‘Slowly and dreamily she pushed the wheel up the road’, a drawing in ‘Outing’, an illustrated magazine of sport, travel and recreation (Vol. XXIII, October 1893), for a story entitled ‘A Century Ride’. The heroine is ‘dear little yellow-haired, dainty-featured maid Maude Mannering, the successful girl-graduate and medical student’. Like Ethel Smyth, the fictional Maude was a cyclist, to the consternation of her aunt and other relatives, though her chosen career was to be a surgeon.
Introduction
Ethel Smyth (to rhyme with ‘Forsyth’) was a successful composer of opera and orchestral music, whose lightly-written memoirs – she was acquainted with Brahms, Grieg and several other public figures in music – were also well received. Here, she recalls her scandalous purchase of a ladies’ bicycle in 1894.
IN the Illustrated London News were to be seen pictures of wild women of the usual unprepossessing pioneer type riding about Epping Forest, and I at once decided to buy a bicycle.
Aunts, cousins, and friends were horrified ... never has the word indelicate been bandied about with more righteous conviction. But my mother said this was perfect nonsense; ‘When we are dead’ she would reply to objectors, ‘she won’t be able to keep horses, and I can think of nothing more sensible than her buying a bicycle.’ And buy one I did, and though for many a long day to come no nice women rode bicycles, I pursued my solitary course with enthusiasm.
By degrees, as we know, the thing caught on, and one day, about eighteen months later, when I met Mrs R., the arch-prude of the neighbourhood, wobbling along the high road, and beheld her fall off her machine at my feet to explain that she had taken to it in order to avoid having out the horses on Sunday, it was clear that the indelicacy ghost had been finally laid.
Abridged
Abridged from ‘Impressions that Remained’, by Ethel Smyth (1858-1944).
Questions for Critics
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate her ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Précis
Composer Ethel Smyth recounts how in 1894 she bought one of the earliest ladies’ bicycles, scandalising friends and family alike, but not her mother, who saw the sense in it where horses were too expensive. In fact, the taboo quickly passed, and even Ethel’s most strait-laced neighbour preferred cycling to making her grooms work on the Lord’s Day. (58 / 60 words)
Composer Ethel Smyth recounts how in 1894 she bought one of the earliest ladies’ bicycles, scandalising friends and family alike, but not her mother, who saw the sense in it where horses were too expensive. In fact, the taboo quickly passed, and even Ethel’s most strait-laced neighbour preferred cycling to making her grooms work on the Lord’s Day.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, because, despite, just, otherwise, ought, until, whether.
Archive
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Spinners Find in Think and Speak
For each group of words, compose a sentence that uses all three. You can use any form of the word: for example, cat → cats, go → went, or quick → quickly, though neigh → neighbour is stretching it a bit.
This exercise uses words found in the accompanying passage.
1 Nonsense. Out. Wont.
2 Bandy. Eighteen. Lie.
3 Final. My. Once.
Variations: 1. include direct and indirect speech 2. include one or more of these words: although, because, despite, either/or, if, unless, until, when, whether, which, who 3. use negatives (not, isn’t, neither/nor, never, nobody etc.)
High Tiles Find in Think and Speak
Make words (three letters or more) from the seven letters showing below, using any letter once only. Each letter carries a score. What is the highest-scoring word you can make?
x
0
Add
Your Words ()
Post Box : Ask Nicholas
Grok : Ask Grok
You are welcome to share your creativity with me, or ask for help with any of the exercises on Clay Lane. Write to me at this address:
See more at Post Box.
If you like what I’m doing here on Clay Lane, from time to time you could buy me a coffee.
Buy Me a Coffee is a crowdfunding website, used by over a million people. It is designed to help content creators like me make a living from their work. ‘Buy Me a Coffee’ prides itself on its security, and there is no need to register.
Related Posts
Meriel Talbot’s distinguished career in government came as no surprise to those who had seen her at the wicket.
Picture: From James Lillywhite’s Cricketer’s Annual for 1890, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 29 2018
Composer Ethel Smyth starts telling the Archbishop of Canterbury a joke, and then wishes she hadn’t...
Picture: © Maigheach gheal, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted June 29 2018
Picture: © Orin Zebest, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted February 18 2018
