PART II. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND REMINISCENCES OF MISS BECKER. CHAPTER III. MISS BECKER. § 6. Introductory. THERE are times when the story of one life is so interwoven with the story of its time, when the thought and conduct of one individual soul is so typical of the life of its generation, that to tell the story of the one, is to tell that of the other. So it is with the story of the Women's Suffrage agitation in Great Britain, and the life-story of Miss Becker, the woman who will stand forth to after times as the leader whose personality was impressed on its early work, whose forethought and judgment moulded its policy. One must stand in a sense apart, at a certain distance from events and persons that one has known intimately near, to be able to marshal them in clear procession with due subordination of the parts, and to show truly the stature of those who have taken part in the procession. That the task is not an easy one, no one can feel more keenly than the present writer, who can but give her best endeavour, out of the huge mass of letters, minutes, circulars, journals, pamphlets, and speeches, to seize on those points which will most clearly and effectually delineate the character of the movement and of the workers therein. It seems remarkable that we should look in vain in the memorable petition of 1866 for the name which was soon to become the personification of the movement to the world. Yet so it was the knowledge of that petition had not penetrated to her quiet home in Lancashire. "There ought to have been 1500 names," she used to say; "mine ought to have been there." However, it was not long before the meeting of the Social Science Association, held that year in Manchester, brought her into touch with the work which responded to the aspirations of her life. Miss Becker was one of the audience when Mrs. Bodichon read her paper, "On Reasons for the Enfranchisement of Women," before the Association, on 6th October 1866. § 7. Her Young Days. Lydia Ernestine Becker was born in Cooper Street, Manchester, on 24th February 1827-the eldest of the fifteen children of Hannibal Leigh Becker and Mary Duncuft. Her mother was of an old Lancashire stock, her father was of German descent: his father, Ernest Hannibal Becker, being a native of Thuringia, who had come to England as a young man and lived to an advanced age at Foxdenton Hall, where all his children were born. Notwithstanding the strain of German descent Miss Becker was thoroughly a Lancashire woman: her life was spent in Lancashire; her family affections all centred there. The Beckers moved when Lydia was but a child to Altham, near Accrington, a large house on rising ground, with a fine view of the Pendle range, and later to Reddish. Their old house, and indeed the whole of Cooper Street, is now occupied by huge warehouses. In reference to Miss Becker's early days one of her sisters writes: "Upon myself her influence has been very strong, and I owe to her much of my intellectual life. Perhaps the quiet way in which our youth was spent brought us into closer contact than would have been the case otherwise. " We lived in the country and were thrown much together, as we were almost entirely educated at home. Lydia was always a great reader, and always remembered what she read, so that she was the universal referee when information was wanted, no matter what the subject. She had a wonderful way, too, of getting at the kernel of a book in a very short time. Without reading it through she seized on the salient points, and knew more about it in an hour than I should have done after careful plodding through. She went for a long visit to Germany about 1844. This was a great event in our quiet lives." |