I had a very unpleasant interview, during this visit to London, with Miss Lydia Becker, Miss Caroline Biggs, and Miss Blackburn, at the Metropole, about choosing delegates to the International Council of Women soon to be held in Washington.  As there had been some irreconcilable dissensions in the suffrage association, and they could not agree as to whom their delegate should be, they decided to send none at all.  I wrote at once to Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, pointing out what a shame it would be if England, above all countries, should not be represented in the first International Council ever called by a suffrage association.  She replied promptly that must not be, and immediately moved in the matter, and through her efforts three delegates were soon authorized to go, representing different constituencies—­Mrs. Alice Cliff Scatcherd, Mrs. Ormiston Chant, and Mrs. Ashton Dilke.

Toward the last of February, 1888, we went again to London to make a few farewell visits to dear friends.  We spent a few days with Mrs. Mona Caird, who was then reading Karl Pearson’s lectures on “Woman,” and expounding her views on marriage, which she afterward gave to the Westminster Review, and stirred the press to white heat both in England and America.  “Is Marriage a Failure?” furnished the heading for our quack advertisements for a long time after.  Mrs. Caird was a very graceful, pleasing woman, and so gentle in manner and appearance that no one would deem her capable of hurling such thunderbolts at the long-suffering Saxon people.

We devoted one day to Prince Krapotkine, who lives at Harrow, in the suburbs of London.  A friend of his, Mr. Lieneff, escorted us there.  We found the prince, his wife, and child in very humble quarters; uncarpeted floors, books and papers on pine shelves, wooden chairs, and the bare necessaries of life—­nothing more.  They indulge in no luxuries, but devote all they can spare to the publication of liberal opinions to be scattered in Russia, and to help Nihilists in escaping from the dominions of the Czar.  The prince and princess took turns in holding and amusing the baby—­then only one year old; fortunately it slept most of the time, so that the conversation flowed on for some hours.  Krapotkine told us of his sad prison experiences, both in France and Russia.  He said the series of articles by George Kennan in the Century were not too highly colored, that the sufferings of men and women in Siberia and the Russian prisons could not be overdrawn.  One of the refinements of cruelty they practice on prisoners is never to allow them to hear the human voice.  A soldier always accompanies the warder who distributes the food, to see that no word is spoken.  In vain the poor prisoner asks questions, no answer is ever made, no tidings from the outside world ever given.  One may well ask what devil in human form has prescribed such prison life and discipline!  I wonder if we could find a man in all Russia who would defend the system, yet someone is responsible for its terrible cruelties!