_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.
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