Margaret and her friends
Rosalind Nash
Margaret was perennially curious about the people she came across, from Bloomsbury intellectuals to working class Guildswomen, from politicians like Lloyd George to suffrage campaigners; not to mention people she just happened to talk to on trains. There was much more to her than a passionate campaigner: lively and entertaining, she had a gift for friendship, with a wide social circle and - at least as important – a small group of intimates who saw one another through good times and bad.
Central were three fellow Girton students, Janet Case, Ethel Sargant and Rosalind Shore Smith (later Nash) who went on to be her close friends throughout their lives. To illustrate, at one point in her early thirties Margaret, ill and overworked, fled home and Guild commitments to a remote Cornish village. She was prepared to see both Rosalind and Ethel while convalescing but no-one else, not even her beloved mother. Later, when Virginia Woolf first encountered Margaret and Janet together, she was struck by their intimacy: they treated one another ‘with the familiarity of a worn out glove’.
Rosalind became active in the Guild around the time Margaret did. Their relationship was clearly special. After Rosalind announced her engagement, Margaret’s mother wrote that it must be ‘almost like a third person stepping in between a happily married pair’. But although marriage and children inevitably changed things, the two remained close and supported one another over the years through family crises and bereavements. Rosalind continued to contribute to the Guild, and she was regularly the first person Margaret turned to for advice.
Bertrand Russell
While her closest intimates were women, Margaret enjoyed friendships with men too; after all, she had grown up with six brothers. In the years after 1905, following brother Theodore’s tragic death, she became friendly with Bertrand Russell, who had been close to Theodore. Both were active in the suffrage movement during this exciting but turbulent time, and they often used their correspondence to offload as well as to debate campaigning issues. At one difficult time Russell confessed that ‘mathematics is most consoling when one is depressed by politics’. At another, when a proposal she had co-organised sank without trace, an enraged Margaret scribbled him a note: ‘Now. Bertie, you see. No heed taken by Asquith, ignored nearly by newspapers. I hope politicians and newspapers will realise that it is they who are driving women into revolution.’
Somewhat later, Margaret became good friends with Virginia and Leonard Woolf. Leonard, a fellow Co-operator, became a sympathetic and like-minded confidant who backed her up during difficult disputes in the movement. As she exclaimed in one letter, ‘I can’t imagine how it is you always think + feel just what I wanted + express it so infinitely better.’ For his part Leonard liked and respected Margaret, whom he considered one of the most eminent women he had ever known. Her relationship with Virginia Woolf was somewhat cooler, however: while appreciating Margaret’s ‘niceness and valiancy’, Virginia often found her irritating.
Virginia and Leonard Woolf
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Another significant friendship in later life was with Dolly Ponsonby and her politician husband Arthur. Margaret and Dolly confided in one another, and fuelled by their shared pacifism, the friendship with both became closer from the 1920s onward.
Thanks to their surviving diaries and correspondence, we know more about Margaret’s friendships with eminent figures like Russell than we do about others, even the closest. And her relationships with the working class Guild activists are the least visible of all.
For what we do know, see the page on Margaret and the Guild.
Finally, there is Lilian Harris. A devoted friend and colleague, and Margaret’s life companion for many years, she merits a page to herself.
Dolly Ponsonby