of a nearby tree. To which her father said, “Clever girl.”
From there it was a school in Switzerland. More boredom. Then a two-month stop in Paris, which led to a very brief flirtation with cigarettes, a boy whose name she forgot within a month, and an introduction to the women’s rights movement. When she returned to London as a suffragette, a family friend informed her that she was “too well-adjusted, too happy and attractive” for a movement that belonged to women who were “disillusioned and disappointed.”
It was true that Amadora was raised with parties, social engagements, games, theater, museums, and music. There were friends, parents’ friends, friends of friends, and pets. She would regularly visit her father at work, where his company made superior-quality inks of unusual colors, like London fog, pale pink peonies gone brown about the edges, black pearl, the green of a summer field, imported coffee, roses, fiery sunset, and shades of blue resembling a variety of skies and seas, all with their impossibly French names: saphir, améthyste, topaze-jaune, rubis, émeraude. Ink that glowed like stars; invisible ink that turned blue in the light; inks of silver, gold, copper, and platinum. There was something alchemical about so many hues deriving from three primary colors. Her father not only instructed her in the principles of color but encouraged her education in color and chemicals.
Amadora was as far from “disillusioned and disappointed” as one could get, and the whole concept angered her. Why would anyone believe that a happy, privileged life was incompatible with political participation? Even more shocking was when this attitude came from other women. She was too young to think it all through, but she did know that denigrating women—in this case, Amadora—because they (she) wanted the vote only made her more committed to the fight. From an early age she rebelled against other people telling her what she should or should not want. Nerve.
Amadora’s response was standing on a corner at Piccadilly Circus two days a week, passing out suffragette literature. At seventeen and finished with school, she had the time and energy to face the weather, and the indifference, real or feigned, of passersby. Then, in July 1910, about the time the women were told by Prime Minister Asquith that theycouldn’t expect to receive the vote any time soon, Amadora attended a massive Hyde Park political rally (the same event Cymbeline described to Julius, prompting him to say people should be allowed to be who they are) where tempers began to flare. Unrest—and not the polite, ladylike kind—violence, impatience, and menace were in the air. In the same way that Amadora had taken to her tree in school when the Girl Guides came to blows, she had to rethink her commitment to the suffragette movement.
She later wrote, “I would gladly have embarked on a career of wickedness and violence to obtain political freedom, but I was frightened. The leaders of the Women’s Social and Political Union conducted the campaign of violence like a war, to destroy property but not endanger life. If you signed on, you signed on for the lot. You couldn’t say, ‘I don’t mind smashing windows but I draw the line at setting fire to a church.’ I could not face prison and forcible feeding, which often entailed having a twenty-inch tube shoved up your nostril after being held down by half a dozen people. The prison matrons and doctors broke teeth, damaged esophagi, and left women seriously hurt, sometimes lying in their own vomit. My fear was not unfounded.”
She was as uninterested in marriage as she was in pursuing a university education, or in going to jail for the political beliefs that she still held dear. She could take a lover and “go to the bad,” as she said, or she could work.
She did what she always did at moments of indecision. She made a list:
(a) Being a Doctor: Exams too difficult. Training too expensive though
From there it was a school in Switzerland. More boredom. Then a two-month stop in Paris, which led to a very brief flirtation with cigarettes, a boy whose name she forgot within a month, and an introduction to the women’s rights movement. When she returned to London as a suffragette, a family friend informed her that she was “too well-adjusted, too happy and attractive” for a movement that belonged to women who were “disillusioned and disappointed.”
It was true that Amadora was raised with parties, social engagements, games, theater, museums, and music. There were friends, parents’ friends, friends of friends, and pets. She would regularly visit her father at work, where his company made superior-quality inks of unusual colors, like London fog, pale pink peonies gone brown about the edges, black pearl, the green of a summer field, imported coffee, roses, fiery sunset, and shades of blue resembling a variety of skies and seas, all with their impossibly French names: saphir, améthyste, topaze-jaune, rubis, émeraude. Ink that glowed like stars; invisible ink that turned blue in the light; inks of silver, gold, copper, and platinum. There was something alchemical about so many hues deriving from three primary colors. Her father not only instructed her in the principles of color but encouraged her education in color and chemicals.
Amadora was as far from “disillusioned and disappointed” as one could get, and the whole concept angered her. Why would anyone believe that a happy, privileged life was incompatible with political participation? Even more shocking was when this attitude came from other women. She was too young to think it all through, but she did know that denigrating women—in this case, Amadora—because they (she) wanted the vote only made her more committed to the fight. From an early age she rebelled against other people telling her what she should or should not want. Nerve.
Amadora’s response was standing on a corner at Piccadilly Circus two days a week, passing out suffragette literature. At seventeen and finished with school, she had the time and energy to face the weather, and the indifference, real or feigned, of passersby. Then, in July 1910, about the time the women were told by Prime Minister Asquith that theycouldn’t expect to receive the vote any time soon, Amadora attended a massive Hyde Park political rally (the same event Cymbeline described to Julius, prompting him to say people should be allowed to be who they are) where tempers began to flare. Unrest—and not the polite, ladylike kind—violence, impatience, and menace were in the air. In the same way that Amadora had taken to her tree in school when the Girl Guides came to blows, she had to rethink her commitment to the suffragette movement.
She later wrote, “I would gladly have embarked on a career of wickedness and violence to obtain political freedom, but I was frightened. The leaders of the Women’s Social and Political Union conducted the campaign of violence like a war, to destroy property but not endanger life. If you signed on, you signed on for the lot. You couldn’t say, ‘I don’t mind smashing windows but I draw the line at setting fire to a church.’ I could not face prison and forcible feeding, which often entailed having a twenty-inch tube shoved up your nostril after being held down by half a dozen people. The prison matrons and doctors broke teeth, damaged esophagi, and left women seriously hurt, sometimes lying in their own vomit. My fear was not unfounded.”
She was as uninterested in marriage as she was in pursuing a university education, or in going to jail for the political beliefs that she still held dear. She could take a lover and “go to the bad,” as she said, or she could work.
She did what she always did at moments of indecision. She made a list:
(a) Being a Doctor: Exams too difficult. Training too expensive though
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