In July the slumbering movement towards resisting the payment of
taxes by vote-less women woke up into real activity, and there were
many ludicrous and pathetic scenes organized often by Vivie and
Bertie Adams at which household effects were sold and bought in by
friends to satisfy the claims of a tax-collector. In the autumn
Vivie and others of the W.S.P.U. organized great pilgrimages--the
marches of the Brown Women--from Scotland, Wales, Devon and Norfolk
to London, to some goal in Downing Street or Whitehall, some
door-step which already had every inch of its space covered by
policemen's boots. These were among the pleasantest of the
manifestations and excited great good humour in the populace of town
and country. They were extended picnics of ten days or a fortnight.
The steady tramp of sixteen to twenty miles a day did the women
good; the food _en route_ was abundant and eaten with tremendous
appetite. The pilgrims on arrival in London were a justification in
physical fitness of Woman's claim to equal privileges with Man.
Vivie after her Easter holiday took an increasingly active part in
these manifestations of usually good-humoured insurrection. As
Vivien Warren she was not much known to the authorities or to the
populace but she soon became so owing to her striking appearance,
telling voice and gift of oratory. All the arts she had learnt as
David Williams she displayed now in pleading the woman's cause at
the Albert Hall, at Manchester, in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
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