Mom's Traffic Accidents
The bicycling craze came in when were just about the right age to enjoy it. At first even "safety" bicycles were too dangerous and improper for ladies to ride, and they had to have tricycles. My mother had (I believe) the first female tricycle in Cambridge; and I had a little one, and we used to go out for family rides, all together; my father in front on a bicycle, and my poor brother Charles standing miserable on the bar behind my mother. I found it very hard work, pounding away on my hard tyres; a glorious, but not a pleasurable pastime.
Then, one day at lunch, my father said he had just seen a new kind of tyre, filled up with air, and he thought it might be a success. And soon after that everyone had bicycles, ladies and all; and bicycling became the smart thing, and the lords and ladies had their pictures in the papers, riding along in the park, in straw boater hats.
My mother must have fallen off her bicycle pretty often, for I remember seeing the most appalling cuts and bruises on her legs. But she never complained, and always kept these mishaps to herself. However, the great Mrs. Phillips, our cook, always knew all about them; as indeed she knew practically everything that ever happened. She used to draw us into the servants' hall to tell us privately. "Her Ladyship had a nasty fall yesterday; she cut both her knees and sprained her wrist. But don't let her know I told you. " So we never dared say anything. Similar little accidents used to occur when, at the age of nearly seventy, she insisted on learning to drive a car. She never mastered the art of reversing, and was in every way an unconventional and terrifying driver. Mrs. Phillips used then to tell us: "Her Ladyship ran into the back of a milk-cart yesterday; but it wasn't much hurt "; or " A policeman stopped her Ladyship because she was on the wrong side of the road; but she said she didn't know what the white line on the road meant, so he explained and let her go on. " Mrs. Phillips must have had an excellent Intelligence Service command, for the stories were always true enough.
