Rhoda Garrett
Rhoda Garrett, the daughter of the Revd John Fisher Garrett and his first wife, Elizabeth Henry Pillcock, was born on 28th March 1841. Rhoda's cousins included Agnes Garrett, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. (1)
Her mother, Elizabeth Garrett, died on 18th October 1853. Seven years later the Revd Garrett married 28-year-old Mary Gray, a governess from Grantham. (2) The couple had four children, including Amy Garrett in 1862. (3)
It has been claimed by Ethel Smyth that his second wife "practically turned her predecessor's children out of the house to fend for themselves" and Rhoda had a "terrible struggle" to support herself and her younger brothers and sisters, and was "dogged by ill-health as well as poverty". (4)
Millicent Garrett had a great relationship with Rhoda: "Rhoda was a little older than we were, of brilliant capacity and great personal attractiveness, witty and very ready with her wit. Her mother had died in her early childhood, and after several years of widowhood her father had married again, and a fairly rapid succession of babies appeared once more in the Elton Rectory. The three children of the first marriage were almost by force of circumstances pushed out of the parent nest." (5)
In 1861 Elizabeth Garrett asked her friend Emily Davies, if she could help Rhoda develop a career. "I am so anxious just now to get Rhoda Garrett away from home. She can do nothing there, and her parents are willing to let her go. She is fit for very little now, and will have to support herself sooner or later; as they would not permit anything like a manual employment or a situation in an office or a shop. Even if she were fit to take one, which she is not, there seems to be nothing but teaching to go to. She therefore wants to get a situation as junior teacher in a school, where she would have some advantages in return for what she has to give - or failing this, she would accept a nursery governess' situation for the sake of making a start. I suppose you don't know any one who would be glad to have her in either of these capacities?" (6)
Elizabeth Garrett eventually came to the conclusion that Rhoda would not become a successful governess and even considered the possibility of her being trained as a photographer. She wrote to her mother, Louise Garrett: "I have not much hope of her ever being a first or even second class governess but there are many things to make the photography not quite the thing for her... I am daily more convinced that trustworthy and trained women can always get work." (7)
In 1864 Rhoda found employment as a governess in Lichfield. (8) However, the job did not last long and she later explained why: "Miss Garrett said she could almost count upon on the fingers the number of employments in which women could engage in order to get their livelihood, which amounted in most cases to a mere pittance. Whether a woman remained unmarried from choice of compulsion, the stigma of 'old maid' was applied to her with withering scorn. Perhaps the most respectable occupation in which she could engage was that of being a governess, but the teaching market was greatly overstocked, and governesses were consequently wretchedly remunerated. The maximum salary of a governess was £100 a year, and for this she was required to possess all the knowledge that was contained in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and such social qualities as man or woman could scarcely ever possess, and with a future prospect before her of an old age of poverty and dependence." (9)
London Society for Women's Suffrage
Rhoda became active in the women's suffrage movement. One of her friends was the suffragette Ethel Smyth. She later recalled: "How shall one describe that magic personality of hers, at once elusive and clear-cut, shy and audacious? - a dark cloud with a burning heart - something that smoulders in repose and bursts into flame at a touch… though the most alive, amusing, and amused of people, to me at least the sombre background was always there - perhaps because the shell was obviously too frail for the spirit." (10)
Rhoda was influenced by her cousin Millicent Garrett who had been converted to the cause in 1865 after hearing a speech made by John Stuart Mill during his campaign to be elected as the Liberal MP for the City of Westminster. "He (Mill) was, of course, a staunch upholder of an extended franchise which I should include the then voteless masses of working men and also women. I was a woman suffragist, I may say, from my cradle, but this meeting kindled tenfold my enthusiasm for it." (11)
In 1867 Rhoda joined the London Society for Women's Suffrage (LSWS). Soon afterwards, Rhoda's eldest cousin, Louisa Garrett Smith, who was Honorary Secretary of the LSWS and had been so helpful to her, died from appendicitis aged just 31. Rhoda was to suffer further distress the following month with the death of her 6-year-old half-brother John Fergusson Garrett. (12)
Contagious Diseases Act
Rhoda Garrett was active in other campaigns against gender inequality. This included opposing the Contagious Diseases Acts. These acts had been introduced in the 1860s in an attempt to reduce venereal disease in the armed forces. Under the terms of these acts, the police could arrest women they believed were prostitutes and could then insist that they had a medical examination. Many of the women were not prostitutes but they still had to undergo the medical examination. (13)
Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy and Josephine Butler objected in principal to laws that only applied to women. They also had considerable sympathy for the plight of prostitutes who they believed had been forced into this work by low earnings and unemployment. In December 1869, Wolstenholme-Elmy and Butler formed the Ladies Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts: "These Acts are in force in some of our garrison towns unlike all other laws for the repression of contagious diseases, to which both men and women are liable, these two apply to women only, men being wholly exempt from their penalties. Equality before the law, even for fallen women. Let your laws be put in force, but let them be for male and female." (14)
The petition calling for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts had 2,000 signatures, including those of Rhoda Garrett, Louisa Martindale, Florence Nightingale and Lydia Becker. Most of the newspapers were hostile to this campaign. Martineau commented: "The extraordinary violence and ill manners of the Pall Mall Gazette and some other papers seem to me to indicate that they think our cause is gaining ground." (15)
Rhoda Garrett's cousin, Elizabeth Garrett, the only British woman qualified as a doctor at that time, not only supported the Contagious Diseases Acts but also their extension to civilian areas. In a letter to the British Medical Journal, Elizabeth Garrett argued that only doctors could really understand the need to contain syphilis: "Miss Nightingale and her coadjutors' should leave well alone, since only men, with the rarest exceptions had any hope of understanding it." (16)
Rhoda Garrett an officer of Ladies Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts and one of its main speakers, was at the centre of this conflict between campaigners for women's rights. "The majority of their members (of the women's suffrage movement), though by no means all of them, were in sympathy with the objects of the new campaign, but they could not help seeing that the unpleasant notoriety which was gathering about it was damaging their cause. Moreover, there were quite a number of their own supporters who disagreed with Mrs Butler, and even a few who thought the matter too painful and improper to be mentioned." (17)
Women's Suffrage
In early 1871 Millicent Garrett Fawcett wrote to John Stuart Mill asking if there was a position for Rhoda as a paid secretary for the Land Tenure Reform Association. He replied that the organisation had not received sufficient subscriptions to make this possible. (18)
Unable to find employment, Rhoda began to make speeches on the subject of women's suffrage. The Ipswich Journal argued on 15th April 1871 that it had "small sympathy with Miss Garrett and all those with whom she acts." It added: "Miss Rhoda Garrett, who read her observations in a clear but not strong voice. Indeed we may say this young lady supplies in herself an illustration of the difficulty - not to say the impossibility of bringing women into public life. We do not argue that Miss Garrett is inferior, far from it, she is a fair average thinker and expresses herself with much more than average precision and elegance of diction, but her physical powers are wholly unequal to the task of addressing a large audience - that is to say if we are to have the audience as well as the speaker satisfied and made comfortable. It is no disparagement to Miss Garrett to say that she has not a strong voice, and we may not perhaps be accused of unduly depreciating the fair sex when we add that were all kinds of professions to be occupied by women we should find a large number of them fail as public teachers for want of the necessary physical powers to make themselves heard by large numbers at a time." (19)
A week later Rhoda Garrett, along with Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Agnes Garrett, spoke at a meeting in Framlingham. The local newspaper reported: "Miss Rhoda Garrett, who seemed perfectly self-possessed, said in opening the subject that she made no doubt the audience was well aware that the women's rights movement was regarded by a large number as a dangerous innovation, by others with scorn, and by many as a subject affording matter for fun and amusement. Of all three classes of objectors to women's suffrage she had, perhaps, the most sympathy with the first, as their opposition was thoughtful and reasoning. There were so many deeply rooted and cherished feelings with which women were hedged round to keep them in their 'proper sphere' that he who was bold enough to attempt to make a breach in the entrenchments was likely to meet with formidable obstacles." (20)
Later that month Rhoda Garrett gave a talk on women's suffrage at the famous Langham Hotel in London. Rhoda was to go on and make further speeches in the next few months, including ones at Greenwich, Woolwich, Newark and Leeds. She often shared a platform with her good friend, Lydia Becker, treasurer of the Married Women's Property Committee and a member of the Manchester School Board. (21)
Arts and Crafts Movement
Rhoda and Agnes Garrett became interested in the emerging Arts and Crafts movement. The philosophy was derived from the writings of John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle. Ruskin acknowledged that he owed more to Carlyle "than to any other living writer". Ruskin considered the sort of mechanized production and division of labour that had been created in the industrial revolution to be "servile labour", and he thought that a healthy and moral society required independent workers who designed the things that they made. He believed factory-made works to be "dishonest," and that handwork and craftsmanship merged dignity with labour. (22)
Ruskin agreed with Carlyle criticism of the industrial revolution and in The Stones of Venice: Volume II (1853) Ruskin argued that the working man had been reduced to the condition of a machine: "We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that it divided; but the men; - divided into mere segments of men - broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, - sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is - we should think that there might be some loss in it also... And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach at them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can only be met by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour." (23)
William Morris later recalled: "To some of us when we first read it, now many years ago, it seemed to point out a new road on which the world should travel". Morris began experimenting with various crafts and designing furniture and interiors. Morris argued "without dignified, creative human occupation people became disconnected from life." He was personally involved in manufacture as well as design, which was the hallmark of the Arts and Crafts movement. Morris commented: "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." (24)
In 1861 William Morris established his own decorating company. It was originally formed to decorate his Red House. His partners included Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and Philip Webb. The company then began to take commissions. The first circular of the Firm proposed to undertake work in "any species of decoration, mural or otherwise, from pictures, properly so called, down to the consideration of the smallest work of art beauty." Morris designed wallpaper, Burne-Jones painted tiles for fire-places and Webb concentrated on producing furniture. (25)
The Firm's catalogues offered painted furniture, mural decoration, metalware and glass, embroidery and hangings, jewellery, and hand-painted tiles. Some of these products were made in the Firm's workshops, some were subcontracted. (26) Walter Crane later commented on the birth of the Arts and Crafts movement as "a revival of the medieval spirit (not the letter) in design; a return to simplicity, to sincerity; to good materials and sound workmanship; to rich and suggestive surface decoration, and simple constructive forms." (27)
According to E. P. Thompson: "By the 1870s the Firm was not only well established: it was beginning to set the pace among wealthy circles where any claim was made to cultivation. Even the fiercest opponents were forced to alter their designs, and to adapt some of the minor superficial characteristics of the Firm's work to their own. In short, Morris and Company... had become fashionable: and, moreover, the revolt had began to bring rich returns in the form of commercial success." (28)
Apprenticeship & Political Activism
The success enjoyed by William Morris inspired Rhoda and Agnes Garrett to become involved in this form of employment. As Millicent Garrett Fawcett pointed out, this was an extremely difficult thing to do: "Rhoda and Agnes determined to live together and get themselves trained as house-decorators, a thing quite as unprecedented then as women becoming doctors." (29)
Moncure D. Conway later reported: "Agnes and her cousin Rhoda Garrett, joined together to become house decorators. They were beautiful young ladies. They told me their adventures in trying to obtain training in their art. They went to the chief firm in London, whose manager was inclined to make fun of their proposal to become apprentices. Finding them skilful as designers, he said that if they were not women he could give them positions as subordinate directors in certain kinds of work." He then added: "Young women couldn't get along with workmen. How could you swear at them? And think of nice ladies running up ladders!" (30)
After her marriage Elizabeth Garrett Anderson approached Daniel Cottier about helping her to redecorate her house at 20 Upper Berkeley Street in London. Cottier had trained under Ford Madox Brown and was part of the Arts and Crafts movement. Elizabeth also asked him to take on Rhoda, aged 30, and Agnes, aged 26, as apprentices. They were to remain with Cottier for about a year and a half but there is a suggestion that they felt they were not being taught enough. (31)
Rhoda Garrett continued with her campaign for women's suffrage. On 3rd April, 1872, she gave a lecture on education at the Corn Exchange in Cheltenham. "Let us first of all consider the present state of education among women, from the time when they are first capable of receiving any education at all, until they arrive at that happy climax, when they are pronounced by their parents and guardians 'finished'. In the training of very young children there is, of course, comparatively little difference between the actual teaching to boys and girls, but in their moral and physical training the difference is even then apparent. Boys are taught from the earliest period of life to be self-dependant and self-reliant; while girls are taught, on the contrary, to the yielding, self-sacrificing, and reliant on anyone rather than upon themselves. A boy is encouraged to develop his physical powers out-door sports of all kinds, and to interest himself in a variety of pursuits, which cultivate habits of observation, and often lay the foundation for a love of natural science which in after life proves most valuable. A girl generally receives training of a very opposite character. If she shows a disposition to join in her brothers' games and amusements she is probably told that such conduct is 'unladylike', that little girls should not be 'tom-boys', and that, instead of running and jumping and climbing she should get to her sewing and knitting and 'keep quiet'. I believe it is a generally received axiom that men are more selfish than women, and it is easy to trace the growth of this selfishness in men to the spirit of excessive self-sacrifice in women which, even as boys, they have been taught to look upon as natural, and to regard as a right." (32)
On 5th April, 1872, she made a speech in Worcester. "The objection she had heard most frequently was – first, that it was not natural for women to vote at elections; secondly, that women never had had votes; thirdly that women's sphere was home, and that she must necessarily neglect her domestic duties if she gave her time to electioneering matter; fourthly, that women did not desire the franchise, as her interests were sufficiently represented by men; fifthly, that women were too weak and delicate to take their part at the polling-booth; sixthly, that women were mentally and physically inferior to men; seventhly, that if women were to take upon themselves men's work, it would only be fair and natural that men should cease to pay to them those courteous attention which they had hitherto considered themselves entitled to receive; eighthly, that if women were entitled to vote at elections, they would next want to sit in Parliament; ninthly, that women were more easily influenced than men, and would probably give their votes to their clergymen or nearest relative suggested. These were only a few of the objections that were raised against the possessions of the franchise by women. There were two and a half millions of British women who had no husbands, and who had to work for their own livelihood. As there was an immense excess in the number of women over the number of men in this country, there must always be a very large number of females unmarried. If a woman had nothing to do with politics, politics had a vast deal to do with her; and if women had votes, they would be able to look after their own interests. Statesmen would them take care to provide measures for the benefit of their female as well as their male-constituents." (33)
Graeme Taylor has argued that a picture of Rhoda making a speech in Cheltenham on 10th May, 1872, shows that she looked different from other campaigners for women's suffrage: "Rhoda's appearance is in marked contrast to all the other speakers, showing her strength of mind and individuality. Instead of the shawls and close fitting dresses and corsets worn by all the other women speakers and attendees, Rhoda has her hair loose and over her shoulders, wearing a two-piece, double-breasted jacket with velvet revers worn over a tailored skirt and certainly no corset!" (34)
(Millicent Fawcett seated front left) on 10th May 1872
The following week Rhoda was in Glastonbury giving a lecture on "The Electoral Disabilities of Women". (35) Millicent Garrett Fawcett claimed that Rhoda "became a speaker of extraordinary power and eloquence. Many of her hearers declared her to be quite unequalled for her combination of humour with logic and closely reasoned argument." (36)
In 1872 Rhoda and Agnes were both elected to the Executive Committee of the Central Society of the National Society for Women's Suffrage. (37) According to Rachel Strachey, the author of The Cause: A Short History of the Women's Movement in Great Britain (1928) Rhoda Garrett was one of the most impressive of the women's suffrage orators: "When an audience expected to find a fierce and strident virago, and found instead a young lady whose voice, dress, and manner were not only quiet but exquisite, then indeed they were startled to attention; and when these young ladies began to develop their theme with the power and eloquence of Rhoda Garrett, or with the wide sweep of thought of Mrs Fawcett, then the lesson went home." (38)
In October 1873, Rhoda Garrett and her friend, Lilias Ashworth, decided to get involved in the Taunton by-election. The reason for this was Henry James, the Liberal Party candidate had made a speech opposing women's suffrage, whereas Alfred Slade, the Conservative Party candidate, claimed he was in favour of reform. The Evening Standard reported that both women were willing to support Slade: "I sincerely trust she (Rhoda Garrett) will yet have the opportunity given her, since I think it only right to add that Miss Garrett and Miss Ashworth unite with that charm of manner which it is the privilege of their sex, a moderation and temperance of speech, an earnest but thoroughly tranquil zeal, which it is impossible not to admire. They may not convert every one with whom they converse; but no man could converse with them once and ever ridicule either them or their cause again. They have both the manner and the mind which command respect." (39)
Henry James feared this intervention might stop him being elected. He falsely claimed that Rhoda Garrett and fellow suffragists, "Were frequenting the houses and electors in Taunton and telling the wives that they did not have their fair rights and privileges; that they, in their position with their husbands, were mere slaves, and that the law ougt to be altered to give them greater freedom. If that were the case, wives would have found it out for themselves; and there were no greater traitors against the domestic happiness alike of men and women than those ladies, who generally being social failures, endeavoured to become political successes." (40) Rhoda was furious with Henry James and issued a statement in The Times denying the story. (41)
The term "social failures" upset many advocates of women's suffrage. Sir Alfred Austin, wrote: "The assertion that there is the slightest wish, to excite married women against their husbands, must be pronounced either an ignorant or an impudent invention; and the endeavour to traduce Miss Rhoda Garrett and her friends... I cannot pretend to say with accuracy what such a bastard phrase as 'social failures' may mean, but as I have heard attempts to interpret it, I will venture to affirm that no society exists which would not be made happier by the presence of the gentlewomen - one of whom is a sister-in-law of Mr Fawcett, MP who have been thus rudely traduced, and the privilege of having made whose acquaintance will ever remain my pleasantest memento of the Taunton election." (42)
R & A Garrett Company
In 1873 Rhoda and Agnes apprenticeship was transferred to John McKean Brydon, a young architect who was highly supportive of women's rights. (43) The following year Rhoda and Agnes toured England in search of inspiration and ideas and according to Moncure D. Conway that when "their apprenticeship reached its last summer (the Garretts) went on a tour throughout England, sketching the interiors and furniture of the best houses, which were freely thrown open to them." (44)
In 1874 the Garretts became the first British women to open an interior design business. The company, called R & A Garrett, designed furniture, chimney-pieces, and wallpapers in the Queen Anne style and aiming at middle-class people with moderate incomes... Among their commissions were the new women's university colleges." (45) One of their first commissions was to decorate 4 Upper Berkeley Street, the home of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. They were to go on to successfully decorate many private houses. (46)
In May 1875, Rhoda and Agnes moved into 2 Gower Street on the corner of Bedford Square, Bloomsbury. Maude Parry: later pointed out: "Lady pupils in an architect's office being a thing altogether undreamt and unheard of. Having learnt their trade, they soon established themselves as decorators in 2, Gower Street, their firm being the first and only one registered for ladies. A cottage room exhibited by them in the Trocadero at the French Exhibition of 1878 gained very general admiration for its original and simple style; and the Miss Garretts after long protracted and patient work attained that success which was so justly their due." (47)
Ethel Smyth argued that Rhoda Garrett was an amazing woman: "How shall one describe that magic personality of hers, at once elusive and clear-cut, shy and audacious? - a dark cloud with a burning heart - something that smoulders in repose and bursts into flame at a touch... On the whole, I think she was more amusing than anyone else I have ever met - a wit half scornful, always surprising, as unlike everyone else's as was her person... a slim, lithe being, very dark, with deep set burning eyes... I always think the feel of a hand as it grasps yours is a determining factor in human relationships, and all her friends must well remember Rhoda's - the soft, soft skin that only dark people have, the firm, wiry, delicate fingers. My reason tells me she was almost plain, but one looked at no one else when she was in a room." (48)
Rhoda Garrett gave lectures on interior design. On 17th October 1876, she read a paper at the annual meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science in Liverpool: She argued: "The first step for carrying out any improvements in the house must be to devise some means of giving an appearance of better proportion to the rooms. It is easy to see that the height is out of proportion, and thus the area of the room is apparently reduced. The effect of bad proportion is further increased by the unbroken uniformity of the wall surfaces; there are not, as in the carefully planned rooms of an earlier period, any of those ancient recesses and corners, which, of themselves, suggested a pleasing picturesqueness in the treatment of rooms. When, as is generally the case, the rooms are thus too high, and the surfaces of the walls continuous and unvaried, the disagreeable effect can be in some degree modified: first, by dividing the wall by means of strings, cornices, or panels, and secondly, by a careful attention to the colouring of both walls and ceilings. It can easily be imagined that, if instead of covering the entire surface of the walls with an obtrusive paper of bad design and crude colour, some plan were adopted for dividing the height by means of wooden mouldings fixed to the wall so as to form either a dado or a deep frieze, the room would be brought into more graceful proportions. The divisions thus formed might be decorated in various ways, care being taken to get the deeper and heavier colour at the bottom of the room and the lighter towards the top." (49)
In 1876 Rhoda and Agnes Garrett published their book, Suggestions for House Decoration in Painting, Woodwork, and Furniture. In a letter to the publisher, Alexander Macmillan, Rhoda explained the contents of the book: "An account of the more simple ways in which, without great expense, a home might be made pretty & also wholesome; with designs & illustrations of furniture the whole to consist of a kind of narrative, in which a house is described on which a great deal of money has been spent with a bad result, and the simple cheap way in which the same house may be made to look well." (50) The book was extremely successful and six editions appeared over the next three years. (51)
The composer, Hubert Parry, was one of their early customers. He became a close friend and stayed with the cousins at 2 Gower Street in May 1876: "I was never so spoilt in my life. They seem to divine all one's wants before one has thought of them oneself. They are the best company I ever knew, and to live in their house is a very great deal of happiness in itself. The quiet and soothing colour of the walls and decoration and the admirable taste of all things acts upon the mind in the most comforting manner. I was quite excised of the vulgar idea that everything ought to be light & gaudy & covered with gilt in London. All these are a sure element of discomfort in a house, ones eye wants rest & nothing shows the dirt & dust of London so soon as light colours of gilding." (52)
The composer Ethel Smyth, also an activist in the women's suffrage movement, became friends with Rhoda and Agnes Garrett, whom she wrote about in her memoirs, Impressions That Remained (1919). Smyth recalled "The beauty of the relation between the cousins, and of that home life in Gower Street, remains with us who knew them as certain musical phrases haunt the melomaniac, and but for Agnes, who stood as far as was possible between her and the slings and arrows which are the reward of pioneers, no doubt Rhoda's life would have spent itself earlier. Her every burden, human and otherwise, was shouldered by Agnes, and both had a way of discovering waifs and strays of art more or less worsted by life whose sanctuary their house henceforth became." (53)
One of their first commissions was the Kensington home of the composer, Hubert Parry. Rhoda and Agnes Garrett exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society and Exhibition of Women's Industries and were members of the Royal Archaeological Society and the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings. (54)
Rustington
Hubert Parry and Maude Parry decided they wanted to live in the small village of Rustington in West Sussex. In June 1878 he wrote in his diary: "In the afternoon Maudi & I drove down to Rustington, to see some houses which were to be let, one 'The Grange' is quite an ideal snuggery, & would have done for me to perfection, but has been snapped up under our very noses." (55)
Soon afterwards the Parrys rented Cudlow House. Rhoda and Agnes and liked the village so much that in 1879 began renting Firs Cottage, just west of the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul. "It consisted of a largish, though rather dark drawing room and a front hall and large old kitchen with a stone floor and an old pump." (56)
In the summer of 1881, Ethel Smyth spent a lot of time with Rhoda and Agnes: "They rented an old thatched cottage at Rustington of which they had made the most perfect of habitations, and the summer holidays and any odd days they could snatch from business were spent there. Rustington was then quite an unfrequented spot - a few straggling cottages and farmhouses, a fine Norman Church, sometimes flicked by spray when south-west gales blew, and an almost deserted beach." (57)
Rhoda Garrett caught typhoid at the end of October 1882. Ten days later she developed bronchitis. Her friend, Alice Stansfield, sent a postcard to Hubert Parrywho noted in his diary: "In the evening after dinner I was playing when she walked in with a fixed expression on her face and said something which I did not catch, and handed me a postcard from Alice Stansfield, on which were written only the cruel words 'No more hope'. She was my food and brain, but unnaturally quiet, and still both hope that better news may come tomorrow." (58)
The following day Parry wrote in his diary: "Met the postman in the morning and he handed me a note from Agnes telling me that the blow had fallen, and dear Rhoda had died yesterday. Even in her desolation Agnes thought for Maude, and wanted me with a kindness for her so that I might tell her in the best way to avoid a shock. Maude took it very well, but gradually succumbed under it. Maude and her spent much time together, and I thought best to leave them alone, but they must have been taken with much weepings before their spirits could approach any sort of quietude again. It was a terrible day." (59)
Rhoda Garrett on 22nd November 1882 at 2 Gower Street, London. Her death certificate was signed by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and she was buried in the churchyard at Rustington. The Times obituary commented: "Her delicate taste, her refined sense of fitness, her capacity for taking trouble soon recommended to a large and admiring circle. She has just reached its border land of assured success when her health finally broke down. She is lamented by many friends to whom she endeared herself not only by her cheerful and frequently brilliant conversation, but by her unwavering kindness. Having known what it was to struggle, she was always ready with a helping hand, and her influence on the rising generation of fellow artists – and, indeed of male artists as well – will long be felt." (60)
Rhoda's half-brother, Edmund Garrett, wrote in a letter to Maude Parry: "What you say is exactly true. She was different from everyone else. Others might be good, others earnest, but there never was another Rhoda, there is only one, and I think there never will be another. That shows her genius; but the myriad of things that show her perseverance and hard work and unselfishness are to me the most comforting and valuable. We are born with talents; and if we have genius, it is ours from birth... it is steadfast earnest use of abilities that strikes me most; it seems so unattainable, so much above. Rhoda was one among a thousand in her wonderful charm and influence and genius but she was one among a million in the use she made of these; - I hardly know yet what a hole her loss has made in my life." (61)
Primary Sources
(1) Millicent Garrett Fawcett, What I Remember (1924)
Rhoda was a little older than we were, of brilliant capacity and great personal attractiveness, witty and very ready with her wit. Her mother had died in her early childhood, and after several years of widowhood her father had married again, and a fairly rapid succession of babies appeared once more in the Elton Rectory. The three children of the first marriage were almost by force of circumstances pushed out of the parent nest. One son went to New Zealand and stayed there; one was in an office in London; and it became a question what should Rhoda do? At that time governessing was practically the only professional career open to a woman...
Our school friendship, and especially that which Rhoda formed with Agnes, almost at the same time had important consequences. After my marriage, in 1867, Rhoda and Agnes determined to live together and get themselves trained as house-decorators, a thing quite as unprecedented then as women becoming doctors. Rhoda also took an active part in the agitation led by Mrs. Butler against the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1866 and 1868 and in working for Women's Suffrage. She became a speaker of extraordinary power and eloquence. Many of her hearers declared her to be quite unequalled for her combination of humour with logic and closely reasoned argument. Sometimes the newspaper comments were very droll. One which sticks in my memory ran thus: "The lecturer, who wore no hat, was youthful but composed, feminine but intelligent."
(2) Elizabeth Garrett, letter to Emily Davies (30th November, 1861)
I am so anxious just now to get Rhoda Garrett away from home. She can do nothing there, and her parents are willing to let her go. She is fit for very little now, and will have to support herself sooner or later; as they would not permit anything like a manual employment or a situation in an office or a shop. Even if she were fit to take one, which she is not, there seems to be nothing but teaching to go to. She therefore wants to get a situation as junior teacher in a school, where she would have some advantages in return for what she has to give - or failing this, she would accept a nursery governess' situation for the sake of making a start. I suppose you don't know any one who would be glad to have her in either of these capacities? She is fond of children and has a good deal of general brightness and general ideas, as Miss Snowdon says, and a freshness of character which makes one hope that she will develop into something more some day. She is very Evangelical in creed, but this is the result of education, and has not done any serious harm. She is very truthful.
(3) The Ipswich Journal (15th April 1871)
On Wednesday evening Miss Rhoda Garrett lectured at the Lecture Hall, Ipswich, in favour of extending the Suffrage to women. The Hall was crowded, and the audience was remarkably orderly and respectful in its demeanour. We have small sympathy with Miss Garrett and all those with whom she acts, but are ready to acknowledge that the introduction of the feminine element to political life will not be altogether a misfortune if all meetings for political agitation should be similarly quiet and orderly...
Mr. Grimwade then introduced Miss Rhoda Garrett, who read her observations in a clear but not strong voice. Indeed we may say this young lady supplies in herself an illustration of the difficulty - not to say the impossibility of bringing women into public life. We do not argue that Miss Garrett is inferior, far from it, she is a fair average thinker and expresses herself with much more than average precision and elegance of diction, but her physical powers are wholly unequal to the task of addressing a large audience - that is to say if we are to have the audience as well as the speaker satisfied and made comfortable. It is no disparagement to Miss Garrett to say that she has not a strong voice, and we may not perhaps be accused of unduly depreciating the fair sex when we add that were all kinds of professions to be occupied by women we should find a large number of them fail as public teachers for want of the necessary physical powers to make themselves heard by large numbers at a time. We have, however, no desire to depreciate the lady in question. She spoke, or read, which is more trying, for more than an hour, and such the grace and dexterity with which she presented the usual arguments in favour of the extension of the suffrage to women that there were no signs of impatience and the only interruptions were an occasional ironical piece of applause, as some of the bogey arguments were set up ready for demolition.
(4) The Framlingham Weekly News (22nd April 1871)
A public meeting for the advocacy of women's political rights was held in The People's Hall, Framlingham, on Friday evening last. The fact of lady speakers being announced drew a large and respectful audience. Mr Larner, who was suffering from indisposition, took the chair, and he was supported on the platform by Miss Rhoda Garrett (niece of Newson Garrett, Esq.), Mrs. Fawcett, and Miss Agnes Garrett. Mr. Garrett was announced to take part in the meeting, but he was prevented attending through an accident to some member of his family...
Miss Rhoda Garrett, who seemed perfectly self-possessed, said in opening the subject that she made no doubt the audience was well aware that the women's rights movement was regarded by a large number as a dangerous innovation, by others with scorn, and by many as a subject affording matter for fun and amusement. Of all three classes of objectors to women's suffrage she had, perhaps, the most sympathy with the first, as their opposition was thoughtful and reasoning. There were so many deeply rooted and cherished feelings with which women were hedged round to keep them in their "proper sphere" that he who was bold enough to attempt to make a breach in the entrenchments was likely to meet with formidable obstacles.
(5) Rhoda Garrett, speech at the Corn Exchange in Cheltenham (3rd April 1872)
Let us first of all consider the present state of education among women, from the time when they are first capable of receiving any education at all, until they arrive at that happy climax, when they are pronounced by their parents and guardians 'finished'. In the training of very young children there is, of course, comparatively little difference between the actual teaching to boys and girls, but in their moral and physical training the difference is even then apparent. Boys are taught from the earliest period of life to be self-dependant and self-reliant; while girls are taught, on the contrary, to the yielding, self-sacrificing, and reliant on anyone rather than upon themselves. A boy is encouraged to develop his physical powers out-door sports of all kinds, and to interest himself in a variety of pursuits, which cultivate habits of observation, and often lay the foundation for a love of natural science which in after life proves most valuable. A girl generally receives training of a very opposite character. If she shows a disposition to join in her brothers' games and amusements she is probably told that such conduct is 'unladylike', that little girls should not be 'tom-boys', and that, instead of running and jumping and climbing she should get to her sewing and knitting and 'keep quiet'. I believe it is a generally received axiom that men are more selfish than women, and it is easy to trace the growth of this selfishness in men to the spirit of excessive self-sacrifice in women which, even as boys, they have been taught to look upon as natural, and to regard as a right.
(6) The Worcester Journal (13th April 1872)
On Friday evening (5th April) a numerous audience assembled at the Music Hall, to listen to a lecture delivered by Miss Rhoda Garrett of London, on the subject of the electoral disabilities of women. She was accompanied on the platform by Miss Ashworth, of Bath (niece of Mr. John Bright, M.P.) and by Miss Garrett, her cousin, and sister of Mrs. Dr. Garrett Anderson and to the wife of Professor Fawcett, M.P.).
Miss Garrett… began by saying that she was not advocating universal suffrage, yet a resolution would be submitted to them to the effect that those women who paid their rates should be admitted to the franchise, so that household suffrage, which was fixed by the Reform Act of 1867, should become a reality instead of what it was, a delusion. Some looked upon it with dislike as an ignoration; others with scorn, as a wild dream of enthusiasm; others with pity and amusement, as a good joke. She would show that the question was variously disregarded, and then explain the reasons why she thought it might be differently viewed. She had the most sympathy might with those who opposed the possession of the franchise by women through dislike or fear. The objection she had heard most frequently was – first, that it was not natural for women to vote at elections; secondly, that women never had had votes; thirdly that women's sphere was home, and that she must necessarily neglect her domestic duties if she gave her time to electioneering matter; fourthly, that women did not desire the franchise, as her interests were sufficiently represented by men; fifthly, that women were too weak and delicate to take their part at the polling-booth; sixthly, that women were mentally and physically inferior to men; seventhly, that if women were to take upon themselves men's work, it would only be fair and natural that men should cease to pay to them those courteous attention which they had hitherto considered themselves entitled to receive; eighthly, that if women were entitled to vote at elections, they would next want to sit in Parliament; ninthly, that women were more easily influenced than men, and would probably give their votes to their clergymen or nearest relative suggested. These were only a few of the objections that were raised against the possessions of the franchise by women. There were two and a half millions of British women who had no husbands, and who had to work for their own livelihood. As there was an immense excess in the number of women over the number of men in this country, there must always be a very large number of females unmarried. If a woman had nothing to do with politics, politics had a vast deal to do with her; and if women had votes, they would be able to look after their own interests. Statesmen would them take care to provide measures for the benefit of their female as well as their male-constituents. Having read the opinion of Mr. John Stuart Mill on the subject, Miss Garrett said she could almost count upon on the fingers the number of employments in which women could engage in order to get their livelihood, which amounted in most cases to a mere pittance. Whether a woman remained unmarried from choice of compulsion, the stigma of "old maid" was applied to her with withering scorn. Perhaps the most respectable occupation in which she could engage was that of being a governess, but the teaching market was greatly overstocked, and governesses were consequently wretchedly remunerated. The maximum salary of a governess was £100 a year, and for this she was required to possess all the knowledge that was contained in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," and such social qualities as man or woman could scarcely ever possess, and with a future prospect before her of an old age of poverty and dependence. They asked that women should have equal educational advantages with men, and the training to compete with men in all trades and professions, the duties of which they showed themselves competent to discharge. The lecturer continued at considerable length, and ably combated all the objections urged against the political enfranchisement of the fair sex.
(7) The Dundee Courier (6th March 1873)
It is stated that Mr Ruskin, who has lately given up his house in Denmark Hill, and has bought a small estate at Coniston Lake, Cumberland, is now engaged with Lady Trevelyan in painting a house. House decoration is one of the fine arts, one which Mr Morris and Mr D. Rossetti have brought to great perfection Miss Agnes Garrett, sister of Mrs Anderson and Mrs Fawcett, and Miss Rhoda Garrett, her cousin, have made it their profession.
(8) The Evening Standard (4th October 1873)
I sincerely trust she (Rhoda Garrett) will yet have the opportunity given her, since I think it only right to add that Miss Garrett and Miss Ashworth unite with that charm of manner which it is the privilege of their sex, a moderation and temperance of speech, an earnest but thoroughly tranquil zeal, which it is impossible not to admire. They may not convert every one with whom they converse; but no man could converse with them once and ever ridicule either them or their cause again. They have both the manner and the mind which command respect.
(9) The Newry Telegraph (16th October 1873)
Miss Rhoda Garrett denies, in the Times, that the ladies who advocated women's suffrage at Taunton went into houses while the men were absent, and told the wives that they were slaves.
(10) Rhoda Garrett, speech at the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science in Liverpool (17th October 1876)
The first step for carrying out any improvements in the house must be to devise some means of giving an appearance of better proportion to the rooms. It is easy to see that the height is out of proportion, and thus the area of the room is apparently reduced. The effect of bad proportion is further increased by the unbroken uniformity of the wall surfaces; there are not, as in the carefully planned rooms of an earlier period, any of those ancient recesses and corners, which, of themselves, suggested a pleasing picturesqueness in the treatment of rooms. When, as is generally the case, the rooms are thus too high, and the surfaces of the walls continuous and unvaried, the disagreeable effect can be in some degree modified: first, by dividing the wall by means of strings, cornices, or panels, and secondly, by a careful attention to the colouring of both walls and ceilings. It can easily be imagined that, if instead of covering the entire surface of the walls with an obtrusive paper of bad design and crude colour, some plan were adopted for dividing the height by means of wooden mouldings fixed to the wall so as to form either a dado or a deep frieze, the room would be brought into more graceful proportions. The divisions thus formed might be decorated in various ways, care being taken to get the deeper and heavier colour at the bottom of the room and the lighter towards the top. It is also a generally safe rule to avoid placing any elaborate pattern on a level with the eye, but to arrange the chief part of the ornament either above or below the middle compartment of the wall. The revival of plaster work for decorative purposes is much to be desired; but workmen are now so unaccustomed skill, that, for some time at least, the cost of carrying out such work would be considered by many at least out of proportion to its decorative value.
(11) The Grantham Journal (2nd December 1882)
I regret to hear the death of Miss Rhoda Garrett, the younger sister of Mrs Garrett Anderson and Mrs Fawcett shared the remarkable intellectual gifts of her family, and shared, too, their advanced opinions on questions of women's rights and women's position.
(12) The Times (4th December 1882)
We announced some days ago the death of Miss Rhoda Garrett at the early age of 41. The daughter of a clergyman of small means, and one of a large family, she broke through the usual restrictions of home life and determined to earn for herself an honest independence. After passing through an architect's office, she set up for herself as a "house decorator," taking the cousin, the sister of Mrs Garrett Anderson and Mrs Henry Fawcett, into partnership and, in spite of delicate health, soon rose to eminence. Her delicate taste, her refined sense of fitness, her capacity for taking trouble soon recommended to a large and admiring circle. She has just reached its border land of assured success when her health finally broke down. She is lamented by many friends to whom she endeared herself not only by her cheerful and frequently brilliant conversation, but by her unwavering kindness. Having known what it was to struggle, she was always ready with a helping hand, and her influence on the rising generation of fellow artists – and, indeed of male artists as well – will long be felt. She wrote a little volume on "House Decoration", which has passed through six editions.
(13) The Hampshire Independent (9th December 1882)
The death of Miss Rhoda Garrett removes one member of a trio which has made some noise in the world as advocates of women's rights, and in practical exponents of what women can do. Miss Elizabeth Garrett took to physic and married a doctor, Miss Millicent Garrett took to political economy and married Professor Fawcett; whilst Rhoda Garrett took to the law and would no doubt have mastered it had she been spared.
(14) Maude Parry, Rhoda Garrett (1882)
Rhoda Garrett was born in 1841. She was the eldest daughter of the Rev. John F. Garrett, rector of Elton, in Derbyshire, and first cousin to Mrs Garrett Anderson and to Mrs Fawcett. She and an elder sister of Mrs Fawcett's came up to London in search of employment in 1867. They succeeded, after many a weary and fruitless search, in apprenticing themselves to an architect for three years, lady pupils in an architect's office being a thing altogether undreamt and unheard of. Having learnt their trade, they soon established themselves as decorators in 2, Gower Street, their firm being the first and only one registered for ladies. A cottage room exhibited by them in the Trocadero at the French Exhibition of 1878 gained very general admiration for its original and simple style; and the Miss Garretts after long protracted and patient work attained that success which was so justly their due. A manual written by the cousins, addressed particularly to the middle classes, containing their views on house decoration, passed through six editions; and in it are illustrations of the interior of their house in Gower Street.
(15) Ethel Smyth, Impressions That Remained (1919)
Barbara Hamley had often spoke to me of Agnes and Rhoda Garrett, who were among the first women in England to start business on their own account and by that time were well-known house decorators of the Morris school... Late in the autumn Barbara introduced me to these great friends of hers, and during the next two years their house became the focus of my English life owing to the friendship that sprung up between Rhoda and me.
Both women were a good deal older than I, how much I never knew - nor wished to know, for Rhoda and I agreed that age and income are relative things concerning which statistics are tiresome and misleading. How shall one describe that magic personality of hers, at once elusive and clear-cut, shy and audacious? - a dark cloud with a burning heart - something that smoulders in repose and bursts into flame at a touch... Though the most alive, amusing, and amused of people, to me at least the sombre background was always there - perhaps because the shell was so obviously too frail for the spirit. One knew of the terrible struggle in the past to support herself and the young brothers and sisters; that she had been dogged by ill health as well as poverty - heroic, unflinching through all...
I spoke of her humour; on the whole, I think she was more amusing than anyone else I have ever met - a wit half scornful, always surprising, as unlike everyone else's as was her person... a slim, lithe being, very dark, with deep set burning eyes that I once made her laugh by saying she reminded me of a cat in a coal scuttle. Yet cats eyes are never tender, and hers could be the tenderest in the world.
I always think the feel of a hand as it grasps yours is a determining factor in human relationships, and all her friends must well remember Rhoda's - the soft, soft skin that only dark people have, the firm, wiry, delicate fingers. My reason tells me she was almost plain, but one looked at no one else when she was in a room. There was an enigmatic quality in her witchery behind which the grand lines, the purity and nobility of her soul, stood out like the bone in some enchanted landscape. No one had a more subtle hold on the imagination of her friends, and when she died it was as if laughter, astonishment, warmth, light, mystery, had been cut off at the source. The beauty of the relation between the cousins, and of that home life in Gower Street, remains with us who knew them as certain musical phrases haunt the melomaniac, and but for Agnes, who stood as far as was possible between her and the slings and arrows which are the reward of pioneers, no doubt Rhoda's life would have spent itself earlier. Her every burden, human and otherwise, was shouldered by Agnes, and both had a way of discovering waifs and strays of art more or less worsted by life whose sanctuary their house henceforth became.