Nobel Prize winners William Butler Yeats and George Bernard Shaw wrote a poem and a play, respectively, for the flamboyant British feminist Helen "Lalla" Speyer (1870-1965). She posed for one of the finest portraits by Roger Fry, a member of the Bloomsbury Group, to which Virginia Woolf also belonged. And from 1901 to 1922, she was the wife of Emile Vandervelde, the undisputed patron of the Belgian Workers' Party.
Lalla introduced Emile to feminist ideas, while he introduced her to the socialist struggle. They found common ground, particularly in the fields of art, popular education, the campaign against Leopold II's atrocities, and aid to occupied Belgium. Emile "forgot" his first wife in his memoirs. Studies about him have too often neglected Lalla's impact on his political and personal development. But Lalla is more than just "Emilie's wife." Her own story only began to unfold after the First World War, when she began to work and live increasingly independently of her husband.
You can read more about this in Martine Vermandere's book - Madame Lalla Vandervelde - A very exceptional woman :
Image: Lalla Vandervelde by Roger Fry
