Guardian and ward -- Fiction; Women -- Suffrage -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"I will be at the Rose and Crown at least half an hour before the
meeting. We have got a capital waggon for you to speak from, and chosen
the place where it is to stand. I am afraid we may have some rough
customers to deal with. But the police have been strongly warned--that
I have found out--though I don't know by whom--and there will be plenty
of them. My one regret is that I cannot be in the crowd, so as both to
see and hear you. I must of course stick to the waggon. What a day for
us all down here!--for our little down-trodden band! You come to us as
our Joan of Arc, leading us on a holy war. You shame us into action,
and to fight with you is itself victory. When I think of how you looked
and how you talked the other night! Do you know that you have a face
'to launch a thousand ships?' No, I am convinced you never think of
it--you never take your own beauty into consideration. And you won't
imagine that I am talking in this way from any of the usual motives.
Your personal charm, if I may say so, is merely an item in our balance
sheet; your money--I understand you have money--is another. You bring
your beauty and your money in your hand, and throw them into the great
conflagration of the Cause--just as the women did in Savonarola's day.
You fling them away--if need be--for an idea. And because of it, all
the lovers of ideas, and all the dreamers of great dreams will be your
slaves and servants. Understand!--you are going to be loved and
followed, as no ordinary woman, even with your beauty, is ever loved
and followed. Your footsteps may be on the rocks and flints--I promise
you no easy, nor royal road. There may be blood on the path! But a
cloud of witnesses will be all about you--some living and some dead;
you will be carried in the hearts of innumerable men and women--women
above all; and if you stand firm, if your soul rises to the height of
your call, you will be worshipped, as the saints were worshipped.
"Only let nothing bar your path. Winnington is a good fellow, but a
thickheaded Philistine all the same. You spoke to me about him with
compunction. Have no compunctions. Go straight forward. Women have got
to shew themselves ruthless, and hard, and cunning, like men--if they
are to fight men."
"Yours faithfully,
PAUL LATHROP."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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