Mrs. Warren's Daughter — Chapter XV, Imprisonment, Part 2

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.

CHAPTER XVI