Christabel then applied for an adjournment and the Magistrate agreed to allow the case to stand over for a week. The three prisoners being released on bail for the time being.
As soon as this had been decided Mr. Curtis Bennett said that he would deal with the cases of the women who had been arrested in Trafalgar Square, and seven of these were soon ordered to undergo from one to two months' imprisonment in default of being bound over for twelve months. As each woman was asked if she had anything to say for herself, she replied, "I demand a trial by jury." This seemed to annoy Mr. Curtis Bennett considerably and he became more and more irate until the fifth woman had spoken. Then he laughed and said, "I see this has evidently been arranged beforehand." It was unfortunate for the fourth woman that he had not recovered his temper earlier for, though a first offender arrested for doing practically nothing, she received a sentence of two months' imprisonment, whilst one month only was served out to others of the same class. Mrs. Leigh, as this was the third time that she had been charged, received a sentence of three months. Thirteen of the Suffragettes pleaded that they wished to obtain legal advice, and were remanded for a week, at the end of which time milder methods obtained, for their sentences ranged merely from three weeks to one month.
Next day, Thursday, October 15th, a summons was issued against Mr. Will Thorne, M.P. for inciting the unemployed to rush the bakers' shops, and when his case came up on the 21st, he expressed the belief that no summons would have been issued against him but for the remarks made by Christabel Pankhurst during the Suffragette trial. He declared that in speaking as he had done his object had been to persuade the unemployed not to take part in the Women's Demonstration in Parliament Square, because he felt sure that they would get into trouble if they did so, and urged that his speech had been taken too literally. Mr. Curtis Bennett, however, ordered him to be bound over in his own recognisances of £200 and two sureties of £100 each to be of good behaviour for twelve months or in default to go to prison for six months. Mr. Thorne agreed to be bound over.
On Wednesday, October 21st, the trial of the Suffragette leaders again came on and, whilst the Court was just as crowded, the Press seats were even fuller than before. Mr. Curtis Bennett seemed more than ever dignified and magisterial. Everyone waited with impatience and presently there was a stir in the court, and, with much ceremony, some of the officers opened the door by which the prisoners usually enter and ushered in a group of gentlemen, who seated themselves in the pew-like benches reserved for counsel and distinguished persons. Then, preceded by a stout, black-bearded gaoler, and with three or four police on either side of them, the three Suffragettes made their way into the dock. As soon as they had seated themselves, Mr. Muskett rose and said in his usual rather peevish and very indistinct tones that the case for the Prosecution had been concluded on the previous Wednesday.
After a short preliminary argument as to legal forms between Christabel and the Magistrate and a pledge that she should be allowed to submit her objections later, there was a slight scuffling in those important side benches, the pew doors were opened, two of the gentlemen who had accompanied him stepped aside and Mr. Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, came forward and passed across the court into the witness box.
Seen for the first time, he is totally unlike what one has been led to expect. Instead of the romantic-looking Welsh bard, with black and very curly hair, portrayed by the newspaper cartoons and drawings, there stood, cooped up in the little witness box, with its useless-looking wooden canopy, a plain little man, with a pale face, a long untidy moustache and hair which, though he wears it somewhat long, as it is in the pictures, has not the least suspicion of a curl but lies limp and scanty and is a dull dingy brown. At first he leant his arm on the front of the witness box and looked across at the three prisoners in the dock. He regarded Christabel Pankhurst curiously, as well he might, for, in her fresh white muslin dress whose one note of colour was the broad band of purple white and green stripes around her waist, with her soft brown hair uncovered, the little silky curls with just a hint of gold in them clustering about her neck, and, in this dingy place, her skin looking even more brilliantly white and those rose petal cheeks of hers even more exquisitely and vividly flushed with purest pink than usual, she was as bright and dainty as a newly opened flower, and with all her look of perfect health and vigour, appeared so slender and so delicately knit as to have little more of substance in her than a briar rose. But she was to triumph over her opponent in the witness box, not by her grace and freshness and by the outer aspect of her vivid glowing personality, but by her sparkling wit, her biting sarcasm and by the force and depth of her arguments. And these went home, not merely as they can be set down here in cold dull print, but far more truly, because they were enhanced by the everchanging eloquence of gesture, voice, and facial expression—by a lift of the eyebrows, a turn of the head, a heightening of the lovely rose colour that flooded sometimes as far as the white throat and as quickly ebbed again, a sweep of the slender hand or a turn of that slight virile frame. All these, because so perfectly they echoed and expressed her thoughts, could lend to even the baldest and tritest words, a fanciful humour, a delicate irony, or an inexorable force.
As she rose to examine Mr. Lloyd George, she began quite formally, but with a cheerful and pleasant manner asking whether he had been present at the Trafalgar Square meetings on October 11th? and whether he had seen a copy of the bills which were being distributed? "Yes," he replied, with just the least suspicion of a smile, "a young lady gave one to me the moment I arrived. It invited me to rush the House of Commons." "How did you interpret the invitation conveyed to you as a member of the audience?" she asked next with a brisk business-like air. "What did you think we wanted you to do?" He replied pompously, "I really should not like to place an interpretation upon the document. I do not think it is quite my function." "Well, I am speaking to you as a member of the general public," she urged, refusing to be put off. "Imagine you were not at the meeting at all, but were walking up the Strand, and someone gave you a copy of this Bill, and you read it—'Help the Suffragettes to rush the House of Commons.' And suppose you forgot you were a member of the Government and regarded yourself just as an ordinary person like myself—quite unofficial," she added, smiling, and with a little quick shake of her shoulders. "What would you think you were called upon to do?" "Really, I should not like to be called upon to undertake so difficult a task as to interpret that document," was the tart reply, but Christabel went on persuasively, "Now this word 'rush,' which seems to be at the bottom of it all, what does it mean?" She waited with parted lips and raised eyebrows for a reply. It came unwillingly. "I understood the invitation from Mrs. Pankhurst was to force an entrance to the House of Commons." "No, no, I want you to keep your mind concentrated on the bill," she corrected. "Let us forget what Mrs. Pankhurst said. What did the Bill say?" "I really forget what the Bill said," he snapped out sharply. She repeated the phrase to him graciously—"Help the Suffragettes to rush the House of Commons." "Yes, that is it," he assented, and she said, "I want you to define the word 'rush.'" "I cannot undertake to do that." "You cannot?" she asked incredulously. "No, Miss Pankhurst, I cannot." "Well," she replied, "I will suggest some definitions to you. I find that in 'Chambers' English Dictionary' one of the meanings of the word is 'an eager demand.' Now, what do you think of that?" "I cannot enter into competition with 'Chambers' Dictionary.' I am prepared to accept it," he said stolidly.
Miss Christabel Pankhurst questioning Mr. Herbert Gladstone
Mr. Lloyd George was beginning to turn his head away from her and to show every sign of unwillingness to continue answering. Her imperturbable good humour made the situation harder for him to bear. As Max Beerbohm in the Saturday Review said, "His Celtic fire burned very low; and the contrast between the buoyancy of the girl and the depression of the statesman was almost painful. Youth and an ideal, on the one hand, and on the other, middle age and no illusions left over."