On Friday, March 12, I had an unexpected and altogether delightful surprise. In the afternoon I was summoned out of the ward and taken across the yard. Was I being changed to the other side? A deliriously joyful thought suggested itself, could it be a visitor? I had already had my due in this respect, but several visitors were occasionally allowed to prisoners. Since privileges towards me were the order of the day it was a possibility. I was shown into the same “solicitor’s” room as before; this time it was empty. I was left in charge of a wardress I had not seen before; she was very amiable. I felt quite distraught with the unusual excitement, and with the torrent of questions that ramped through my brain. Although I had had no reason to expect another visitor, I had recently longed for one with accelerated zest because of the patient with the injured leg. I had grown daily more exasperated over the attitude of the authorities towards her case, and felt that the seeming brutality on their part was probably due to an official inability to realise all that it entailed to this suffering woman, that if only one could get the facts known outside the prison a reconsideration might bring about the granting of some of the very moderate requests she had made with regard to her release, and also by exposure of her treatment make it unlikely that physically injured prisoners should be subject to the same hardships in future. She was a woman of abnormal courage, and in spite of her crippled condition was planning to go straight home by rail to Marlow on the day of her release. She did not keep a servant; her three children who had been cared for by friends were to return with her. It seemed to me she was unfit for her ordinary life and I was most anxious that she should see a surgeon before attempting the journey by rail. I urged her, too, to make some arrangement for being nursed in her own house or to go for a while to a “home” or hospital. For all these matters it was imperative that she should see her husband and discuss possible plans with him. She asked leave of the Governor to write to him. This was refused unless she obtained a permit from the Home Secretary. It took three days to write to and obtain an answer from the Home Office. When the reply came, permission was granted to write to her husband, but no mention was made as to his visiting her. The prison authorities would not allow this without a further permit from the Home Office. There was no time to receive and act upon this before her release. When I compared such treatment of an urgently needful situation with my own, the ease with which I obtained leave direct from the prison authorities to write two letters, one of them of no particular importance, and the ease with which two of my relatives had been allowed to visit me, I felt exasperated. The action of the authorities made no pretence at inflexible, even-handed justice, and the partiality shown was all on behalf of the prisoner who needed it least.
After a few minutes, to my surprise and intense delight, my eldest brother was shown in. He gave me good news of those at home. Before long I was pouring out to him the facts and my pent-up commentary concerning Mrs. Macdonald, in spite of frequent protests from the wardress, who exclaimed from time to time that it was against the rules to make communications to outsiders about fellow-prisoners or the prison authorities. This time I was careful not to reprove my loved visitor for anything, and before our all-too-short interview came to an end I was able to send a message to my sister to make good my regrets about her visit.
The variety of leniency of the different officials, and of the same officials on different days, gave a certain savour of adventure to the dreariness of prison life. Here are two instances of the brighter side. Mrs. Lawrence and I were one afternoon allowed to walk up and down the length of the ward side by side talking in low voices. She told me about the early days of the militant movement and supplemented my book-study of that miraculous fairy tale in which I was now privileged to take part. As I listened and reproached myself continually with the thought, “Women had all this to face and I was not helping them,” there seemed a positive charm in the trials of imprisonment—the suffering about my home people, the grim sights and sounds of our surroundings, the rudeness of prison officers, the physical discomforts of unaccustomed clothing, thunder-stuffed pillows, etc. Now that I passed the nights in a cell and came into the ward only for meals and part of the day, I noticed with keener insight how remarkably the atmosphere of leadership clung round Mrs. Pethick Lawrence. Her clothes and the disciplined routine were exactly the same in her case as in ours, she conformed to all the rules and seemed to adapt herself to the life as if it had been of her choice and not imposed upon her. Yet the authority, and above all, the wisdom in her personality seemed to shine out more prominently even than they did in free life when she was controlling the many departments of the office at Clement’s Inn for which she was responsible, or of the public movement from a platform. Everyone came to her for advice, even the prison officers seemed instinctively to refer matters to her. It was, for once, quite intelligible why they had separated her from the bulk of the Suffragist prisoners by putting her in hospital. It was obvious that her control over them would far outweigh the authority of prison rules and rulers should she choose to exert it. The reason given, however, was that she too was suffering from heart disease, but this medical verdict did not prevent her being sent to the cells, where the full prison labour of floor washing and tin polishing was exacted of her, as soon as our shorter sentences had expired and she was left to finish her unjustifiably longer term in solitude.
Another unexpected privilege had been carefully planned so that the joy of it was spread over several days. The Freedom League prisoners were soon to be released. We schemed a jollification to take place on the Sunday evening before their departure. The Sabbath day reflected national customs in prison as outside. The morning was characterised by clean clothing and an unusual rigidity of behaviour, but towards the latter half of the afternoon the air of solemnity wore away, some of the officers had an afternoon off, bringing back with them an indefinable sense of the outer world, and the evening hours sometimes produced an atmosphere almost of amiability. Much would depend on whether a lovable wardress, who often did duty in our ward and had shown herself invariably friendly towards us, should be “on” or “off.” The patients, who had increased to nine, were all of them now out of bed during part of the day. We were to gather round the fire, and to tell yarns, stories or poems, as if we were in camp in the free world. A sense of excitement and expectancy pervaded the ward all day. I felt as children do before a self-schemed escapade into the dominions of forbidden joys, my delight only slightly marred by the prospect of having to contribute to the recitations, a performance not at all in my line. I spent the spare moments of the day trying to remember and write down on my slate Coventry Patmore’s poem “The Toys.” Parts of it had constantly floated into my mind while in Holloway from the striking resemblance between prisoners and children. I treasured more especially the actual list of toys which the child, a seven times breaker of the law, when punished and dismissed “with hard words and unkiss’d,” had put beside his bed:—
“A box of counters and a red-vein’d stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach,
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells,
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art
To comfort his sad heart.”