Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's MovementJohnston, Harry
General
Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's Movement
Johnston, Harry
Feminism -- Fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction; Women's rights -- Fiction
muscles--as, at any reasonable time before or after the birth of
your last child in June, 1910, you stand in the hall of your sunny,
eighteenth century house, with the gold and green glint of the
Kensington garden behind you: saying with your glad eyes and bonny
mouth "Come to our Suffrage Party? _Such_ a lark! We've got Mrs.
Pankhurst here and the Police daren't raid us; they're so afraid of
'Army.' Of course he's away, but he knows _perfectly well_ what I'm
doing. He's _quite_ given in. Now Michael, you show Sir Harry and
Lady Johnston to the front seats..."
(I looked round for the rather gloomy presence of Michael Rossiter,
but it was his little golden-haired god-son she meant.)
You shall have your general back safe from the wars, with a wound
that gives only honour, a reasonable number of well-earned
decorations, and a reputation for rather better strategy than
Aldershot generally produces; and he shall live out his wholesome
life alongside yours, still dispensing happiness, even under a
Labour Government: till, as Burton used to wind up his Arabian
Nights love stories, "there came to them the Destroyer of delight
and the Sunderer of societies."
Honoria acted towards the Suffrage movement somewhat as in
older-fashioned days of Second Empire laxity well-to-do people
evaded military service under conscription by paying a substitute to
take their place in the fighting line. On account of her husband,
and the children she had just had or was going to have, she did not
throw herself into the physical struggle; but she still continued
out of her brother's ear-marked money to subsidize the cause. Rather
regretfully, she looked on from a motor, a balcony, a front window
or the safe plinth of some huge statue, whilst her comrades, with
less to risk physically and socially, matched their strength of
will, their trained muscles, their agility, astuteness and feminine
charm (seldom without some effect) against the brute force and
imperturbability of the Police.
The struggle waxed hot and fierce in the early months of 1910. Vivie
held herself somewhat in the background also, not wishing to strike
publicly and effectively until she was sure for what principle she
endangered her life and liberty. Nevertheless she became a resource
of rising importance to the Suffrage cause. She was known to have
had a clever barrister cousin who for some reasons best known to
himself had of late kept in the background--ill-health, said some;
an unfortunate love affair, said another. But his pamphlet on the
White Slave Traffic on the Continent showed that he was still at
work. Vivie was thought to be fully equal in her knowledge of the
law to her cousin, though not allowed to qualify for the Bar. Case
after case was referred to her with the hope that if she could not
solve it, she might submit it to her cousin's judgment. In this way,
excellent legal advice was forthcoming which drove the Home Office
officials from one quandary to another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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