ABSTRACT
On returning to England in early May 1917, Christabel initially stayed with her mother at 50 Clarendon Road, Holland Park, London. The fifty-nine-year-old Emmeline Pankhurst had rented and furnished the house the previous summer since it was in a pleasant area and large enough to accommodate the four adopted babies and Catherine Pine, who looked after them. Emmeline, accompanied by Jessie Kenney, was shortly to leave for a three-month trip to Russia where the Tsarist regime had been overthrown in the February 1917 revolution. The visit was provoked by the news that the pacifist Ramsay MacDonald, a key Labour figure, had been allowed by the British Government to travel with some like-minded socialists to Russia, one of Britain’s allies. Younger, fitter and much more vigorous than her absent mother, Christabel enthusiastically delivered patriotic speeches that were well received by the press and general public.
