Cicely Hamilton

{{Short description|English actress, writer and suffragist (1872–1952)}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Cicely Hamilton

| image = Cicely Hamilton, c1907.jpg

| caption = Cicely Hamilton, c. 1907

| birth_name = Cicely Mary Hammill

| birth_date = 15 June 1872

| birth_place = Paddington, London, England

| death_date = {{death-date and age|6 December 1952|15 June 1872}}

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| other_names =

| known_for = Suffragette, event organiser

| education =

| employer =

| occupation = Actor, playwright, novelist

| parents =

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}}

Cicely Mary Hamilton (née Hammill; 15 June 1872 – 6 December 1952), was an English actress, writer, journalist, suffragist and feminist, part of the struggle for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. She is now best known for the feminist play How the Vote was Won, which sees a male anti-suffragist change his mind when the women in his life go on strike.[https://www.jstor.org/stable/3346832?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoAdvancedSearch%3Ff5%3Dall%26amp%3Bc4%3DAND%26amp%3Bq4%3D%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3Bc6%3DAND%26amp%3Bbk%3Don%26amp%3Bf2%3Dall%26amp%3Bc1%3DAND%26amp%3Bla%3D%26amp%3Bf0%3Dall%26amp%3Bms%3Don%26amp%3Bq5%3D%26amp%3Bc3%3DAND%26amp%3Bq3%3D%26amp%3Bpm%3Don%26amp%3Bc5%3DAND%26amp%3Bq6%3D%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bisbn%3D%26amp%3Bf3%3Dall%26amp%3Bq2%3D%26amp%3Bsd%3D%26amp%3Bf4%3Dall%26amp%3Bq0%3Dhow%2Bthe%2Bvote%2Bwas%2Bwon%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bar%3Don%26amp%3Bpt%3D%26amp%3Bed%3D%26amp%3Bc2%3DAND%26amp%3Bf6%3Dall%26amp%3Bq1%3Dcicely%2Bhamilton%26amp%3Bf1%3Dall&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents "Cicely Hamilton, Independent Feminist"], Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol 11 No. 2/3 1990Lisa Shariari, "Hamilton, Cicely" in Faye Hammill, Ashlie Sponenberg and Esme Miskimmin (ed.), Encyclopedia of British Women's Writing, 1900-1950. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. {{ISBN|9781403916921}} (pp. 105-6) She was also the author of one of the most frequently performed suffrage plays, A Pageant of Great Women (1909), which featured the character of Jane Austen as one of its "Learned Women.{{Cite web|date=2014-10-21|title=A Pageant of Great Women: The Suffragettes and Performance|url=https://womenslibrary.org.uk/event/katharine-cockin-a-pageant-of-great-women/|access-date=2021-08-26|website=Glasgow Women's Library|language=en-US}}"{{Cite book|last=Looser|first=Devoney|title=The Making of Jane Austen|location=Baltimore, MD|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|year=2017|page=169|isbn=978-1421422824}}

Biography

Born in 1872, Cicely Hammill in Paddington, London, she was the eldest of the four children of Maude Mary and Denzil Hammil. She was educated in Malvern, Worcestershire and in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe.{{cite ODNB|id=38633 |last1=Joannou |first1=Maroula |title=Hamilton [née Hammill], (Mary) Cicely (1872–1952), writer and campaigner for women's rights |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-38633 |accessdate=12 February 2020 |language=en}} Hammill was raised by foster parents because her mother had gone missing. After a short spell in teaching, she acted in a touring company. She took the pseudonym "Cicely Hamilton" out of consideration for her family. Then, she wrote drama, including feminist themes, and enjoyed a period of success in commercial theatre. Hamilton was praised for her acting in a performance of Fanny's First Play by George Bernard Shaw.

In 1908, she and Bessie Hatton founded the Women Writers' Suffrage League. This grew to around 400 members, including Ivy Compton-Burnett, Sarah Grand, Violet Hunt, Marie Belloc Lowndes, Alice Meynell, Olive Schreiner, Evelyn Sharp, May Sinclair, and Margaret L. Woods. It produced campaigning literature, written by Sinclair amongst others, and recruited many prominent male supporters.

File:Cicely Hamilton by Lena Connell 1910s.png from the 1910s]]

Hamilton supplied the lyrics of "The March of the Women", the song which Ethel Smyth composed in 1910 for the Women's Social and Political Union,{{Cite book|last=Bennett|first=Jory|editor=Crichton, Ronald|title=The Memoirs of Ethel Smyth: Abridged and Introduced by Ronald Crichton, with a list of works by Jory Bennett|publisher=Viking|location=Harmondsworth|year=1987|page=[https://archive.org/details/memoirsofethelsm00smyt/page/378 378]|isbn=0-670-80655-2|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/memoirsofethelsm00smyt/page/378}} was first performed at an 'At Home' in Suffolk Street Galleries, Pall Mall to celebrate the release of women violently arrested on Black Friday; it had suitably stirring lyrics for such an occasion:

{{blockquote|

Shout, shout up with your song!

Cry with the wind for the dawn is breaking.

March, march swing you along,

Wide blows our banner and hope is waking,

Sing with its story, dreams with their glory,

Lo! They call and glad is their word!

Forward! Hark how it swells

Thunder and freedom, the voice of the Lord!{{Cite book|last=Atkinson|first=Diane|title=Rise up, women! : the remarkable lives of the suffragettes|publisher=Bloomsbury|year=2018|isbn=978-1-4088-4404-5|location=London|pages=245, 540|oclc=1016848621}}}}

In the days before radio, one effective way to get a message out into society and to have it discussed was to produce short plays that could be performed around the country, and so suffrage drama was born. Elizabeth Robins's "Votes for Women" and Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St. John's "How the Vote Was Won" are two predominant examples of the genre.Maroula Joannou & June Purvis, The Women's Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Perspectives (Manchester University Press, 1998), 127 Hamilton also wrote "A Pageant of Great Women", a highly successful women's suffrage play based on the ideas of her friend, the theatre director Edith Craig. Hamilton played 'Woman' while Craig played the painter Rosa Bonheur, one of the 50 or so great women in the play. Lena Connell's photographs of the leading players were sold to assist the suffrage cause and Connell exhibited the pictures at the Royal Photographic Society in 1910-11.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EMTiDQAAQBAJ&q=Lena+Connell+1949&pg=PT121|title=Edith Craig and the Theatres of Art|last=Cockin|first=Katharine|date=2017-01-26|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-1-4725-7063-5|language=en}} The play was produced all over the UK from 1909 until the First World War.Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869–1947): Dramatic Lives, Cassell (1998). Hamilton was a member of Craig's theatre society, the Pioneer Players. Her play "Jack and Jill and a Friend "was one of the three plays in the Pioneer Players' first production in May 1911.Cockin, Katharine. Women and Theatre in the Age of Suffrage: The Pioneer Players 1911–25, Palgrave (2001) Hamilton inspired young schoolgirls, supportive of suffrage, like Winifred Starbuck, who had Hamilton and other leaders' pictures on her desk in purple, white and green frames and later herself protested by school disorder, such as graffiti and hiding the school registers and handbell, as a milder form of resistance to authority for women's suffrage.

During World War I, Hamilton initially worked in the organisation of nursing care, with the Scottish Women's ambulance service near Paris, and then joined the army as an auxiliary. Later she formed a repertory company to entertain the troops. After the war, she wrote as a freelance journalist, particularly on birth control, and was a press officer for the Geneva International Suffrage Conference and as a playwright for the Birmingham Repertory Company. When Lena Ashwell Players Ltd was formed in 1923, Hamilton was one of the directors. The other three were Lena Ashwell, Esme Church and Marion Fawcett, who were the company's theatre managers.{{Cite book|last=Leask|first=Margaret|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s7DIAwAAQBAJ&q=lena+ashwell+Fawcett%2C+Marion&pg=PA1914-IA90|title=Lena Ashwell: Actress, Patriot, Pioneer|date=2012|publisher=Univ of Hertfordshire Press|page=1914|isbn=978-1-907396-64-9|language=en}}

Hamilton was a regular contributor to Time and Tide magazine, and an active member of the feminist Six Point Group, campaigning for the rights of children, widows and unmarried mothers; equal guardianship of children, and equal pay in teaching and civil service.Anne Logan, Feminism and criminal justice : a historical perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. {{ISBN|9780230584136}} (pp. 24-5) In 1938, she was given a Civil List pension. She was a friend of E. M. Delafield and is thought to be the model for "Emma Hay" in Delafield's "Provincial Lady" books.{{Cite web|url=http://www.starcourse.org/emd/emdwho.htm|title=EM Delafield Who's Who|website=www.starcourse.org}}

Hamilton's "Theodore Savage" (1922, vt. Lest Ye Die 1928) is a science-fiction novel about a Britain devastated by a war.E. F. Bleiler and Richard Bleiler. Science-Fiction: The Early Years. Kent State University Press, 1990. (p.331). {{ISBN|9780873384162}}.

Hamilton's autobiography "Life Errant" was published in 1935. She died in Chelsea in 1952.

In July 2017, the Finborough Theatre staged the first London production of Hamilton's play "Just to Get Married" in over 100 years. It received positive reviews (4 stars) from The Times,{{Cite news|url=https://www.thetimes.com/culture/theatre-dance/article/theatre-review-just-to-get-married-at-the-finborough-theatre-sw10-8jc007s6v|title=Theatre review: Just to Get Married at the Finborough Theatre, SW10|last=Treneman|first=Ann|date=2017-08-01|work=The Times|access-date=2018-01-23|issn=0140-0460}} The Observer,{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/aug/06/just-to-get-married-review-road-jim-cartwright-lemn-sissay-john-tiffany|title=Just to Get Married; Road review – fire and anxiety|last=Clapp|first=Susannah|author-link=Susannah Clapp |date=2017-08-06|website=The Guardian|access-date=2018-01-23}} The Evening Standard{{Cite web|date=2017-08-23|title=Just to Get Married, theatre review: Catch this now or risk waiting a century {{!}} London Evening Standard|url=https://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/theatre/just-to-get-married-theatre-review-catch-this-now-or-risk-waiting-a-century-a3599851.html|access-date=2021-06-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170823165834/https://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/theatre/just-to-get-married-theatre-review-catch-this-now-or-risk-waiting-a-century-a3599851.html|archive-date=23 August 2017}} and The New York Times.{{Cite news|url=https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/theater/women-without-options-and-spoiled-for-choice.html?referer=https://www.google.co.uk/|title=Women Without Options and Spoiled for Choice|work=The New York Times |date=7 August 2017 |access-date=2018-01-23|language=en|last1=Brantley |first1=Ben }}

Works

File:Suffrage theatricals, performed by the Actresses' Franchise League, c1909-1914.jpg.]]

The Traveller Returns (1906) play
Diana of Dobson's (novel, play 1908)
Women's Votes (1908)
Marriage as a Trade (1909)
How the Vote was Won (1909) play
A Pageant of Great Women (1910) play
Just to Get Married (1911) play
Jack and Jill and a Friend (1911) play
Lady Noggs (1912) play
William - an Englishman (1919) novel (Reprinted by Persephone Books in 1999)
The Child in Flanders: A Nativity Play (1922)
Theodore Savage: A Story of the Past or the Future (1922)
The Old Adam (1924) play
Non-Combatant (1924)
The Human Factor (1925)
The Old Vic (1926) with Lilian Baylis
Lest Ye Die (1928)
Modern Germanies, as seen by an Englishwoman (1931)
Modern Italy, as seen by an Englishwoman (1932)
Modern France, as seen by an Englishwoman (1933)
Little Arthur's History of the Twentieth Century (1933)
Modern Russia, as seen by an Englishwoman (1934)
Modern Austria, as seen by an Englishwoman (1935)
Life Errant (1935) autobiography
Modern Ireland, as seen by an Englishwoman (1936)
Modern Scotland, as seen by an Englishwoman (1937)
Modern England, as seen by an Englishwoman (1938)
Modern Sweden, as seen by an Englishwoman (1939)
The Englishwoman (1940)
Lament for Democracy (1940)
The Beggar Prince (1944) play
Holland To-day (1950)

Notes

References

{{cite book | last=Bleiler | first=Everett | authorlink=Everett F. Bleiler | title=The Checklist of Fantastic Literature | location=Chicago | publisher=Shasta Publishers | year=1948 | page=112}}
Lis Whitelaw (1990) The Life & Rebellious Times of Cicely Hamilton

External links

{{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/cicely-hamilton}}
{{Gutenberg author|id=47185}}
{{Library resources about|onlinebooks=no|viaf=54947993}}
{{Library resources by|onlinebooks=yes|viaf=54947993}}
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1956 page at Literary Encyclopedia]
[http://www.spartacus-educational.com/FWWhamiltonC.htm page at Spartacus]
[http://www.ellenterryarchive.hull.ac.uk AHRC Ellen Terry and Edith Craig Archive Database]
[http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/cicely-hamilton/ Author Profile at Persephone Books] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180319091346/http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/cicely-hamilton/ |date=19 March 2018 }}
[http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/william-an-englishman.html William – An Englishman] at Persephone Books
{{Internet Archive author |sname=Cicely Mary Hamilton |sopt=t}}
{{Librivox author |id=10128}}
Play script of [https://www.greatwartheatre.org.uk/db/script/2976/ 'A Child in Flanders'] accessible from [https://www.greatwartheatre.org.uk The Great War Theatre Project]