CHAPTER X. MISS BECKER'S DEATH. 37. Times of Depression. WHEN there was no longer any Bill before the House as a standard round which to rally the forces of the movement-no target for Parliamentary action-all plans for work lacked their wonted incentive: the flow of funds naturally slackened, and workers drifted off to other things-many throwing themselves, as has been already seen, into party work. All circumstances thus combined to bring increasing anxiety on the responsible leaders of the movement, and above all, therefore, on Miss Becker. Early in 1888 symptoms of loss of physical vigour had distressed her colleagues. She had always been liable to a sudden collapse of nervous power, after any specially anxious and severe effortbut these attacks, alarming though they were for those who saw them, never came during, but only after, the work that had caused them was done, and she recovered quickly from them. But now the prolonged anxiety was telling on her permanently. The deep affections which lay under her stately and reserved demeanour were often sorely tried in those days of divided counsels between old friends and coworkers. The difficulties that then penetrated into the Women's Suffrage policy were only the reflex action of the storm which was disturbing the whole political atmosphere of the country, and as such she regarded them, checking any personal feeling which younger and less tried workers might display. She took all these troublesome matters as part of the incidents of political work, to be met passively and impersonally, but the depression of the time fell with special heaviness on a leader of her sympathetic nature. § 38. The Tragic End. In the winter of 1889-90, Miss Becker was almost entirely confined to her house, 155 Shrewsbury Street, Manchester, where she had lived since the death of her father in 1877. She fought on, doing her work on the Women's Suffrage Journal as usual, and welcoming the friends who came to beguile her hours of forced inaction with chess. At last, in the spring of 1890, she became so much worse that she decided on going to Bath, where she placed herself under the charge of Dr. Spender. Her letters from Bath were cheerful, and her health improving in some degree she arranged to take a course of baths at Aix-les-Bains. On her way through London she stayed a few days to take leave of her friends, and even attended a meeting of the Committee in Great College Street, on her way to Waterloo Station, on the day of her departure. It seemed a serious journey for one in her crippled state; nevertheless, she started with only her maid, her immense courage making light of all difficulties; and seemingly with good reason, for her letters from Aixles-Bains told of steady improvement, so much so that early in July she set out on an excursion into the Savoyard Alps. Nothing can better show how little the tragic end was looked for than some passages from the letters written by her in these last days of her life to the present writer, to whom she had entrusted the care of the Women's Suffrage Journal during her absence. In a letter dated July 6th she thus describes her arrival at St. Gervais-les-Bains: "Just arrived here and find your welcome letter and budget of newspapers, which I regard as a famished lion might look at a bone, after having had no news for some days. You must have thought I was lost, and so indeed I have been for the last two days-stuck in the bottom of a deep, damp hole from which escape seemed hard. I left Annecy on Thursday, en route for this place, which is reached by a cross-country railway, which strikes the beaten track from Geneva to Chamounix at a place called La Roche; the train passes up the wide valley of the Arne as far as Cluse, where the rail ends. The valley here contracts to a ravine, up which the diligence proceeds to Chamounix. The day was glorious and the country magnificent. When the diligence stopped at the point for St. Gervais, I found that the village was three or four miles off, and I had not arranged for a conveyance, so I was, perforce, |