Some great political movements achieve success in a blaze of victory which reflects glory on all the labourers in the field, from those of the first to those of the eleventh hour. Others, after long, bitter struggles, have a quiet triumph, and are soon surrounded by such an atmosphere of acceptance that many once violent opponents, come to believe that they have always supported what now seems so natural and right. Women's suffrage is undoubtedly one of these last, and the manner in which it has taken its place as a national institution is in harmony with the character of the leader whose memoirs are now before us. For one who has accomplished so much, Mrs. Fawcett has been very little in the public eye, and it is possible that some will now realize for the first time what a part she has taken in every movement for the political and social enfranchisement of women during a period of nearly 60 years.
She was born in 1847, and was therefore only a child when her sister Elizabeth (afterwards Mrs. Garrett-Anderson) began her long struggle for the opening of the medical profession to women. She was 18 when John Stuart Mill put forward women's suffrage as one of the chief planks in his election programme and thus made it, for the first time, a practical issue in politics. She attended one of his meetings, and a few years later, when her first book was published, she dedicated the first fruits of her pen to a J. S. Mill election fund. This was after her marriage with Henry Fawcett, which took place in 1867. She was just 20 when she married Henry Fawcett. He was one of those clear spirits who are raised "to scorn delights and live laborious days," not by the desire for fame, but by human affection and a passion for justice. The cruel accident which had blinded him was to him an opportunity, and he was already a professor at Cambridge and a member of Parliament. So Millicent Garrett, who had spent most of her early girlhood in the family home at Aldeburgh, where she lived chiefly among country and seafaring folk, was removed to London, where she joined Mrs. Peter Taylor's newly formed women's suffrage committee, and to Cambridge, where she found herself in the midst of the movement for the higher education of women. She heard John Stuart Mill move his women's suffrage amendment to the 1867 Reform Bill, and, still very young and shy and frightened, she managed to make her first speech at the first public meeting in support of votes for women ever held in London. A "well-known Member of Parliament" referred publicly in the House of Commons to her and Mrs. Taylor as "two ladies, wives of members of this House, who have disgraced themselves," and added that "he would not further disgrace them by mentioning their names." Soon afterwards Mrs. Fawcett had the pleasure of sitting next to this gentleman at a Cambridge dinner party and gently chaffing him on his unfortunate position. When they had both let off steam, she found him quite an agreeable neighbour, and says that as far as she knows he never afterwards held up any women publicly to contempt for advocating the enfranchisement of her sex. She follows his kind precedent about names by referring to him only as Mr. C. R.
In the seventies and eighties the struggles for women's property rights, for women's suffrage, for the higher education of girls, and for an equal moral standard were all carried on simultaneously, and Mrs. Fawcett took part in them all. It is characteristic that she regards the fact that the meeting at which Newnham College was founded took place in her house at Cambridge as just one of her usual pieces of wonderful good luck. It was good luck too, but perhaps also something more, that made her only daughter, Philippa, be the one to heap glory on Newnham and on the women's cause by coming out "about the Senior Wrangler" in the mathematical tripos of 1890. Henry Fawcett did not live to see this triumph. He died in 1884, after being Postmaster-General in Gladstone's Government for four and a half years. During his lifetime he and his wife helped and supported each other in all their work; after his death she went on steadily with the increasing labours of what gradually became a gigantic propaganda. She was not alone, for she was surrounded by a growing body of friends and comrades. They concentrated more and more upon the suffrage, and in the early years of the present century the movement gained enormously in intensity and volume. The militant outbreak was only one side of this development. Mrs. Fawcett warmly recognizes the devotion of many that took part in it, but in the end it complicated the issue. The attitude of the militant leaders and of the anti-suffrage politicians, led by Mr. Asquith, acted and reacted upon each other, and one constitutional effort after another was defeated, till in 1914 the impasse appeared to be complete.
The declaration of war seemed to Mrs. Fawcett, as doubtless to many others, to be an indefinite postponement of women's suffrage. How could the country think about women when it was struggling for its life with the greatest military Power in the world? But the turn of events was unexpected and welcome. Men suddenly discovered that women were as much part of the "country" as they were and cared for it in the same way, and women discovered that their long effort for various kinds of emancipation had freed their powers and fitted them to serve the State. So women's suffrage became law and an interesting chapter in British history was closed. Its chief events are delightfully recorded in this book by one who seems unconscious of what a supremely important part she herself played in bringing them to a happy issue.
