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138 Book IV: Hadji Sadrä: Chapter X . . . After dinner, [Julia] started for the moor. She wanted a spray of white heather and to walk in the paths of the Brontës. The long crooked street of [the village of Haworth] was deserted, the good people lingering over their Sunday meal. But Julia felt little interest in them. As she reached the end of the street and looked out over the great purple expanse undulating away until it melted into the low pale sky brushed with white, she was wondering which of these narrow paths had been Charlotte’s and trying to conjure up the tragic figure of Emily, one of her literary loves. She walked for several miles and managed to find the nook in the glen which she had been told by the landlady of the Black Bull was the spot where Charlotte had sat so often to dream the books that must have transformed her bleak life into wonderland. . . . Julia, whose ego was enjoying a brief recrudescence, felt that it was JULIA FRANCE AND HER TIMES (1912) gertrude atherton (1857–1948) In 1909, popular novelist Gertrude Atherton overcame her reluctance to support suffrage and began using her fame to promote California’s suffrage campaign; she wrote articles, gave interviews, and, agreed to write a suffrage play. To research her text, Atherton spent three months studying the British militant suffrage movement; on her return to the United States, she created the character of Julia, a beautiful aristocratic North American woman who joins the WSPU to escape an unhappy marriage. Although Atherton’s drama closed after one performance , the novel adaptation published afterward was an immediate success.14 These excerpts juxtapose two acts of public speaking: in the first, as the WSPU’s recently elected president, Julia addresses Yorkshire working women but regrets the sacrifices she has made in her personal life; the second depicts a rally at Albert’s Hall, followed by Julia’s reunion with her charismatic Californian suitor Daniel Tay. R a small thing to be half starved and lonely, afflicted by a drunken brother, and sisters dying of consumption, when consoled with an imagination that not only swamped life for this poor sickly little mortal, but must have whispered to her of undying fame. And she had contributed her share to the cause of which this devotee at her shrine was a symbol, vastly different from all that is modern as she had been; for had she not been of the few to make the world recognize the genius of woman? She had, in truth, been one of the flaming torches. Julia climbed out of the glen and started to return. After she had traversed several of the knolls, she saw that the moor down by the village was alive with people. The landlady had told her that all Haworth took its Sunday afternoon walk on the moor, but she still felt no interest in them, and renewed her search for white heather. She passed the first group and nodded, as she had a habit of doing, for she had come to feel as if the toilers of England were her especial charge. They smiled in return, and one stared and whispered to the others. Julia guessed that she had been at the meeting in Keighley the night before. The crowd became thicker, and she was soon in the midst of it. She would have been stared at in any case, for strangers were rare in Haworth. . . . Julia looked and saw that the whole company was streaming toward her. They paused, held a hurried conference, and then one of the younger women came directly up to the stranger. “We are thinking,”she said diffidently,“that you may be Mrs. France, who spoke last night at Keighley, and has been speaking all over the north.” “Yes, I am Mrs. France,” said Julia, wondering what was coming. “And you really are a suffragette?” “That is what they call us.” “We’ve never seen one, only one or two of us who were at the meeting last night. The rest of us didn’t go, we was that tired, and we’re wondering if you wouldn’t give us a speech here.” “Oh—really—I rarely speak on Sunday, and even suffragettes must rest, you know.” The woman’s face fell, but she said politely, “Of course. We know what work is. But we may never have another chance—and we’re that curious. We’d...

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