.y., EP; Whitehall Review, 17 July 1879, p.323. J. J. Cleve to Lord Somers, 13 Aug. 1878; A. M. A. Burr to Lady Somers, 29 July 1878; A. M. A. Burr to Lady Somers, 30 July 1878, and Mrs Lewis to A. M. A. Burr, n.d., EP. The latter letter has several sections cut out, including the names of the correspondents, but it is referred to in and enclosed with A. M. A. Burr’s letter to Lady Somers of 30 July. W. Pulling to Lord Somers, 22 Aug. 1878, and W. H. Cooke to W. Pulling, 19 Aug. 1878, EP. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 613. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 613; Morning Post (London), 29 July 1879, p.7; The Times (London), 11 Oct. 1932, p.16. W. H. B. Somerset, The Descendants of Henry Somerset, 5th. Duke of Beaufort, 2nd. ed. (London, 1938), 77. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 120; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 614; Wilfrid Hooper, Reigate: Its Story Through the Ages (Guilford, 1945), 39. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 121, 123; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 613; Frances E. Willard, ‘Description of the Priory’, typed manuscript, Frances Willard Memorial Library, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Headquarters, Evanston, Illinois (WCTUF). Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 614. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 126, 128; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 613–614. The Times (London), 28 Sept. 1883, p.8; Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 127. Fitzpatrick is the only source of the suicide episode which I was able to locate. No information on this event appears in Isabel’s private papers or other materials I have accessed. Quoted in Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 615. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 128; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 615.

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23. Isabel Somerset’s Diary, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset (hereafter cited as Diary), entries for 13 June and 31 Aug. 1887, pp.133, 142; Somers, A History of the Cocks Family. 24. Gregory, Lord Somers, 11. 25. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 14. 26. Quoted in Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 613. 27. Affidavit of Charles Leslie Courtenay, 1 Mar. 1878, EP. 28. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 123. 29. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 616. 30. Ibid. 31. Diary, entry for 15 July 1887, pp.138; see also entries for 11 and 13 June, 4 and 15 July 1887, pp.132–3, 135, 138–9, and text, p.129. 32. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letters nos. 34 and 35, 14 Feb. and 10 Mar. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly. See also Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 147; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 617. 33. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 616. 34. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 29, 16 Oct. 1889, HWSMSS Lilly. 35. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 617. 36. Noyes, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, p.371. 37. Diary, entries for 29 and 30 Aug., and 1 Sept. 1887, pp.141–3; see also 130. 38. Diary, entry for 18 June 1887, p.134; see also entries for 11 June, 4 July, 2 Aug., and 11 to 15 Sept. 1887, pp.132, 136, 140, 143. 39. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 43, 1 Oct. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly; Chappell, Noble Work, 46–7; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 619. 40. Quoted in ‘Ledbury Mission’, notes by Miss Bateman, addendum to ‘Keepsakes of Memory’. 41. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letters nos. 38 and 47, 30 May and 1 Dec. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly. 42. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 158. 43. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 158. 44. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 619. Crofters were peasant farmers working small parcels of agricultural land known as ‘crofts’. 45. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 29, 16 Oct. 1889, HWSMSS Lilly; Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Recollections of noted men and women. V, Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith’, World’s White Ribbon, 10 Mar. 1892, pp.202–3. 46. Agnes E. Slack, ‘A talk with Mrs. Pearsall Smith’, White Ribbon, 9 (Apr. 1905), 86; Barbara Strachey, Remarkable Relations: The Story of the Pearsall Smith Family (London, 1980). 47. Hannah Whitall Smith to Robert Pearsall Smith, 4 Mar. 1875. See also Hannah Whitall Smith to Robert Pearsall Smith, 16 Feb. and 24 Mar. 1875; Frances E. Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 21 Feb. 1880, HWSMSS Lilly. For Willard, see Bordin, Frances Willard. 48. BWTA National Executive Committee minutes, 25 Mar. and 3 Apr. 1889, pp.466, 469, NBWTAU Archives; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letters no. 12, 12 Dec. 1888, and no. 19, 22 Mar. 1889, HWSMSS Lilly. 49. Report of the First British Women’s Temperance Conference, Newcastle, 1876, NWTAUF.

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50. For background on women in the temperance movement, see Olwen C. Niessen, ‘Temperance and the Women’s Movement in Victorian and Edwardian Britain’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, Montreal, 1985, 11–20. The ideals and functions of the midVictorian female temperance reformer are set forth in Clara Lucas Balfour’s Women and the Temperance Reformation (London, 1849). Women’s efforts for temperance are discussed in the following works: Women’s Work in the Temperance Reformation, papers prepared for a Ladies’ Conference, 26 May 1868 (London, 1868); Mrs Hind Smith, ‘Pioneering Work of Temperance Women’; Mrs Henry J. Osborn, ‘The National British Women’s Temperance Association’; and Mrs. W. S. Cain, ‘The National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union’; all in World’s Temperance Congress, London 1900: Journal of the Proceedings, ed. John Turner Rae (London, 1900); The National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union, A Century of Service. 51. ‘Reports of Affiliated Societies’, BWTA AR, 1884, p.46. 52. ‘Record of Work’, BWTJ, 5 (May 1887), p.52. See also ‘Record of Work’, BWTJ, 4 (Nov. and Dec. 1886), pp.42, 123; 6 (Apr. 1888), p.41; 8 (Feb. 1890), p.16. 53. BWTA NEC minutes, 1 Feb. and 11 Apr. 1888, pp.391, 405; BWTA AR, 1877, p.16. 54. BWTA AR, 1889, p.25; BWTJ, 7 (June 1889), pp.67, 70. 55. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letters nos. 34 and 35, 14 Feb. and 10 Mar. 1890, and Hannah Whitall Smith to Alys [Pearsall Smith], 16 Feb. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly; Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 150. 56. BWTA NEC minutes, 19 Feb. 1890, p.564. 57. Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 20 Feb. n.y., HWSMSS Lilly. 58. Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 28 Feb. and 2 Mar. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly; BWTA NEC minutes, 19 and 26 Feb. and 5 Mar. 1890, pp.564, 569, 573. 59. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 161. 60. ‘Lady Henry Somerset at Blackpool’, Blackpool Times, 14 Mar. 1890, reported in BWTJ, 8 (Apr. 1890), p.45. 61. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letters nos. 35 and 36, 10 Mar. and 5 Apr. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly. 62. Quoted in Anna Gordon, The Beautiful life of Frances E. Willard (Evanston, Ill., 1914), 153. 63. Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 169, 173, cited in Ian Tyrrell, ‘International aspects of the woman’s temperance movement in Australia: the influence of the American WCTU, 1882–1914’, Journal of Religious History, 12 (June 1983), pp.284–304. 64. Ross Evans Paulsen, Women’s Suffrage and Prohibition: A Comparative Study of Equality and Social Control (Glenview, Ill., 1973), 114–16, and Mary S. Logan, The Part Taken by Women in American History (Wilmington, Del., 1912), 657, cited in Tyrrell, ‘International aspects’, 287–88. 65. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 27–8. This publication serves as a standard work in the field of WWCTU history and is fundamental to an understanding of the organization. 66. BWTA AR, 1886, p.8; BWTJ, 4 (Sept. 1886), p.99; (Oct. 1886), p.100; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 63.

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PAGES 77–81

67. Frances E. Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 11 Apr. 1890, HWSMSS Asbury. See also Frances E. Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 29 Mar. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly. The ‘White Ribboners’ referred to by Willard were WCTU members, the nickname arising from their practice of wearing white ribbons which denoted membership of the Union and support for the temperance cause. 68. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 36, 5 Apr. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly. 69. Quoted in Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 618. 70. Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 28 Apr. 1890, LHSC; Isabel’s letter to Smith contains no year, but Willard’s letter to Isabel is referred to in Frances E. Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 29 Mar. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly. 71. Frances E. Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 11 and 16 Apr. 1890, HWSMSS Asbury; Frances E. Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 5 June 1890, HWSMSS Lilly; Isabel Somerset to ‘Dear Friend’ [Frances Willard], 12 Aug. n.y., FEWC. 72. BWTA AR, 1890, pp.24, 28; BWTA NEC minutes, 19 Feb. 1890, p.964. 73. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 184; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 620. 74. BWTA NEC minutes, 19 Feb. 1890, p.563. 75. Docwra’s vision for the BWTA is outlined in her pamphlet The British Women’s Temperance Association: What It Is, What It Has Done, What It Has Still to Do, n.d., 13–24. 76. Address of Lady Henry Somerset, BWTA AR, 1890, pp. I–IV. The BWTA Council was a body comprising presidents, vice-presidents, and treasurers of the affiliated societies. The Council’s mandate was to annually elect officers and members of the Association’s executive committees and to conduct business, including additions or amendments to BWTA regulations. 77. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 38, 30 May 1890, HWSMSS Lilly; BWTA AR, 1890, pp. V–VI. 78. BWTA National Executive Subcommittee minutes, 27 Jan. 1885, 28 May 1890, 4 and 11 June 1890, pp.22, 27, 29, 32; BWTA NEC minutes, 30 Oct. 1889, p.520; BWTJ, 7 (June 1889), p.64. 79. ‘British Women’s Forward Movement’, Temperance Record, 3 July 1890, p.425. 80. BWTJ, 8 (Aug. 1890), p.86, and 12 (Dec. 1890), p.133; NESC minutes, 10 Dec. 1890, p.87; BWTA, AR, 1981, p.18; Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 28 July 1890, HWSMSS Lilly. 81. Work Among Young Women: Paper by Lady Henry Somerset. Read at the Autumnal Conference of the BWTA, Sunderland, October, 1890, BWTA pamphlet, n.d.; BWTJ, 8 (Nov. 1890), pp.127–8. See also BWTA, AR, 1891, p.18. 82. ‘British Women’s Forward Movement’, 425; NEC minutes, 2 July 1890, pp.39–40. See also BWTA, AR, 1891, pp.18, 45; BWTJ, 9 (Sept. 1890), p.98. 83. BWTJ, 8 (Nov. 1890), pp.128–9; BWTA, AR, 1891, pp.18–19, 43. 84. BWTA NESC minutes, 4 June 1890 to 18 May 1891; BWTA, AR, 1891, p.16; BWTJ, 8 (Oct. 1890), p.110. 85. BWTA NESC minutes, 11 June, 2 and 16 July, 6 Aug. 1890, pp.32, 40, 43, 46, 49; 4 Feb. and 4 Mar. 1891, pp.101, 109; BWTJ, 9 (Jan. 1891), pp.8–9, and (Feb. 1891), pp.20–21. 86. BWTA AR, 1891, p.16; NESC minutes, 4 June and 2 July 1890, p.41, and 3 June 1891, pp.27, 30, 41, 132; BWTJ, 8 (Aug. 1890), p.94. 87. Isabel Somerset to ‘Dearest Friend’ [Frances Willard], 17 Dec. 1890, Frances E. Willard Correspondence, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

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88.

89. 90.

91. 92.

93.

94. 95.

96. 97.

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(hereafter cited as FEWC). This letter has no year but precedes their first meeting, which took place in autumn 1891. See also Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 17 Dec. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly; BWTA AR, 1877, p.3. The 8th Baron Somers recalled hearing family discussions about how ‘Lady Henry squandered the family fortune on the temperance cause’. Conversation with Lord John Patrick, 8th Baron Somers, May 1990. See also Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 620. BWTJ, 8 (Nov. 1890), p.129. BWTJ, 9 (May 1891), p.54; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letters nos. 52 and 53, 4 May and 9 June 1891, and Hannah Whitall Smith to Alys [Pearsall Smith], 8 Oct. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, BWTA AR, 1891, pp.25–40; see also pp.24, 47. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, BWTA AR, 1891, pp.35–6; ‘Social purity’ was an all-embracing term used to describe efforts to preserve decency in society, rescue prostitutes, and eradicate the sexual double standard by making men as responsible as women in acts of prostitution; efforts included participation in the campaign against the revival in India of the Contagious Diseases Acts, legislation originally passed in the 1860s for the state regulation of vice and rescinded in the 1880s. These Acts, enforced in ports and garrison towns, required women who were suspected of prostitution to undergo registration and medical examination. Opponents of the Acts argued that they were discriminatory because they exacted a double standard of morality—only the women and not their male clientele were subjected to examination—and that the legislation directly involved the state in the promotion of prostitution. See Petrie, A Singular Iniquity; Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society. ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset,’ in BWTA, AR, 1891, p.34. Josephine Butler was the president of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which was instrumental in achieving their abolition. See A. S. G. Butler, Portrait of Josephine Butler; Josephine Butler, Personal Reminiscences; Bell, Josephine Butler; Boyd, Three Victorian Women; and Caine, Victorian Feminists. ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, in BWTA, AR, 1891, pp.34–9, 47. Support for the petition grew only slowly, and not until 1895 were sufficient signatures collected to warrant its presentation to American president Glover Cleveland. It eventually contained 7 million signatures; only 1.2 million were actually those of women. The petition’s sluggish growth prompted Willard to invite associations with male and female membership to sign. In addition, Isabel’s influence convinced the Salvation Army to provide 0.25 million signatures, from both sexes. Willard formulated plans to charter a steamship upon which she and Isabel might travel around the world in support of the petition. Though the trip never materialized, Willard maintained her belief in the Polyglot’s efficacy until her death in 1898. See Bordin, Frances Willard, 191–2; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 39–43. The petition is now housed at Willard’s former home, part of the American WCTU headquarters in Evanston, Illinois. BWTA, AR, 1891, p.47. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 12 Aug. 1891, LHSC.

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Chapter 6: American Sojourn Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 5 June and 1 Oct. 1890; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 57, 5 Oct. 1891, and Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘Beloved Family’, 7 and 13 Oct. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly; Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 11 and 16 Apr. 1890, HWSMSS Asbury; ‘Lady Henry pleased’, Chicago Evening Post, 31 Oct. 1891, p.9. 2. Isabel Somerset to ‘Dearest Friend’ [Frances Willard], 22 Nov. n.y., LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 53, 9 June 1891, HWSMSS Lilly; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 618. Isabel, Frances, and Hannah used Quaker terms, such as ‘thee’, ‘thou’, and ‘thine’, in their correspondence with each other. 3. Bordin, Frances Willard, 194–6. See also Christine Bolt, The Women’s Movement in the United States and Britain from the 1790s to the 1920s (London, 1993) and Feminist Ferment: The ‘Woman Question’ in the USA and England, 1870–1940 (London, 1895); Richard Carwardine, Trans-Atlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1790–1865 (Westport, Conn., 1978); David Hall, ‘The Victorian Connection’, in Daniel Walker Howe (ed.), Victorian Experience (Philadelphia, 1976), 81–94; William L. O’Neill, The Woman Movement: Feminism in the United States and England (London, 1969); Robert C. Reinders, ‘Toynbee Hall and the American Settlement Movement’, Social Services Review, 56 (Mar. 1982), pp.39–54; Frank Thistlethwaite, America and the Atlantic Community: Anglo-American Aspects (New York, 1963). 4. Charles E. Parker, Memoirs of Margaret E. Parker: A Memorial (Bolton, Lancashire, 1906); Eliza D. Stewart, The Crusader in Great Britain (Springfield, Ohio, 1893); Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 20–22; BWTA, AR, 1876 and 1877, pp.7, 34. 5. Parker, Memoirs of Margaret E. Parker, 62–3, 65–6; BWTJ, 5 (June and July 1887), pp.68–9, 80–1; 6 (June 1888), p. ii; 7 (June 1889), p.72. 6. Margaret Bright Lucas to Frances Willard, n.d., FEWC; BWTJ, 4 (Dec. 1886), p.136; Bordin, Frances Willard, 194. For WCTU members’ participation in BWTA councils, see BWTA and NBWTA Annual Reports. 7. Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘Dear Home People’ and to ‘My Beloved Family’, 15 and 16 Oct. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly. Isabel Somerset to Adeline [Duchess of Bedford], 12 and 15 Oct. 1891, and Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 19 Oct. 1891, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 164-8. 8. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers and Adeline [Russell], 21 Oct. 1891, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 169–171. Adeline married George W.F.S. Russell, future Duke of Bedford, in 1876. 9. ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 12. 10. Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 23 Sept. 1891, and Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My Beloved Family’, 7 Nov. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly; ‘Lady Somerset here’, Chicago Evening Post, 28 Oct. 1891, newspaper cutting, HWSMSS Asbury. 11. Hannah Whitall Smith to Alys [Pearsall Smith], 28 Oct. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly; Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 30 Oct. 1891, FEWC. Lillian Stevens was president of the Maine WCTU and succeeded Willard as national president upon her death in 1898. See also Frances Willard to Isabel Somerset, n.d., quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 183. 12. Isabel Somerset to ‘My Darlings’ [Lady Somers and Adeline], 2 Nov. 1891, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 172. 1.

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13. ‘Lady Henry pleased’, Chicago Evening Post, 31 Oct. 1891, p.9; Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 345–6. 14. Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My Beloved Family’, 7 Nov. 1891, HWSMSS Asbury; Isabel Somerset to ‘My Darlings’ [Lady Somers and Adeline], 2 Nov. 1891, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 172. See also ‘Lady Henry pleased’, Chicago Evening Post. 15. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 57, 5 Oct. 1891, and Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My Beloved Family’, 7 and 13 Oct. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly; ‘Lady Henry pleased’, Chicago Evening Post, p.9. 16. Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 5 Feb. n.y., HWSMSS Lilly. 17. Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, ‘Monday’, n.d. See also Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, ‘Saturday’, n.d., and 14 and 26 Feb. n.y., and 1 Aug. n.y.; Hannah Whitall Smith to Alys [Pearsall Smith], 26 Jan. n.y., and Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My Beloved Family’, 16 Oct. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly. The above undated letters contain details indicating they were written in late 1890 and in 1891. 18. Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My Beloved Family’, 16 Oct. and 7 Nov. 1891, and Hannah Whitall Smith to Logan [Pearsall Smith], 5 Nov. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly; Isabel Somerset to Anna Gordon, 6 Nov. 1891, LHSC; ‘Lady Somerset here’ and ‘Lady Somerset pleased’, Chicago Evening Post, and ‘White Ribbons’, untitled Boston newspaper, n.d., newspaper cuttings, HWSMSS Asbury. 19. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 43–4. 20. Chappell, Noble Work, 38. 21. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 44–9. 22. Isabel Somerset to ‘My darling’ [Adeline Russell], 23 Nov. 1891, EP. In her biography (pp.175–8) Fitzpatrick cites this letter as having been sent to Lady Somers, but the correspondence contains Isabel’s request that it be forwarded to Mama, indicating that the letter’s recipient was Adeline. 23. ‘New Year’s Eve greetings from Lady Henry Somerset’ to the BWTA, BWTJ, 10 (Jan. 1892), pp.7–8; Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My beloved family’, 17 Nov. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly. See also Isabel Somerset to ‘My darling’ [Adeline Russell], 23 Nov. 1891, EP. 24. Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Annual Address to the Members and Delegates of the British Women’s Temperance Association’, BWTA AR, 1892 (hereafter cited as ‘Annual Address’, 1892), pp.34–6. 25. Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My beloved family’, 20 Nov. 1891, and Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My darling daughter’ [Mary Costelloe], 10 Nov. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly; Isabel Somerset to ‘My darling’ [Adeline Russell], 23 Nov. 1891, EP; ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, untitled Boston newspaper cutting, 18 Nov. 1891, HWSMSS Asbury. 26. Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My beloved family’, 17, 20, and 22 Nov. 1891, and circular letter no. 58, 16 Jan 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. 27. ‘Lady Somerset in the slums’, Evening Sun (New York), 28 Nov. 1891, and ‘Lady Somerset views the slums’, newspaper cuttings (the latter untitled), n.d., HWSMSS Asbury. 28. Quoted in ‘Lady Somerset in the slums’, Evening Sun; Isabel Somerset to ‘My darling’ [Lady Somers], 1 Dec. 1891, EP. 29. Isabel Somerset to ‘Dearest’ [Frances Willard], 28 Nov. 1891, FEWC. See also

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30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

43. 44.

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Isabel Somerset to ‘My darling’ [Lady Somers], 1 Dec. 1891, EP; ‘Lady Somerset in the slums’, Evening Sun. Isabel Somerset to ‘My darling’ [Adeline Russell], 23 Nov. 1891, EP; Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My beloved family’, 17 Nov. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 28 Nov. n.y., FEWC. Isabel Somerset to ‘My darling one’ [Lady Somers], 18 Dec. 1891, and Isabel Somerset to ‘My darling’ [Adeline?], 18 Dec. 1891, EP. Though they contain similar information, these two letters have some variations in content. One is signed ‘Your own child’, indicating it is to Lady Somers, and the other ends ‘Yours lovingly’ and is likely to Adeline. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 22 Nov. n.y., 28 Nov. 1891, and 25 Dec. n.y., LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My beloved family’, 20 Nov. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 25 Dec. 1891, LHSC; Isabel Somerset to Anna Gordon, n.d., but sent from Montreal in December 1891, FEWC; Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 25 Dec. n.y., HWSMSS Lilly. Isabel Somerset to Anna Gordon, 30 Nov. 1891, FEWC; Anna Gordon to Frances Willard, 14 Apr. 1892, Temperance and Prohibition Papers, microfilm ed., WCTU series (WCTU series), reel 18. For a description of these papers, see Randall C. Jimerson, Francis X. Blouin, and Charles A. Isetts (eds.), Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Temperance and Prohibition Papers (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1977). Isabel Somerset to ‘My darling’ [Lady Somers], 1 Dec. 1891, EP; Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My beloved family’, 22 Nov. 1891, HWSMSS Lilly. See also Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 618. BWTJ, 10 (Apr. 1892), pp.42–3; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 618. BWTA NESC minutes, 3 Feb. 1892, p.214; BWTJ, 3 (Mar. 1892), p.27; Hannah Whitall Smith to Alys [Pearsall Smith], 14 Feb. 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. Frances Willard to Mary Willard [Mother], 29 Jan. 1892, WCTU series, reel 18; Chappell, Noble Work, 48. Jack S. Blocker, Jr, ‘The politics of reform: populists, prohibition, and woman suffrage, 1891–1892’, The Historian, 34 (Aug. 1972), pp.614–32, and his American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform (Boston 1989), 80–5, 100; Bordin, Frances Willard, 134–44, 175–89; BWTJ, 10 (Apr. 1892), p.43; Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 210–35. Blocker, ‘The politics of reform’; Bordin, Frances Willard. Ibid. Portland Daily Press, 31 Mar. 1892, quoted in BWTJ, 10 (May 1892), pp.55; ‘Vital points of expert opinion: Lady Henry Somerset on the temperance reform in America’, Our Day: A Record and Review of Current Reform, 9 (July 1892), pp.516–18. Bolton, Famous Leaders, 260–1; Frances Willard to Mary Hill Willard [Mother], 7 Apr. 1892, WCTU series, roll 18. ‘To Lady Henry Somerset, Vice President at Large of the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and President of the British Women’s Temperance Association’, WCTU series, reel 18; BWTA, AR, 1892, p.21; ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, untitled newspaper cutting, 18 Nov. 1892, HWSMSS Asbury.

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PAGES 94–97

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45. Neal Dow to Frances Willard, 3 May 1892, WCTU series, reel 18, quoted in Bordin, Frances Willard, 181–2. 46. Anna Gordon to Mary Willard, 14 Apr. 1892, WCTU series, reel 18. 47. Hannah Whitall Smith to Alys [Pearsall Smith], 14 Feb. 1892, HWSMSS Lilly; Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 15 Apr. 1892, FEWC. ‘Frank’ was a diminutive of ‘Frances’, often used by Willard and her friends. 48. Frances Willard to ‘My Heart’ [Isabel Somerset], 13 Apr. 1892, WCTU series, reel 18. 49. Isabel Somerset to Lady Somers, 3 Apr. 1892, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 180. 50. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 25 Dec. 1891 and 26 Apr. 1892, FEWC. 51. See, for example, Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 4 May 1894; Frances Willard to ‘Stevie’ [Lillian Stevens], 11 and 25 June 1897, FEWC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 15 May and 14 June 1894, HWSMSS Lilly. 52. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 120. Tyrrell notes that in response to Oscar Wilde’s morals conviction, Willard obtained from the delegates at the 1895 World’s WCTU convention an expression of horror that violations of young women’s purity were not redressed. Tyrrell also observes that Willard’s reaction reflects her fundamental opposition to the application of the double standard throughout both public and private life. 53. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 616; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, ‘The female world of love and ritual: relations between nineteenth-century women’, Signs, 1 (Autumn 1975), pp.1–29. 54. Bordin, Frances Willard, 44–6. For the relevance of female relationships to the nineteenth-century professional woman, see Martha Vicinus, ‘One life to stand beside me: emotional conflicts in first generation college women in England’, Feminist Studies, 8 (Fall 1982), pp.603–28. 55. In 1861, Willard became engaged to Charles Fowler but broke it off in January 1862, ostensibly because she was unwilling to relinquish her independence, as required by the marital state. However, her journal entries reveal that her reasons were more complex, involving also her love for a female friend and future sister-in-law, Mary Bannister; the absence of any physical attraction towards Fowler; and the belief that she would be unable to feel the depth of passion for men that she felt towards women. See Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, 113–117. 56. Bordin, Frances Willard, 44–5; Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 75–83; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, 14–15; Ray Strachey, Frances Willard: Her Life and Work (London, 1912), 270–2; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 116–119. 57. ‘Cossie’, ‘Cozzie’, and ‘Cos’ were diminutives of ‘Earl Cosmos’, Willard’s nickname for Isabel. ‘Earl’ is a reference to her late-father’s title. Willard considered that Isabel’s capabilities rendered her fully deserving of the designation ‘Earl Cosmos’, had the title ever existed. See Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, 364 n.2; see also p.380, entry for 22 Aug. 1893. ‘Little Nan’ was Willard’s companion and secretary, Anna Gordon. 58. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 28 Nov. n.y., FEWC. 59. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 35, 10 Mar. 1890, HWSMSS Lilly; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 28 Nov. n.y., LHSC; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 22 Aug. 1893, p.380.

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PAGES 97–102

60. Agnes Slack, ‘Frances Willard and Some of Her Friends’, handwritten manuscript, n.d., p.1, NBWTAUF. 61. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 31 Dec. 1896, p.426. 62. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 4 June 1896, p.409. See also Bordin, Frances Willard, 198; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 618–19. 63. ‘Interview with Frances Willard’, Woman’s Herald, 17 Dec. 1892, p.8. 64. Lady Henry Somerset, Woman’s Work for a Sober England, BWTA pamphlet, n.d., p.11; Isabel Somerset, Frances E. Willard: In Memoriam (London, n.d.), 6. 65. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 4 June 1896, p.409; Bordin, Frances Willard, 227–8. 66. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 619. 67. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 30–1. 68. Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America (Middletown, Conn., 1981), 142, quoted in Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 243. For Isabel’s Christian Socialism, see Somerset, ‘What is it to be a Christian?’, Young Woman, and Introduction above. 69. See, for example, Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 17 Jan. 1896, FEWC; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 72, 10 Apr. 1893, and circular letter no. 74, 10 July 1893, and Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 10 July 1896, HWSMSS Lilly; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entries for 2 Jan. 1893 and 10 Aug. 1896, pp.364, 414. 70. See, for example, Isabel Somerset to ‘My Dear Friend’ [Lillian Stevens], 27 Feb. 1894, FEWC; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 31. 71. Quoted in Bolton, Famous Leaders, 261. 72. BWTA, AR, 1892, p.21. 73. Woman’s Herald, 17 Dec. 1892, p.9. 74. For objections to Isabel’s leadership decisions, see, for example, Wings, 11 (Apr. 1893), pp.188–9. For opposition to Willard’s policies, see Bordin, Frances Willard, 214–18; Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 352–66. 75. Bordin, Frances Willard, 216–18, 221–2, 236–7.

1.

2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

Chapter 7: Leader Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 61, 26 Apr. 1892, and Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 5 Apr. 1892, HWSMSS Lilly; Arthur Pollen to Frances Willard, 19 Apr. 1892, FEWC; BWTA NESC minutes, 6 Apr. 1892, p.241. NBWTA NESC minutes, 18 Nov. and 2 Dec. 1891, pp.187, 192–3. Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 25 Dec. n.y., and Hannah Whitall Smith to Robert [Pearsall Smith], 14 Jan. 1892, HWSMSS Lilly; NESC minutes, 6 Jan. 1892, pp.206–8, and 20 Jan. 1892, p.210. BWTA NESC minutes, 3 Feb. 1892, p.214; 17 Feb. 1892, pp.219–20; Hannah Whitall Smith to Alys [Pearsall Smith], 14 Feb. 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. BWTA NESC minutes, 17 Feb., 6 and 20 Apr. 1892, pp.220–2, 241, 245–6; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 62, 26 May/6 June 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. BWTA NESC minutes, 24 Mar. 1892, p.236. In the minutes, the association is incorrectly termed the Ladies Vigilance Association by the NEC. The National Vigilance Association had been created in 1885 ‘to repress criminal vice and public immorality’, and its mandate included scrutinizing the print media and

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8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

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entertainment industry, lobbying public authorities and police to curb the sex industry, and lobbying the London County Council to close bawdy theatres. They urged municipal officials to establish respectable lodging houses for males and to create women’s shelters, and had the satisfaction of seeing the LCC appoint 23 inspectors to oversee entertainment locales. On the negative side, their zealotry was linked to book banning and burnings, the flogging of homosexuals, the offspring of brothel keepers being taken from their parents without proof of any abuse, and the closure of working-class music halls. The NVA ranks included temperance women, Charity Organization Society workers, individuals from the National Union of Women Workers, and suffragists, including Millicent Fawcett, leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. See Hollis, Ladies Elect, 50–51. See also Introduction above. British Committee for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice in India and Throughout the British Dominions, leaflet, 15 Oct. 1893, NBWTAUF; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 606–22. Mort, Dangerous Sexualities, 103–4; Petrie, A Singular Iniquity, 246–54; Stead, ‘Maiden tribute’. Roy Jenkins, Sir Charles Dilke, rev. ed. (London, 1965), 239–45, 383. W. T. Stead to Isabel Somerset, 7 Aug. 1892, WCTU series, reel 18; Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 620. ‘The President’s Annual Address’, BWTA ‘Annual Report’, 1892, publisher’s draft, 14–15, National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union Files, NBWTAU Headquarters, Rosalind Carlisle House, Solihull, West Midlands (NBWTAUF). Somerset, Origin and Early History, 10; ‘President’s Address’, BWTA AR, 1884, pp.8–10; ‘Letter from the President of the World’s Union’, BWTJ, 4 (Nov. 1886), p.125. See also BWTJ, 4 (Feb. 1886), p.7, and 5 (Jan. 1887), p.5. BWTA AR, 1887, p.28; BWTJ, 5 (June 1887), pp.61–4. NESC minutes, 16 Mar. 1892, pp.229–30; 24 Mar. 1892, p.235; 20 Apr. 1892, pp.245–6; Our Position and Our Policy, Appendix I, 32–3, subsequently printed as part of the BWTA AR, 1893; BWTA, ‘Report of the Annual Council Meeting held May 4th and 5th’ (hereafter cited as ‘Report of the Annual Council Meeting, 1892’), p.46. This typescript was edited for publication in the BWTA AR for 1892. The suffrage resolution recorded in the NESC minutes for 24 March 1892 is a printed cutting from the 1892 AR, having been pasted over the written minutes, so that the wording of Isabel’s original resolution is no longer visible for comparison. BWTA NESC minutes, 16 and 24 Mar. 1892, pp.229–30, 235; Wings, 11 (Apr. 1893), p.188. Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 5 Apr. 1892, and Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 62, 26 May / 6 June 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 62, 24 May/6 June 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. ‘Report of the Annual Council Meeting, 1892’, pp.13–15, NBWTAUF. See also Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 184–6. The President’s Annual Address, 1892, publisher’s copy, pp.1, 11–15, 21–2, 40–4, NBWTAUF. ‘Report of the Annual Council Meeting, 1892’, pp.14–16, 21–31, 54–7; BWTA NESC minutes, 5 Oct. 1892; Our Position and Our Policy, 61–2.

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21. BWTA NESC minutes, 16 Mar. and 17 June 1892, pp.233, 279; ‘Report of the Annual Council Meeting, 1892’, pp.45–6; Our Position and Our Policy, 36–7. 22. BWTA NESC minutes, 2 Mar. 1892, p.226; BWTJ, 10 (Mar. 1892), pp.30–31; M. E. Docwra to Lady Henry Somerset, 19 Mar. 1892, quoted in Our Position and Our Policy, 29. 23. ‘Report of the Annual Council Meeting, 1892’, pp.46–7, 49–51; BWTA AR, 1887, pp.27–9. 24. ‘Report of the Annual Council Meeting, 1892’, pp.47–51. 25. Ibid. pp.47, 50, 52–3; Our Position and Our Policy, 32–4. 26. BWTA NESC minutes, 18 May 1892, pp.247–8. 27. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 62, 26 May/6 June 1892, HWSMSS Lilly; ‘The other side of the question: interview with Miss M. E. Docwra, President of the Executive Committee of the BWTA’, Christian Commonwealth, 23 Feb. 1893, quoted in Our Position and Our Policy, Appendix III, p.102, and Appendix XVIII, pp.141–2. 28. Wings, 11 (Jan. 1893), p.152. Wings had succeeded British Women’s Temperance Journal as the Association’s organ in October 1892 and was controlled by the conservative faction in the NEC. 29. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 79. 30. Our Position and Our Policy, 38. 31. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 62, 26 May/6 June 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. 32. To Delegates Who Attended the Council Meeting of the British Women’s Temperance Association, private circular issued to the members of the BWTA by Isabel Somerset, June 1893, NBWTAUF; Our Position and Our Policy, 57–8; NBWTA NEC minutes, 5 May and 30 June, 1893, pp.4–7, 12–13. The word ‘National’ was added to the BWTA name following a split in the Association in 1893. See Chapter 9. 33. Our Position and Our Policy, Appendix II, pp.10, 94–9, and Appendix IV, pp.104–8. 34. BWTA NESC minutes, 25 May and 1 June 1892, pp.267–9, 274; Our Position and Our Policy, Appendix I, p.10, and Appendix III, pp.100–3. 35. BWTA NEC minutes, 1 June 1892, p.275; Isabel Somerset to the Executive Committee, n.d., appended to the NESC minutes, 17 June 1892, p.282. 36. Hannah Whitall Smith circular letter no. 62, 26 May/6 June 1892, HWSMSS Lilly; BWTA NESC minutes, 1 and 17 June 1892, pp.275, 283; Our Position and Our Policy, Appendix I, pp.12–14. 37. BWTA NESC minutes, 17 June and 20 July 1892, pp.284–96, 307; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 63, 10 July 1892, HWSMSS Lilly; BWTJ, 10 (July 1892), pp.80–1. 38. Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 8 Aug. 1892, FEWC; BWTA NESC minutes, 6 and 20 Apr. 1892, pp.242–3, 246; Wings, 10 (Oct. 1892), pp.1–10. For an overview of the evolution of the British Women’s Temperance Journal and the Association’s subsequent organs, see Olwen C. Niessen, ‘Temperance’, in J. Don Van and Rosemary T. VanArsdel, Victorian Periodicals and Victorian Society (Toronto, 1994), 251–77. 39. Our Position and Our Policy, 5–8. The NEC purchased all the advance copies of the June issue, and the bulk of the subsequent editions contained the revised editorial. However, the purged sentences were reprinted in the July editorial on

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40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

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261

BWTA policy. See BWTJ, 10 (June 1892), p.72, and 10 (July 1892), p.80; ‘Annual Council Meeting, 1892’, pp.39–40. BWTJ, 11 (Jan. 1893), p.150; 11 (Feb. 1893), pp.161–3; 11 (Mar. 1893), pp.174–7; 11 (Apr. 1893), pp.186–90; and 11 (May 1893), pp.198–201; Niessen, ‘Temperance’, 273–4. See for example, BWTJ, 8 (Nov. 1890), p.124; 9 (May 1891), p.49; 9 (July 1891), p.79; 9 (Aug. 1891), p.100; 10 (Jan. 1892), p.1; 10 (Mar. 1892), pp.27, 30–1; 10 (Apr. 1892), pp.42; 10 (May 1892), p.55; 10 (June 1892), p.72; 10 (July 1892), p.80; and 10 (Aug. 1892), pp.91–2. BWTJ, 10 (Apr. 1892), p.42; Woman’s Herald, VII (18 Feb. 1893), p.1; Rosemary T. VanArsdel, ‘Mrs. Florence Fenwick Miller and the Woman’s Signal, 1895–99’, Victorian Periodicals Review 15 (Fall 1982), pp.107–18. Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 26 Mar. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; BWTJ, 10 (Sept. 1892), p.102; Woman’s Herald, 7 (23 Feb. 1893), p.1; The Woman’s Herald, publication announcement, n.d., NBWTAUF. Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, 3 Mar. 1893, Rosalind Carlisle Papers, Castle Howard, York, North Yorkshire (RCP); Woman’s Herald, 7 (23 Feb. 1893) pp.2, 7; (13 Apr. 1893), pp.10–11; (11 May 1893), p.171.

Chapter 8: Gathering Storm Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 8 August 1892, FEWC. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 62, 26 May/6 June 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. BWTA NESC minutes, 4 June 1890, p.33; BWTJ, 10 (Sept. 1892), p.103; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 62, 26 May / 6 June 1892, HWSMSS Lilly; Our Position and Our Policy, pp.46–8, 53, and Appendix VI, p.110; Lady Henry Somerset, World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, WWCTU British National Leaflet no. 56. BWTA NESC minutes, 6 July 1892, pp.302–3; Our Position and Our Policy, 48–9; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 64, 3 Aug. 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. BWTA NEC minutes, 7 Sept. 1892, pp.316–18; Our Position and Our Policy, 38–45, 50–2. BWTA NEC minutes, 7 Sept. 1892, pp.319–20; BWTA NESC minutes, 5 and 19 Oct. 1892, pp.328–9, 333–4; Jessie A. Fowler [BWTA Honorary Secretary], circular letter, Sept. 1892; Our Position and Our Policy, 54–7, and Appendix VII, 110–11. Our Position and Our Policy, Appendix IX, 115–19; Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 22 Dec. 1892, FEWC; Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 4 Jan. 1893, HWSMSS Asbury; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 68, 16 Dec. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly. ‘Report of the Annual Council Meeting 1892’;Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 79–80. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letters nos. 65, 66, and 68, 6 Sept., 10 Oct., and 16 Dec. 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 16 Jan. 1893, FEWC. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 66, 10 Oct. 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, cablegram, 26 Aug. 1892, FEWC. Anna Gordon to Lillian Stevens, 13 Sept. 1892, Woman’s Christian Temperance

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15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

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PAGES 118–122

Union Files, Frances Willard Memorial Library, WCTU Headquarters, Evanston, Illinois (WCTUF); Bordin, Frances Willard, 200. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 66, 10 Oct. 1892, HWSMSS Lilly; Frances Willard to ‘My dear sister’, 27 Sept. 1892, FEWC. ‘Letter Sent by President to Branches on Leaving for America, 28 Sept. 1892’, in Our Position and Our Policy, Appendix VIII, 112–13. See also pp. 69–70; BWTA AR, 1893, p.14; BWTA NESC minutes, 5 Oct. 1892, pp.328, 331–2. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 66, 10 Oct. 1892, HWSMSS Lilly; Frances Willard to Dr Dickinson, 3 Nov. 1892, FEWC; Bordin, Frances Willard, 200–1. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no.72, 10 Apr. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 16 Jan. 1893, FEWC; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 14 Jan. and 22 June 1893, pp.7, 35; Bordin, Frances Willard, 78. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 67, 15 Nov. 1892, HWSMSS Lilly; Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 327. Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 22 Dec. 1892 and 3 Mar. 1893, FEWC; Our Position and Our Policy, 14–15, 20–3. Quoted in Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 326; Wings, 11 (Mar. 1893), pp.171–2. Joseph Cook to Isabel Somerset, 23 Mar. 1893, LHSC; Our Position and Our Policy, 24–8. Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 12 Mar. 1893, and circular letter no. 70, 21 Feb. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 4 Feb. 1893, FEWC; Our Position and Our Policy, 14; Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 329. Isabel Somerset, ‘New Year’s Letter to the Members of the British Women’s Temperance Association’, 1 Jan. 1893, WCTUF. The notation ‘Not for publication’ is written on the printed letter in Isabel’s handwriting and with her signature. Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 6 Jan. 1893, p.5; Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 11 Jan. 1893, and circular letter no. 69, 17 Jan. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Woman’s Herald, 7 (14 Jan. 1893), pp.9–12; Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 16 Jan. 1893, FEWC; Gordon, The Beautiful Life, 193–202. Quoted in Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 327; BWTA NESC minutes, 7 Sept. 1892, p.319; Gordon, The Beautiful Life, 200–1. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 11 Jan. 1893, p.367; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 8 Jan. and 2 Feb. 1893, pp.5, 11; Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 4 and 12 Jan. and 7 Feb. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly. Outline of the Progressive Policy of the British Women’s Temperance Association, proposed by its President, Lady Henry Somerset, and Officers and Candidates for the Executive Committee of the British Women’s Temperance Association, circular, NBWTAUF; ‘Lady Henry Somerset’s Rejoinder to Miss Docwra’, Christian Commonwealth, 2 Mar. 1893, quoted in Our Position and Our Policy, 146; see also 76, 137. The progressives’ proposal to create a subcommittee of the NEC may have been designed to restructure an already functioning one. For example, the 1890–92 minute books of the BWTA contain NEC and NESC minutes, bound in separate volumes and titled, respectively, National Executive Committee Minutes and National Executive Subcommittee Minutes.

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PAGES 122–128

263

29. Plan of Work for 1893–94 and Policy Endorsed by the President and Minority of the Executive Committee of the British Women’s Temperance Association, BWTA circular, NBWTAUF. 30. Our Position and Our Policy, 7–10, 49–50. 31. ‘Progressive Policy Advocated by the Majority of the Executive Committee’, in Our Position and Our Policy, Appendix XI, 122–4, and Appendix XVIII, 143. 32. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 11 Jan. 1893, pp.366–7. 33. Wings, 11 (Jan. 1893), p.146; 11 (Feb. 1893), pp.161–3; 11 (Mar. 1893), pp.171–2, 174–77, 180; 11 (Apr. 1893), p.182; Our Position and Our Policy, 81–6. 34. Woman’s Herald, 23 Feb. and 4 May 1893, pp.1–23, 161–2, 164; Niessen, ‘Temperance’, 274–5. 35. ‘Lady Henry Somerset and the BWTA’, ‘The other side of the question’, and ‘The split in the BWTA’, Christian Commonwealth, 16 and 23 Feb. and 2 Mar. 1893, all quoted in Our Position and Our Policy, Appendix XVIII, 136–45. 36. Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 7 Feb. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly. 37. Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 2, 4, and 11 Jan. and 7 Feb. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Our Position and Our Policy, 62–4. 38. Our Position and Our Policy, Appendix XIX, 147–9; ‘Well done British Women’s Temperance Association!’, Methodist Times, 11 May 1893, reproduced in The Journal, 1 (June 1893), pp.12–13. The Journal was the official journal, pro tem, of the NBWTA. 39. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 18 Jan. 1893, p.368. 40. ‘Letter from Lady Henry Somerset to the Branches of the British Women’s Temperance Association. Re Conference March 14th’, in Our Position and Our Policy, Appendix XIV, 128–9, 164–8; Wings, 11 (Apr. 1893), pp.187–90; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 14 Mar. 1893, p.16. 41. Our Position and Our Policy, 4; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 78–9. 42. Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 26 Mar. 1893, p.18; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 28 Mar. 1893, p.371; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 72, 10 Apr. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Frances Willard to Mary B. Shepherd, 29 Nov. 1892, FEWC. 43. Bordin, Frances Willard, 203. 44. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entries for 16, 18, and 23 Jan. 1893, pp.367–8; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 20, 24, 26, 30, and 31 Jan. 1893, 1, 2, 10, and 28 Feb. 1893, and 13 Apr. 1893, pp.8–13, 15, 23; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 71, 25 Mar. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 22 Dec. 1892; 27 Jan. and 4 Feb. 1893; S. E. Drysdale to Frances Willard, 14 Mar. 1893, FEWC; Wings, 11 (Mar. 1893), p.180; 11 (May 1893), p.204. 45. If passed by Parliament, the direct veto would allow those communities who obtained two-thirds majority in favour to refuse the renewal of existing licences of current houses, after a three-year grace period, and to enforce Sunday closing on all drinking establishments. 46. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 72, 10 Apr. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; BWTJ, 10 (July 1892), pp.77–9; Dingle, The Campaign for Prohibition, 147–8. 47. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entries for 2, 9, 11, and 18 Jan. 1893, pp.364–8; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 10, 14, 16, 17, and 22 Jan. 1893,

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PAGES 128–134

5, 12, 13, 16, 19, and 26 Feb. 1893, 31 Mar. 1893, and 1, 6, 15, and 18 Apr. 1893, pp.6–9, 19–22, 24. 48. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 72, 10 Apr. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Isabel Somerset to ‘My dear Friend’ [probably Lillian Stevens], 20 June 1893, FEWC. Isabel’s and Hannah’s reports of Willard’s condition seem to be contradicted by Anna Gordon in a letter to Lillian Stevens in which she states that examining physician Sir B. W. Richardson had concluded Willard did not have the disease. See Anna Gordon to Lillian Stevens, 3 July 1893, FEWC. It is possible that Gordon was attempting to minimize the seriousness of Willard’s condition in order not to further alarm a WCTU already concerned about her health. 49. Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 13 Apr. 1896, HWSMSS Lilly.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

Chapter 9: Triumph Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no.72, 10 Apr. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly. Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 2 May 1893, HWSMSS Lilly. Isabel Somerset and the Minority of the Executive Committee to Dear Friends [BWTA Branches], 10 Apr. 1893, NBWTAUF. Wings, 11 (May 1893), pp.198–201. Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 29 Apr. 1893, p.25. Frances Willard, ‘It was a famous victory’, Woman’s Herald (11 May 1893), pp.181–3; ‘Star chamber methods’, Woman’s Herald (4 May 1893), p.166; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 3 May 1893, p.26. An alternative term for ‘counterfoil’ is ‘ticket stub’. ‘Report of the Annual Council Meeting of the British Women’s Temperance Association, held at Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London, E.C. on May 3rd. and 4th., 1893’, section 1, Wednesday, 3 May, pp.1–32, typescript, NBWTAUF (hereafter cited as ‘Report of the Annual Council, 1893’). This document is divided into four sections, each with individual pagination, recording separately the morning and evening sessions over the two days of meetings. The minutes of the annual council were later included as part of the BWTA’s 1893 Annual Report for the branches but not printed in the edition for the general public. See BWTA AR, 1893, p.13. ‘Report of the Annual Council, 1893’, section 1, p.32; Willard, ‘It was a famous victory’, 181; Our Position and Our Policy. Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 28 Apr. and 1 May 1893, p.25. These entries were made by Anna Gordon, not Frances Willard. Our Position and Our Policy, 3–10, 14–15, 28–32, 35–56, 76–8, 81–3, 86–9. ‘Report of the Annual Council, 1893’, section 2, pp.1–22 (p. 22 is misnumbered as p. 21); Frances Willard to ‘Stevie’ [Lillian Stevens], 3 May 1893, FEWC; Willard, ‘It was a famous victory’, 182. ‘Report of the Annual Council, 1893’, section 3, pp.1–29; section 4, pp.1–11; Willard, ‘It was a famous victory’, 182–3. Wings, 2 (June 1893), pp.214–15; Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 187–8. See, for example, NBWTA NESC minutes, 17 June 1892, pp.284–96; BWTJ, 2 (July 1892), pp.80–1; Wings, 11 (Mar. 1893), pp.79–80, and 11 (May 1893), p.204; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 63, 10 July 1892, HWSMSS Lilly. Christian World, 11 May 1893, reproduced in The Journal, 1 (June 1893), p.11.

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PAGES 134–137

265

16. NBWTA NEC minutes, 30 June 1893, p.13, NBWTAU Archives; The Journal, 1 (June 1893), p.1. 17. To Our Fellow Workers, and All Friends of Temperance Reform, circular letter to the branches from the provisional committee, 14 June 1893, NBWTAUF. This circular also appeared in Wings, 11 (July 1893), p.221; ‘The Women’s Total Abstinence Union’, Wings, 11 (Oct. 1893), p.257; ‘Preamble’ to ‘Manifesto: To the Members of the Women’s Total Abstinence Union’, and ‘Report of the General Committee’, WTAU AR, 1894, cover page, pp.16–17, 63–5. 18. NBWTA NEC minutes, 30 June 1893, p.12; NBWTA NESC minutes, 21 June 1893, p.50; NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.13, 49. The ‘Reports of the Federated Societies’ given in the WTAU Annual Reports for the period 1894–1903 provide evidence of the Union as a ‘single issue’ organization, concentrating on the promotion of total abstinence and the suppression of the liquor traffic. 19. WTAU AR, 1894, and 1903, pp.19, 18; NBWTA AR, 1894 and 1903, pp.138, 48. The two women’s organizations were eventually reunited and amalgamated as the National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union in June 1926. See White Ribbon and Wings, 1 (June 1926), pp.104–105. 20. NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.18, 35, 53, 101–4, 116, 136–7; AR, 1895, pp.25, 52–3, 57–9, 69–72; AR, 1896, pp. xii, 54, 57, 96–8, 103–7; NBWTA NEC minutes, 19 Mar. and 30 June 1893, pp.187, 22–3; NBWTA NESC minutes, 20 Sept. 1893, p.125; 29 May 1894, pp.229–30; 20 Feb. 1895, p.316; What Next? The Future of the Temperance Cause Depends on the Immediate Rally of the Women: Isabel Somerset to Beloved Comrades, circular letter to NBWTA branches, 28 May 1894, in NBWTA NESC minutes, 29 May 1894, pp.231–3; Florence Balgarnie, A Plea for the Appointment of Police Matrons at Police Stations, NBWTA pamphlet, n.d., NBWTAUF. 21. NBWTA NEC minutes, 19 Mar. 1895, p.161; ‘Lady Henry Somerset’s tour’, Woman’s Herald, p.523; ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.32–41; ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset: Police Matron Work’, WM. News, 24 Jan. 1894, p.7, newspaper cutting, WCTU Files; The Times (London), 19 June, 1895, p.7. 22. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 78, 19 Nov. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Somerset, ‘Is it starvation or surrender?’; Somerset, ‘Miners and Misery’, 611; see also 647. 23. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 1 Aug. 1893, p.377; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 7, 9, and 20 Nov. 1893, pp.75, 78; Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity, p.142, cited in Tyrrell, Woman’s World, p.243; Sidney Webb to Frances Willard, 23 June 1893, FEWC; Edward R. Pease to Anna Gordon, 21 Mar. 1894, cited in Bordin, Frances Willard, 145–6, 209, and 271 n.78; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 20 Mar. 1896, FEWC. See p.98 and note 68 on p.258 herein for Epstein’s assessment. 24. See, for example, Woman’s Herald, 1, 8, 22, and 29 June 1893, pp.227, 243, 249, 285-6; Dawn, 1 July 1893, p.12; Woman’s Signal, 31 May 1894, p.361. 25. Law Times, 30 June 1894, newspaper cutting, NBWTAUF; ‘Lady Henry Somerset in John Wesley’s Chapel’, White Ribbon (WCTU, India), 15 Oct. 1895, pp.10–11, WCTU Files.

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PAGES 137–141

26. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, p.31; NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.8, 81, 112–13, 182; 1895, pp.17, 45; and 1896, p.57; What Is Meant by Our Political Action?, NBWTA circular, 14 Oct. 1893, NBWTAUF. 27. NBWTA NESC minutes, 26 July 1893, pp.64–5. The United Committee represented many women’s organizations, including the Conservative Party’s Primrose League, the Women’s Liberal Federation, women’s suffrage societies, and trade unions. The petition, an ‘Appeal from Women of all Parties and Classes’, which eventually held 257,000 signatures, was presented to Parliament in May 1896; though it did not produce the intended results, the Registration Bill having been abandoned, the campaign for its compilation helped keep the suffrage cause alive. See Rubinstein, Before the Suffragettes, 147–8. 28. ‘Lady Henry Somerset: philanthropist and social reformer’, Snapshot, newspaper cutting, ECA. 29. NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.34, 89; Woman’s Herald, 5 Oct. and 21 Dec. 1893, pp.523, 697; Woman’s Signal, 8 and 29 Mar. 1894, pp.166, 215; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 77, 17 Oct. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 2 Dec. 1893, pp.81–2; ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, p.5. 30. See, for example, NBWTA NESC minutes, 21 June 1893, pp.57, 59; 26 July 1893, p.63; 16 Aug. 1893, p.89; 13 Sept. 1893, p.117. 31. NBWTA NESC minutes, 26 July 1893 and 25 Oct. 1893, pp.70, 146; Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 3 Oct. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly. 32. NBWTA AR, 1894 and 1895, pp.34–5, 225; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 79, 26 Dec. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 7 Dec. 1895, FEWC; National British Women’s Temperance Association: Midland Counties, School of Methods Programme, 12 Apr. 1894, NBWTAUF; ‘Temperance notes’ and ‘A school of methods’, Woman’s Herald, 2 and 23 Nov. 1893, pp.591, 636; Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Dec. 1894), p.32. 33. NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.54–5, 110–11, 113–15, 178; 1895, pp.87–8, 176; 1896, pp.206–7; 1897, pp.31, 96, 133–4; NBWTA NEC minutes, 19 Mar. 1895, pp.143–5; ‘How we fought a drink license’, White Ribbon Signal, p.53, n.d., newspaper cutting, NBWTAUF; The Times (London), 19 June 1895, p.7, and 5 June 1896, p.4. 34. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 74, 10 July 1893, HWSMSS Lilly. 35. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 79, 26 Dec. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; ‘Temperance legislation’, ‘Temperance notes’, and ‘In the name of the people’, Woman’s Herald, 1 and 8 June 1893, 14 Dec. 1894, pp.230, 243, 249, 678; ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.4–5, 17–19; Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (May 1895), pp.106–7. 36. What Next? The Future of the Temperance Cause, Isabel Somerset to the branches, NBWTAUF; NBWTA NESC minutes, 29 May and 11 Dec. 1894, pp.229, 290; NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.69–70; Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (May 1895), pp.106–7. 37. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1895, pp.8–10; Dingle, The Campaign for Prohibition, 169. 38. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.13–17. 39. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 82, 16 May 1894, HWSMSS Lilly; NBWTA AR, 1894 and 1903, pp.138, 48; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 80.

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PAGES 141–143

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40. ‘The Women’s Total Abstinence Union’, Wings, 10 (Oct. 1893), p.257; NBWTA NESC minutes, 24 May and 21 June 1893, pp.26, 49; NBWTA AR, 1894, p.117; The Journal, 1 (June 1893), p.1; Niessen, ‘Temperance’, 275–6. 41. ‘Report of the Annual Council of the Women’s Liberal Federation’, Woman’s Herald, 1 June 1893, pp.228–9; NBWTA NEC minutes, 30 June and 30 Sept. 1893, pp.27–8, 62–3; NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.35, 43–4; Woman’s Herald, 6 July 1893, p.311; Niessen, ‘Temperance’, pp.275–6. Despite the Signal’s adoption as the NBWTA’s official organ, Isabel decided against announcing this on the paper’s cover, her reasons only being divulged to the NEC but not specified in their official minutes. Her decision may have been based on a desire to avoid misrepresenting the journal as a narrowly based, temperance publication, in order to attract a wider audience. See NBWTA NEC minutes, 30 Jan. 1894, p.95. 42. NBWTA NESC minutes, 27 Dec. 1893, p.176; NBWTA AR, 1894, p.134; Woman’s Herald, 21 and 28 Dec. 1893, pp.691, 697, 707; Woman’s Signal, 4 Jan. 1894; ‘Mr. H. J. Osborn’, Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Aug. 1895), p.157; Niessen, ‘Temperance’, 275. Frances Willard had pressed Isabel to issue the Signal as a daily paper, but having researched the feasibility of taking this step, she concluded it would not be financially viable. See Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 4 May 1894, FEWC. 43. NBWTA NEC minutes, 20 July 1894 and 19 Mar. 1895, pp.123, 136–7; ‘A New Year’s letter’, Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Jan. 1895), p.38; NBWTA AR, 1895, pp.24, 43–4. The Budget’s first issue appeared in July 1894, designated vol. 1, no. 1, followed by an August edition. The September Budget was also issued as vol. 1, no. 1. The July and August issues may have been published as trial editions for limited circulation. 44. NBWTA NESC minutes, 17 Jan. and 6 June 1894, pp.188, 236; NBWTA AR, 1894, p.45; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 25 Oct. 1895, FEWC; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 2 Sept. 1896, p.61. 45. NBWTA NEC minutes, 30 Oct. 1895, p.219; Florence Fenwick Miller to Frances Willard, 31 Oct. 1895, FEWC; ‘Official Message’, Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Aug. 1895), p.54. 46. Florence Fenwick Miller to Frances Willard, 31 Oct. 1895, FEWC; Rosemary T. VanArsdel, ‘Florence Fenwick Miller, Feminism and the Woman’s Signal, 1895–1899’, unpublished paper, University of Puget Sound. 47. NBWTA NESC minutes, 2 Jan., 15 May, and 4 Sept. 1895, pp.296–7, 343–4, 371; 15 Jan., 2 and 16 Sept., 7 and 21 Oct., 4 and 18 Nov., 2, 16, and 21 Dec. 1896, pp.400, 458, 460, 466–7, 470, 479–81, 485–6; 6 and 20 Jan., 17 Feb. 1897, pp.489–90, 500; NBWTA NEC minutes, 25 Mar. and 11 Nov., 1896, pp.241, 261; NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.50, 52–3; AR, 1897, pp.28–9, 88–9; Florence Fenwick Miller to Frances Willard, 31 Oct. 1895; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 7 Feb., 23 Mar., 7 and 22 Dec. 1896, FEWC; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 17 Nov. and 21 Dec. 1895, 16 Mar. and 15 Dec. 1896, LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 20 Oct. 1895 and 21 Jan. 1896, FEWC; ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.50–51; ‘Lady Henry Somerset on polygamy’, Woman’s Signal, 19 Dec. 1895, p.390. 48. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 18 Dec. 1896 and 5 Mar. 1897, LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 22 Dec. 1896, FEWC; NESC minutes, 17 Nov. 1897, p.10. For the details of this dispute see Chapters 14 and 15.

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1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

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PAGES 144–147

Chapter 10: Stresses and Strategies Bordin, Frances Willard, 206–8. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 74, 10 July 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Isabel Somerset to ‘My dear Friend’ [probably Lillian Stevens], 20 June 1893, FEWC. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 74, July 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; NBWTA NESC minutes, 26 July 1893, pp.64–66, 70–71; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entries for 16, 26, and 28 July, pp.375–81; 22 and 27 Aug. 1893, pp.14–18. Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 5, 8–15, 19–20, 23–25, and 27 July and 7, 8, 10, 12, 19–21, 23–26 Aug. 1893, pp.37–52; Woman’s Herald, 30 Nov. 1893, p.647. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letters nos. 74 and 76, 10 July and 4 Sept. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 7 Oct. 1893, p.383; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 3 Oct. 1893, p.62; Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 7 Sept. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly. Bordin, Frances Willard, 210–13; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entries for 18 Feb. and 1 Nov. 1893, pp.369, 387. For the Temple controversy, see Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 348–50. Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 10 Oct. 1893, and circular letter no.78, 19 Nov. 1893, HWSMSS Lilly. Isabel Somerset to ‘My dear Friend’ [Lillian Stevens], 2 Feb. 1895, FEWC; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 1 Nov. 1893, p.387. Bordin, Frances Willard, 214–15. See, for example, Louise S. Rounds to Helen Hood, 15 Jan. 1894, and Mary A. Woodbridge, 3 Mar. 1894, FEWC. Rounds was the president of the influential Illinois WCTU, and Woodbridge was corresponding secretary of the WCTU and president of the Ohio WCTU. Mary Clement Leavitt to Frances Willard, 2 Jan. 1894; Margaret A. Sudduth to Frances Willard, 19 Feb. 1894; Clara Hoffman to Frances Willard, 9 Mar. 1894; cited in Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 352–3. Frances Willard to Mary Clement Leavitt, 13 Feb. 1894; Isabel Somerset to ‘My dear and trusted Friend’ [Lillian Stevens], 27 Apr. 1894, FEWC. Isabel Somerset to Mary Clement Leavitt, 15 Feb. 1894; Isabel Somerset to ‘My dear Friend’ [Lillian Stevens], 2 Feb. and 27 Apr. 1894; ‘Memorandum of Questions from the Officers of the World’s WCTU and the National WCTU to Mrs. Leavitt’, unpublished manuscript (enclosed in Somerset’s letter to Lillian Stevens, 27 Apr. 1894); C. F. Grow to Isabel Somerset, 13 Mar. 1894; FEWC. Mary Earhart reports that in order ‘to lesson the discord which had arisen’, Willard voluntarily reduced her annual salary from $2,000 to $1,000. See Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 353. Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘Carrie’ [Lawrence?], 5 Feb. 1894, and Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 14 June 1894; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letters nos. 82 and 83, 16 May and 9 July 1894, HWSMSS Lilly. Frances Willard to ‘Dearie Stevie’ [Lillian Stevens], 27 Apr. 1894; Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 14 June 1894, and circular letter no. 81, 10 Mar. 1894, HWSMSS Lilly. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.4–5; Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 7 Mar. 1894, FEWC; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letters nos.

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NOTES

16.

17. 18.

19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

TO

PAGES 147–148

269

80 and 81, 20 Jan and 10 Mar. 1894, HWSMSS Lilly; NBWTA NEC minutes, 30 Sept. 1893, p.49; NBWTA NESC minutes, 4 Apr. 1894, p.216; Woman’s Signal Supplement, 20 Jan. 1894, p.68. Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 83, 9 July 1894, HWSMSS Lilly; Shall Women Have the Vote?, handbill, June 1894, reproduced in Rubenstein, Before the Suffragettes, plate 10. Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘Carrie’ [Lawrence?], 27 Feb. 1894, HWSMSS Lilly. NBWTA NEC minutes, 30 Sept. and 29 Nov. 1893, pp.60–2, 82; 20 July 1894, pp.116–17; NBWTA NESC minutes, 22 Nov. 1893, p.158; 19 and 29 May, 20 June, 18 July, 12 and 28 Sept. 1894, pp.225, 228, 244, 248, 262; ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.47–9; NBWTA AR, p.25; Woman’s Signal, 27 Sept. 1894, p.204. For a full discussion of the development and role of the NBWTA Colony for Female Inebriates, Duxhurst, see Chapter 12. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 4 May 1894, LHSC; NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.34, 35–6, 45, 53; Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 13 May 1894, HWSMSS Lilly. Woman’s Signal, 16 Aug. 1894, p.98; Isabel Somerset to ‘My dear Friend and Comrade’ [Lillian Stevens], 14 July 1894, and Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 5 May and 7 Aug. 1894, FEWC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Mary Costelloe, 14 June 1894, and circular letter no. 83, 9 July 1894, HWSMSS Lilly. Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 3 Sept. 1894, HWSMSS Lilly; Lady Somers to Frances Willard, 22 Sept. 1894, FEWC. Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 10 Sept., and Frances Willard to Alys [Smith Russell], 27 Dec. 1894, HWSMSS Lilly; Frances Willard to ‘Stevie Dearest’ [Lillian Stevens], 3 Oct. and 22 Dec. 1894; Anna Gordon to Frances Willard, 22 Dec. 1894, FEWC; Our Message, official organ of the Massachusetts WCTU, 10 (Jan. 1895), pp.1–2; Isabel Somerset, ‘One more unfortunate’, serialized story, Woman’s Signal, 10 to 31 Jan. 1895, pp.2–3, 19, 35, 51, 67; 7 to 21 Feb. 1895, pp.83–4, 99–100, 115–16; Henry C. S. A. Somerset, Land of the Muskeg (London, 1895). Bordin, Frances Willard, 218–20. Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 7 Sept. 1894, and Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 3 Sept. 1894, HWSMSS Lilly; NBWTA NEC minutes, 14 Nov. 1894, pp.124–34; NBWTA NESC minutes, 17 Oct. 1894, p.277. The NEC minutes of the 14 November meeting do not elaborate upon the exact nature of the inebriate–scheme problem. In an 8 October 1894 letter to a friend, Hannah Whitall Smith criticized the woman’s purchase of the site. This site could not have been Duxhurst because NBWTA documents and journal record that terms for Duxhurst were agreed upon and the property leased in September 1894; in addition, both the NESC and the NEC approved these arrangements at their November meetings, at which Isabel described the farm as ‘a most desirable property’. Smith may have been referring to the woman’s premature acquisition of an additional site, as the scheme proposed future development of several farm homes, an expense which would have no doubt placed Duxhurst in jeopardy. See NBWTA NESC minutes, 28 Sept. and 9 Nov. 1894, pp.268–9, 282; NBWTA NEC minutes, 14 Nov. 1894, pp.126–7; Hannah Whitall Smith to Carrie Lawrence, 8 Oct. 1894, HWSMSS Lilly; Woman’s Signal, 27 Sept. 1894, p.204; ‘Farm homes for inebriate women’, Woman’s Signal

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25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

38.

39.

40.

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TO

PAGES 149–152

Supplement, 25 Jan. 1894, p.68; NBWTA AR, 1894 and 1895, pp.136, 25. The AR, 1895, mistakenly gives the date of the Duxhurst lease as August 1894. ‘A New Year letter from the President of the NBWTA’, Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Jan. 1895), pp.37–8. NBWTA NEC minutes, 19 Mar. 1895, p.154; Mary Ward Poole to Isabel Somerset, 16 Feb. 1895, FEWC; Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Apr. 1895), p.90. NBWTA NEC minutes, 19 Mar. 1895; NBWTA AR, 1895, pp.87, 105; Public Conference of Workers, NBWTA printed leaflets, announcing meetings at Dover on 25 April and at Ipswich on 29 April, NBWTAUF; Woman’s Signal, 4 Apr. and 30 May 1895, pp.222, 350; Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Apr. 1895), p.94, and 1 (May 1895), pp.106–7. For details of the malcontents’ assaults on Isabel, see Chapters 13 to 14. ‘After the convention: a talk with Lady Henry Somerset’, The Echo, newspaper cutting, n.d. HWSMSS Asbury; ‘Our world’s convention pilgrimage’, Young Woman, Sept. 1895, pp.8–11; ‘Albert Hall Meeting’, Woman’s Signal, 27 June 1895, pp.441–3. Frances Willard to ‘Dearest Stevie’ [Lillian Stevens], 17 July 1895, and ‘Pooley’ [Mary Ward Poole] to ‘Stevie’ [Lillian M. Stevens], 18 July 1895, FEWC; Isabel Somerset, ‘To the work’, Woman’s Signal, 11 and 25 July 1895, pp.24, 57. NBWTA AR, 1896, p.108; Dingle, The Campaign for Prohibition. Frances Willard to ‘My dear Sister’ [Hannah Bailey], 5 July 1895, FEWC; NBWTA AR, 1896, p.108; ‘What part did the BWTA play in the Liberal Party defeat at the last general election?’ and ‘The Liberal defeat’, Woman’s Signal, 8 and 22 Aug. 1895, pp.93–4, 125–6. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.13–17. NBWTA AR, 1896, p.108. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.17–19; ‘The present position of the temperance movement’ and ‘A question for consideration by temperance women’, Woman’s Signal, 21 Nov. 1895 and 20 Aug. 1896, pp.323, 121. For the council discussion, see the AR, p.61. For details of the gradual evolution and adoption of the new policy, see Chapter 15. Mary Ward Poole to ‘Stevie’ [Lillian Stevens], 18 July 1895, FEWC. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 17 Nov., 9 and 21 Dec. 1895, and Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 26 Dec. 1895, FEWC; Woman’s Signal Supplement, 20 Feb. 1896, p. i. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 9 and 21 Dec. 1895, LHSC; Lizzie Osborn to Frances Willard, 21 Dec. 1895; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 5 Nov., 3, 8, and 11 Dec. 1895; Edith Goode to Frances Willard, 18 Dec. 1895; Frances Willard to ‘Stevie’ [Lillian Stevens], 4 May 1896, FEWC; NBWTA AR, 1896, p.127; Woman’s Signal, 19 Dec. 1895, p.396; Woman’s Signal Supplement, 20 Feb. 1896, p. iii. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 4 and 8 Nov. n.y., and 8 and 31 Jan. 1896, LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 5 and 11 Nov. 1895, FEWC; Woman’s Signal, 21 Nov. 1895, p.323. Isabel Somerset to Mrs. Bedford Fenwick, 27 Nov. 1895; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 29 Nov. and 9 Dec. 1895; Rachel Avery Foster to Isabel Somerset, 30 Mar. 1894; Ethel S. Fenwick to Isabel Somerset, 6 Dec. 1895, LHSC; ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, AR, 1896, pp.36–7; Woman’s Signal, 13 Feb.

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NOTES

41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

46.

47. 48.

49.

1. 2.

TO

PAGES 153–155

271

1896, p.105; ‘A Proposed National Council of Women’, untitled newspaper cutting, n.d., NBWTAUF. The National Council was the British section of the International Council of Women, which along with an American national chapter had been established in the United States in 1888. The councils were nonpolitical and non-sectarian and dedicated to the furtherance of women’s rights. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 9 Jan. and 6 Mar. 1896, LHSC. Gregory, Lord Somers, 11; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 3 Dec. 1895, 9 and 12 Mar. 1897, FEWC; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 31 Oct. 1895 and 6 Mar. n.y., LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 16 Apr. 1897, FEWC; Hooper, Reigate, 39–43; Woman’s Signal, 29 Aug. 1895, p.125; Lady Henry Somerset, ‘A New Year’s Letter’, Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Jan. 1895), pp.37–8. Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 26 Dec. 1895 and 2 Jan. 1896, FEWC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 15 Dec. 1895 and 10 Mar. 1896, FEWC; Mary Ward Poole, ‘The Industrial Farm Colony, Duxhurst, Reigate’, manuscript, EP; NBWTA AR, 1895, p.93, and 1896, p.152. For Isabel’s outlay on the British Women’s journals, see Chapter 9. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 55. See, for example, Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 17 Sept. 1895, FEWC; NBWTA NESC minutes, 20 June 1894, p.242; NBWTA AR, 1895, p.31, and 1896, p.32; ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 33–5; ‘Lady Henry Somerset: social reformer’, Daily Telegraph (London), 14 Mar. 1921, newspaper cutting, ECA; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 14 Feb. 1896, p.15; Woman’s Signal Supplement, 18 June 1896, p. i; ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, Christian Standard and Home Journal, 13 July 1893, p.6; Noyes, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’; Jane A. Stewart, ‘A talk with Lady Henry Somerset’, Christian Endeavour World, 20 Nov. 1902, pp.145–6; Shafts, 24 Dec. 1892, p.125; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 7 Nov. 1893, pp.74–5. For the Armenian refugee project, see Chapter 11. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 4 May 1894, 30 Dec. 1895, 3 Jan. and 15 Dec. 1896; Harriet B. Kells to Isabel Somerset, 25 Nov. 1895, LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 7 Dec. 1895, 24 Feb. and 10 Mar. 1896, FEWC. Bordin, Frances Willard, 226. See, for example, Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, Friday, n.d., and 17 Jan., 14 Feb., 16 Mar., 4 Apr. 1896; Isabel Somerset to ‘Stevie’ and ‘My dear and trusted Friend’ [Lillian Stevens], 2 and 27 Feb. 1894, LHSC; [Frances Willard?] to ‘Dearest Stevie’ [Lillian Stevens], 4 May 1896, first page only, and Lillian Stevens to Anna Gordon, 19 May n.y., FEWC; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letters nos. 72 and 74, 10 Apr. and 10 July 1893, HWSMSS Lilly; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 14 Oct. 1896, p.20; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 12 Aug., 2 and 29 Sept. 1893, pp.47–8, 54, 60–1, and entries for 12 Jan. and 27 Apr. 1896, pp.5, 38. Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 9 and 24 Sept. 1893, pt.1, pp.56 and 59.

Chapter 11: Diversions ‘Coming of age of Mr. Somers Somerset’, Woman’s Signal, 22 Aug. 1895, p.125. Frances Willard to ‘Dearest Stevie’ [Lillian Stevens], 17 Sept. 1895, FEWC; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 23 June 1896, p.49; Woman’s Signal, 10 Oct. 1895, p.233.

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4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

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PAGES 155–159

Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 23 and 26 Sept., 19 Nov., 2 and 30 Dec. n.y., LHSC; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 12 Jan. 1896, p.5. This is the first reference to Lady Katherine in Isabel’s correspondence. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, Tuesday, n.d., 19 and 31 Oct. n.y., and 25 Nov. n.y. (all 1895), LHSC; NBWTA NESC minutes, 4 Dec. 1895, p.390; The Times (London), 24 Jan. 1896, p.7; Woman’s Signal, 16 Jan. 1896, p.41. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 12 Mar. 1897; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 20 Jan. 1896, FEWC. Pencilled notation on reverse of the letter: the notation is not signed but is in Willard’s handwriting and is headed ‘7 Feb. 1896, St. Augustine, Florida’, where she was currently staying. It can be assumed that the details of Worcester’s personal life were previously imparted to Willard by Isabel; Woman’s Signal, 10 Oct. 1895, p.233; The Times (London), 10 Oct. 1895, p.7. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 17 and 25 Nov., 20 Dec. 1895, 8 and 17 Jan. 1896, Tuesday 18th, n.m., n.y., 21 Jan. n.y., and 24 Jan. n.y., LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 5 Nov. and 3 Dec. 1895, 20 and 24 Jan. 1896; Edith Goode to Frances Willard, 4 Jan. 1896 and Edith Goode to Anna Gordon and Frances Willard, 28 Nov. 1895, FEWC; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 9 and 24 Jan.1896, pp.4, 14; Woman’s Signal, 26 Dec. 1895, p.409. Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 15 Dec. 1895, FEWC. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, Tuesday 18th, n.m., n.y., and 24 Jan. n.y.; Somers Somerset to Frances Willard, 27 Jan. 1896 (In his letter to Willard, Somey spells the poet’s name ‘Stephenson’, as does Isabel in hers of Tuesday 18th, but she uses the correct ‘Stevenson’ in the letter of 24 Jan.); Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 24 Jan. 1896, LHSC. The Times (London), 24 Jan. 1896, p.7; Morning Post (London), 24 Jan. 1896, p.6; Woman’s Signal, 30 Jan. 1896, pp.70-1. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, Tuesday 18th, n.m., n.y., 28 Jan. n.y., and Friday 31, n.m., n.y.; M. M. Pollen to Isabel Somerset, 23 and 28 Jan. 1896; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 24 Jan. and 4 Feb. 1896, FEWC; Woman’s Signal, 30 Jan. 1896, p.70. See, for example, Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 10 Dec. n.y. and 28 Jan. 1896; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 1 Oct., 5 Nov., 11 Dec. 1895, 7 and 20 Jan. 1896; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 21 Jan. 1896, FEWC. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 11 Nov. 1895, 8 Jan., 7, 14, and 27 Feb. 1896, LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 7 and 24 Jan., 23 Mar. 1896; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 21 Jan. and 24 Feb. 1896, FEWC. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 19 n.y. and 25 Oct. 1895; 8 Nov. n.y., 30 Dec. n.y., 9, 17, 21 and 28 Jan. n.y., Tues. 18th n.m., n.y., and 11 and 25 Feb. n.y.; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 24 Feb. 1896, FEWC; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 30 Jan. and 6 July, 1896, pp.11, 52; The Times (London), 24 Jan. 1896, p.7. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 31 Oct. n.y., 10, 20, and 21 Dec. 1895, 9 Jan. 1896, 21 and 31 Jan. n.y, LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 24 Feb. 1896, FEWC. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, Tuesday, n.d., and 24 Jan. n.y., LHSC; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 1 Mar. 1896, p.399. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 26 Dec. n.y. and 6 Mar. 1896, LHSC.

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PAGES 159–162

273

16. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 25 Feb. n.y., LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 24 Feb. 1896, FEWC. Isabel’s and Mary Ward Poole’s correspondence contains accounts of engagements kept by Isabel during late February and March. See, for example, Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 21, 27 Feb. n.y., 6 and 24 Mar. 1896, 20 Mar. n.y., LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 3, 10, and 23 Mar. 1896, FEWC. 17. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 14, 19, 21, 25 Feb. n.y., 11, 13 and 20 Mar. n.y., 6 and 16 Mar. 1896; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, cablegrams, 21 and 31 Jan., 11 and 27 Feb., 4, 6, 16 and 24 Mar., 2 and 4 Apr. 1896, LHSC; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 12 Mar. 1896, pt.2, p.24. 18. Bordin, Frances Willard, 225–7; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, undated correspondence but 1896, LHSC; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 1 May 1896, p.408; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 29 Apr., 23 May, 15 and 17 June 1896, pp.39, 43, 48; Hooper, Reigate, 43. 19. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 20 Dec. n.y., 6 Mar. n.y., and 4 Apr. n.y., LHSC; Diary of Frances Willard, entry for 1 May 1896, cited in Bordin, Frances Willard, 226; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, pt.2, entries for 8 and 17 May 1896, pp.41, 42. 20. NBWTA AR, 1896, p.49; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entries for 4 and 6 June, 6 July, 10 and 14 Aug. 1896, pp.409, 411, 414; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, pt.2, entries for 1, 3, 9, 14, 15, 17, and 30 June, 4, 11, 15, 19, 24, and 26 July, 3, 9, 10–28 Aug., 2–11 Sept. 1896, pp.44–5, 47–8, 51, 53–63; Woman’s Signal, 10 Sept. 1896, p.168. 21. Bordin, Frances Willard, 228; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 114. For a contemporary account of the Armenian atrocities, see Frederick Davis Greene, The Armenian Crisis in Turkey: The Massacre of 1894, Its Antecedents and Significance (London and New York, 1895). For a more recent interpretation, see David Marshall Lang, Armenia, Cradle of Civilization, 3rd. ed. (London, 1980). 22. ‘The Armenian refugees in Marseilles’, White Ribbon Signal, 1 (Nov. 1896), pp.1–2; Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 336. 23. Armenian Women of Constantinople to Isabel Somerset, n.d., EP; Mary Ward Poole to Isabel Somerset, 16 Feb. 1895, LHSC; To the Secretaries of the Branches: Circular from the Muswell Hill, East Finchley, and Highgate Branches of the BWTA. 4 Feb. 1895, NBWTAUF; NBWTA NESC minutes, 18 Sept. and 2 Oct. 1895, pp.374, 376; NBWTA AR, p.26; ‘A cry from Armenia’, Shafts, 3 (Dec. 1895), p.132; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 24 Mar. 1896, 31 Mar. n.y., and 2 Dec. n.y., LHSC; ‘New Year’s letter to the National British Women’s Temperance Association, from their president, the Lady Henry Somerset’, Woman’s Signal, 16 Jan. 1896. For the WCTU’s fundraising efforts, see Bordin, Frances Willard, 229. 24. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 3 and 8 Jan., 4 and 7 Feb., 6, 16, and 20 Mar. 1896, LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 23 Mar. 1896, FEWC. Lord Salisbury did attempt to persuade European governments to launch joint action to constrain the Turks, but the Germans, who hoped to make the Sultan an ally, declined to co-operate, and Salisbury’s efforts failed. See Robert Taylor, Lord Salisbury (London, 1975), 168–71. 25. Bolton, Famous Leaders Among Women, 265. 26. Bordin, Frances Willard, 229; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 143.

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PAGES 162–167

27. NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.45–7; ‘Armenian atrocities’, Woman’s Signal, 9 May 1895, p.302. 28. Lady Henry Somerset, ‘A call to women to help the Armenians’, and Frances Willard, ‘To the women of America’, Woman’s Signal, 17 Sept. 1896, p.183. See also the edition of 24 Sept. 1896, p.198; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 13 Sept. 1896, p.63. 29. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entries for 19–24 Sept. 1896, pp.415–16; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 13 Sept. 1896, p.63; ‘Armenian horrors’ and ‘Lady Henry Somerset’s efforts for the Armenian refugees’, Woman’s Signal, 24 Sept. and 1 Oct. 1896, pp.198, 215; ‘Armenian refugees at Marseilles’, White Ribbon Signal, 1 (Nov. 1896), p.2; ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 17–19; Chappell, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, 52–4; Bordin, Frances Willard, 230. 30. Quoted in Woman’s Signal, 24 Sept. 1896, p.198; Armenian Community in Paris to Isabel Somerset, 29 Oct. 1896, EP. 31. Isabel Somerset to Florence Fenwick Miller, 2 Oct. 1896, in Woman’s Signal, 8 Oct. 1896, p.230; see also 15 Oct. 1896, p.245. 32. Poins, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, 10; Bordin, Frances Willard, 230. 33. ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 17–19; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entries for 1 and 2 Oct. 1896, pp.418–9; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, pt. 2, entries for 30 Sept., 3, 21–23, 25–26, and 31 Oct. 1896, pp.68–70, 73–5; Gordon, The Beautiful Life, 230–43. 34. Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 12 Oct. 1896, FEWC; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entries for 11 and 14 Oct. 1896, pp.419–20; ‘The Armenians in Marseilles’, Woman’s Signal, 1 (Nov. 1896), p.2. 35. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, ‘In the train, Tuesday’, n.d., 6, 13, and 17 Nov. 1896, LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 5, 7, and 27 Nov. and 7 Dec. 1896, FEWC. 36. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 9 Dec. 1896, LHSC. Corinna Shatuck was a missionary with the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. 37. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, ‘In the train, Tuesday’, n.d., and 6, 10, 13, 17, 20, 24, and 28 Nov., 1, 4, and 6 Dec. 1896, and 1 Jan. 1897, LHSC; ‘Lady Henry Somerset’s efforts for the Armenian refugees’, Woman’s Signal, 1896, 313; NBWTA AR, 1897, pp.119, 122. 38. Bordin, Francis Willard, 230. 39. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 9 Dec. 1896 and 5 Mar. 1897, LHSC; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 1, 4, 19, and 22 Jan., 8, 12, and 26 Feb., 5 and 12 Mar. 1897, FEWC; Woman’s Signal, 18 Mar. 1897, p.172. Isabel did contribute seed money to establish one orphanage at Ourfa, to be run by American missionaries, on condition it be called the WCTU orphanage. See Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 12 Mar. 1897, LHSC. 40. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 9 Dec. 1896, LHSC. 41. See, for example, Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 4, 15, and 29 Dec. 1896. See also Chapter 12.

1.

Chapter 12: Duxhurst Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 12 Feb. and 12 Mar. 1897, LHSC; NBWTA NEC minutes, 29 Nov. 1893, p.82; NBWTA NESC minutes, 10 Jan. 1894, p.184;

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PAGES 167–173

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Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 81, 10 Mar. 1894, HWSMSS Lilly; ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894 and 1895, pp.47–9, 32–5; NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.13–14; Woman’s Herald, 21 Dec. 1893, p.697. 2. NBWTA NESC minutes, 22 Nov. 1893, p.158; NWBTA AR, 1896, p.110. 3. Mellor et al, ‘Prayers and piecework’; Branthwaite, ‘The Inebriates Act, 1898’. 4. NBWTA NESC minutes, 6 Dec. 1893, p.160; NBWTA AR, 1895, pp.16–17; ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894–97, pp.48, 32, 11–13, 223; Somerset, ‘The Duxhurst Farm Colony for Female Inebriates’. 5. NBWTA NESC minutes, 19 May and 28 Sept. 1894, pp.222, 269; ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, p.48; ‘What is the Duxhurst Home?’, Woman’s Signal, 6 July 1896, pp.34–5. See also 11 Jan. and 27 Sept. 1894, pp.30, 204; Woman’s Signal Supplement, Feb. 1894, p.136; Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Sept. 1894), p.6. 6. G. Hunt, J. Mellor, and J. Turner, ‘Wretched, hatless and miserably clad: women and the inebriate reformatories from 1900–1913’, British Journal of Sociology, 40 (June 1989), pp.244–270. 7. NBWTA NEC minutes, 20 July 1894, pp.116–17; NBWTA NESC minutes, 19 May 1894, pp.223–5; Hannah Whitall Smith, circular letter no. 81, 10 Mar. 1894, HWSMSS Lilly; ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894 and 1895, pp.47–9, 33–4; NBWTA AR, 1894 and 1895, pp.136, 129; Dr Sarah Anderson Brown, ‘Farm homes for inebriate women’, Woman’s Signal Supplement, 25 Jan. 1894. 8. NBWTA NEC minutes, 19 Mar. 1895, pp.157–9; NBWTA NESC minutes, 1 May 1895, p.336; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 21 Dec. n.y., LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 15 Dec. 1895, FEWC; Isabel Somerset, ‘A New Year letter from the President of the NBWTA’, Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Jan. 1895), pp.37–8; NBWTA, AR, 1895, p.25; Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Aug. 1895), p.iii; 1 (Feb. 1895), p.64; ‘Letters from the President’, Woman’s Signal, 19 Sept. 1895, p.187. 9. ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1895, pp.32–5; NBWTA NEC minutes, 30 Oct. 1895 and 29 Jan. 1896, pp.212, 223–25; NBWTA AR, 1895, pp.91–2; ‘The industrial home for inebriate women’, Woman’s Signal, 1 Aug. 1895, p.78; ‘Happy holidays in Surrey’, Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Aug. 1895), pp.149–50; Woman’s Signal Supplement, 19 Mar. 1896, p.i; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 15 Dec. 1895, 21 Jan. and 24 Feb. 1896, FEWC. 10. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, Tues. in train, n.d.; Friday, Ashley Gardens, n.d.; 30 Sept. n.y.; 15 and 17 Nov. n.y., 4 Nov. and 9 Dec. 1895; 8 Jan 1896 [incorrectly dated 1895]; 28 Jan. n.y., LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 1 Oct., 11 Nov., and 3 Dec. 1895; 4 Feb. and 3 Mar. 1896; Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 17 Sept. 1895; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 10 Mar. 1896, FEWC; NBWTA NEC minutes, 1896, p.226; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 4 Apr. 1896, p.31. 11. NBWTA NEC minutes, 29 Jan. 1896, p.225; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 8 Jan. 1896 [incorrectly dated 1895], LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 26 Dec. 1895, FEWC. 12. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 9 and 21 Dec. 1895; 8 Jan. and 7 Feb. 1896, LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 5 and 11 Nov. 1895 and 7 Feb. 1896; [Lizzie Lesham?] to Frances Willard, 21 Dec. 1895, FEWC; NBWTA AR, 1896,

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13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

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p.129; Woman’s Signal, 1 Aug., 21 Nov. and 19 Dec. 1895, pp.78, 323, 396, and 16 July 1896, p.34; Woman’s Signal Supplement, 20 Feb. and 18 June, 1896, pp.iii, ii. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.8, 11; ‘What is the Duxhurst home?’, Woman’s Signal, 16 July 1896, pp.34–5; Woman’s Signal Supplement, 22 Feb and 18 June 1896, pp.136, ii. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 21 Dec. n.y., Tues. n.d., and 31 Jan. n.y., LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 6 and 21 Jan. 1896; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 7 Feb. 1896, FEWC. NBWTA NEC minutes, 25 Mar. 1896, p.231; Lady Somers to Mary Ward Poole, 15 July 1896, EP; ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 25; ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.7–11; Frances Willard, ‘The Duxhurst dedication’, Woman’s Signal, 4 June 1896, p.359; Woman’s Signal, 19 Dec. 1895, p.396; 19 Mar. and 16 July 1896, pp.1, 33–5. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 16 July 1897, LHSC; Norsworthy, ‘Beauty to Ashes’; Rev. E. F. Russell, ‘A village home’, Ideal Home, Dec. 1923, periodical article, ECA; Woman’s Signal, 18 June 1896, p.294. Woman’s Signal, 4 June 1896, p.358; Woman’s Signal Supplement, 18 June 1896, p.ii. Lady Henry Somerset, ‘A year’s work at Duxhurst’, Woman’s Signal, 21 Jan. 1897, p.86; Norsworthy, ‘Beauty to Ashes’, p.7; Mellor, et al, ‘Prayers and piecework’, p.200–1. Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Report of the Industrial Farm Home’, NBWTA AR, 1897, pp.127–31; Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Duxhurst’, pt.1, Surrey Magazine, 1 (1900), pp.21–3. Lady Henry Somerset, Beauty for Ashes (London, 1912), quoted in Norsworthy, ‘Beauty to Ashes’, p.4. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 15, 25 and 29 Dec. 1896; 4 Jan., 23 Mar., 19 Apr. and 11 May 1897; Sunday, n.d., LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 27 Nov., 7 and 28 Dec. 1896, 18 Mar. and 8 July 1897; Agnes Slack to Frances Willard, 24 June 1897, FEWC; ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1896, p.9; Somerset, Beauty for Ashes, cited in Norsworthy, ‘Beauty to Ashes’, p.4; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 9 Aug. 1896, pt. 2, p.58; Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, pp.215–16. ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1895, p.35; Lady Henry Somerset, ‘A New Year’s letter’, Woman’s Signal Supplement, 16 Jan. 1896, pp.i–ii; Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Duxhurst’, pt.2, Surrey Magazine, 1 (Feb. 1900), pp.50–3; Somerset, ‘A year’s work at Duxhurst’, Shafts, 4 (Feb. 1896), p.8. ‘What is a Duxhurst home?’, Woman’s Signal, 16 July 1896, pp.34–5; ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, p.49; Lady Henry Somerset, ‘Report of the Industrial Farm Home’, NBWTA AR, 1897, p.130. Lady Henry Somerset, Beauty for Ashes, quoted in Norsworthy, ‘Beauty to Ashes’, p.3. Frances Willard, ‘The Duxhurst dedication’, Woman’s Signal, 4 June 1896, p.359; Somerset, ‘Report of the Industrial Farm Home’, NBWTA AR, 1896, p.10; Mary Ward Poole, ‘The Church at Duxhurst’, unpublished manuscript, attached to ‘Keepsakes of Memory’.

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26. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 4 Dec. 1896 and Apr. 16 n.y., LHSC; Somerset, ‘A year’s work at Duxhurst’; Somerset, ‘Report of the Industrial Farm Home’, NBWTA AR, 1897 and 1903, pp.128, 139. 27. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 8 Jan. 1896, LHSC. 28. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 4 Nov. n.y.; 8 Jan. 1896 [incorrectly dated 1895], LHSC; Edith Goode and Emma Fuller to Frances Willard, 28 Nov. 1895, FEWC; The Times (London), 18 Jan. 1896, p.4; Woman’s Signal, 5 Sept., 7 Nov. 1895, pp.151, 297; 23 Jan., 13 Mar. 1896, pp.56, 170; 15 Dec. 1898, p.374; The Times (London), 18 Jan. 1896, p.4. 29. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 7 Feb. and 1, 6, 20 Mar. 1896, LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 10 Mar., 7 Dec. 1896, FEWC; Woman’s Signal, 13 and 26 Mar. 1896, pp.170, 202. 30. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 2 Mar., 18 June, 2, 16 and 28 July 1897, LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 15 Jan., 8 July 1897; Lillian Stevens to Frances Willard, 28 June, 6, 16, and 21 July 1897, and from ‘47 Victoria St’, n.d., FEWC; NBWTA NEC minutes, 9 Feb. 1897, p.278, and 28 Sept. 1898, p.336; Josephine Butler to Fanny Forsaith, 15 Dec. 1897, Josephine Butler Papers, Women’s Library, Metropolitan University, London (JBP); Somerset, ‘Report of the Industrial Farm Home’, NBWTA AR, 1898, pp.141–5; NBWTA AR, 1897 and 1898, pp.56, 38–9; Woman’s Signal, 15 Apr., 11 Nov. 1897, pp.230, 313; 19 May, 18 June 1898, pp.311, 379. 31. NBWTA NEC minutes, 9 Feb. 1897, 22 Feb. 1898, pp.278, 361–2; NBWTA NESC minutes, 20 Jan. 1897, pp.494–5; NBWTA AR, 1897, pp.53–4. 32. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 28 Nov. n.y., LHSC; Somerset, ‘Report of the Industrial Farm Colony, Duxhurst’, NBWTA AR, 1898 and 1900, pp.141–3, 110–11; Woman’s Signal, 26 Nov. 1896, p.334, and Somerset, ‘A year’s work at Duxhurst’, Woman’s Signal, 21 Jan. 1897, pp.86-7; NBWTA AR, 1899, p.40. 33. Lady Henry Somerset, ‘The Industrial Farm Colony, Duxhurst’, NBWTA AR, 1898, 1900, 1902, pp.141–5, 110–13, 128–34; NBWTA AR, 1900, pp.43, 81.

1.

2.

3.

Chapter 13: Challenges Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 12 Feb., 2 Mar., 2 and 16 Apr. 1897, LHSC; Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 23 Feb. 1897: Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 3 and 12 Feb., 15, 19, 23 and 30 Mar., 6 Apr., 1 June 1897; Agnes Slack to Frances Willard, 12 Apr. 1897, FEWC; NBWTA NEC minutes, 9 Feb. and 7 Apr. 1897, pp.272, 289, and NBWTA NESC minutes, 3 Feb. 1897, p.498; NBWTA AR, 1897, pp.56–7; Woman’s Signal, 18 Mar. 1897, p.175. Alfreda M. Duster (ed.), Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Chicago, 1970); Jacqueline J. Royster (ed.), Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892–1900 (Boston, 1997), 33–5; Patricia A. Schechter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001), 90–2; Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History (London, 1992), 172–75. Carolyn L. Karcher, ‘Ida B. Wells and her allies against lynching’, Comparative American Studies, 3 (2005), pp.131–51; Schechter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 93; Ware, Beyond the Pale, 184–90.

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10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

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Karcher, ‘Ida B. Wells’, 141–42; Royster, Southern Horrors, 35–6; Ware, Beyond the Pale, 169–72. Duster (ed.), Crusade for Justice, 125–31; Royster, Southern Horrors, 37; Schechter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 91–3; Ware, Beyond the Pale, 175–77. Duster, Crusade for Justice, 131, 154–55; Schechter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 98–102. Duster, Crusade for Justice, 112–13. Bordin, Frances Willard, 216–18; Schechter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 111–12. Bordin, Frances Willard, 217–18; Schechter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 102; Ware, Beyond the Pale, 200; Ida B. Wells, ‘Mr. Moody and Miss Willard’, Fraternity, 15 May 1894, pp.15–16. Duster, Crusade for Justice, 203. Lady Henry Somerset, ‘White and black in America: an interview with Miss Willard’, Westminster Gazette, 21 May 1894, p.3; Ware, Beyond the Pale, 202–3. Ida B. Wells, ‘Letter to the editor’, Westminster Gazette, 22 May 1894, p.2. See also Duster, Crusade for Justice, 208–9. NBWTA AR, 1894; ‘Annual council meetings’, Woman’s Signal, 17 May 1894, pp.337–38. For Florence Balgarnie, see Lilian L. Shiman, ‘Florence Balgarnie’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004–6). Balgarnie had also been superintendent of the NBWTA political department but resigned in July 1894 because of pressure of work and ill health. See NBWTA NEC minutes, 20 July 1894, p.119; Woman’s Signal, 22 Nov. 1894, p.338. Duster, Crusade for Justice, 202–3; Ware, Beyond the Pale, 209–11, 217–20. ‘Report of the Annual Council Meeting, 1893’, section 1, Wednesday, 3 May, typescript, pp.19, 26, NBWTAUF. The minutes of the annual council were later included in the printed Annual Report but not in the edition for the general public. Cited in Bordin, Frances Willard, 222, 273 n.24. To the Secretaries of the Branches: Circular from the Muswell Hill, East Finchley, and Highgate Branches of the BWTA. Anna Gordon to Isabel Somerset, 16 Feb. 1895, FEWC. Lady Henry Somerset’s Statement Concerning Accusations of Miss Florence Balgarnie, June 1895–May 1896, NBWTAUF (hereafter cited as Lady Henry Somerset’s Statement); ‘The NWCTU of the United States and the coloured people’, Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Apr. 1895), p.8. An edited version of this statement appears in Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 361. NBWTA NEC minutes, 19 Mar. 1895, pp.163–81, italics added. Florence Balgarnie to Isabel Somerset, 14 June 1895, in Lady Henry Somerset’s Statement, 3–4. William Lloyd Garrison to Isabel Somerset, 14 June and 19 July 1896, and Mrs Frederick Douglass to Isabel Somerset, cablegram, 23 May 1896, in Lady Henry Somerset’s Statement, 6–7, 9; see also pp.4–5, NBWTAUF. See also Woman’s Signal, 20 June 1895, p.404; Union Signal, 11 July 1895, p.4. NBWTA AR, 1895, pp.46–7. Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 26 June 1895, FEWC. NBWTA NEC minutes, 20 June 1895, pp.203–6.

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PAGES 189–192

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27. NBWTA NESC minutes, 24 July, 4 and 18 Sept., 20 Nov. 1895, pp.430–1, 372–3, 373–4, 390; 15 and 22 Apr. 1896, pp.430–1, 435. 28. NBWTA NESC minutes, 12 May 1895, p.438; 1 Apr. and 12 May, 1896, pp.428–9, 438–9; NBWTA NEC minutes, 30 Oct. 1895, pp.217–18; 25 Mar. 1896, pp.241–2; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 17 Nov. n.y., LHSC; National Executive Committee and Miss. F. Balgarnie. NEC private circular for NBWTA members only, n.d., and Hull NBWTA branch, Shall We Not Arbitrate? To the Officers, Delegates, and Members of the BWTA Branches, 29 Apr. 1896, NBWTAUF. 29. NBWTA NEC minutes, 29 Jan. and 25 Mar. 1896, pp.228–9, 241–44; NBWTA NESC minutes, 20 Nov. 1895, p.390; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 29 Oct. n.y., LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 31 Oct. and 7 Dec. 1895; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 5 Nov. 1895, FEWC; Shall We Not Arbitrate?, 1; Florence Balgarnie to Isabel Somerset, 17 May 1896, in Lady Henry Somerset’s Statement, 10; Woman’s Signal, 28 Nov. 1895, p.345. 30. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 9 Dec. 1895, LHSC; NBWTA NESC minutes, 18 Dec. 1895, p.396. 31. NBWTA NEC minutes, 6 May 1896, pp.437–8; Isabel Somerset to Florence Balgarnie, 7 May 1896, in Lady Henry Somerset’s Statement, 10; see also 11. 32. NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.47, 49; NBWTA NESC minutes, 20 May 1896, p.443; Lady Henry Somerset’s Statement, 1–11; Woman’s Signal, 18 June 1896, p.i; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 3 June 1896, p.45. 33. Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart, entry for 4 June 1896, p.49. 34. Ware, Beyond the Pale, 218. 35. I have been unable to locate any of Balgarnie’s personal papers. Despite the generous assistance of NBWTAU officers, the relevant records of the Muswell Hill Branch could not be found, and a search through primary and secondary sources pertaining to the NBWTA and this issue failed to provide any evidence of Balgarnie’s views on the incident. 36. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 191,198; Bell, Josephine Butler, 233. 37. ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, BWTA AR, 1891, pp.34–6; 1892, pp.37–8; NBWTA AR, 1894, pp.101–4; 1896, pp.96–8, 103–7; Woman’s Herald, June 1893, p.251. 38. Lady Henry Somerset, ‘The living pictures: to the women of England’, and ‘Press comments on the appeal to the women of England’, Woman’s Signal, 2 and 16 Aug. 1894, pp.63, 109; Woman’s Herald, 29 June 1893, p.299; ‘Lady Henry’s plans’, New York Sun, 29 Nov. 1894, p.1, cited in Pivar, The Purity Crusade, 235–6. 39. For an overview of the campaign to abolish the Contagious Diseases Acts, see McHugh, Prostitution; Petrie, A Singular Iniquity; Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society. For the situation in India, see Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, chaps. 2 and 3; Burton, Burdens of History, 128–169; Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics. 40. British Committee for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice in India, pamphlet, 15 Oct. 1893, NBWTAUF; Dawn, 1 July 1891, no. 13, p.4; 1 Jan. and 1 July 1893, nos. 17 and 20, pp.4, 5; Woman’s Herald, 1 June 1893, p.227; Woman’s Signal, 24 May 1894, p.359; Woman’s Signal Budget, 1 (Aug. 1894), p.2. 41. BWTJ, 9 (Sept. 1892), p.103.

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PAGES 193–198

42. BWTJ, 9 (Feb. 1891), p.14; Woman’s Herald, 4 and 11 May 1893, pp.162, 178; Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, 69–88; Burton, Burdens of History, 136; Bell, Josephine Butler, 228–32; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 197–201. 43. Woman’s Herald, 1 and 8 June 1893, pp.227, 243–4, 249, 251–2; Josephine Butler to Stanley [Butler], 7 June 1893, JBP; Dawn, 1 July 1893, pp.16, 22; Shafts, 2 (June 1893), p.81; Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entry for 1 June 1893, p.31. 44. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 201–2. 45. NBWTA AR, 1894 and 1895, pp.101, 28. 46. NWCTU AR, 1893, p.89, cited in Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 202. 47. Woman’s Herald, 21 Sept. 1893, p.490. 48. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 202. 49. Bell, Josephine Butler, 234. 50. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 202–3. 51. Josephine Butler to Helen Clark, 6 May 1895, JBP. 52. Josephine Butler to Fanny Forsaith, 30 Mar. 1893 and to ‘Dear Friends’ [The Misses Priestman], 3 May 1895, JBP. 53. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 203. 54. Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 15 Feb. 1894, HWSMSS Lilly; Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 20 Mar. 1894, HWSMSS Asbury. 55. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 202–3. 56. Josephine Butler to Fanny Forsaith, 8 and 15 Apr. 1894, JBP. 57. Josephine Butler to ‘Dear Friends’ [The Misses Priestman], 3 May 1895, quoted in Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 203. 58. Josephine Butler to ‘Dear Friends’ [The Misses Priestman], 3 May 1895, and margin notes to this letter, JBP. 59. Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, 88–92; Shafts, 5 (May 1897), pp.153–5. 60. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 197–8. 61. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 2 and 27 Apr. 1897, LHSC. 62. Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, 91–2. 63. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 204. 64. Agnes Weston to Isabel Somerset, 2 Feb. 1896, and Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 4 Feb. 1896, LHSC. 65. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 2 Mar. 1897, FEWC. 66. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 1 Jan., 13 and 27 Apr. 1897, LHSC; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 2 Mar. 1897, and Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, May 1897, FEWC. 67. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 12, 15, 19, 20 and 26 Jan. 1895; 2, 5 and 23 Feb. 1897, LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 12, 15, 22, 26, 28 Jan., 3 and 4 Feb. 1897, FEWC. 68. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 29 Mar. 1897, LHSC. 69. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 29 Mar. 1897; see also 2 and 9 Apr., 18 June 1897, LHSC. 70. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 204. 71. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 2 Apr. n.y., LHSC. 72. Josephine Butler to Fanny Forsaith, 3 June 1897, JBP. 73. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 2 Apr. n.y. See also Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 6 Apr. 1897, LHSC. 74. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 2 Apr. n.y. and 6 Apr. 1897, LHSC.

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75. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 16 Apr. 1897. See also Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 13 Apr. 1897, LHSC. Walter McLaren was a Liberal MP, supporter in Parliament of women’s suffrage, and a temperance worker. His wife, Eva, was a vice-president of the NBWTA and a suffrage activist. Both were at the forefront of the purity movement. James Stansfield was a stalwart of the abolitionist movement. 76. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, Tuesday, n.d., LHSC. In her letter Isabel does not specify which ‘Committee’ advocated action and compromise, but if she is referring to the British Committee for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice, their remedies would not have included the proposals later recommended by Isabel, as they subsequently issued a formal declaration opposing them in their official organ. See Shield, new series, 1 (Aug. 1897), p.1; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 2 Apr. n.y., LHSC. 77. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 29 Mar. 1897, LHSC. 78. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 6 Apr. 1897, LHSC. See also The Times (London), May 1897, quoted in Woman’s Signal, 20 May 1897, p.313. 79. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 6 Apr. 1897, LHSC. 80. Isabel Somerset to Lord George Hamilton, 13 Apr. 1897, EP. An edited version of this letter appeared in The Times (London), 21 Apr. 1897, p.10, and in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 198–9. 81. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 9 Apr. 1897, LHSC. See also Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 19 Apr. and 4 May 1897, FEWC. 82. See Chapter 14.

Chapter 14: Confrontation Quoted in Woman’s Signal, 20 May 1897, p.313; ‘Open Letter’ from Josephine Butler, 30 May 1897, JBP. 2. Princess Christian, et al., to Lord Salisbury, 24 Apr. 1897, Parliamentary Papers, 1897, LXIII (Cmd. 8495), 637f, cited in Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, 92. Ward was a novelist, social reformer, and architect of the women’s suffrage campaign. Nightingale and Ward signed ‘subject to the establishment of further local enquiries’. 3. Shield, new series, 1 (June 1897), pp.17, 19–24; The Times (London), 19 June 1897, p.10. Woman’s Signal, 17 June 1897, p.379. 4. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 30 Apr. 1897, LHSC. 5. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 205. 6. Josephine Butler to Fanny Forsaith, 26 Apr. and 3 June 1897; Josephine Butler to Miss Priestman, 28 July 1897, JBP. 7. ‘Open Letter’ from Josephine Butler, 30 May 1897, JBP; Josephine Butler, ‘Josephine Butler on the new regulations for the Army in India’, Woman’s Signal, 17 June 1897, p.379. 8. Shield, new series, 1 (May 1897), p.7, and (Aug. 1897), p.33; Sentinel, 19 (Sept. 1897), pp.117–19; Woman’s Signal, 27 May 1897 and 16 Sept. 1897, pp.334, 184. 9. Josephine Butler to Fanny Forsaith, 1 and 3 June 1897, JBP. 10. NBWTA NEC minutes, 11 Nov. 1896, p.263, NBWTAU Archives; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 9 Apr. 1897, FEWC. 1.

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PAGES 203–205

11. Isabel Somerset to Dear Friend, circular letter to the NBWTA membership, 20 July 1897, LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 21 May 1897; Lillian Stevens to Frances Willard, 2 June 1897, FEWC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 25 May and 8 and 24 June 1897, FEWC; Woman’s Signal, 17 June 1897, p.378; Shield, new series, 1 (June 1897), p.18. 12. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 4 June 1897, LHSC; Isabel Somerset to Lady Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle, 9 July 1897, RCP; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 24 June 1897, and Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 16 July 1897, FEWC; ‘Lady Henry Somerset’s Address’, NBWTA AR, 1897, pp.209–228; Woman’s Signal, 17 June 1897, p.378. 13. Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 25 May and 8 June 1897, and Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 18 June and 9 July 1897, FEWC; NBWTA AR, 1897, pp.59–60; Shield, new series, 1 (June 1897). Writing in the Woman’s Signal, Florence Fenwick Miller reported Balgarnie’s amendment had been ruled out of order by Isabel, but Lillian Stevens told Willard that Balgarnie withdrew her motion ‘in the interest of peace’. See ‘British Women’s Temperance Association’, Woman’s Signal, 17 June 1897, p.378; Lillian Stevens to Frances Willard, 2 June 1897, FEWC. 14. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 4 and 18 June 1897, LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 18 June 1897; Lillian Stevens to Frances Willard, n.d., 25 June, 6 and 8 July 1897; Agnes Slack to Frances Willard, 16 July 1897; Elizabeth Blackwell to Frances Willard, 1 July 1897, FEWC. 15. Josephine Butler to Fanny Forsaith, 1 July 1897, JBP; Agnes Slack to Frances Willard, n.d.; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 9 and 16 July 1897, and Hannah Whitall Smith to Agnes Slack, 12 July 1897; Lillian Stevens to Frances Willard, n.d., 16 July and 3 Aug. 1897; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 27 July 1897, FEWC; NBWTA NESC minutes, 3 July 1897, pp.537–8; LNA ‘Memorial’, reprinted in Shafts, 5 (July and Aug. 1897), p.219; Woman’s Signal, 29 July 1897, p.73. The LNA memorial was circulated to women around the United Kingdom and eventually obtained some 61,000 signatures; it was later published as a parliamentary paper. See Parliamentary Papers, 1897, LXIII, East India (Contagious Diseases, No. 7, 1897), pp.4–5; Woman’s Signal, 12 Aug. and 30 Dec. 1897, pp.105, 425. 16. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 3 Aug. 1897, LHSC; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 18 June 1897, FEWC; Woman’s Signal, 20 May, 3 and 17 June, 29 July and 12 Aug. 1897, pp.313, 344, 378–9, 72–3, 104–5. Technically, Isabel had been ‘corresponding editor’ of the Woman’s Signal since relinquishing the paper to Fenwick Miller in September 1895; at that time she retained the right to supply unedited material for inclusion in the Signal, though she had contributed only one article since that date. According to Fenwick Miller, Isabel agreed to waive this right in July 1897, and her name was removed from the paper’s masthead. See Woman’s Journal, 29 July 1897, p.72. 17. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 18 June and 3 Aug. 1897, FEWC. 18. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, Sunday, n.d., 18 June, 28 July and 3 Aug. 1897, LHSC; Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle, 9 July 1897, RCP; Lillian Stevens to Frances Willard, 1 July n.y.; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 24 June 1897; Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 18 June 1897, FEWC.

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19. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 16, 21 and 28 July 1897, LHSC; Mary Ward Poole to Frances Willard, 27 July 1897; ‘Bremner’ to Frances Willard, 25 July 1897, FEWC. 20. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 21 and 28 July 1897, LHSC; Isabel Somerset to ‘Dear Friend’, printed letter of resignation to each NEC member, 20 July 1897, NBWTAUF. 21. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 28 July 1897, LHSC; ‘English Girl’ to Frances Willard, 21 July 1897 (this letter decrying Isabel’s resignation bears no signature other than ‘English Girl’); Hannah Whitall Smith to Frances Willard, 22 July 1897, FEWC. 22. ‘Speech by Lady Henry Somerset to the Executive of the B.W.T.A.’, NBWTA NEC minutes, 28 July 1897, pp.311-317; see also pp.318-19, 322. Agnes Slack to Anna Gordon, 20 July 1897, FEWC. 23. ‘Isabel Somerset to Officers and Members of the National Executive Committee, 7 Aug. 1897’, in NBWTA AR, 1898, p.43; ‘Speech by Lady Henry Somerset to the Executive Committee of the B.W.T.A.’, NBWTA NEC minutes, 28 July 1897, pp.311-17; see also pp.318-19, 322-7. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 3 Aug. 1897, LHSC; Agnes Slack to Anna Gordon, 20 July 1897, FEWC. 24. Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 8 July 1897, FEWC. 25. Frances Willard to Elizabeth Blackwell, 21 June 1897, cited in Bordin, Frances Willard, 237; Elizabeth Blackwell to Frances Willard, 1 July 1897, and Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 6 July 1897, FEWC. 26. Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 6, 8 and 13 July 1897, FEWC. 27. Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 6 July 1897, and Lillian Stevens to Frances Willard, 16, 20, and 21 July 1897, FEWC; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, Sunday, n.d., LHSC; Woman’s Signal, 25 Nov. 1897, p.298. 28. Lillian Stevens to Frances Willard, 20 July 1897, FEWC; Bordin, Frances Willard, 222–23; Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 363. 29. Mary C. Leavitt, ‘An Open Letter’, 22 Sept. 1897, reel 24, WCTU series, quoted in Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 205. 30. Katharine Bushnell to Frances Willard, 10 Aug. 1897 (copy), EP; Isabel Somerset to Mary Ward Poole, n.d., LHSC. An edited version of this letter appears in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 202–3. 31. ‘Reply to Lady Henry Somerset by Dr. Katherine Bushnell and Mrs. Elizabeth Andrew’, Shield, new series, 1 (Oct. 1897), p.45; Katherine C. Bushnell, MD, and Elizabeth W. Andrew, ‘A fatal mistake’, Sentinel, 19 (Nov. 1897), pp.145–6; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 205. 32. Gifford (ed.), ‘Journal’, entries for 12 and 14 May, 5 June 1893, pp.28, 32; Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 29 Nov. 1895 and 26 Dec. n.y., LHSC. Rossiter Willard was not related to Frances Willard. 33. Josephine Butler to Mary Priestman, 26 July 1895, JBP. Butler cites Jessie Ackerman as the missionary appointed to the WWCTU post, but she was evidently unable to take up this position because of ill health. See Sentinel, 20 (Dec. 1898), p.162. 34. Elizabeth Andrew and Katherine Bushnell to Frances Willard, 15 June 1896, cited in Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 205. 35. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 206.

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PAGES 210–213

36. Cited in Sentinel, 19 (Oct. 1897), pp.127–8; Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 22 Dec. 1897, HWSMSS Asbury. 37. Josephine Butler to members of the Purity Department of the WCTU, 27 Sept. 1897, and to Miss Priestman, 12 Oct. 1897, JBP; ‘The WCTU and Lady Henry Somerset’, Woman’s Signal, 25 Nov. 1897, p.342; ‘The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the state regulation of vice’, Sentinel, 20 (Jan. 1898), pp.10–11. 38. Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 362–3; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 206. 39. Quoted in Gordon, The Beautiful Life, 186–7. 40. Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 22 Dec. 1897, HWSMSS Asbury. 41. Woman’s Journal (Boston), n.d., quoted in ‘The WCTU and Lady Henry Somerset’, Woman’s Signal, 25 Nov. 1897, p.342. 42. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 211. 43. Katherine Bushnell to Miss Forsaith, 15 Jan. 1898, JBP; Shield, new series, 1 (Feb. and June 1898), pp.75–76, 117; Sentinel, 20 (Feb./Mar./June 1898), pp.27, 37, 69; ‘Lady Henry Somerset and the presidency of the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’, Sentinel, 20 (June 1898), pp.76–7; Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 207. 44. Josephine Butler to James Stuart, 24 Nov. 1897; Josephine Butler to Frances Willard, 29 Nov. 1897; Josephine Butler to Fanny Forsaith, 13 Dec. 1897; C. Stuart Thorpe to Josephine Butler, 8 Dec. 1897, JBP; ‘BWTA Northern Union Conference’, Shield, new series, 1 (Jan. 1898), p.69. 45. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, n.d., LHSC; Katherine Bushnell to Fanny Forsaith, 22 Jan. 1898, JBP; Shield, new series, 1 (Feb. 1898), p.81. 46. Annie Coller to Josephine Butler, 27 Nov. 1897; NBWTA Penarth Branch to Josephine Butler, 26 Jan. 1898, JBP; NBWTA NESC minutes, 5 Jan. 1898, pp.21, 23; Woman’s Signal, 30 Dec. 1897, p.427; Shield, new series, 1 (Jan./Feb./Mar. 1898), pp.69, 81, 87; ‘A call to duty’, circular (proof marked ‘private’), NBWTAUF. This was later published in Sentinel, 20 (Feb. 1898), pp.25–7. 47. Isabel Somerset to Lillian Stevens, 10 Aug. 1897, LHSC; NBWTA NESC minutes, 19 Jan. 1898, pp.23, 25; Amelia J. Pernell to Hannah Whitall Smith, 28 Feb. 1898, HWSMSS Asbury. ‘The President’s goodbye’, White Ribbon, 2 (Feb. 1898), p.38. 48. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 21 Jan. 1898, EP. Isabel does not elaborate on the specifics of Fawcett’s position on state regulation of vice but notes that she was formerly opposed to CD Acts. 49. Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 22 Dec. 1897, HWSMSS Asbury; Earhart, Frances E. Willard, 368. 50. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 209. 51. Frances Willard to Hannah Whitall Smith, 22 Dec. 1897, HWSMSS Asbury; Frances Willard to Lillian Stevens, 19 Jan. 1898 (p.1 only), FEWC. 52. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 204. In making this assessment, Fitzpatrick had access to Isabel’s diary, unavailable to subsequent researchers. 53. Quoted in Anna Gordon to Lillian Stevens, 29 Jan. 1898, FEWC. 54. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 28 Jan. 1898, EP. 55. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 8 Feb. 1898, EP; Mary Ward Poole to Hannah Whitall Smith, 16 Feb. 1898, and Frances J. Barnes to Hannah Whitall Smith, 15 Feb. 1898, HWSMSS Asbury.

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TO

PAGES 213–216

285

56. Anna Gordon to Isabel Somerset, 18 Feb. 1898, LHSC; Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, cablegram, 18 Feb. 1898, and 2 Mar. 1898; Helen Hood to Hannah Whitall Smith, 19 Feb. 1898, HWSMSS Asbury; Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, 9 Mar. 1898, RCP; Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘My Friend’ [Mrs Harvey?], 3 Mar. 1898, Autograph Letter Collection: Temperance, Women’s Library, Metropolitan University, London (hereafter cited as ALC). 57. Isabel Somerset to Lord George Hamilton, 27 Jan. 1898, EP; Isabel Somerset to ‘Dear Sisters and Colleagues’, 3 Mar. 1898, WCTU Files; Agnes Slack to Hannah Whitall Smith, 18 Feb. 1898, HWSMSS Asbury; The Times (London), 8 Feb. 1898, p.4. 58. NBWTA NEC minutes, 22 Feb. and 7 May 1898, pp.365, 367; NBWTA NESC minutes, 25 Apr. 1898, p.46; Isabel Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith, 2 Mar. 1898, HWSMSS Asbury; Circular Letter, North Metropolitan Union, n.d., NBWTAUF; NBWTA AR, 1898, pp.72–80; Sentinel, 20 (July 1898), p.89; Woman’s Signal, 19 May 1898, pp.309–10. 59. Josephine Butler to Stanley [Pearsall Smith], 9 Feb. 1898; Josephine Butler to Fanny Forsaith, 16, 18 and 25 Feb. 1898; Josephine Butler to Mrs Spence Watson, 15 Mar. 1898, JBP. 60. Josephine Butler to Mrs Spence Watson, 15 Mar. 1898, JBP; The Christian, 17 Feb. 1898, quoted in Shield, new series, 1 (Mar. 1898), p.90; see also ‘Note by the Editor’, in Shield; ‘Lady Henry Somerset and the presidency’, Sentinel, 20 (June and July 1898), pp.76–7, 89–90. 61. Anna Gordon to Isabel Somerset, 18 Feb. 1898, LHSC; Katherine Bushnell to Fanny Forsaith, 21 Feb. 1898; Elizabeth Andrew to Fanny Forsaith, 1 and 10 Mar. 1898, JBP; Are the Standards of the WCTU Being Lowered?, circular, n.d., WCTU Files. 62. Mary Leavitt, Let Us Be Consistent, circular, WCTU Files; Elizabeth Andrew to Fanny Forsaith, 22 Feb 1898, and to ‘My Dear Friend’, 22 Mar. 1898, JBP; White Ribbon, 2 (July 1898), p.97; Report of the Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws (Cmd. 8693) vol. XXXVI, Minutes of Evidence, Parliamentary Papers, 1898, pp.177, 193. See also Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 208–9. 63. Susan S. Fessenden to Mary Clement Leavitt, 4 June 1898; Ruth B. Baker to Mrs Leavitt, 4 June 1898; ‘Memo. for Stevie’, n.d., all in WCTU Files; Josephine Butler to Mrs Spence Watson, 15 Mar. 1898; Elizabeth Andrew to [?], incomplete letter, 21 Jan. 1898; Elizabeth Andrew to ‘My dear Friend’ [Fanny Forsaith], 30 Mar., 23 and 27 June 1898, JBP. 64. Isabel Somerset to ‘Dear Sister and Comrade’, 24 Apr. 1898, EP; Dominion Woman’s Christian Temperance Union to Dear Comrades, circular, 1 June 1898, and Amelia Yeomans, A Goodbye Message to Dominion White Ribboners, Montreal, 1898, WCTUF; Sentinel, 20 (Dec. 1898), p.162; Woman’s Journal (Canada), 27 July 1898, pp.4–5; 31 Aug. 1898, pp.7–10; 30 Sept. 1898, p.7; 1 Nov. 1898, p.6; 1 Dec. 1898, pp.3, 8; Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 209.

1. 2.

Chapter 15: Alone Isabel Somerset to Robert Pearsall Smith, 23 Mar. 1898, HWSMSS Lilly. ‘A Christmas greeting from the President’, White Ribbon, Jan. 1899, p.170.

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5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

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PAGES 216–220

‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1896, pp.17–19. See also Chapter 10. David M. Fahey, ‘Temperance and the Liberal Party—Lord Peel’s Report, 1899’, Journal of British Studies, 10 (May 1971), pp.132-59, cited in Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 266. NBWTA AR, 1896, p.103. Report of the Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing (Cmd 8693), vol. XXXVI, Minutes of Evidence (London 1898), 177. Isabel Somerset to Frances Willard, 25 May 1897, FEWC; untitled newspaper cutting, WCTU Files. Fahey, ‘Temperance and the Liberal Party’, cited in Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 266. Ibid. 266–7. ‘President’s Annual Address’, NBWTA AR, 1899, pp.91–3. Joseph Rowntree and Arthur Sherwell, The Temperance Problem and Social Reform (London, 1899), cited in Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 269. NBWTA NEC minutes, 31 Oct. 1899, p.436; NBWTA AR, pp.25, 31. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 267. NBWTA NEC minutes, 6 Mar. 1900, p.444; NBWTA AR, pp.31–2. NBWTA NEC minutes, 9 Oct. 1900, pp.457–8; 5 Feb. 1901, pp.474–5; ‘President’s Annual Address’, NBWTA AR, 1900, pp.67–75; The Times (London), 17 May 1901, p.13. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 267. Ibid. 268–70. ‘Lady Henry Somerset’s Address’ and ‘The President’s Address’, NBWTA AR, 1897 and 1898, pp.217, 94. See also ‘Address by Lady Henry Somerset’, NBWTA AR, 1894, p.19. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 270. ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 41; Christian Endeavour World, Nov. 1902, pp.145–6; Temple Appeal, 5 (Oct. 1902), p.1. NBWTA NEC minutes, 2 Dec. 1902 and 17 Feb. 1903, pp.563, 3–9; ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 41–2. ‘President’s Address’, NBWTA AR, 1902, pp.75–107. National Temperance Manifesto, 1903 and Lady Henry Somerset’s Speech, EP; ‘President’s Address’, NBWTA AR, 1903, pp.102–3; The Times (London), 28 May 1903, p.8; Fahey, ‘Temperance and the Liberal Party’, 158. The Gothenburg System permitted municipal authorities to vest in a single company, run as a trust, the town’s licences for retail and public-house liquor sales, as a method of controlling and reducing the dispensation of intoxicants. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 270. This cordiality is evidenced in earlier correspondence. See, for example, Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, 26 Feb. 1901, 19 May 1894, 25 Nov. 1896, 26 Feb. 1901, RCP. Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, 3 May 1903, RCP. At the 1903 council, a movement to have the presidential office left vacant for one year (anticipating Isabel would soon be sufficiently restored in health to resume office) was deemed unconstitutional, and a nomination ballot produced votes for a variety of candidates. Carlisle received 247 votes, while the other nominees shared a total of 239, with 116 ballots blank and 26 spoiled. When all other nominees

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NOTES

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

43. 44.

45.

46.

TO

PAGES 221–224

287

declined to serve, the nomination ballot was accepted as the election ballot, and Carlisle was declared president. See NBWTA AR, 1903, pp.67–9. Rosalind Carlisle to Isabel Somerset, 31 Oct. 1903, RCP. Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, Nov. 1903, RCP. Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, 21 Nov. 1906; see also Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, 4 Feb. 1904 and 5 Apr. 1905; Rosalind Carlisle to Isabel Somerset, 22 Jan. and 5 Feb. 1904; 5 Apr. 1905; 21 Dec. 1906, RCP. Rosalind Carlisle to Isabel Somerset, 31 Oct. 1903, RCP; Rosalind Carlisle to Mrs Harvey, 17 Jan. 1904, ALC. Rosalind Carlisle to Mrs Harvey, 17 Jan. 1904, RCP; NBWTA NESC minutes, 28 June and 27 July 1905, pp.519, 531; NBWTA AR, 1905, pp.70–1. White Ribbon, July 1905, p.129, cited in Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 270; NBWTA AR, 1904, 1905, and 1907, pp.64, 36, 69. NBWTA NEC minutes, 20 Sept. 1904, 28 July 1905 and 6 Feb. 1906, pp.117–18, 155, 173. Fahey, ‘Temperance and the Liberal Party’, 159. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, 274. NBWTA NESC minutes, 20 Dec. 1905, p.563. Hannah Whitall Smith to ‘Sister Annie’ [Mrs Harvey], 12 Sept. 1906, ALC; Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, 22 Oct., 21 Nov., 3, 13 and 29 Dec. 1906; 14 Apr. and 9 Dec. 1907; 23 Sept. 1908; 5 June 1909 and 2 May 1910; Rosalind Carlisle to Isabel Somerset, 21 Dec. 1906 and 5 Dec. 1907, RCP. Mary Ward Poole to ‘Dear Reverend Father’, 5 Sept. 1924, ECA; ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 33–5. NBWTA NEC minutes, 21 Oct. 1903, p.68; NBWTA NESC minutes, 4 May 1904, pp.409–10; Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, July n.d., and 23 Sept. 1908; 5 June 1909, RCP. Isabel Somerset to Mrs Harvey, 7 Dec. 1905, ALC; Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 210. Isabel Somerset to ‘My Darling’ [cousin Verena], 16 July, 15 Oct., 9 Nov. and 7 Dec. 1912, EP; ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 43. Isabel Somerset, Diary, entries for 25 Feb., 18 Apr. and 1 June 1907, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, pp.223, 227, 229; Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, 14 July 1910, RCP; Isabel Somerset to ‘My darling Children’ [cousin Verena and family], 29 June 1912, EP; Norsworthy, ‘Beauty to Ashes’, 10. Diary, entries for 28 and 29 Jan., 23 Mar., 10, 15 and 16 June 1907, 31 Oct. 1908, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 220–1, 225, 230–1, 235. Bousfield, ‘The touchstone of St. Francis’, pp.486–91; Somerset, ‘The Duxhurst Industrial Farm Colony for Female Inebriates’, British Journal of Inebriety, pp.81–5. Diary, entries for 5 Jan. and 18 Apr. 1907; Tuesday 19, 1910; 23 Jan. 1913 and 20 Dec. 1919, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 218, 227, 238, 242, 249; Norsworthy, ‘Beauty to Ashes’, 4, 10; Somerset, Beauty for Ashes; printed invitation from the Countess of Ellesmere to ‘Miss Stirling & friends’. I am indebted to Amy Peyton of Gander, Newfoundland, for a copy of Lady Ellesmere’s invitation. Diary, entries for 27 Apr., 9 June, 8 and 21 July 1907; 3 Jan., 25 Feb. and 14 Mar.

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47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64.

65.

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PAGES 225–230

1912; 2 Jan. and 5 Apr. 1913; 6 Jan. 1914, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 227, 229–30, 232–3, 239, 240–2, 243–4. Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, 21 Nov. and 3 Dec. 1906; 2 May and 4 July 1910, RCP; Isabel Somerset to Mrs Harvey, 30 Nov. n.y., ALC; Diary, entries for Tuesday, n.d. 1909, and 11 and 29 Sept. 1910, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 236, 238–9; ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 37; Russell, ‘A village home’, ECA. Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 241. Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, 23 Sept. 1908, RCP. Diary, entry for 20 Mar. 1912, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 241. See also Fitzpatrick’s note on same page. Isabel Somerset to Rosalind Carlisle, 23 Sept. 1908 and 4 July 1910, RCP; Isabel Somerset to ‘My Darling’ [cousin Verena], 26 Apr., 16 July and 23 Nov. 1912; Isabel Somerset to ‘Darling Verena’ [cousin Verena], 23 Aug. 1912; Isabel Somerset to ‘My Darlings’ [cousin Verena and family], 9 and 29 May, 8 June, 9 Nov. and 7 Dec. 1912; 5 Jan. and 8 Feb. 1913; 9 July n.y. and 30 July n.y.; Isabel Somerset to ‘My darling Children’ [cousin Verena and family], 29 June 1912, EP; ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 41, 47–8; Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 241. Isabel Somerset to Mrs Harvey, 7 Dec. 1905, ALC; Isabel Somerset to ‘Dearest Alys’ [Alys Russell], 25 Aug. 1916, HWSMSS Lilly; ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 39; Norsworthy, ‘Beauty to Ashes’, 10–11; ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, Daily Telegraph, p.11; untitled Report, EP; ‘Residential nurseries’, The Times, 6 July 1917, p.9. Isabel Somerset to ‘Darlings’ [cousin Verena and family], Tuesday in Holy Week, n.d., EP. Diary, entries for 3, 5 and 12 Aug., 20 and 31 Dec. 1914, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 244–5. London Gazette Supplement, 18 July 1918, quoted in W. H. B. Somerset, The Descendants of Henry Somerset, 77–8. ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 42–3; Diary, entries for 13 and 14 Oct. 1915, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 246. ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 49. Diary, entries for 6 Feb. 1909 and 16 June 1917, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 237, 247–8. Diary, entry for 20 Dec. 1919, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 249. ‘Destroyed by fire’, Evening Standard (London), 10 Oct. 1920, p.8, and untitled Report, ECA. The Times (London), 19 Apr. 1920, p.15; Diary, entry for 22 Apr. 1920. The diary entry was made in retrospect. See ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 38. ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 39–40; The Times (London), 14 Mar. 1921, p.16. ‘Keepsakes of Memory’. 40, 49; Daily Sketch (London), 16 Mar. 1921; Graphic (London), 14 Mar. 1921; Pall Mall Gazette, 15 Mar. 1921, newspaper cuttings, ‘Treasures of Dicíe’, ECA; Morning Post (London), 16 Mar. 1921, p.7. See, for example, Brothers and Sisters Magazine, Apr. 1921; Church Times, 24 Mar. 1921; Observer (London), 13 Mar. 1921, newspaper cuttings, ‘Treasures of Dicíe’, ECA; Morning Post (London), 14 Mar. 1921, p.7; Daily Telegraph (London) Mar. 1921, p.8; The Times (London), 14 Mar. 1921, p.16. ‘Keepsakes of Memory’, 46–7.

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66. Morning Post (London), 8 Dec. 1921, and Observer (London), 2 Oct. 1921, newspaper cuttings, ‘Treasures of Dicíe’, ECA; Gregory, Lord Somers, 11. 67. ‘Letters to the Editor: Lady Henry Somerset memorial’, Morning Post (London), 9 Nov. 1921, newspaper cutting, and untitled Report, ECA; Daily Telegraph (London), 7 Aug. 1922, p.11. 68. Norsworthy, ‘Beauty to Ashes’, 12–14. 69. ‘Address of Lady Henry Somerset’, BWTA AR, 1891, p.25. 70. O’Connor, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’. 71. Quoted in Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 615; see also 616. 72. ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, Snapshot, 1899, newspaper cutting, ‘Treasures of Dicíe’, ECA. 73. Stead, ‘Character sketch’, 622. 74. Ibid. 606. Britomart appears in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene as an allegorical figure representing English virtue, particularly English military power. 75. Noyes, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’. 76. Poins, ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, 10. 77. Evening News (London), 27 Feb. 1907, newspaper cutting, ‘Treasures of Dicíe’, ECA. 78. See, for example, Maureen Keene, Ishbel: Lady Aberdeen in Ireland (Newtownards, 1999); Henley, Rosalind Howard; Roberts, The Radical Countess; Surtees, The Artist and the Autocrat; Bell, Josephine Butler; Boyd, Three Victorian Women; Caine, Victorian Feminists; G. Darley, Octavia Hill: A Life (London, 1990); Rubenstein, A Different World for Women. 79. See, for example, Bordin, Frances Willard; Earhart, Frances E. Willard; Gifford (ed.), Writing Out My Heart; Gordon, The Beautiful Life. 80. See, for example, Diary, entries for 15 June 1907, 3 Jan. 1912, 2 Jan. 1913, 15 Apr. 1914, quoted in Fitzpatrick, Lady Henry Somerset, 230–1, 239, 242, 244.

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ABBREVIATIONS

ALC AR BWTA BWTJ ECA EP FEWC HWSMSS IS JBP LHSC LNA NBWTA NBWTAU NBWTAUA NBWTAUF NEC NESC NVA RCP UKA WCTU WCTUF WLF WTAU WWCTU

Autograph Letter Collection: Temperance Collection Annual Report British Women’s Temperance Association British Women’s Temperance Journal Eastnor Castle Archives Eastnor Papers Frances E. Willard Correspondence Hannah Whitall Smith Manuscripts Isabel Somerset Josephine Butler Papers Lady Henry Somerset Correspondence Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts National British Women’s Temperance Association National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union Archives National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union Files National Executive Committee (of NBWTA) National Executive Subcommittee National Vigilance Association Rosalind Carlisle Papers United Kingdom Alliance Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Files Women’s Liberal Federation Women’s Total Abstinence Union World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union

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abstinence xiv, 73, 74 Ackerman, Jessie 283n33 alcohol vending see drink shops alcoholism causes of 167–8 as criminal behaviour 4 as disease 4 effects of xiv, 3, 170 and poverty 7–8, 70 treatment of 4, 175, 230 (see also Duxhurst Farm Colony for Female Inebriates; reformatories) and women 4, 170 Alexandra, Queen xiii Alpha House (Hornsey) 135 Ames, Julia 79, 91 Anderson-Brown, Sarah 170 Andrew, Elizabeth Wheeler 192, 193, 201, 208–9, 210, 211, 214, 234 Anglican Order of St Anne 226 Anglo-American co-operation 83–4, 98–9, 121, 183 Anti-Caste 183, 184 Argyll, John see Lorne, Lord aristocracy antipathy to 201 arranged marriages 26–7, 36, 37 charitable work by women 1–2 on homosexuality 66 lifestyle of 36 vice among 36

Armenian massacre 160–6 Armenian Relief Committee, America 161 government intervention 161, 162, 166, 273n24 immigration plan, America 164 international central committee 165 and NBWTA 161, 162 orphans 165, 166, 274n39 refugees 9, 163, 164 relief camps in Eastern Europe 165–6 and WCTU 161, 162 Woman’s Signal Armenian Relief Fund 161–2, 165, 166 women affected by 161, 162 Women’s Armenian Relief Fund 161, 162 and WWCTU 166 Astor, Lord William Waldorf 178–9 Atherton, A.E. 106, 108, 110, 125, 126 Baldwin, Mr 35 Balgarnie, Florence 106, 114, 186–90, 203, 278n14, 282n13 Band of Hope 70, 223 Beauclerk, Lady Katherine De Vere 155, 174 Beaufort, 7th Duke of boycott of grandson’s wedding 158

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INDEX

Beaufort, 7th Duke of (continued) financial support of son 29 and Isabel Somerset 37, 39, 227–8 lifestyle 35, 36 on son’s behaviour 35, 44, 50 Beaufort, Duchess of and Isabel Somerset 28, 35, 37, 40, 44, 46, 48–9, 53, 57 on son’s male cohorts 49 on son’s treatment of Isabel Somerset 39, 42, 44, 46, 49 Beauty for Ashes 224 Bedford, Duchess of see Somers Cocks, Adeline Mary Bell, E. Moberly 190 Bell, Vanessa 14 Bellamy, Edward 136 Bennett, Edward T. 113 Biddulph, Lady Elizabeth 74, 106, 107–9, 119 Bill of Rights 11 Blackwell, Elizabeth xv, 204, 207 Blocker, Jack 93 Bordin, Ruth 93, 98, 163 British Committee for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice in India 102, 192, 193, 198, 202, 203, 280n76 see also prostitution, stateregulated in India British Women’s Temperance Association (BWTA) 1893 annual council 130–4 1893 split 124, 129–35, 237n20 ‘Americanization’ of 82, 109, 115–17, 119, 121 anti-Dilke petition 102, 103–4 archives 234–5 council’s mandate 252n76 departmental system 78, 79, 81, 82, 106–7 departments Police Court Work 81 Press 79–80, 81 Social Purity 6 Suffrage 5

Young Women’s Work 79 dissension in 110–11 Do-Everything Policy 105, 106, 109, 130, 131, 132 formation xiv, 73, 84, 167 IS as president 3, 8–9, 74, 75, 77, 106, 118 duties 80, 126 inaugural address 78 opposition to 77, 101, 130–1 re-elections 81, 133 resignations 101–2, 125 support for 134 IS’s financial support 80–1, 153 IS’s rejuvenation 3, 74–5 IS’s restructuring 3, 78, 121–2, 123, 130, 131, 132 journals 80, 99, 113–14, 122, 123–4 membership 5, 73, 78 National Executive Committee 78, 102, 133, 134 conciliatory conference 124–6 conservative majority 101, 104, 106–7, 110–12, 120, 130–1 progressive minority 106, 116, 122, 131–2 National Executive Subcommittee 78, 123, 133, 262n28 objectives 5, 73, 103, 105, 106, 108 offices 122 Outline of the Progressive Policy 121–3, 127 political stance 110 on prohibition 77 as single-issue entity 78, 81, 104, 109, 122, 134 social purity 6–7, 9, 81 Sunday Closing campaign 74 and WCTU 74, 83, 99 and women’s organizations 78, 84 women’s suffrage 4, 78, 104–5,

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INDEX 107–9, 111, 122 workers’ rights 7–8 and WWCTU 74, 75, 76, 79, 82, 98, 116, 119, 130, 133 Yorkshire branch 138–9 Youth branches 79 see also British Women’s Temperance Association; Duxhurst Farm Colony for Female Inebriates; lynching, activism against; National British Women’s Temperance Association; prostitution, stateregulated in India British Women’s Temperance Journal 80, 112, 113, 122 Britomart 231, 289n74 Burns, John 72 Bushnell, Katherine 193, 208–9, 210, 211, 214, 234 Butler, Josephine campaign against Isabel Somerset 201–2, 203, 214 Josephine Butler Papers 234 Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts 6–7, 253n93 and NBWTA 211 and WWCTU 82, 194–6, 209, 211, 215 BWTA see British Women’s Temperance Association Cameron, Julie Margaret Pattle xi, 14 Campbell-Bannerman, Henry 218 Cantonment Acts 99 see also Contagious Diseases Acts; prostitution, stateregulated in India Carlisle, Countess of see Howard, Rosalind Carter, Mrs Jabez 108 Central National Society for Women’s Suffrage 5, 107–8, 114, 123, 137 Chant, Laura Ormiston 104, 106, 165–6

293

child care, upper-class 17, 18, 19, 20, 22 Chitty, QC, Mr 64 The Christian 214 Christian, Princess 65 Christian Commonwealth 124 Christian Socialism 2, 98, 137 Christian World 134 Church of England reformers 84 Church of England Temperance Society 237n19 Clark, Helen Bright 187 Clogstoun, Blanche xi, 67 Cocks, Charles (?–1727) xi, 12 Cocks, Charles (1725–1806) xi, 12 Conservative Party and liquor trade 151, 216 opposition to direct veto 216 Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing 216–18 Contagious Diseases Acts 6–7, 99, 191, 234, 239n42 see also prostitution, stateregulated in India Cook, Rev Joseph 120 Courtenay, Charles 12, 32, 64, 248n1 Criminal Laws Amendment Act 1885, 6 Daily Telegraph xiii, 229 Dalrymple, Walter 40, 41–2, 43, 47–8, 49–52, 54, 59 Dilke, Sir Charles 102, 103–4 Direct Veto Bill xiv–xv, 109–10, 127, 139–40, 147, 149, 150 Disraeli, Benjamin 41, 59 Do-Everything Policy 75, 76, 82, 88, 119–20 dockers’ strikes (London) 72, 225–6 Docwra, Mary 78, 101, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 133 Douglass, Frederick 187, 188 Dow, Neal 93–4, 120 drink shops 77, 139, 236n8 see also veto, direct drug trade 75, 82, 90, 149, 223

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INDEX

drunkenness see insobriety Duxhurst Farm Colony for Female Inebriates Beauty for Ashes 224 buildings 173, 174, 176–7, 179, 223 Cakebread case 178 children’s home 172, 173, 176, 177, 180, 226, 228 cottage system 175, 177 demise 230 fees 174 financial liability 172, 173, 179 fundraising 147, 151–2, 153, 168, 171, 172, 173, 179, 224, 230 Hope House 174 IS as superintendent 226 IS’s life at 176, 223 ladies’ home 171, 172, 174, 230 licensing of 4, 179 management 151, 172, 173, 175, 179 meals 175 name change 172, 230 objectives 180 occupational training 176, 180, 224 outdoor work 177, 180 philosophy 175 police court patients 180 property search 147, 148, 269n24 spiritual guidance 176–7, 182 success rate 4, 177–8, 180, 229 treatment programmes 4, 170–1, 175, 223–4 during World Wars 226, 230 Dwight Moody’s School of Methods 86, 90, 92, 139 Eastnor Castle (Herefordshire) 12, 15–16, 29, 36, 72, 233 Education Act 1918, 14 Epstein, Barbara 136 L’Etang, Ambroise Pierre Antoine de 14 L’Etang, Theresa Josephe Blin de Grincourt de 14, 20 Evening News (London) 231

Fabian Society 137 Fawcett, Millicent xv, 104, 212, 231, 259n6, 284n48 Field, Justice, judgement of 59–64, 65–6 Fisher, H.A.L. 14 Fitzpatrick, Kathleen xv, 85, 133–4, 190, 243n61 Forsaith, Fanny 106, 113, 234 Foster, Judith Ellen 87, 110, 117, 119–20, 123 Fowler, Jessie 106, 116, 117 Fraternity 183, 185, 186 Friends Association for Abolishing the State Regulation of Vice 202 Garrison, William Lloyd 187, 188 Gifford, Carolyn DeSwarte 234 Gladstone, William 66, 109 Gordon, Anna 91–2, 94, 96, 118, 129, 131, 186 Gurney, Laura 67, 69 Guttridge, Mrs 108 Habeas Corpus Act 58, 247n12 Habitual Drunkards Act 1879, 167, 179 Hamilton, Lord George 196, 197 Harmsworth, Alfred 198 Hereford, Bishop of 205 Hicks, Annie 123 Hill, Octavia xv, 232 Hills, A.F. 125, 151 homosexuality, views on 49, 95 Hood, Helen 101 Howard, Rosalind, Countess of Carlisle 215, 220–1, 222, 232, 234, 237n26, 286n26 Humphreys and Hussey, Messrs 52, 57, 61 imperialism, activism against 183–4 Impey, Catherine 183–4, 186, 190 Independent Order of Rechabites 74 Inebriates Act 1898, 4, 168, 170, 180

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INDEX insobriety causes of 167–8 as criminal behaviour 4 as disease 4 effects of xiv, 3, 170 and poverty 7–8, 70 treatment of 4, 175, 230 (see also Duxhurst Farm Colony for Female Inebriates; reformatories) and women 4, 170 Inter Ocean 184 International Council of Women 152, 270n40 Jackson, Kate 96 Jackson, Maria Pattle xi, 14 James, Sir Henry 60–1 Jenkins, Roy 103 Johnson, Mary Coffin 84 Jones, Mrs Lloyd 130 The Journal 141 ‘Keepsakes of Memory’ 233, 236n8 Knights of Labour 93 labour movement Anglo-American co-operation 84 child workers 136 eight-hour day 136 and Isabel Somerset 7–8, 72, 225–6 miners 71, 136 a ‘new order’ 226 servants immigration scheme 84 strikers 8 and temperance 136 Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts 6–7, 137, 253n93 see also Butler, Josephine Lady Somerset Homes see Duxhurst Farm Colony for Female Inebriates Lansdowne, Lord Henry 13, 16 Lawson, Sir Wilfrid 149, 150 Leavitt, Mary Clement 76, 146, 201, 208, 215

295

Ledbury Mission 69–70, 71–2, 222 lesbian relationships 95 Liberal Party 1895 general election 3, 140, 149–50 and NBWTA 150 temperance bills xiv–xv, 109–10, 127, 151, 216, 218, 222 Licensing Bill 1908, 222 Lindsay, Sir Coutts 16–17 Liquor Licensing Act 1904, 221–2 Liquor Traffic (Local Control) Bill 127 LNA see Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts London Anti-Lynching Committee 184, 186 London County Council 120–1 Looking Backward 136 Lorne, Lord 26, 27 Louise, Princess 26, 66, 174 Lucas, Margaret Bright 4–5, 74, 76, 84, 104 lynching, activism against campaign in America 184 campaign in Britain 183–8 Florence Balgarnie 186–90, 279n35 Frances Willard’s position 184–7, 188, 190 and NBWTA 186, 187, 188, 189, 190 and WCTU 184–6, 187, 188 Wells, Ida B. 183–6, 190 Macnamara, Charles 59 ‘Maiden tribute to modern Babylon’ 103 Malins, Joseph 124 Manifest Destiny 75–6 Married Women’s Property Act 1882, 32, 56–7 Mary, Princess, Duchess of Teck xiii, 65–6, 174 Massingberd, Mrs 106, 173, 179 Maurice, Frederick Denison 2, 13 Mayo, Isabelle Fyvie 183

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INDEX

McLaren, Eva 198, 280n75 McLaren, Walter 198, 203, 280n75 Methodist Times 125 middle classes charitable work 1–2 relationships between men and women 26–7 Miller, Florence Fenwick 142–3, 204–5 Mothers’ Meetings 71–2 National British Women’s Temperance Association 260n32, 264n19 annual councils 147, 149, 151, 160, 182, 202–3, 218, 220, 230–1 archives 234–5 ‘Call to Duty’ circular 211 contagious diseases question 204 departmental system 135, 137 Do-Everything Policy 135, 138, 183 finances 147 formation 135, 237n20 IS as president 141, 147, 160, 205–7, 214 IS’s resignations 205–7, 212, 219–20 journals 141–3, 266n41 membership 135 personal growth workshops 139 prison and police court work 135 progress 140–1, 147 publican compensation, opposition to 151 rehabilitation homes 147, 148, 167, 168, 172, 179, 269n24 rescue homes 135 social purity work 135, 211 temperance work 139–40, 147, 151 women’s suffrage 135, 137 National British Women’s Total Abstinence Union 234–5, 264n19 National Bulletin 80

National Council of Women for Great Britain and Ireland 152, 270n40 National Temperance League 120 National Union of Women Workers 258n6 National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies 258n6 National Vigilance Association 6, 102, 103, 191, 195–6, 285n6 see also Contagious Diseases Acts; prostitution, stateregulated in India NBWTA see National British Women’s Temperance Association New York Chinatown 90 Sing Sing prison 91 tenement slums 90 Nightingale, Florence 201, 281n2 Nineteen Beautiful Years 77 noblesse oblige 1, 23–4 Non-Partisan Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 87, 117, 119, 123 Nonconformist teetotal organizations xiv, 126, 134 O’Connor, T.P. xiii, 3 Onslow, Lord 201 Orred, Charles 43, 47–51, 54, 55, 56, 57 Pall Mall Gazette 6, 103, 178 Palmerston, Lord Henry 13 Parker, Margaret 84, 116 Pattle, Adeline xi, 14 Pattle, James 14 Pattle, Sophie 14 Pattle, Virginia see Somers Cocks, Virginia Pattle ‘Pattledom’ 14–15 Pearson, Mrs 108 Peel, Sir Robert 217, 218, 219, 222 People’s Party 93 Pollen, Arthur 86, 87, 101 Polyglot Petition for Home

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INDEX Protection 82, 149, 195, 253n95 Poole, Mary Ward 81, 151, 182, 203, 228, 229, 233, 236n8, 243n61 Populist movement 92–3 poverty alleviation of 7–8, 69 and drunkenness 7–8, 70, 71 Primrose League 110 Prinsep, Sarah Pattle xi, 14–15 prohibition xv, 4, 93–4, 149, 219 activists 76, 92, 97, 220 and BWTA 77, 140 see also United Kingdom Alliance; Willard, Frances E. prohibition, permissive see veto, direct Prohibition Party 92–3 prostitution child 6, 103 medical treatment of women 6–7 protecting families from contagion 7 registration of women 6 rescue work 135 white slavery 6 prostitution, state-regulated in India 191–3, 196–200 ‘A Fatal Mistake’ 208–9 Anglo-American co-operation 84 British Committee for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice in India 192, 193, 198, 202, 203, 280n76 Cantonment Acts 191–2, 211, 212 IS’s proposals 197, 198–9, 201, 202, 206, 213–14 opposition to 201, 203, 204, 208–9, 210, 214 support of 201, 205 Josephine Butler’s campaign against Isabel Somerset 202, 203, 210, 234 Frances Willard 209–10 government committees 192, 196 inequality 190, 191, 199 Josephine Butler 191, 194, 204

297

Kathleen Fitzpatrick 190 Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts 191, 193, 194–6, 204, 205, 282n15 and NBWTA 194, 199, 202, 203–4, 205, 207 Regulation Bill 199 report by missionaries 192, 193–4, 208–9, 234 split in purity movement 197–8 and temperance 194 and WCTU 191, 193, 199, 207–8, 209 and WCTU British section 192, 193 and Women’s Liberal Federation 193 and WWCTU 192, 193, 194–6, 199, 210, 212 see also Contagious Diseases Acts; National Vigilance Association public houses 4, 151 Pugin, A.W.N. 16 racial equality 183, 185 reformatories 4, 167, 168, 175, 180 see also Duxhurst Farm Colony for Female Inebriates reformers, middle-class 183 Registration Bill 138, 140, 147, 265n27 see also women’s suffrage rehabilitation see reformatories Reigate Priory 15, 67, 153, 160, 169, 230 Rest Island Mission 92 Rounds, Louise S. 268n10 Rowntree, Joseph 218 Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing 197, 216–18 IS’s testimony 215 Russell, Adeline Mary Somers Cocks see Somers Cocks, Adeline Mary Russell, Rev E.F. 174

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INDEX

Salvation Army 127, 163, 253n95 Scotland, Peel Report 217 Selbourne, Lord 64, 248n1 Sentinel 210 Shattuck, Miss 165, 274n36 Sherwell, Arthur 218 Slack, Agnes 97, 204 slavery, abolition of 83 Smith, Hannah Whitall 73 and BWTA 73, 76, 79, 88, 102, 106, 112–13, 117 correspondence and papers 234 and Frances Willard 73 and Isabel Somerset 72–5, 83, 85–6, 92, 96–7, 105, 158, 210, 243n63 and NBWTA 206 and WCTU 73, 84, 89 and WWCTU 73, 75, 76 Smith, Henry 43, 47–8, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55 Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll 95 social activism age of consent 103, 135 Anglo-American co-operation 83–4, 98–9 religious ideology 84 slavery, abolition of 83 social order, fostering 5–6 social purity 239n42 Social Purity movement Anglo-American co-operation 84 Criminal Laws Amendment Act 1885, 6 entertainment industry 135, 258n6 National Vigilance Association 6 objectives 5, 239n42 on prostitution 6–7, 135 see also prostitution, stateregulated in India social reform legislation Cantonment Acts 99 Contagious Diseases Acts 6, 7, 99, 234, 239n42 Criminal Laws Amendment Act 1885, 6 Education Act 1918, 14

Habeas Corpus Act 58, 247n12 Married Women’s Property Act 1882, 32, 56–7 Registration Bill 138, 140, 147, 266n27 Society for Promotion of Legislation for the Control and Cure of Habitual Drunkards 167, 168 Society for the Recognition of the Brotherhood of Man 185 Somers, John (?1650–1716) xi, 11 Somers, Lady see Somers Cocks, Virginia Pattle Somers Cocks, Arthur, 6th Baron 230 Somers Cocks, Caroline 12 Somers Cocks, Charles (father) xi, 2, 12–14, 17, 43 death 68 and IS marriage 28, 29, 30, 32, 52, 243n61 and IS’s financial stability 28, 32, 56 properties 15–16, 29, 44, 67 Somers Cocks, Herbert Haldane xi, 67 Somers Cocks, Isabella Caroline see Somerset, Isabel (Lady Henry) Somers Cocks, John (1762–1841) xi, 12, 15 Somers Cocks, John (1788–1852) xi, 12 Somers Cocks, Margaret Nash xi, 12 Somers Cocks, Mary xi, 11–12 Somers Cocks, Virginia Pattle (mother) xi, 173 ancestry 14 children 18–20, 22–3, 25 death 225 education 20 fashion 17 health 225 IS’s custody battle 59, 63, 65 IS’s marriage 27, 28, 34, 47, 49, 51, 58, 243n61, 243n63

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INDEX marriage 13–14, 15 social life 14–15, 16–17 Somers Cocks, Virginia (sister) 15, 18, 19 Somers Cocks (Russell), Adeline Mary (sister) xi, 21, 29, 40, 54, 69, 72, 96, 179, 230 birth 15 childhood 18–24, 25 death 228 Duxhurst Farm Colony for Female Inebriates 177, 179, 230 marriage 254n8 Somers Town (London) 15, 72, 81, 153 Somerset, Arthur, Marquis of Worcester 51, 53, 58–9, 60, 156 Somerset, Blanche 37, 38, 41 Somerset, case re 61–4 Somerset, Henry Charles Augustus Somers (son) 51 as Beaufort heir 60, 61, 63, 156, 158, 248n29 birth 38 coming of age 148, 155, 172 divorce 228 education 86, 87 health 91 nickname 40 as soldier 227 travels 86, 90, 92, 101, 145, 146, 148 wedding 155, 156–8 Somerset, Henry Richard Charles (husband) ancestry, 26 death 67 finances 28, 32, 37, 38, 52, 228 Lady Somers 39, 40, 41, 44 marriage access to son 58, 59–64, 247n12 charge of personal cruelty 60–1 courtship of Isabel Somerset 26, 27–30, 35 knife incident 45–6

299

marriage of convenience 34–5 treatment of wife 38, 39–40, 41, 43–4, 48–9, 52 nicknames 244n8 political career 29, 40, 52–3, 60, 66–7 relationships with men 40–2, 43, 47–8, 49–59, 61–2 religion 27–8 son, Somers Somerset 42, 46, 50, 57, 158 views on children 35, 37–8 views on divorce 39 Somerset, Henry Robert Somers (grandson) 227 Somerset, Isabel (Lady Henry) CAREER (see also British Women’s Temperance Association; National British Women’s Temperance Association; Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union) memberships 5, 6, 7, 73, 168 recognition 1, 3, 94, 228–9, 231 social problems, approach to 163–4 socialism 136–7 total abstinence pledge 70 CHARACTER AND APPEARANCE

appearance 23 artistic talent 22, 40 character 1, 2, 3, 23, 86, 89, 98 fashion 25, 51, 67, 157, 174 photographs xii, 21, 31, 100, 169 public speaking ability 3, 70, 98, 105 CHILDHOOD

education 20, 22–3 peers 24, 25 upbringing 18–23 FRANCES WILLARD

death 213 financial support of 146, 153–4 first meeting 83, 86, 87 friendship 77, 86, 91, 96, 97–9, 159, 160

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Somerset, Isabel (Lady Henry) (continued) opposing principles 200 separations 94–5, 146, 148, 159, 164, 173, 207 shared ideals 97 HEALTH

carriage accident 197 exhaustion 144, 158, 159, 172 failing health 216, 219 heart problems 225 illness 38–9, 48 rheumatism 226 surgery 225 MARRIAGE

custody battle 52–3, 57–8, 59–64, 69, 247n12 honeymoon 33–4 husband’s jewellery bill 48, 50 husband’s letters from men 49–50, 53, 54–5, 57, 62 life at Badminton 36, 51 marital separation 47, 52, 53–4, 60–1, 65, 174, 248n1 marriage 26–7, 32–64 raising of son 67, 86–7 scandal 51, 56, 58, 59, 63 settlement 61 treatment by husband 38, 39–40, 41, 43–4, 48–9, 52 wedding 32 PERSONAL LIFE

ancestry xii, 26 birth 11, 15 death xiii, 228 debut 23, 24–6, 35 diary 233, 236n8 estates management of 152–3, 230 public houses on 81, 120, 151 welfare of tenants 68–9, 70, 72, 153, 157 final years 231 finances 2, 98, 118, 119, 153, 154, 164, 229, 253n88 nicknames 96, 244n20, 257n57 relationships with women 96–7

social life 23, 25, 67 suitors 26, 27 withdrawal from Society 1, 68 PHILANTHROPY

charitable works 7, 23–4, 69, 229 philanthropy 222–3 RELIGION

Anglicanism 160, 237n19 call to duty 231 Christian Socialism 2–3 conversion 2–3, 237n16 Established Church 69, 70 inner battles 67–8, 71, 224 Methodism 69 prejudices 162 TRAVELS ABROAD

America 84–94, 97, 99, 118–19, 148–9, 219 France 144, 148, 160, 162–4 Italy 37 Switzerland 144 VIEWS

African Americans 85 America’s future 85 children 26, 34, 38 contagious diseases question 206 drink question 3–4, 215, 219 First World War 227 homosexuality 48, 50–1, 95 insobriety 70, 77 marriage 30, 243n63 prohibition 4 promoting sobriety 4 social purity 190 vice 205 Somerset, Lady Henry see Somerset, Isabel (Lady Henry) Somerset, Lord Edward 24, 27 St Albans, Duke and Duchess of 155, 156, 160 St Louis Industrial Conference 92–3 St Mary’s Home (Reigate) 135, 153, 157 Stansfield, James 198, 280n75 Stead, W.T. 6, 102–3, 114, 231,

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INDEX 237n16 Stevens, Lillian 148, 203, 204, 207, 212, 254n11 Stewart, Eliza 84 Stewart, Mrs 108, 110, 116–17, 119 Stout, Edwin 114, 141 Sunday Closing Bill 74, 139 temperance bills Direct Veto xiv–xv, 109–10, 127, 139–40, 147, 149, 150 Licensing 1908, 222 Liquor Traffic (Local Control) 127 Sunday Closing 139 United Temperance 151 temperance legislation Habitual Drunkards Act 1879, 167 Inebriates Act 1898, 4, 168, 170, 180 and Polyglot Petition for Home Protection 82, 149, 195, 253n95 public house licences 151 public management of the drink trade 4 to reduce poverty 7–8 United Kingdom Alliance xiv–xv temperance movement xiv, xv, 3, 4, 7, 110, 170, 235, 251n50 call to Christian duty 73, 231 temperance public speeches Boston 88, 89 Chicago 86, 178 Eastnor 70 Ireland 147–8 London 120–1, 126, 149 Midlands 75, 126, 147 Minneapolis–St Paul 92 New York 85 Scotland 126, 149 Sunderland 127 Washington DC 85 Temperance Record 110, 119, 120 temperance reform Conservative Party and liquor trade 216 direct veto 217, 218 Gothenburg system 220, 286n23

301

IS’s compromise 216 manifestos 218, 220, 221 and NBWTA 218–19, 220, 221 public houses disinterested management 218, 220, 221 licensing 216, 217, 220, 222, 286n23 taxes 217 Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing 216–18 IS’s testimony 216–17 Peel Report 217, 218 Sunday closing 218 and WCTU 219 and WWCTU 219, 221 see also temperance bills; temperance legislation Tennyson, Alfred 15, 33 The Temperance Problem and Social Reform 218 The Times (London) 3, 198, 201, 227 Turner, Bishop 187 Tyrrell, Ian 3, 87, 110, 141, 162, 197, 209, 256n52 Union Signal 79, 86, 92, 99, 208, 210 United Kingdom Alliance xiv–xv, 127, 237n19 United Temperance Societies 125 Vegetarian Society 125 venereal disease among armed forces 6–7, 191, 196, 198–9 see also prostitution, stateregulated in India veto, direct xiv–xv, 4, 109–10, 236n8 legislation 127, 149, 151, 216, 263n45 veto, local see veto, direct Victoria, Queen 25, 26, 30, 59, 66, 174 Victorian Britain attitude towards colonials 85 class distinction 85

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INDEX

Wales, and Peel Report 217 Ward, Mrs Humphrey 201, 281n2 Watts, G.F. xi, 13, 15, 16, 19, 21, 31 WCTU see Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Wedderburn, Mr 48, 50, 51, 54, 55 Wells, Ida B. 183–6, 190 Westminster Licensing Reform Committee 216 Westmorland, Earl and Countess of 34, 59 Weston, Agnes 196 Whisky War 1873–1874, 84, 167 White Ribbon 143 White Ribbon Settlement House 222–3 White Ribbon Signal 143 White Ribboners 76, 94, 215, 219, 252n67 Whittaker, Thomas P. 218 Wilberforce, Canon Basil Orme 155, 160, 174, 237n19 Wilde, Oscar 256n52 Willard, Frances E. British visits 120–1, 126–7, 159–60, 174 character 93, 98 contagious diseases question 207 death 213 Do-Everything Policy 75, 76, 82, 88, 119–20, 121, 123 Frances Willard Memorial Library 233–4 health 118, 128, 144–5, 159, 164, 212, 263n48 on homosexuality 95 inequality 256n52 journal 234 nicknames 96, 256n47 Nineteen Beautiful Years 77 and People’s Party 93 and Prohibition Party 92–3 recognition of 232 relationships Isabel Somerset 76, 77, 94–9, 100, 117–19, 207 men 95, 257n55

women 95–6, 257n55 religion 160, 162 Rest Cottage 85, 96, 118 social problems, approach to 163–4 and socialism 136–7 and World Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 87, 121 see also Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Willard, Rossiter 209 Wilson, Mrs Henry J. 133 Wings 113, 123–4, 141, 259n28, 260n39 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) 1889 split 87, 92 annual conventions 83, 88–9, 144–5, 211, 219 anti-lynching resolution 99 and BWTA 74, 83, 99 finances 146, 268n12 Frances Willard as president 145, 146 Isabel Somerset 89, 94, 144–5, 145 objectives 93 offices 145 and Prohibition Party 92 as single-issue entity 145 White Ribboners 76, 252n67 see also Willard, Frances E.; Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association Woman’s Herald 99, 113–14, 123–4, 137, 141, 153 Woman’s Signal 99, 141–3, 147, 153, 204–5, 266n41, 266n42, 282n16 Woman’s Signal Budget 142–3, 147, 153, 266n43 Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association 86, 92, 145 Temple office tower 145, 146, 211

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INDEX women church roles 137 relationships between 95–6 Women’s Liberal Federation 110, 113, 123, 127, 130, 137, 193, 215 Women’s Protestant Union 182 women’s rights in Armenia 162 custody of children 47, 57, 61, 62, 247n12 employment as barmaids 136, 170 equality, moral and legal 7, 103, 239n42 in India 193, 199 and Isabel Somerset 70, 137 marital separation 47, 61 property 32, 56–7 women’s suffrage 137 and Anglo-American cooperation 83 and BWTA 5 legislation 5 parliamentary bills 104, 135, 138, 140, 147, 265n27 and People’s Party 93 petitions 265n27 and Prohibition Party 92–3 and temperance 4–5 as tool for reform 108, 140 Women’s Total Abstinence Union (WTAU) 134–5, 141, 237n20, 264n18, 264n19 Woodbridge, Mary A. 268n10 Wooley, John G. 92 Woolf, Virginia xi, 14 working classes 5–6, 7–8, 71, 72, 136

303

World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU) annual conventions 83, 87–8, 116, 149, 210, 215 and BWTA 74, 75, 76, 79, 82, 98, 116, 119, 130, 133 executive committee 88 expansion abroad 76, 88 Frances Willard as president 88 IS as president 211, 214, 215, 222 IS as vice-president 88, 115, 210, 211 IS’s financial support 153 membership 76 objectives 75, 116 Polyglot Petition 82, 149, 195, 253n95 Purity department 82, 194–5, 209, 283n33 sections 76 Britain 76, 87, 98, 114, 115, 116–17, 129, 211 Denmark 211 Dominion WCTU of Canada 211, 215, 219 Netherlands 211 Sweden 211 White Ribbon missionaries 76 WTAU see Women’s Total Abstinence Union WWCTU see World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Yeomans, Amelia 211, 215 Yorke, Lady Caroline xi, 12 Young Abstainers’ Union 80 Young Women’s Christian Association 80

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