Prissy Peter

Chief drawing-card at a charity fete in Teddington, outside London, one day last week was a well-publicized ride by a well-clothed modern Lady Godiva. Hundreds of amused spectators lined the sidewalks as 13-year-old Mirabelle Muller, in flesh-colored trunks, brassiere and long flaxen wig, mounted an old grey mare and ambled through the streets. No Peeping Tom peeked but a Prissy Peter caused lady and mare trouble:

Out of a knot of sidewalk spectators bustled a puritanical gaffer. He grabbed Lady Godiva's wrist, clawed at her dangling bare leg: "Down with this sacrilege; wearing nothing but a bathing suit! This is supposed to be a God-fearing country." Lady Godiva's father, marching beside the mare, knocked the old man to the pavement. The crowd pinned him down. As police dragged the oldster to safety he shrieked: "How dare they do that to a little girl of 13? Poor little innocent-making an exhibition of herself at that tender age! I think it's awful." Unabashed, Lady Godiva calmed her rearing mare, rode on.

The real Lady Godiva (Saxon name: Godgifu) made her traditional ride in the middle of the eleventh century in the English town of Coventry. Her husband, Leofric, Earl of Mercia, Lord of Coventry, agreed to remit his oppressive taxation on the town if Lady Godiva would ride the streets naked. Ordering all persons within doors behind closed shutters, the Lady mounted a white charger and ambled through, the crooked streets, clothed only in her long hair. But through one shutter peeked an itchy little tailor. Lady Godiva spotted him but before she could reprove him, a greater punishment was meted out. Peeping Tom was stricken blind.

Coventry, now the home of Daimler Motors, still celebrates with an occasional Lady Godiva ride. A bronze memorial tablet has been set up to the city's benefactor, and before Coventry's King's Head Hotel stands a colored, wooden statue of a bearded, blinded Peeping Tom.

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