There is no country in the world—not even France, where the motoring movement received its first real start and its keenest pursuit, nor America, where the fair sex is supposed to receive and to exercise its largest freedom—there is no country in the world in which woman may be seen at the helm of a motor-car so frequently as in England. Whatever the cause—whether it be due to a greater sense of security from annoyance on public roads or simply to superiority of pluck, the fact remains that women in England excel their sisters in other countries as greatly in motoring as in horsemanship.
Almost every woman who can afford it is, of course, a motoriste in the sense that she owns, or has at her disposal, a motor-car. It is not, however, with the ladies whose experience of the pastime is limited to a seat beside or behind the driver that this chapter deals, but rather with those who are accustomed to the task of driving and caring for their cars, and who find a healthful recreation in doing it. Twenty or thirty years ago, two of the essentials to a motorist—some acquaintance with mechanics and the ability to understand local topography—were supposed to be beyond the capacity of a woman’s brain. The supposition was simply due to the fact that woman’s brain had never had occasion to approach these subjects. Fifty years ago a satirical writer—a man, of course—averred that although instruction in “the use of the globes” was part of the curriculum of every girls’ school, no woman could understand, or would try to understand, a road map. If the remark was true when it was written it is
Photo by Keturah Collings
BARONESS CAMPBELL DE LORENTZ, THE FIRST LADY IN BRITAIN TO DRIVE HER OWN CAR
certainly not true to-day. The school-room globes have long been buried in the dust of disuse, but the pastimes of cycling and motoring have made the understanding of maps a necessity to every active gentlewoman; indeed the average woman is probably quicker than the average man in gathering from a map the information which it has to offer.
So with mechanics. If a woman wants to learn how to drive and to understand a motor-car, she can and will learn as quickly as a man. Hundreds of women have done and are doing so, and there is many a one whose keen eyes can detect, and whose deft fingers can remedy, a loose nut or a faulty electrical connection in half the time that the professional chauffeur would spend upon the work.
Incontestable evidence of the practical interest which Englishwomen are taking in motoring is afforded by the existence and prosperity of the Ladies’ Automobile Club. This institution was established in 1903. The annual subscription is five guineas, and there is an entrance fee of the same amount. There are nearly four hundred members, most of whom are fully competent to drive their own cars. The club has successfully organised a number of tours in England and on the Continent as well as driving competitions at Ranelagh.