Review of ReHews, llS/Oe. 



Character Sketches. 



Photograph bw] 



Miss Annie Kenney. 



[E. H. Mills 



n.— MISS ANNIE KENNEY, THE SUFFRAGETTE. 



world began, nor shall we ever be privileged to look 

 upon her like. But the astonishing and revolting 

 unanimity of the English of her time in misunder- 

 standing, in abusing, and in torturing to death the 

 saintliest heroine the world has ever seen, is recalled 

 by the extraordinary consensus of abuse which has 

 been levelled against Annie Kenney because of her 

 impassioned protest from behind the grille against 

 the insufferable impertinences and dawdling impo- 

 tence of nominal Liberal supporters of woman's suf- 

 frage. It is the new version in miniature of the 

 same old story. The apathetic do-nothings who do 

 lip homage to a cause which they do nothing to sup- 

 port, are outraged beyond expression at the sudden 

 apparition of a new and unexpected human factor 

 who cares nothing for the rules of the game and 

 the dilatory ways of the professional. 



It is one of the tragic ironies of history that 

 Jeanne d'Arc was finally condemned because she re- 

 sunxed the wearing of a man's dress the better to 

 enable her to defend her chastity against attempted 

 outrage in her dungeon. Such an unwomanly thing 

 to do, was it not? — a thing horrifying to the fine 

 susceptibilities of conventional ideas of English ma- 

 trons. A forward hussy, indeed ! They might 

 have had some sympathy with the poor, misguided 

 girl if she had behaved herself decently. But to 

 wear men's clothes, to bestride a war-horse, to go 

 about alone in camp among the soldiers — it was too 

 much. If only she had shown tact — womanly m.o- 

 desty, reserve, she would not have put back the 

 clock of France's deliverance for fifty years. So 

 ran the silly clack of contemporary gooslings, all 

 no doubt as fully convinced that they were competent 

 to settle up Jeanne d'Arc as the corresponding class 

 to-day deems itself capable of disposing of Annie 

 Kenney, tlie young and gifted leader who has sud- 

 denly been raised up to lead the working women of 

 Britain to victory. 



Annie Kenney is a new force with which we have 

 all got to reckon. Xot since Mrs. Josephine Butler, 

 amid a s:orm of denunciation, sprang into the arena 

 and compelled a reluctant Parliament to repeal the 

 laws by which our ruling men had taken prostitu- 

 tion under the patronage of the State, has any 

 woman emerged of equal promise as a driving and 

 inspiring force. There is a great contrast between 

 the cultured daughter of John Grey of Dilston and 

 the Lancashire Mill Girl. But all deficiencies of 

 station and culture are forgotten in the blaze of pas- 

 sionate enthusiasm for the weak and the oppressed 

 of their own sex which animates them both. The 

 story which I heard from the lips of the younger 

 woman last month of her struggle with her natural 

 timidity when first she ventured to stand up on a 

 chair in a Lancashire Fair to plead for her disin- 

 herited sisters, reproduced almost in every detail the 

 story Mrs. Butler told of her first meeting in 



When the fortunes of France were at the last ex- 

 tremity it pleased the I^rd of Hosts to raise up for 

 the deliverance of the distracted land a young 

 maiden from the North Country under the inspira- 

 tion of whose presence the fair land of France was 

 delivered from the scourge of the invader. Last 

 month, in accordance with pious usage unfailing 

 through the centuries, the good people of Orleans 

 commemorated the fete of Jeanne d'Arc on the an- 

 niversary of the day on which she raised the siege 

 of their city. The Church which burnt her as a 

 sorceress is now preparing to canonise her as a 

 saint, and nowhere is the cult of St. Jeanne more 

 universal than among the English. 



So intense is the admiration with which Jeanne is 

 regarded by the descendants of the men whom she 

 defeated on many a stricken field, that we all feel 

 a painful shock when we suddenly come upon e\'i- 

 dences of the manner in which the saintly warrior 

 maid was habitually spoken of by our forefathers. 

 The anonvmous author of the pseudo-Shakespearean 

 play of "Henry 'VI., Part I.," represents her as a 

 common !rull of the French camp, a damnable witch 

 and profligate courtesan, whose extinction as a most 

 pestilent kind of human vermin commanded the uni- 

 versal approval of all decent, respectable God-fear- 

 ing Englishmen — and no doubt still more of all 

 English women of her time. 



There has only been one Jeanne d'Arc since the 



