University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV
IMPRISONMENT

Prior to the Derby day of 1913, Vivie had heard of Emily Wilding Davison as a Northumbrian woman, distantly related to the Rossiters and also to the Lady Shillito she had once defended. She came from Morpeth in Northumberland and had had a very distinguished University career at Oxford and in London, of which latter university she was a B.A. The theme of the electoral enfranchisement of Women had gradually possessed her mind to the exclusion of all other subjects; she became in fact a fanatic in the cause and a predestined martyr to it. In 1909 she had received her first sentence of imprisonment for making a constitutional protest, and to escape forcible feeding had barricaded her cell. The Visiting Committee had driven her from this position by directing the warders to turn a hose pipe on her and knock her senseless with a douche of cold water; for which irregularity they were afterwards fined and mulcted in costs. Two years later, for another Suffragist offence (setting fire to a pillar box after giving warning of her intention) she went to prison for six months. Here the tortures of forcible feeding so overcame her reason--it was alleged--that she flung herself from an upper gallery, believing she would be smashed on the pavement below and that her death under such circumstances might call attention to the agony of forcible feeding and the reckless disregard of consequences which now inspired educated women who were resolved to obtain the enfranchisement of their sex. But an iron wire

grating eight feet below broke her fall and only cut her face and hands. The accident or attempted suicide, however, procured the shortening of her sentence.

Vivie and she often met in the early months of 1913, and on the first day of June she confided to a few of the W.S.P.U. her intention of making at Epsom a public protest against public indifference to the cause of the Woman's Franchise. This protest was to be made in the most striking manner possible at the supreme moment of the Derby race on the 4th of June. Probably no one to whom she mentioned the matter thought she contemplated offering up her own life; at most they must have imagined some speech from the Grand Stand, some address to Royalty thrown into the Royal pavilion, some waving of a Suffrage Flag or early-morning placarding of the bookies' stands.

Vivie however had been turning her thoughts to horse-racing as a field of activity. She was amused and interested at the effect that had been produced in ministerial circles by her interference with the game of golf. If now something was done by the militants seriously to impede the greatest of the sports, the national form of gambling, the protected form of swindling, the main interest in life of the working-class, of half the peerage, all the beerage, the chief lure of the newspapers between October and July, and the preoccupation of princes, she might awaken the male mind in a very effectual way to the need for settling the Suffrage question.

So she determined also to see the running of the Derby, as a preliminary to deciding on a plan of campaign. She had become hardened to pushing and scrouging, so that the struggle to get a seat in one of the fifty or sixty race trains leaving Waterloo or Victoria left her comparatively calm. She was dressed as a young man and had no clothing impediments, and as a young man she was better able to travel down with racing rascality. In that guise

she did not attract too much attention. Rough play may have been in the mind of the card-playing, spirit-drinking scoundrels that occupied the other seats in the compartment, but Vivie in her man's dress created a certain amount of suspicion and caution. "Look's like a 'tec,'" one man whispered to another. So the card-playing was not thrust on her as a round-about form of plunder, and the stories told were more those derived from the spicy columns of the sporting papers, in words of double meaning, than the outspoken, stable obscenity characteristic of the race-course rabble.

Vivie arriving early managed to secure a fairly good seat on the Grand Stand, to which she could have recourse when the crowd on the race course became too repulsive or too dangerous. She wished as much as possible to see all aspects of the premier race meeting. Indeed, meeting a friend of Lady Feenix's, a good-natured young peer who halted irresolute between four worlds--the philosophic, the political, the philanthropic, and the sporting, she introduced herself as "David Williams"--hoping no Bencher was within hearing--said "Dare say you remember me? Lady Feenix's? Been much abroad lately--really feel quite strange on an English race course," and persuaded him to take her round before the great people of the day were all assembled. She was shown the Royal pavilion being got ready for the King and Queen, the weighing room of the jockeys, the paddock and temporary stables of the horses that were to race that day. Here was a celebrated actress in a magnificent lace dress and a superb hat, walking up and down on the sun-burnt, trodden turf, in a devil of a temper. Her horse--for with her lovers' money she kept a racing stable--had been scratched for the race--I really can't tell you why, not having been able to study all the minutiæ of racing. [Talking of that, how annoying it is--or was--when one cared about things of great moment,

to take up an evening newspaper's last edition and read in large type "Official Scratchings," with a silly algebraic formula underneath about horses being withdrawn from some race, when you thought it was a bear fight in the Cabinet.] Vivie gathered from her guide that to-day would be rather a special Derby, because it did not often happen that a King-Emperor was there to see a horse from his own racing stables running in the classic race.

Then, thanking the pleasant soldier-peer for his information, Vivie (David Williams) left him to his duties as equerry and member of the Jockey-Club and entered the dense crowd on either side of the race course. It reminded her just slightly of Frith's Derby Day. There were the gypsies, the jugglers, the acrobats, the costers with their provision barrows; the grooms and stable hands; the beggars and obvious pick-pockets; the low-down harlots--the high-up ones were already entering the seats of the Grand Stand or sitting on the four-in-hand coaches or in the open landaulettes and Silent Knights. But evidently the professional betting men were a new growth since the mid-nineteenth century. They were just beginning to assemble, wiping their mouths from the oozings of the last potation; some, the aristocrats of their calling, like sporting peers in dress and appearance; others like knock-about actors on the music-hall stage. The generality were remarkably similar to ordinary city men or to the hansom-cab drivers of twenty years ago.

In the very front of the crowd on the Grand Stand side, leaning with her elbows on the wooden rail, she descried Emily Davison. Vivie edged and sidled through the crowd and touched her on the shoulder. Emily looked up with a start, surprised at seeing the friendly face of a young man, till she recognized Vivie by her voice. "Dear Emily," said Vivie, "you look so tired.

Aren't you over-trying your strength? I don't know what you have in hand, but why not postpone your action till you are quite strong again?"

"I shall never be stronger than I am to-day and it can't be postponed, cost me what it will," was the reply, while the sad eyes looked away across the course.

"Well," said Vivie, "I wanted you to know that I was close by, prepared to back you up if need be. And there are others of our Union about the place. That young man over there talking to the policeman is really A---- K---- though she is supposed to be in prison. Mrs. Tuke is somewhere about, Mrs. Despard is on the Grand Stand, and Blanche Smith is selling The Suffragette."

"Thank you," said Miss Davison, turning round for an instant, and pressing Vivie's hand, "Good-bye. I hope what I am going to do will be effectual."

Vivie did not like to prolong the talk in case it should attract attention. Individual action was encouraged under the W.S.P.U., and when a member wished to do something on her own, her comrades did not fuss with advice. So Vivie returned to the Grand Stand.

Presently there was the stir occasioned by the arrival of the Royal personages. Vivie noted with a little dismay that while she was wearing a Homburg hat all the men near her wore the black and glistening topper which has become--or had, for the tyranny of custom has lifted a little since the War--the conventional head-gear in which to approach both God and the King. There was a great raising of these glistening hats, there were grave bows or smiling acknowledgments from the pavilion. Then every one sat down and the second event was run.

Still Emily Wilding Davison made no sign. Vivie could just descry her, still in the front of the crowd, still

gazing out over the course, pressed by the crowd against the broad white rail.

* * * * *

The race of the day had begun. The row of snickering, plunging, rearing, and curvetting horses had dissolved, as in a kaleidoscope, into a bunch, and a pear-shaped formation with two or three horses streaming ahead as the stem of the pear. Then the stem became separated from the pear-shaped mass by its superior speed, and again this vertical line of horses formed up once more horizontally, leaving the mass still farther behind. Then the horses seen from the Grand Stand disappeared--and after a minute reappeared--three, four, five--and the bunch of them, swerving round Tattenham Corner and thundering down the incline towards the winning post.... The King's horse seemed to be leading, another few seconds would have brought it or one of its rivals past the winning post, when ... a slender figure, a woman, darted with equal swiftness from the barrier to the middle of the course, leapt to the neck of the King's horse, and in an instant, the horse was down, kneeling on a crumpled woman, and the jockey was flying through the air to descend on hands and knees practically unhurt. The other horses rushed by, miraculously avoiding the prostrate figures. Some horse passed the winning post, a head in front of some other, but no one seemed to care. The race was fouled. Vivie noted thirty seconds--approximately--of amazed, horrified silence. Then a roar of mingled anger, horror, enquiry went up from the crowd of many thousands. "It's the Suffragettes" shouted some one. And up to then Vivie had not thought of connecting this unprecedented act with the purposed protest of Emily Wilding Davison. She sprang to her feet, and shouting to

all who might have tried to stop her "I'm a friend of the lady. I am a doctor"--she didn't care what lie she told--she was soon authoritatively pushing through the ring of police constables who like warrior ants had surrounded the victims of the protest--the shivering, trembling horse, now on its legs, the pitifully crushed, unconscious woman--her hat hanging to the tresses of her hair by a dislodged hat-pin, her thin face stained with blood from surface punctures. The jockey was being carried from the course, still unconscious, but not badly hurt.

A great surgeon happening to be at Epsom Race course on a friend's drag, had hurried to offer his services. He was examining the unconscious woman and striving very gently to straighten and disentangle her crooked body. Presently there was a respectful stir in the privileged ring, and Vivie was conscious by the raising of hats that the King stood amongst them looking down on the woman who had offered up her life before his eyes to enforce the Woman's appeal. He put his enquiries and offered his suggestions in a low voice, but Vivie withdrew, less with the fear that her right to be there and her connection with the tragedy might be questioned, as from some instinctive modesty. The occasion was too momentous for the presence of a supernumerary. Emily Wilding Davison should have her audience of her Sovereign without spectators.

Returning with a blanched face to the seething crowd, and presently to the Grand Stand, Vivie's mood altered from awe to anger. The "bookies" were beside themselves with fury. She noted the more frequent of the nouns and adjectives they applied to the dying woman for having spoilt the Derby of 1913, but although she went to the trouble, in framing her indictment of the Turf, of writing down these phrases, my jury of matrons opposes itself to their appearance here, though I am all

for realism and completeness of statement. After conversing briefly and in a lowered voice with such Suffragettes as gathered round her, so that this one could carry the news to town and that one his to communicate with Miss Davison's relations, Vivie--recklessly calling herself to any police questioner, "David Williams" and eliciting "Yes, sir, I have seen you once or twice in the courts," reached once more the Grand Stand with its knots of shocked, puzzled, indignant, cynical, consternated men and women. Most of them spoke in low tones; but one--a blond Jew of middle age--was raving in uncontrolled anger, careless of what he said or of who heard him. He was short of stature with protruding bloodshot eyes, an undulating nose, slightly prognathous muzzle and full lips, and a harsh red moustache which enhanced the prognathism. His silk hat tilted back showed a great bald forehead, in which angry, bluish veins stood out like swollen earth worms. "Those Suffragettes!" he was shouting or rather shrieking in a nasal whine, "if I had my way, I'd lay 'em out along the course and have 'em ---- by ----. The ----'s!"

The shocked auditory around him drew away. Vivie gathered he was Mr. ---- well, perhaps I had better not give his name,[1] even in a disguised form. He had had a chequered career in South America--Mexico oil, Peruvian rubber, Buenos Aires railways, and a corner in Argentine beef--but had become exceedingly rich, a fortune perhaps of twenty millions. He had given five times more than any other aspirant in benefactions to charities and to the party chest of the dominant Party, but the authorities dared not reward him with a baronetcy because of the stories of his early life which had to be fought out in libel cases with Baxendale Strangeways and others. But he had won through these libel cases, and now devoted his vast wealth to improving our breed

of horses by racing at Newmarket, Epsom, Doncaster, Gatwick, Sandown and Brighton. Racing had, in fact, become to him what Auction Bridge was to the Society gamblers of those days, only instead of losing and winning tens and hundreds of pounds, his fluctuations in gains and losses were in thousands, generally with a summing up on the right side of the annual account. But whether on the Turf, at the billiard table, or in the stock market he was or had become a bad loser. He lost his temper at the same time. On this occasion Miss Davison's suicide or martyrdom would leave him perhaps on the wrong side in making up his day's book to the extent of fifteen hundred pounds. Viewed in the right proportion it would be equivalent to our--you and me--having given a florin to a newspaper boy as the train was moving, instead of a penny. But no doubt her unfortunate impulse had spoiled the day for him in other ways, upset schemes that were bound up with the winning of the King's horse. Yet his outburst and the shocking language he applied to the Suffrage movement made history: for they fixed on him Vivie's attention when she was looking out for some one or something on whom to avenge the loss of a comrade.

She forthwith set out for London and wrote up the dossier of Mr. ----. In the secret list of buildings which were to be destroyed by fire or bombs, with as little risk as possible to human or animal life, she noted down the racing stables, trainers' houses and palaces of Mr. ---- at Newmarket, Epsom, the Devil's Dyke, and the neighbourhood of Doncaster.

Rossiter and Vivie met for the first time for a year at Emily Davison's funeral. Rossiter had been profoundly moved at her self-sacrifice; she was moreover a Northumbrian and a distant kinswoman. Perhaps, also, he felt that he had of late been a little lukewarm

over the Suffrage agitation. His motor-brougham, containing with himself the very unwilling Mrs. Rossiter, followed in the procession of six thousand persons which escorted the coffin across London from Victoria station to King's Cross. A halt was made outside a church in Bloomsbury where a funeral service was read.

Mrs. Rossiter thought the whole thing profoundly improper. In the first place the young woman had committed suicide, which of itself was a crime and disentitled you to Christian burial; in the second she had died in a way greatly to inconvenience persons in the highest society; in the third she had always understood that racing was a perfectly proper pastime for gentlemen; and in the fourth this incident, touching Michael through his relationship with the deceased, would bring him again in contact with that Vivie Warren--there she was and there was he, in close converse--and make a knighthood from a nearly relenting Government well-nigh impossible. Rossiter, after the service, had begged Vivie to come back to tea with them in Park Crescent and give Mrs. Rossiter and himself a full account of what took place at Epsom. Vivie had declined. She had not even spoken to the angry little woman, who had refused to attend the service and had sat fuming all through the half hour in her electric brougham, wishing she had the courage and determination to order the chauffeur to turn round and run her home, leaving the Professor to follow in a taxi. But perhaps if she did that, he would go off somewhere with that Warren woman.

Michael presently re-entered the carriage and in silence they returned to Portland Place.

The next day his wife meeting one of her Anti-Suffrage friends said:

"Er--supposing--er--you had got to know something about these dreadful militant women, something which might help the police, yet didn't want to get too

much mixed up with it yourself, and certainly not bring your husband into it--the Professor thoroughly disapproves of militancy, even though he may have foolish ideas about the Vote--er--what would you do?"

"Well, what is it?"

"It's part of a letter."

"Well, I should just send it to the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard, and tell them under what circumstances it came into your possession. You needn't even give your name or address. They'll soon know whether it's any use or not." So Mrs. Rossiter took from her desk that scrap of partly burnt paper with the typewritten words on it which she had picked out of the grate two and a half years before, and posted it to the Criminal Investigation Department, with the intimation that this fragment had come into the possession of the sender some time ago, and seemed to refer to a militant Suffragist who called herself "Vivie Warren" or "David Williams," and perhaps it might be of some assistance to the authorities in tracking down these dangerous women who now stuck at nothing. She posted the letter with her own hands in the North West district. Park Crescent, Portland Place, she always reflected, was still in the Western district, though it lay perilously near the North West border line, beyond which Lady Jeune had once written, no one in Society thought of living. This was a dictum that at one time had occasioned Mrs. Rossiter considerable perturbation. It was alarming to think that by crossing the Marylebone Road or migrating to Cambridge Terrace you had passed out of Society.

It took the police a deuce of a time--two months--to make use effectively of the information contained in Mrs. Rossiter's scrap of burnt paper; though the statement of their anonymous correspondent that Vivie

Warren and David Williams were probably the same person helped to locate Mr. Michaelis's office. It was soon ascertained that Miss Vivien Warren, well known as a sort of Society speaker on Suffrage, lived at the Lilacs in Victoria Road, Kensington. But when a plain-clothes policeman called at Victoria Road he was only told by the Suffragette caretaker (whose mother now usually lived with her to console her for her mistress's frequent absences) that Miss Warren was away just then, had recently been much away from home, probably abroad where her mother lived. (Here the enquirer registered a mental note: Miss Warren has a mother living abroad: could it be the Mrs. Warren?). Polite and respectful calls on Lady Feenix, Lady Maud Parry, and Mrs. Armstrong--Vivie's known associates--elicted no information, till on leaving the last-named lady's house in Kensington Square the detective heard Colonel Armstrong come in from the garden and call out "Ho-no-ria." "'--ria," he said to himself, "'-ria kept the keys, and now--' Honoria. What was her name before she married Colonel Armstrong?--why--" He soon found out--"Fraser." "Wasn't there once a firm, Fraser and Warren, which set up to be some new dodge for establishing women in a city career?--Accountancy? Stockbroking? Where did Fraser and Warren have their office? Fifth floor of Midland Insurance office in Chancery Lane. What was that building now called? No. 88-90." Done.

These two sentences run over a period of--what did I say? Two months?--in their deductions and guesses and consultation of out-of-date telephone directories. But on one day in September, 1913, two plain-clothes policemen made their way up to the fifth floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane and found the outer door of Mr. Michaelis's office locked and a notice board on it saying "Absent till Monday." Not deterred by this, they forced

open the door--to the thrilling interest of a spectacled typewriteress, who had no business on that landing at all, but she usually made assignations there with the lift man. And on the writing table in the outer office they found a note addressed to Miss Annie Kenney, which said inside: "Dear Annie. If you should chance to look in between your many imprisonments and find me out, you will know I am away on the Firm's business, livening up the racing establishments of the Right Honble Sir ---- ----, Bart. Bart. No one knows anything about this at No. 94."

(This note was purely unnecessary--a bit of swagger perhaps, lest Miss Kenney should think Vivie never did anything dangerous, but only planned dangerous escapades for others. Like the long letter of Vivie to Michael Rossiter, written on the last day of December, 1910, which he had imperfectly destroyed, it was a reminder of that all-too-true saying: "Litera scripta manet.")

If the outer door of Michaelis's office was locked how could Miss Kenney be expected to call and find this note awaiting her? Why, here came in the "No. 94" of the scrap of paper. There was an over-the-roofs communication between the block of 88-90 and House No. 94. The policemen in fact found that the large casement of the partners' room was only pulled to, so that it was easily opened from the outside. From the parapet they passed to the fire-escapes and through the labyrinth of chimney stacks to a similar window leading into the top storey of 94, the office of Mr. Algernon Mainwaring, Hygienic Corset-maker. This office at the time of their unexpected entry was fairly full of Suffragettes planning all sorts of direful things. So the plain-clothes policemen had a rare haul that day and certainly had Mrs. Rossiter to thank for rising to be Inspectors and receiving some modest Order of later days. It was about

the worst blow the W.S.P.U. had; before the outbreak of War turned suddenly the revolting women into the stanchest patriots and the right hands of muddling ministers. For in addition to many a rich find in No. 94 and a dozen captives caught red-handed in making mock of the Authorities, the plain-clothes policemen made themselves thoroughly at home in Mr. Michaelis's quarters till the following Monday. And when in the fore-noon of that day, Mr. Michaelis entered his rooms, puzzled and perturbed at finding the outer door ajar, he was promptly arrested on a multiform charge of arson ... and on being conveyed to a police station and searched he was found to be Miss Vivien Warren.

At intervals in the summer and early autumn of 1913 the male section of the public had been horrified and scandalized at the destruction going on in racing establishments, particularly those of Sir George Crofts and of a well-known South American millionaire, whose distinguished services to British commerce and immense donations to Hospitals and Homes would probably be rewarded by a grateful government. If these outrages were not stopped, horse-racing and race-horse breeding must come to a stand-still; and we leave our readers to realize what that would mean! There would be no horses for the plough or the gig, or the artillery gun-carriage; no--er--fox-hunting, and without fox-hunting and steeple-chasing and point-to-point races you could have no cavalry and without cavalry you could have no army. If we neglected blood stock we would deal the farmer a deadly blow, we should--er--

You know the sort of argument? Reduced to its essentials it is simply this:--That a few rich people are fond of gambling and fond of the excitement that is concentrated in the few minutes of the horse race. Some others, not so rich, believe that by combining horse-racing with a certain amount of cunning and bold

cheating they can make a great deal of money. A few speculators have invested funds in spaces of open turf, and turn these spaces into race courses. Having no alternative, no safer method of gambling offered them, and being as fond of gambling as other peoples of the world, the men of the labouring classes and a few of their women, the publicans and their frequenters, army officers, farmers, and women of uncertain virtue stake their money on horses they have never seen, who may not even exist, and thus keep the industry going. And the chevaliers of this "industry," the go-betweens, the parasites of this sport, are the twelve thousand professional book-makers and racing touts.

Somehow the Turf has during the last hundred years, together with its allies the Distillers and Brewers, the Licensed Victuallers and the Press that is supported by these agencies, acquired such a hold over the Government Departments, the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, and Liberal politicians who are descended from county families, that it has more interest with those who govern us than the Church, the Nonconformist Conscience, the County Palatine of Lancaster or any other body of corporate opinion. So that when in September, 1913, representatives of the Turf (and no doubt of the Trade Unions) went to the Home Secretary in reference to the burning and bombing of racing stables, trainers' houses, Grand Stands and the residences of racing potentates, and said "Look here! This has GOT TO STOP," the Home Secretary and the Cabinet knew they were up against no ordinary crisis. At the same time Sir Edward Carson, the Marquis of Londonderry, the Duke of Abercorn, Mr. F.E. Smith and nearly a third of the Colonels in the British Army of Ulster descent were actively organizing armed resistance to any measure of Home Rule; while Keltiberian Ireland was setting up the Irish Volunteers to start a Home Rule insurrection.

You can therefore imagine for yourselves the mental irritability of members of the Liberal Cabinet in the autumn of the sinister year 1913. I have been told that there were days at the House of Commons during the Autumn Session of that year when the leading ministers would just shut themselves up in their Private Rooms and scream on end for a quarter of an hour.... Of course an exaggeration, a sorry jest.

In retrospect one feels almost sorry for them: the Great War must have come almost as a relief. Not one of them was what you would call a bad man. Some of them suffered over forcible feeding and the Cat and Mouse Act as acutely as does the loving father or mother who says to the recently spanked child, "You know, dear, it hurts me almost as much as it hurts you." If one met them out at dinner parties, or in an express train which they could not stop by pulling the communication cord, and sympathized with their dilemma, they would ask plaintively what they could do. They could not yield to violence and anarchy; yet they could not let women die in prison.

Of course the answer was this, but it was one they waved aside: "Dissolve Parliament and go to the Country on the one question of Votes for Women. If the Country returns a great majority favourable to that concession, you must bring in a Bill for eliminating the sex distinction in the suffrage. If on the other hand, the Country votes against the reform, then you must leave it to the women to make a male electorate change its mind. And meantime if men and women, to enforce some principle, rioted and were sent to prison for it, and then started to abstain from food and drink, why they must please themselves and die if they wanted to."

But this was just what the Liberal Ministry of those days would not do; at all costs they must stick to office, emoluments, patronage, the bestowal of honours, and

the control of foreign policy. They clung to power, in fact, at all costs; even inconsistency with the bedrock principle of Liberalism: no Taxation without Representation.

It was decided in the innermost arcana of the Home Office that an example should be made of Vivie. They had evidently in her got hold of something far more dangerous than a Pankhurst or a Pethick Lawrence, a Constance Lytton or an Emily Davison. The very probable story--though the Benchers were loth to take it up--that she had actually in man's garb passed for the Bar and pleaded successfully before juries, appalled some of the lawyer-ministers by its revolutionary audacity. They might not be able to punish her on that count or on several others of the misdemeanours imputed to her; but they had got her, for sure, on Arson; and on the arson not of suburban churches, which occurred sometimes at Peckham or in the suburbs of Birmingham and made people laugh a little in the trains coming up to town and say there were far too many churches, seemed to them; but the burning down of racing establishments. That was Bolshevism, indeed, they would have said, had they been able to project their minds five years ahead. Being only in 1913 they called Vivie by the enfeebled term of Anarchist, the word applied by Punch to Mr. John Burns in 1888 for wishing to address the Public in Trafalgar Square.

So it was arranged that Vivie's trial should take place in October at the Old Bailey and that a judge should try her who was quite certain he had never stayed at a Warren Hotel; who would be careful to keep great names out of court; and restrain counsel from dragging anything in to the simple and provable charge of arson which might give Miss Warren a chance to say something those beastly newspapers would get hold of.

I am not going to give you the full story of Vivie's trial. I have got so much else to say about her, before I can leave her in a quiet backwater of middle age, that this must be a story which has gaps to be filled up by the reader's imagination. You can, besides, read for yourself elsewhere--for this is a thinly veiled chronicle of real events--how she was charged, and how the magistrate refused bail though it was offered in large amounts by Rossiter and Praed, the latter with Mrs. Warren's purse behind him. How she was first lodged in Brixton Prison and at length appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey before a Court that might have been set for a Cinematograph. There was a judge with a full-bottomed wig, a scarlet and ermine vesture, there was a jury of prosperous shopkeepers, retired half pay officers, a hotelkeeper or two, a journalist, an architect, and a builder. A very celebrated King's Counsel prosecuted--the Cabinet thus said to the Racing World "We've done all we can"--and Vivie defended herself with the aid of a clever solicitor whom Bertie Adams had found for her.

From the very moment of her arrest, Bertie Adams had refused--even though they took away his salary--to think of anything but Vivie's trial and how she might issue from it triumphant. He must have lost a stone in weight. He was ready to give evidence himself, though he was really quite unconcerned with the offences for which Vivie was on trial; prepared to swear to anything; to swear he arranged the conflagrations; that Miss Warren had really been in London when witness had seen her purchasing explosives at Newmarket (both stories were equally untrue). Bertie Adams only asked to be allowed to perjure himself to the tune of Five Years' penal servitude if that would set Vivie free. Yet at a word or a look from her he became manageable.

The Attorney General of course began something like

this. "I am very anxious to impress on you," he said, addressing the jury, "that from the moment we begin to deal with the facts of this case, all questions of whether a woman is entitled to the Parliamentary franchise, whether she should have the same right of franchise as a man are matters which in no sense are involved in the trial of this issue. All you have to decide is whether the prisoner in the dock committed or procured and assisted others to commit the very serious acts of arson of which she is accused..."

Nevertheless he or the hounds he kept in leash, the lesser counsel, sought subtly to prejudice the jury's mind against Vivie by dragging in her parentage and the eccentricities of her own career. As thus:--

Counsel for the prosecution: "We have in you the mainspring of this rebellious movement..."

Vivie: "Have you?"

Counsel: "Are you not the daughter of the notorious Mrs. Warren?"

Vivie: "My mother's name certainly is Warren. For what is she notorious?"

Counsel: "Well--er--for being associated abroad with--er--a certain type of hotel synonymous with a disorderly house--"

Vivie: "Indeed? Have you tried them? My mother has managed the hotels of an English Company abroad till she retired altogether from the management some years ago. It was a Company in which Sir George Crofts--"

Judge, interposing: "We need not go into that--I think the Counsel for the prosecution is not entitled to ask such questions."

Counsel: "I submit, Me Lud, that it is germane to my case that the prisoner's upbringing might have--"

Vivie: "I am quite willing to give you all the information I possess as to my upbringing. My mother who has

resided mainly at Brussels for many years preferred that I should be educated in England. I was placed at well-known boarding schools till I was old enough to enter Newnham. I passed as a Third Wrangler at Cambridge and then joined the firm of Fraser and Warren. As you seem so interested in my relations, I might inform you that I have not many. My mother's sister, Mrs. Burstall, the widow of Canon Burstall, resides at Winchester; my grandfather, Lieutenant Warren, was killed in the Crimea--or more likely died of neglected wounds owing to the shamefully misconducted, man-conducted Army Medical Service of those days. My mother in early days was better known as Miss Kate Vavasour. She was the intimate friend of a celebrated barrister who--"

Judge, intervening: "We have had enough of this discursive evidence which really does not bear on the case at all. I must ask the prosecuting counsel to keep to the point and not waste the time of the court."

Prosecuting Counsel (who has meantime received three or four energetic notes from his leader, begging him to remember his instructions and not to be an ass): "Very good M'Lud." (To Vivie) "Do you know Mr. David Vavasour Williams, a barrister?"

Vivie: "I have heard of him."

Counsel: "Have you spoken of him as your cousin?"

Vivie: "I may have done. He is closely related to me."

Counsel: "I put it to you that you are David Williams, or at any rate that you have posed as being that person."

Judge, interposing with a weary air: "Who is David Williams?"

Counsel: "Well--er--a member of the Bar--well known in the criminal courts--Shillito case--"

Judge: "Really? I had not heard of him. Proceed."

Counsel (to Vivie): "You heard my questions?"

Vivie: "I have never posed as being other than what

I am, a woman much interested in claiming the Parliamentary Franchise for Women; and I do not see what these questions have to do with my indictment, which is a charge of arson. You introduce all manner of irrelevant matter--"

Counsel: "You decline to answer my questions?"

(Vivie turns her head away.)

Judge, to Counsel: "I do not quite see the bearing of your enquiries."

Counsel: "Why, Me Lud, it is common talk that prisoner is the well-known barrister, David Vavasour Williams; that in this disguise and as a pretended man she passed the necessary examinations and was called to the Bar, and--"

Judge: "But what bearing has this on the present charge, which is one of Arson?"

Counsel: "I was endeavouring by my examination to show that the prisoner has often and successfully passed as a man, and that the evidence of witnesses who affirmed that they only saw a young man at or near the scene of these incendiary fires, that a young man, supposed to have set the stables alight, once dashed in and rescued two horses which had been overlooked, might well have been the prisoner who is alleged to have committed most of these crimes in man's apparel--"

Judge: "I see." (To Vivie) "Are you David Vavasour Williams?"

Vivie: "Obviously not, my Lord. My name is Vivien Warren and my sex is feminine."

Judge, to Counsel: "Well, proceed with your examination--" (But here the Leader of the prosecution takes up the rôle and brushes his junior on one side).

Vivie of course was convicted. The case was plain from the start, as to her guilt in having organized and carried out the destruction of several great Racing establishments

or buildings connected with racing. There had been no loss of life, but great damage to property--perhaps two or three hundred thousand pounds, and a serious interruption in the racing fixtures of the late summer and early autumn. The jury took note that on one occasion the prisoner in the guise of a young man had personally carried out the rescue of two endangered horses; and added a faintly-worded recommendation to mercy, seeing that the incentive to the crimes was political passion.

But the judge put this on one side. In passing sentence he said: "It is my duty, Vivien Warren, to inflict what in my opinion is a suitable and adequate sentence for the crime of which you have been most properly convicted. I must point out to you that whatever may have been your motives, your deeds have been truly wicked because they have exposed hard-working people who had done you no wrong to the danger of being burnt, maimed or killed, or at the least to the loss of employment. You have destroyed property of great value belonging to persons in no way concerned with the granting or withholding of the rights you claim for women. In addition, you have for some time past been luring other people--young men and young women--to the committal of crime as your assistants or associates. I cannot regard your case as having any political justification or standing, or as being susceptible of any mitigation by the recommendation of the jury. The least sentence I can pass upon you is a sentence of Three years' penal servitude."

Vivie took the blow without flinching and merely bowed to the judge. There was the usual "sensation in Court." Women's voices were heard saying "Shame!" "Shame!" "Three cheers for Vivie Warren," and a slightly ironical "Three cheers for David Whatyoumay-callem Williams." The judge uttered the usual unavailing threats of prison for those who profaned the majesty

of the Court; Honoria, Rossiter, Praed (in tears), Bertie Adams, looking white and ill, all the noted Suffragists who were out of prison for the time being and could obtain admittance to the Court, crowded round Vivie before the wardresses led her away from the dock, assuring her they would move Heaven and Earth, first to get the sentence mitigated, and secondly to have her removed to the First Division.

But on both points the Government proved adamant. An interview between Rossiter and the Home Secretary nearly ended in a personal assault. All the officials concerned refused to see Honoria, who almost had a serious quarrel with her husband, the latter averring that Vivien Warren had only got what she asked for. Vivien was therefore taken to Holloway to serve her sentence as a common felon.

"Didn't she hunger-strike to force the Authorities to accord her better prison treatment?" She did. But she was very soon, and with extra business-like brutality, forcibly fed; and that and the previous starvation made her so ill that she spent weeks in hospital. Here it was very plainly hinted to her that between hunger-striking and forcible feeding she might very soon die; and that in her case the Government were prepared to stand the racket. Moreover she heard by some intended channel about this time that scores of imprisoned suffragists were hunger-striking to secure her better treatment and were endangering if not their lives at any rate their future health and validity. So she conveyed them an earnest message--and was granted facilities to do so--imploring them to do nothing more on her account; adding that she was resolved to go through with her imprisonment; it might teach her valuable lessons.

The Governor of the prison fortunately was a humane and reasonable man--unlike some of the Home Office

or Scotland Yard officials. He read the newspapers and reviews of the day and was aware who Vivie Warren was. He probably made no unfair difference in her case from any other, but so far as he could mould and bend the prison discipline and rules it was his practice not to use a razor for stone-chipping or a cold-chisel for shaving. He therefore put Vivie to tasks co-ordinated with her ability and the deftness of her hands--such as book-binding. She had of course to wear prison dress--a thing of no importance in her eyes--and her cell was like all the cells in that and other British prisons previous to the newest reforms--dark, rather damp, cruelly cold in winter, and disagreeable in smell; badly ventilated and oppressively ugly. But it was at any rate clean. She had not the cockroaches, bugs, fleas and lice that the earliest Suffragists of 1908 had to complain of. Five years of outspoken protests on the part of educated, delicate-minded women had wrought great reforms in our prisons--the need for which till then was not apparent to the perceptions of Visiting Magistrates.

The food was better, the wardresses were less harsh, the chaplains a little more endurable, though still the worst feature in the prison personnel, with their unreasoning Bibliolatry, their contemptuous patronage, their lack of Christian pity--Christ had never spoken to them, Vivie often thought--their snobbishness. The chaplain of her imprisonment became quite chummy when he learnt that she had been a Third Wrangler at Cambridge, knew Lady Feenix, and had lived in Kensington prior to committing the offences for which she was imprisoned. However this helped to alleviate her dreary seclusion from the world as he occasionally dropped fragments of news as to what was going on outside, and he got her books through the prison library that were not evangelical pap.

One day when she had been in prison two months she

had a great surprise--a visit from her mother. Strictly speaking this was only to last fifteen minutes, but the wardress who had conceived a liking for her intimated that she wouldn't look too closely at her watch. Honoria came too--with Mrs. Warren--but after kissing her friend and leaving some beautiful flowers (which the wardress took away at once with pretended sternness and brought back in a vase after the visitors had left) Honoria with glistening eyes and a smile that was all tremulous sweetness, intimated that Mrs. Warren had so much to say that she, Honoria, was not going to stay more than that one minute.

Mrs. Warren had indeed so much to impart in the precious half hour that it was one long gabbled monologue.

"When I heard you'd got into trouble, my darling, I was put about. Some'ow I'd never thought of your being pinched and acshally sent to prison. It was in the Belgian papers, and a German friend of mine--Oh! quite proper I assure you! He's a Secretary of their legation at Brussels and ages ago he used to be one of my clients when the Hotel had a different name. Well, he was full of it. 'Madam,' 'e said, 'your English women are splendid. They're going to bring about a revolt, you'll see, and that, an' your Ulster movement 'll give you a lot of trouble next year.'

"Well: I wrote at once to Praddy, givin' him an order on my London agents, 'case he should want cash for your defence. I offered to come over meself, but he replied that for the present I'd better keep away. Soon as I heard you was sent to prison I come over and went straight to Praddy. My! He was good. He made me put up with him, knowin' I wanted to live quiet and keep away from the old set. 'There's my parlour-maid,' 'e says, 'sort of housekeeper to me--good sort too, but wants a bit of yumourin.' You'll fix it up with her,' he

says. And I jolly soon did. I give her to begin with a good tip, an' I said: 'Look 'ere, my gal--she's forty-five I should think--Every one's in trouble some time or other in their lives, and I'm in trouble now, if you like. And the day's come,' I said, 'when all women ought to stick by one another.' 'Pears she's always had the highest opinion of you; very different, you was, from some of 'er master's friends. I says 'Right-o; then now we know where we are.'

"Praddy soon got into touch with the authorities, but for some reason they wouldn't pass on a letter or let me come and see you, till to-day. But here I am, and here I'm goin' to stay--with Praddy--till they lets you out. I'm told that if you be'ave yourself they'll let me send you a passel of food, once a week. Think of that! My! won't I find some goodies, and paté de foie gras. I'll come here once a month, as often as they'll let me, till I gets you out. 'N after that, we'll leave this 'orrid, 'yprocritical old country and live 'appily at my Villa, or travel a bit. Fortunately I've plenty of money. Bein' over here I've bin rearranging my investments a bit. Fact is, I 'ad a bit of a scare this autumn. They say in Belgium, War is comin'. Talkin' to this same German--He's always pumpin' me about the Suffragettes so I occasionally put a question or so to 'im, 'e knowing 'what's, what' in the money market--'e says to me just before I come over, 'What's your English proverb, Madame Varennes, about 'avin' all your eggs in one basket? Is all your money in English and Belgian securities?' I says 'Chiefly Belgian and German and Austrian, and some I've giv' to me daughter to do as she likes with.' 'Well' 'e says, 'friend speakin' to friend, you've giv' me several good tips this autumn,' he says. 'Now I'll give you one in return. Sell out your Austrian investments--there's goin' to be a big war in the Balkans next year and as like as not we shall be here in Belgium.

Sell out most of yer Belgian stock and put all your money into German funds. They'll be safe there, come what may.' I thanked 'im; but I haven't quite done what he suggested. I'm takin' all my money out of Austrian things and all but Ten thousand out of Belgian funds. I'm leavin' my German stock as it was, but I'm puttin' Forty thousand pounds--I've got Sixty thousand altogether--all yours some day--into Canadian Pacifics and Royal Mail--people 'll always want steamships--and New Zealand Five per cents. I don't like the look of things in old England nor yet on the Continent. Now me time's up. Keep up your heart, old girl; it'll soon be over, specially if you don't play the fool and rile the prison people or start that silly hunger strike and ruin your digestion. G--good-bye; and G-God b-bless you, my darlin'" added Mrs. Warren relapsing into tears and the conventional prayer, of common humanity, which always hopes there may be a pitiful Deity, somewhere in Cosmos.

Going out into the corridor, she attempted to press a sovereign into the wardress's hard palm. The latter indignantly repudiated the gift and said if Mrs. Warren tried on such a thing again, her visits would be stopped. But her indignation was very brief. She was carrying Honoria's flowers at the time, and as she put them on the slab in Vivie's cell, she remarked that say what you liked, there was nothing to come up to a mother, give her a mother rather than a man any day.

On other occasions Bertie Adams came with Mrs. Warren; even Professor Rossiter, who also went to see Vivie's mother at Praed's, and conceived a whimsical liking for the unrepentant, outspoken old lady.

Vivie's health gradually recovered from the effects of the forcible feeding; the prison fare, supplemented by the weekly parcels, suited her digestion; the peace of the prison life and the regular work at interesting trades

soothed her nerves. She enjoyed the respite from the worries of her complicated toilettes, the perplexity of what to wear and how to wear it; in short, she was finding a spell of prison life quite bearable, except for the cold and the attentions of the chaplain. She gathered from the fortnightly letter which her industry and good conduct allowed her to receive, and to answer, that unwearied efforts were being made by her friends outside to shorten her sentence. Mrs. Warren through Bertie Adams had found out the cases where jockeys and stable lads had lost their effects in the fires or explosions which had followed Vivie's visits to their employers' premises, and had made good their losses. As to their employers, they had all been heavily insured, and recovered the value of their buildings; and as to the insurance companies they had all been so enriched by Mr. Lloyd George's legislation that the one-or-two hundred thousand pounds they had lost, through Vivie's revenge for the seemingly-fruitless death of Emily Wilding Davison, was a bagatelle not worth bothering about. But all attempts to get the Home Office to reconsider Miss Warren's case or to shorten her imprisonment (except by the abridgment that could be earned in the prison itself) were unavailing. So long as the Cabinet held Vivie under lock and key, the Suffrage movement--they foolishly believed--was hamstrung.

So the months went by, and Vivie almost lost count of time and almost became content to wait. Till War was declared on August 4th, 1914. A few days afterwards followed the amnesty to Suffragist prisoners. From this the Home Office strove at first to exclude Vivien Warren on the plea that her crime was an ordinary crime and admitted of no political justification; but at this the wrath of Rossiter and the indignation of the W.S.P.U. became so alarming that the agitated Secretary of State--not at all sure how we were going to

come out of the War--gave way, and an order was signed for Vivie's release on the 11th of August; on the understanding that she would immediately proceed abroad; an understanding to which she would not subscribe but which in her slowly-formed hatred of the British Government she resolved to carry out.

Mrs. Warren, assured by Praed and Rossiter that Vivie's release was a mere matter of a few days, had left for Brussels on the 5th of August. If--as was then hoped--the French and Belgian armies would suffice to keep the Germans at bay on the frontier of Belgium, she would prefer to resume her life there in the Villa de Beau-séjour. If however Belgium was going to be invaded it was better she should secure her property as far as possible, transfer her funds, and make her way somehow to a safe part of France. Vivie would join her as soon as she could leave the prison.