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.  Countess Feenix took her up, invited her to dinner parties where she found herself placed next to statesmen in office, who at first morose and nervous—­expecting every moment a personal assault—­gradually thawed when they found her a good conversationalist, a clever woman of the world, becomingly dressed.  After all, she had been a third wrangler at Cambridge, almost a guarantee that her subsequent life could not be irregular, according to a man’s standard in England of what an unmarried woman’s life should be.  She deprecated the violence of the militants in this phase.

But she was Protean.  Much of her work, the lawless part of it, was organized in the shape and dress of Mr. Michaelis.  Some of her letters to the Press were signed Edgar McKenna, Albert Birrell, Andrew Asquith, Edgmont Harcourt, Felicia Ward, Millicent Curzon, Judith Pease, Edith Spenser-Churchhill, Marianne Chamberlain, or Emily Burns; and affected to be pleas for the granting of the Suffrage emanating from the revolting sons or daughters, aunts, sisters or wives of great statesmen, prominent for their opposition to the Women’s Cause.  The W.S.P.U. had plenty of funds and it did not cost much getting visiting cards engraved with such names and supplied with the home address of the great personage whom it was intended to annoy.  One such card as an evidence of good faith would be attached to the plausibly-worded letter.  The Times was seldom taken in, but great success often attended these audacious deceptions, especially in the important organs of the provincial press.  Editors and sub-editors seldom took the trouble and the time to hunt through Who’s Who, or a Peerage to identify the writer of the letter claiming the Vote for Women.  No real combination of names was given, thus forgery was avoided; but the public and the unsuspecting Editor were left with the impression that the Premier’s, Colonial Secretary’s, Home Secretary’s, Board of Trade President’s, or prominent anti-suffragist woman’s son, daughter, brother, sister, wife or mother-in-law did not at all agree with the anti-feminist opinions of its father, mother, brother or husband.  If the politician were foolish enough to answer and protest, he was generally at a disadvantage; the public thought it a good joke and no one (in the provinces) believed his disclaimers.