Kitty Marion

Actor and activist

Viv Gardner, Diane Atkinson

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526138064
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

With the outbreak of World War I, German-born Kitty Marion, suspected of being a German spy and placed under surveillance, sailed from Liverpool for New York. She left a dramatic and colourful life behind: a hectic and fascinating 20-year career as a performer crisscrossing Britain first as a singer, dancer and actress on the musical comedy and pantomime stage, and then in music hall as a 'refined comedienne'. She campaigned against the sexual abuses rife in the theatre of the day which led her eventually into the suffragette movement where she became a 'notorious' militant, responsible for numerous acts of arson. She was imprisoned, went on hunger-strike, and was force-fed more than 300-times. In America, she became a celebrated 'foot-soldier' in Margaret Sanger's birth control movement. Her autobiography, written in the 1930s is published here for the first time.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Frontispiece ‘Undaunted by the jeers of the onlookers’, Kitty Marion at the Wrexham Eisteddfod, 5 September 1912. After heckling David Lloyd George, Kitty Marion and two other protesters were attacked by the crowd and escorted to safety by the police. Unidentified cutting, probably from the Daily Sketch (see KMA: 165–6).

KITTY MARION

Chel. 3 – 6969

230 W. 22 St.

N.Y.C.

“What am I? What has my will done to make me that I am? Nothing!”

Emerson

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will!”

Shakespeare

“O, that estates, degrees and offices

Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour

Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!

How many then should cover that stand bare!

How many be commanded that command!

How much low peasantry would then be glean’d

From the true seed of honour! and how much honour

Pick’d from the chaff and ruin of the times

To be new-varnish’d!”

Shakespeare

Dedicated to the Political, Economic, Religious and Sex Freedom of Women

GERMANY

CHAPTER I

“Why don’t you write your experiences?” – “Why don’t you write the story of your life?” – “Why don’t you write a book?” Such and similar are the suggestive questions put to me whenever I reminisce on my stage, suffrage, birth control or ordinary life experiences. Though writing, especially the mechanical part, is a great effort to me, to justify the faith my numerous friends in England and America have expressed in my ability to do it, I will do my best.

Some of my earliest recollections are of home with father and mother – step-mother – in Dortmund, Westphalia, and a visit at Christmas to my father’s parents in Central Germany, to present his second wife. From what father has told me, my own mother suffered from Schwindsucht, tuberculosis, and died when I was two years old. Her life was despaired of at my birth¹ and father, who was away at the time, received a telegram of congratulations on the birth of a daughter in the morning and another at night asking him to hurry home if he wanted to see his wife alive.²

The priest – my mother’s family were Catholic – came to perform the last rites of the Church for the dying and baptize me, Katherine Marie. On father’s timely arrival mother rallied and recovered, only to pass on two years later.

Theirs had been a love-at-first-sight marriage, after an acquaintance of only six weeks, and to satisfy both mother’s and father’s families, the latter being Protestant, they went through the services of both Churches as well as the Civil.

A Protestant pastor who called on father soon after to remonstrate against his marriage with a Catholic was requested to leave the house and never darken its doors again. “The happiest years of my life”, father used to call the all too few with my mother. After her death I was left in her mother’s care until about two years later, father married again, this time a Protestant, and she is the only “mother” I remember. To the oft repeated question was she “kind to me”, I can best prove it by saying that she used to scald the milk and when cold, skim off the thick, rich cream for me, which I loved. She also saw to it that I regularly took my “Lebertran” and “Stiefmütterchentee”.³ Unlike most children I loved the Cod Liver Oil, but not the bitter tea. My stepmother also was tubercular and every precaution was taken against my becoming so. She delighted in dressing me daintily and, on special occasions, curling my hair, though father objected as it might make me conceited.He preferred it combed straight back in one plait. It being “red” was bad enough without making it more conspicuous.

The visit to my father’s home was a great event in my young life of five years. My adoring grand-parents (father’s step mother), two young aunts, Lisette and Mariechen and uncle Heinrich vied with each other in spoiling me. The wonderful Christmas tree and the harmonized singing of Christmas hymns, which in due time I also learned, driving in a Schlitten,⁴ with jingling bells on the horses, through lovely, snow covered country. Grandfather told me that it was sugar over everything to make it sweet for his “kleine Käthchen.”⁵

My aunts and uncle took me out on their small sledge which they navigated down steep inclines, sending my heart through my head, and round curves in a perfectly wonderful way, a thing I never learned to do. And they made a snowman and pelted me with snowballs, a game in which I could hold my own with great gusto. There was another Aunt, Dora, the oldest next to my father, who was already married and settled down in England and who came into my life some years later.

We lived on the outskirts of Dortmund in a house the front of which faced the street and the back towards gardens, fields and open country in which mother and I used to ramble to our hearts content. For neighbours and friends we had a rich Jewish family with one boy of my own age. They lived in a beautiful large house in its own garden full of lovely flowers, vegetables and fruits, at the back of which joined a chicken yard. One day their boy and I chased a young chicken which ran into a small pond and was drowned. Of course our crime was discovered and mother took me back to confess and apologize. Although there was much rejoicing and showering the two repentant little sinners with kisses, candy and fruit, I felt I never wanted to face such a situation again. I was deeply impressed and sorry for the chicken but I made up my child mind to be careful never again to do anything I might have to confess and apologize for.

I was somewhat puzzled over our friends being “Jews” and wondered if they were Catholic or Protestant Jews, for I reasoned that there must be both since there were Catholic and Protestant Christians. My enquiry led to all sorts of religious explanations and enlightenment which puzzled me still more.

Another great event was the visit of some theatrical friends of mother’s. I entered a new, strange and magnificent world, – hinter den Kulissen⁶ – of gorgeously dressed, lovely, kind people, who took my heart and soul by storm. There were flowers, bon-bons, perfumes, the like I had never seen before, and to which I was invited to “help myself”. The one thing that stood out was a huge swan, the rope attached to which I was warned not to step on or fall over, drawing a boat in which “Der Schwanritter”⁷ arrived. The impression all this made on me is better imagined than described. Father was an engineer with a very mathematical mind which he thoroughly brought to bear upon my training and upbringing, a strict disciplinarian with a fierce, violent, evidently uncontrollable temper, the full force of which I often bore the brunt.

Before I went to school at the age of six he had taught me to write and repeat the alphabet and count up to one hundred, taught me several songs including “Als die Romer frech geworden”,⁸ a favorite with me, also my name and address in case I were ever lost and the date of my birth, March – 1871, which latter no doubt prevented my developing that allegedly feminine reluctance of telling one’s correct age. Daily physical drill, which I enjoyed, and “a place for everything and everything in its place”, such as my toys and picture books, etc. were part of my training. I have happy memories of trips to the country, of farms with all their different animals and fowls which I loved, all but the geese who would run after, hiss at and frighten me. Happy memories of being awakened on Christmas morn to see the glittering tree, dolls, always favorite toys with me, and other presents which the Christkind and St Nicholas had brought during the night. The shrieks of delight with which I found the varicolored eggs laid by the Osterhase⁹ in all sorts of hidden nooks and corners at Easter! I also have memories of angry scenes between father and mother, one raging, the other weeping, myself hiding in a corner, afraid to move. Early in 1877 I went to school, though my recollections are rather hazy, many other things happening about that time. One day a friend of mothers took me to play with her own two little girls and stay over night. On returning home next afternoon imagine my joyful surprise when I found mother with what to me was a live doll, a baby brother. Such excitement, wonder and questions, which were promptly hushed. With bated breath I asked “where did you get it?” “The stork brought it.” I had seen pictures of that bird and tried to imagine it flying with that “Wickelkind”¹⁰ through the window. Why hadn’t I been there to see it? Why should this have happened just when I wasn’t at home. Suddenly it struck me as strange that mother should be in bed so early in the afternoon. I wanted to know why and was told that the stork had bitten her leg when he brought the baby. I couldn’t understand him doing such a thing or anyone letting him. Then I wanted to see the wound, but that was bound up to heal and no one could see it, not even I. Full of indignation I blurted out “I won’t let him bite my leg when me brings me a baby.”

When it came to my bedtime, father undressing me, a strand of long, “red” hair fell from my plait as he combed it. The questions father plied me with! It must have been cut, who had done it, how had it happened? I couldn’t account for it and he thought I was lying. He threatened to beat me to death if I lied to him. He would teach me not to lie. Then he promised me some of my favorite pastry if I would tell him the truth. Even for that I didn’t know. I tried so hard to remember and two or three days later it came to me. Father seemed in a good temper and I was telling him of the games my little friends and I had been playing and of cutting out pictures from a paper, when suddenly it flashed across my mind how I had lifted the scissors and given a snick in my hair, with a vague idea of cutting a fringe (bang) like my friends wore. It was the honest to God truth but he was sure it was the pastry had tempted me to confess and he all but did beat me to death. A favorite way with him was to strike me full in the face with the back of his hand. See stars? Yes the whole firmament in one flash, many a time! The following day when I looked in the mirror I saw my nose, which was very painful, had a slight bump where it had been straight before. Father noticed it too and jeeringly remarked that it improved my beauty and would always remind me not to tell lies. I got my pastry too – father always kept his promises. But all the joy had gone out of it. Having plenty of bad temper myself, I wanted to throw it at him, but didn’t dare. At times I gave vent to it by screaming and stamping my feet, but never when father was about. I learned to exercise wonderful control in his presence. I cried very easily; a disapproving, reproachful look from anyone I cared for was enough to make me weep as if my heart would break. Father would stand over me, threatening to give me cause to cry if I didn’t stop immediately. My step-mother was rather that way inclined too. I remember once she was singing “Es ist ein’ Ros’ ensprungen aus einer Wurzel zart”.¹¹ I was crying quietly to myself. I don’t know why -- I couldn’t help it. When she noticed it, instead of leaving me alone or giving me a sympathetic caress, she adopted father’s tactics. How often have I heard her say, “Sie ist doch so verkehrt” – “So contrary” – when speaking of me. Was I to blame for the unfathomable sense of depression from which I suffered at times any more than for periods of high spirited joy and happiness?

But to return to the baby. A few days after his arrival mother and he were removed to the hospital, where next father took me to see mother in her coffin, later to see that coffin lowered into the earth, later still to see the baby follow her. It was all so strange and incomprehensible to me, so desolate and empty without them. I wished then and have wished it many times since, that they had taken me with them. They nearly did, for one day at dinner a tiny sharp splinter of bone in the soup lodged in my throat, causing me to choke. Father was alarmed seeing me turn black in the face but guessing the cause. and having presence of mind to push a finger down my throat, making me vomit and bring back the cause of the trouble. Poor father, I was too young to understand and sympathize with him then.

While disposing of our home, etc. father left me in the care of my own mother’s brother, who lived with his wife and two little children near Cologne. They of course were Catholics and I was sent to a Catholic school and church, which, never having been to church before was a new and strange experience. Especially having to kneel before a huge Crucifix outside the church and pray for the souls of both my...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• The editors
• Series editors’ foreword
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• The Autobiography
• Epilogue: New York
• Appendix I: Extracts from Kitty Marion’s prison records
• Appendix II: Letters from Holloway Prison (1914)
• Appendix III: Extracts from reports on Kitty Marion’s citizenship status etc.
• Select bibliography