Free All We Know: Three Lives by Lisa Cohen Page B

“plunged into the General Election of 1929”—the first English election with universal adult suffrage. In addition to bringing money to Strachey’s candidacy, she campaigned with him, appearing on the platform when he spoke and stumping for him at gatherings of women constituents and elsewhere. On a leaflet addressed “To the Woman Elector of Aston,” there is a photograph of her looking distinctly pretty—fresh-faced, clear-eyed, Irish. “Dear Friend,” the broadside reads, “I am writing to you, as a woman voter, in order to ask you to vote for my husband, John Strachey…I know his grasp of the problems which confront women, and his keen realisation of the urgent necessity of improving the living conditions of the people of Great Britain.” The leaflet, which may not have been written by her, invited women voters to a series of meetings, where her speech—on American democratic traditions and the goals of the Labour Party—was certainly her own. She loved these appearances, and audiences responded to her commanding but matter-of-fact style.
    Strachey defeated his Conservative opponent on May 30, 1929, and Esther and he moved into a house in Westminster, close to the House of Commons. He announced that he anticipated “the swift ‘transformation of society into a Socialist Commonwealth,’” but there was little room for him and his colleagues to maneuver. While Labour had enough seats in the House of Commons to form a government, they had only a small majority over the Conservatives (the Liberal Party had the balance of the votes), and their prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, began to undermine their aspirations for reform. In November 1930, as Labour’s hold on government disintegrated, Esther wrote to a friend in New York describing it as “the most important failure since the Wall Street crash.”

    From left: unidentified woman, Lorna Lindsley, Patrick Murphy, John Strachey (sprinkled with rice), Oswald Mosley behind him, and Esther, after their wedding, April 24, 1929 (Muriel Draper Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University)
    The fatuousness, and incompetence of MacDonald are almost incredible. There may be a general election any time—though no one knows when it will come…Mosley and John assure me that when the general election comes the present government will be snowed under. I don’t doubt it for an instant. John says he is sure to lose his own seat in the debacle…He loathes MacDonald so that he will positively enjoy his own defeat, since it will contribute to Ramsay’s discomfiture. Ramsay now frequents nobody but Duchesses, to whom he tells his troubles while [Chancellor of the Exchequer] Snowden carries on the government employing a financial policy that would have been deemed rather too conservative by Queen Victoria. Though Snowden’s policy and his obstinacy are ruining the Labor party, one can still respect him as a human being…, while Ramsay is a pitiable figure, the mixture of his vanity, his Scotch sentimentality and his snobbery are atrocious. The aristocracy has him eating out of its hand.
    But Esther’s fascination with parliamentary politics was not enough to sustain the marriage, which was itself soon a debacle. Strachey had imagined a union of equals, but still expected his wife to run the household—plan meals, supervise the small domestic staff, make sure the house looked respectable—chores in which Esther had no interest and for which she had no aptitude. She cared about debate and policy, not domestic performance, felt isolated, and continued to drink to excess. She had her own money and had never answered to anyone, so often assuaged her unhappiness by spending weekends in France sitting in cafés drinking and talking with Dorothy Parker, Janet Flanner, and other friends; going to Barney’s salon on Fridays; and visiting Noel, who was now living in the village of Orgeval, about twenty miles