Woman Question'', and the Meanings of Anarchist Socialism in Late Victorian Radicalism

34 Pages·2012·0.3 MB·English

IRSH57(2012),pp.3–36doi:10.1017/S0020859011000757
r2011Internationaal InstituutvoorSociale Geschiedenis
Charlotte Wilson, the ‘‘Woman Question’’,
and the Meanings of Anarchist Socialism
in Late Victorian Radicalism
SUSAN HINELY
Department of History, State University of New York
at Stony Brook
E-mail: [email protected]
SUMMARY: Recent literature on radical movements in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries has re-cast this period as a key stage of contemporary globali-
zation,oneinwhichideologicalformulationsandradicalallianceswerefluidanddid
not fall neatly into the categories traditionally assigned by political history. The
followinganalysisofCharlotteWilson’sanarchistpoliticalideasandactivisminlate
Victorian Britain is an intervention in this new historiography that both supports
the thesis of global ideological heterogeneity and supplements it by revealing the
challenge to sexual hierarchy that coursed through many of these radical cross-
currents.TheunexpectedalliancesWilsonformedinpursuitofherunderstandingof
anarchistsocialismunderscoretheproteannatureofradicalpoliticsbutalsoshowan
over-arching consensus that united these disparate groups, a common vision of the
socialistfutureinwhichthefundamentalbutoppositionalvaluesofselfandsociety
would merge. This consensus arguably allowed Wilson’s gendered definition of
anarchism to adapt to new terms as she and other socialist women pursued their
radicalvisionasactivistsinthepre-warwomen’smovement.
INTRODUCTION
London in the last decades of the nineteenth century was a global
crossroads and political haven for a large number of radical activists and
theorists, many of whom were identified with the anarchist school of
socialist thought. In spite of the importance of London as a center of
anarchist refuge and publication, native English anarchism in this period
has usually been described as a marginal and idiosyncratic movement.1
1. GeorgeWoodcock’shistoryofanarchism,continuouslyinprintsinceitsinitialpublicationin
1962,withrevisededitionsavailableinseverallanguages,andstillthemostwidelycitedsourceon
the subject, presents this picture of native English anarchism; George Woodcock, Anarchism:
A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (Peterborough, Ontario [etc.], 2004),
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000757 Published online by Cambridge University Press
4 Susan Hinely
Its best known advocate, Charlotte Wilson – not only an anarchist but a
founding Fabian socialist and a leading figure of the pre-war suffrage
movement–isoftenofferedastheeccentricfigurethatbestillustratesthe
anomalous and contradictory nature of the English anarchist movement.
Informed by cultural-historical perspectives, recent global histories of
the three to four decades before World War I, however, suggest alternate
ways to think about the movements we call socialism, anarchism, and
feminism.2 These histories highlight the ways that new technologies in
communication and transport produced complex confluences of people
and ideas, creating a rich cultural brew that is not easily organized into
conventional ideological categories. Individual radicals and their fluid
organizations met and diverged under many different labels: anarchists,
anti-imperialists, New Women, eugenicists, vegetarians, and, most broadly
ofall,socialists.Charlotte Wilson’sfriends,alliesandpoliticalcausesappear
prominently in all of these new studies, suggesting that her peculiar eclec-
ticism might be representative of important submerged cultural currents;
accordingly, tracing her political biography offers a way both to illuminate
these underlying currents and to open new perspectives.3
pp. 370–379. See also Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism
(London, 1992), pp. 488–491; David Goodway (ed.), For Anarchism: History, Theory, and
Practice(London[etc.],1989),p.1;MaxNettlau,AShortHistoryofAnarchism,HeinerBecker
(ed.) (London, 1996), p. 209. The Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin, himself part of the
international refugee community in England, may have been the first to describe English
anarchism as eccentric. See Martin Miller, Kropotkin (Chicago, IL [etc.], 1976), p. 169. For
historiesof Englishanarchismsee Hermia Oliver, The International AnarchistMovementin
Late Victorian London (London [etc.], 1983); John Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost
History of the British Anarchists (London [etc.], 1978). See also David Goodway, Anarchist
SeedsBeneaththeSnow:Left-LibertarianThoughtandBritishWritersfromWillliamMorristo
Colin Ward (Liverpool, 2006); Haia Shpayer-Makov, ‘‘Anarchism in British Public Opinion,
1880–1914,’’inVictorianStudies,31(1988),pp.487–516.
2. Benedict Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination
(London [etc], 2005); Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of
Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (Berkeley, CA [etc.], 2010); Leela Gandhi, Affective Commu-
nities:AnticolonialThought,Fin-de-Sie`cleRadicalism,andthePoliticsofFriendship(Durham,
NC[etc.],2006);C.M.Bayly,TheBirthoftheModernWorld,1780–1914(Oxford[etc.],2004);
Ju¨rgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Petersson, Globalization: A Short History (Princeton,
NJ, 2005); Mary Louise Roberts, Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Sie`cle France
(Chicago,IL [etc.], 2002). See also Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global
Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality
(Cambridge[etc.],2008),whichtracksanumberofthemovementsandindividualsdiscussed
belowinitsexaminationoffin-de-sie`clewhiteidentity.
3. ThefollowingdiscussionisprincipallydrawnfrommyunpublishedPh.D.thesis,‘‘Charlotte
Wilson:Anarchist,Fabian,andFeminist’’(StanfordUniversity,CA,1987).TheEnglishjour-
nalist,anarchist,andpeaceactivistNicolasWalterwasthefirsttoresearchWilson’slifeandto
document her role in late Victorian anarchism. See his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography (Oxford [etc.], 2004), and the introduction to his edited collection
of Wilson essays: Charlotte Wilson, Anarchist Essays, Nicolas Walter (ed.) (London, 2000).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000757 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Charlotte Wilson and Anarchist Socialism 5
Thevirtueofbiographyasaformofhistoricalanalysisisthatitrequires
us to take seriously and consider anew actions and beliefs that do not fit
withourcurrenttypologyofpoliticalhistory.Biographypresentsuswith
the stubborn fact that Charlotte Wilson lived, and that under her own
terms,aswellasthosewholookedtoherforleadership,Fabiansocialism,
anarchist revolution, and women’s emancipation were complementary
causes. While one lesson to be drawn from biography is a reminder that
historical figures were no less susceptible than we are to internal con-
tradiction and mixed motives, Wilson’s story also reminds us of what we
stand to lose when we impose coherence and typological precision on
a historical moment that was neither coherent nor clearly defined for
those who experienced it. The terms Wilson used to describe her beliefs
wereunsettledinlateVictorianLondon,andtheparticularideasshetried
to express lost out in the contest over meaning and definition, especially
in the fight over the political meaning of British socialism. William
Morris, designer, poet and political ally of Charlotte Wilson, described
the elusive nature of political ideas when, in A Dream of John Ball, he
pondered,
Howmenfightandlosethebattle,andthethingtheyfoughtforcomesaboutin
spiteofthedefeat,andwhenitcomesturnsoutnottobewhattheymeant,and
other men haveto fightfor whatthey meantunderanother name.4
The following inquiry into Charlotte Wilson’s understanding of poli-
ticaltermsisanefforttorecapturealternatemeaningsemployedbythose
whobattledoverthedefinitionofsocialisminlateVictorianBritain.Like
thenewglobalhistories,Iarguethattherewasarichandcomplexmixof
radical ideas circulating in this period; I ground my exploration of their
meaning and cross-currents in the political career and alliances of one
woman and show that here, too, we can uncover a new way of looking
at this period that reveals alternate meanings of familiar political labels.5
Walter’sthoroughandpainstakingeffortstolocateWilsoninthehistoricalrecordremindusof
thearchivalchallengesofbiography,especiallyofthelivesofwomen.Wilson’semotionallife
and interpersonalrelationscan only be inferredfrom her sporadicpresencein the preserved
correspondenceofprominentmen,especiallyGeorgeBernardShawandKarlPearson.
4. WilliamMorris,ADreamofJohnBall,inThreeWorksbyWilliamMorris,withanintro-
ductionbyA.L.Morton(London,1977),p.53.
5. LikeIlhamKhuri-MakdisiinherstudyofthelateVictorianandpre-warglobalLeft,Iargue
thatradicalisminthisperiod‘‘wasmoreoftenthannotapackageof(sometimesinchoate)ideas
and practices that were not codified, standardized, or homogenized, and in which cleavages
betweensocialism,anarchism,socialdemocracy,Fabianism,andotherideologiesdidnotalways
or necessarily apply’’; Khuri-Makdisi, Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global
Radicalism,p.8.WhileKhuri-Makdisiexploresthis‘‘packageofideas’’byfocusingonthepress
inthreeeasternMediterraneancities,Ifindaninstructiveparalleltoherfindingsintheinter-
sectionandre-conceptionofradicalideasinthesmallbutinfluentialgroupoflateVictorian
intellectualsandradicalstowhichWilsonbelonged.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000757 Published online by Cambridge University Press
6 Susan Hinely
As a member of the late Victorian radical community, Wilson used
a variety of terms to describe her substantive values and political goals.
Iarguethatherchoiceof‘‘anarchistsocialism’’asthemostcomprehensive
waytodescribeherpoliticalideologyopensanewlensonthisperiodand
allows us to see it differently in at least three interconnected ways.
First, Wilson’s choice to identify herself as an ‘‘anarchist’’suggests that
fin-de-sie`cleanarchismisbetteranalyzednotasa‘‘movement’’butrather,
as Benedict Anderson terms it in his recent study, as a ‘‘gravitational
field’’,pulling together momentarilya disparatecollection ofintellectuals
andpoliticalrefugeesfromallovertheworld,atransitoryandconstantly
shifting network made possible by electricity and cheap transit in the
earlystage of contemporary globalization. Anderson’s exercise in ‘‘political
astronomy’’focusesonthelivesoftheindividualswhoweredrawnintothis
protean field, and in so doing uncovers an alternate radical discourse, an
anti-authoritarian critique of late imperial capitalism that was obscured by
the ascendance of socialist parties seeking power in the bourgeois state.6
Critical to the cosmopolitan conversation Anderson describes, though
unexploredinhisaccount,arethevoicesofwomen,someofthemrefugees,
many of them middle-class intellectuals likeWilson, who from their varied
perspectives were also drawn to this anarchist ‘‘force field’’. As a leading
spokesperson and financier of late Victorian English anarchism, Charlotte
Wilson managed a wide-ranging, politically diverse switchboard of global
connections.Ifwearehistoricallyjustifiedinapplyingthisfluid,permeable
conceptofanarchism,Wilsonnolongerappearsoutofplace;herpositionin
this complex, short-lived constellation of activists appears illustrative and
points to alternate and important political ideas.
Secondly, Wilson’s anarchist career suggests that the internal incon-
sistencies of British anarchism are not exceptional, but rather are
emblematic of a dualistic tension within all the competing schools of late
Victorian radical thought. While articulated under a variety of names,
British progressive thought was shaped by a basic morphology that
embraced two fundamental but oppositional values: individual freedom
andcommunalequality.Evenastheactualpracticeofpoliticsrevealedthe
inherent tension between these two values, British radicals promised to
deliver both, animated as they were by the utopian vision of modern
democratic theory. The ‘‘inconsistencies’’ in Wilson’s political biography
reflect this fundamental paradox in a way that is useful for historians of
political ideas. Seeking a new way to express the radical goal of individual
freedom,sheidentifiedherselfasan‘‘anarchist’’.Atthesametime,sheclaimed
thatsocialequalityisbothaproductofandapreconditionforfreedom,soshe
6. Anderson,UnderThreeFlags,pp.1–3.IlhamKhuri-Makdisialsoanalyzesanarchisminthis
wayinheraccountofglobalradicalconnectionsintheArabOttomanworld.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000757 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Charlotte Wilson and Anarchist Socialism 7
also called herself a ‘‘socialist’’, or ‘‘anarchist communist’’, or ‘‘individualist
socialist’’. She was trying to construct a new ‘‘name’’ for the old ‘‘fight’’, as
Morris put it in A Dream of John Ball, and, like other members of the late
Victorian Left, she searched for a political vocabulary that would embrace
bothessentialbutoppositionalelementsoftheutopiandemocraticformula.
The third line of argument proposed here is that the fin-de-sie`cle
movementmostinneedofre-examinationfortracesof‘‘lost’’meaningsis
that vast galaxy of diverse political goals that we retrospectively call ‘‘first-
wave feminism’’. The naming conundrum is most acute here, where the
modern Western term ‘‘feminism’’ is imported to a time when neither the
economic foundations for such feminism nor even the word itself existed.
The complexity and cross-currents within this fin-de-sie`cle ‘‘gravitational
field’’ were too diverse to go under a single term and were reflected in the
open-ended phrase most often used to describe it: the ‘‘Woman Question’’.
Historiansofwomen’spoliticalhistoryfaceataxonomicaltrapattheoutset,
sincewomen,likeotherdisenfranchisedgroups,arecaughtintheparadoxof
speaking on behalf of an identity not of their own making, of necessarily
havingtoframetheiruniversalclaimstofreedomintermsoftheirparticular
exclusion as ‘‘women’’.7 Historians of feminism, therefore, face the double
hurdle of using today’s terms in search of past alternate meanings within a
movement that was in its own time forced to use terms and identities that
reflected exclusion and powerlessness.
Wilson never called herself a ‘‘feminist’’, but her entire political career
atteststothe‘‘feminist’’meaningatthecoreofwhatshecalled‘‘socialism’’,
or,forovertwenty-fiveyears,‘‘anarchistsocialism’’.Herpoliticalidealasa
woman was wholly merged with the radical democratic tradition, yet she
wasfrequentlyfacedwiththeparadoxofrepresentingapresumedseparate
female interest. She and other socialist women, for example, were con-
stantly forced to qualify the term ‘‘worker’’ inorder toincludethemselves
inthiscategory.Theyhadtobe‘‘womenworkers’’,atermthatexplicitlyset
them apart in the very attempt at inclusion. That Wilson chose ‘‘anarchist
socialism’’ as the most inclusive term, and the one best able to express her
political ideal, suggests that a feminist understanding of this ideology was
animportantcurrentpulsingthoughthecomplexspectrumofbellee´poque
radicalism.
7. Thelinguisticparadoxreproducedinthewritingof‘‘feminist’’historyassomethingseparate
fromthehistoryofradicaldemocracyisaddressedbyDeniseRileyin‘‘AmIThatName?’’:
Feminism and the Category of ‘‘Women’’ in History (Minneapolis, MN, 1988). Joan Wallach
ScotttracesthisdiscursiveconundruminmodernFrenchhistoryinOnlyParadoxestoOffer:
FrenchFeministsandtheRightsofMan(Cambridge,MA,1996).Fortheparadoxofwritingthe
history of India using names and identities constructed by imperial Britain, see Dipesh
Chakrabarty,ProvincializingEurope:PostcolonialThoughtandHistoricalDifference(Princeton,
NJ,2000).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000757 Published online by Cambridge University Press
8 Susan Hinely
This third argument suggested by Wilson’s career adds an important,
butlargelyabsentelementtothenewliteratureonglobalradicalism.If,as
I argue, Wilson’s late Victorian radicalism was fundamentally a struggle
for sexual emancipation waged under the name of anarchism, then the
pre-war global women’s movement that she and other anarchist and
socialist women later joined needs to be reconsidered in this light.Just as
Anderson’s work challenges the historiography that sees pre-war labor
movementsasculminatinginsocialistpoliticalparties,andKhuri-Makdisi’s
work challenges the nationalist historiography that sees pre-war eastern
Mediterranean radicalism as culminating in the modern state, the fol-
lowing analysis of Wilson’s anarchism challenges the historiography that
sees the pre-war women’s movement as culminating in the franchise,
andsuggestsinsteadthatthismovementwasanimportantpartofaglobal
revolutionary moment. British suffragists, labor internationalists, Ottoman
intellectuals, and other pre-war dissidents re-examined by the new global
histories, were perhaps far more radical intheir goals and more relevantto
contemporarypoliticalconcernsthanhasbeenacknowledgedintraditional
political history.
CHARLOTTE WILSON AND THE MEANING
OF SOCIALISM
CharlotteWilson(‘‘Lettie’’MartinuntilhermarriagetoArthurWilsonin
1876)was bornin 1854 in the village of Kemerton onthe Gloucestershire–
Worcestershireborder,toafamilyaffiliatedforthreegenerationsbackwith
the evangelical movement in the Anglican Church. Her great-grandfather
used his considerable wealth as a silk manufacturer to purchase parish
livings for his clergyman sons and sons-in-law, some of whom went on to
publish, build churches, and become leaders in the evangelical movement.8
The weight of evangelical duty was no doubt present in Charlotte
Wilson’s youth as the only child of Clementina and Robert Martin, a
memberoftheRoyalCollegeofSurgeonswhoalsoworkedforhisdistrict’s
Poor Law service. Historians have long noted the continuities between
British socialism and the discourse of Christian duty and deliverance.9
8. On the family’s expansive mission and considerable influence see the Rev. George Lea,
Memoir of the Rev. John Davies, M.A. (London, 1859), and Crockford’s Clerical Dictionary
(London1858).WhileWilsonmayhavebrokenherintellectualtiestotheevangelicaltradition
by1876,sherenewedheremotionallinksthatyearbymarryinghercousin,ArthurWilson,son
oftheVicarofIslington,grandsonoftheBishopofCalcuttaandpartofthesameevangelical
familydynasty.
9. SeeBarbaraTaylor,EveandtheNewJerusalem:SocialismandFeminismintheNineteenth
Century(London,1983).Taylorsuggests,asIdohereforthelateVictoriansocialistrevival,that
themeaningofsocialismwasinextricablefromanotionofwomen’sliberationformembersof
theearlysocialistmovement.SeealsoSheilaRowbothamandJeffreyWeeks,Socialismandthe
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000757 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Charlotte Wilson and Anarchist Socialism 9
Wilson fits this pattern, as her socialist writings are a palimpsest of evan-
gelical moral accountancy, but with a marked rejection of institutional
authorityanddisciplinethatmaywellreflectrebellionagainsttheweightof
aprominentfamilyreputation.Oneofthefewrecollectionsshegaveofher
childhood suggests a critical awareness of the regime of Christian guilt,
especiallyasitweighedonwomen:‘‘Ihadmyselfamotherwho,whilstina
sense she loved me intensely, yet always looked on me as an afflictionsent
againstherwillfromonhigh,forwhich,asforotherchastenings,sheought
to feel grateful.’’10
Wilson was first exposed to the radical ideas that she would eventually
label anarchist socialism as one of the original students at Newnham
College, founded at Cambridge in 1871 as one of the earliest elite insti-
tutions of higher education for women in England. Located just outside
the main college area in Cambridge, this bold experiment in female
education recast the evangelical values of charity and improvement into
secular and radical terms. In Wilson’s own description, ‘‘Cambridge was
the porch through which I entered the world.’’11 The idea of women
living apart from fathers or husbands to receive an education designed
for men was one of the most provocative notions circulating in England
in the 1870s.12 The fin-de-sie`cle debate over which economic system
would produce the healthiest ‘‘race’’, a constant topic of discussion that
cut across all factions of the socialist movement, was already raging at
Cambridgeinthe1870s,withrespectedscientistsadvisingagainstintellectual
NewLife:ThePersonalandSexualPoliticsofEdwardCarpenterandHavelockEllis(London,
1977);G.M.Young,PortraitofanAge:VictorianEngland(London,1977).
10. WilsontoPearson,8August1885,KarlPearsonPapers[hereafter,KPP],WatsonLibrary,
UniversityCollege,London.
11. WilsontoShaw,15July1889,AM50512,fo.161,GeorgeBernardShawPapers[hereafter,
SP],BritishLibrary,London.
12. The Principal of Newnham College, Anne Clough, insisted that higher education for
womenwasamatterofgeneralsocialimprovement,notof‘‘women’srights’’,andsheinstructed
her students to steer clear of that phrase. In spite of Clough’s efforts, outsiders saw these
womenas‘‘revolutionaries’’;SeeBlancheAthenaClough,AMemoirofAnneJemimaClough
(London,1897),p.195.Thewomenthemselvespreferredtoidentifyassoldiersforthe‘‘Cause’’,
aplaceholdercalleduponthirtyyearslatertogiveanametothewomen’ssuffragemovement;
seeMaryPaleyMarshall,WhatIRemember(Cambridge,1947),p.10.NotethatWilsonfirst
metatCambridgethefuturesuffragistleaderMillicentGarrettFawcett,whowaspresentthere
notasastudent,butasthewifeoftheprogressivedonHenryFawcett,andanactivesupporter,
alongwithherhusband,oftheNewnhamCollegeproject.Asinthepre-warmovement,the
battle over women’s education reflected real concerns about women wielding power, since
Cambridgegraduateswereentitledtovoteonawiderangeofuniversityaffairs.Thestruggle
fromthe1870suntilwomenwereadmittedtouniversitymembershipin1948canthusbeseen
astheacademicversionofthestruggleforthenationalfranchise;seeRitaMcWilliamsTullberg,
‘‘Women and Degrees at Cambridge University, 1862–1897’’, in Martha Vicinus (ed.), A
WideningSphere:ChangingRolesofVictorianWomen(Bloomington,IN,1977),p.125.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000757 Published online by Cambridge University Press
10 Susan Hinely
Figure 1. ‘‘Cambridge was the porch through which I entered the world.’’ Charlotte Martin
(Wilson)standsatthefarleftandlooksdirectlyatthecamerainthisphotographofNewnham
Collegestudents,takenineither1873or1874.Herlifelongfriendandsocialistcomrade,Emma
Brooke,isstandingontheright.
Photograph reproduced with the permission of the Principal and Fellows, Newnham College
Cambridge.
work for women and accusing women like Wilson of selfishly seeking
their own education ‘‘at the price of a puny, enfeebled and sickly race’’.13
Like allthe other womenstudying atthat time, Wilson left Cambridge
without a university degree, but she took with her a lifelong community
of friends who would work with her in carrying the struggle against
13. Dr. Henry Maudsley, ‘‘Sex in Mind and in Education’’, The Fortnightly Review (April
1874);seealsoJoanN.Burstyn,VictorianEducationandtheIdealofWomanhood(London,
1980),pp.84–98.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000757 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Charlotte Wilson and Anarchist Socialism 11
establishedauthorityintothesocialistmovement.ShealsoleftCambridge
with a fluency in the language of positivist social science, an ability to
engage in masculine discourse about economics and evolution that made
hers one of the handful of female voices audible in the radical debates.
Her anarchist writings drew upon the theories of Professor Henry
Maine’s Ancient Law to show that laws and governmental institutions
impeded rather than accommodated the natural evolution of reason and
social morality, a social science ‘‘fact’’ recognized by many of her radical
colleagues, whether they identified themselves as anarchists or not.14 The
criticalroleplayedbypublicopinionasareplacementforlawinWilson’s
anarchist theory found support in Professor J.R. Seeley’s Ecce Homo,
whichdescribedChristasarevolutionarywhodefiedMosaiclawinfavor
of a stateless ‘‘Universal Commonwealth’’.15
The evolutionary history Wilson learned at Cambridge carried an
implicitchallengetotheVictorianfamilyandtothelegalsubordinationof
women. The focus of Ancient Law was on the family and kinship as the
basisofsocialorganization.Atanygivenstageofhistoricaldevelopment,
the family reflects the superstitions and failures of the culture at large.
Laws restricting the development of women are just as harmful as any
other artificial barriers to free evolution. While these claims were
advanced as scientific knowledge, not as politics, they provided unques-
tioned assumptions from which a variety of socialist and anarchist claims
about women and the family would be made.
Soon after they married, Charlotte and Arthur Wilson set up house in
the stylishand slightly bohemian north London community ofHampstead.
For Charlotte Wilson, the move to Hampstead must have seemed like a
Cambridge homecoming, as two of her closest friends from Newnham,
EmmaBrookeandHenriettaMuller,weresettledthere,andthelocalculture
was fully engaged in the discussions of economics and history that had
structuredherstudies.16InthiscommunityWilsonbeganherlifelongcareer
14. See, for example, ‘‘The Family as a Type of Society’’, The Anarchist, April 1886; ‘‘The
MarriageControversy’’,Freedom,October1888.SeealsoEmmaBrooke,‘‘EachSexitsOwn
Moralist’’,TheNewReview,December1895.ForarecentstudyofHenryMaineandhisplace
in the ‘‘historical constellation’’ of new ideas of empire and liberal theory in late Victorian
Britain, see Karuna Mantena, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal
Imperialism(Princeton,NJ,2010),p.8.
15. JohnRobertSeeley,EcceHomo:ASurveyoftheLifeandWorkofJesusChrist(London
[etc.],1866),especiallypp.180–185,317–321.SeealsoSheldomRothblatt,TheRevolutionof
theDons:CambridgeandSocietyinVictorianEngland(NewYork,1968),p.160.
16. BothBrookeandMullercontinuedtoworkinthewomen’scause,Brookeasa novelist,
mostnotablyastheauthorofASuperfluousWoman(1894),andMullerasthepublisherofThe
Women’s Penny Paper, the first women’s newspaper in London. Both women worked with
Wilson and the Freedom Group on a number of occasions, though they called themselves
socialistsratherthananarchists.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000757 Published online by Cambridge University Press
12 Susan Hinely
as an organizer, working with other young middle-class intellectuals to
implement the social theories they had read, debated, and endorsed.
One of the numerous organizations Wilson formed or joined, starting
in the late 1870s, was the Hampstead branch of the London Society for
the Extension of University Teaching, which she and her neighbor H.H.
Asquith led as co-secretaries. Wilson and the future Liberal Prime Minister
as co-officers in a cause offers an ironic picture, given their positions on
oppositesidesofthesuffragebarricadesthirtyyearslater,butitillustratesthe
way in which a ‘‘movement’’ can have members with very different under-
standings of the movement’s substantive meaning and goals.
While the university extension program was designed and promoted as
a way to enlighten working-class men, the classes in all the London
branches were attended primarily by middle-class women, many of
whomwentontoearnhighmarksandstartledpraisefromtheirOxbridge
examiners.17 The Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young
Servants, whose North London branch Wilson organized in 1880, offers
another example of cross-currents and mixed intentions within a single
organization. The Metropolitan Association, a significant pillar in the
massive edifice of British women’s philanthropy, was structured as a
Christian charitable organization and was organized primarily by the
wives of evangelical clergy. Nonetheless, Wilson was publicly advocating
secularism and anarchist revolution at the same time that she was
volunteering and organizing in this organization, in which she remained
active through at least 1885.18
ShefrequentedtheEastEndofLondonbothtoadvocateanarchismand
to work with Henrietta Barnett, wife of the pious founder of Toynbee
Hall, in providing Christian assistance and instruction to impoverished
girls. From her Hampstead base, Wilson also helped to organize an
eclectic alliance in support of the Russian anti-tsarist cause, a movement
idealizedbyawiderangeofBritishprogressives.WithEdwardPeaseand
Annie Besant, she organized the ‘‘Society of Friends of Russia’’ in the
summer of 1885. Wilson delivered lectures, published articles, and held
gatherings in her home to support ‘‘nihilism’’, a cause she described as a
successful combination of fierce Russian individualism with a perfect
17. Inexpectationthatwomen,ratherthanworkingmen,mightattendsomeofthedayclasses,
a higher fee was charged for those sessions. But the evening lectures as well were delivered
almost entirely to women. See London Society for the Extension of University Teaching,
Reportofthe Council,1877–1884,Departmentof ExtramuralStudiesArchive,Universityof
London.SeealsothenumerousreportsintheHampsteadandHighgateExpress,1879–1880.
18. SeeMetropolitanAssociationforBefriendingYoungServants,AnnualReports,1877–1886,
BritishLibrary,London.NotethatMillicentGarrettFawcettandothersupportersofwomen’s
highereducationwerealsoinvolvedwiththeMetropolitanAssociation.SeeHelenBlackburn
(ed.),AHandbookforWomenEngagedinSocialandPoliticalWork(Bristol,1881),forasense
ofthecomplexwebofcharitableandeducationalwomen’sorganizationsintheearly1880s.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000757 Published online by Cambridge University Press