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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78278 ***
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: DR. MARIE STOPES as thousands have seen her on the
+lecture platform.]
+
+
+
+
+                                   THE
+                             AUTHORIZED LIFE
+                                   OF
+                             MARIE C. STOPES
+
+                                   BY
+                              AYLMER MAUDE
+
+                                AUTHOR OF
+
+                           _Life of Tolstoy_.
+
+              _Editor of the “Maude Tolstoy” in the World’s
+                            Classics Series._
+
+
+                                 LONDON:
+                        WILLIAMS & NORGATE, LTD.
+               14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.2
+
+                                  1924
+
+
+MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
+
+
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
+
+
+The author expresses his grateful thanks to the following firms who
+have kindly given permission for the use of some of the photographs
+illustrating this book:--Messrs. Swaine, Elliott & Fry and Neame.
+
+
+
+
+  TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+  I.    The Theme.
+
+  II.   Glimpses of Childhood.
+
+  III.  The Student.
+
+  IV.   Academic Life.
+
+  V.    World Travel.
+
+  VI.   Marriage.
+
+  VII.  “Married Love” and its Developments.
+
+  VIII. Opponents.
+
+  IX.   Inner Life.
+
+  APP. A. List of Books and Pamphlets by Dr. Marie Stopes.
+
+  APP. B. List of Dr. Stopes’s Scientific Memoirs, etc., Embodying
+              her New Discoveries.
+
+  APP. C. The tenets of the C.B.C.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+    1. Dr. Marie Stopes as thousands have seen her on the lecture
+       platform.
+
+    2. The author at Givons Grove with Mrs. Zangwill on his left, Dr.
+       Marie Stopes kneeling, and her mother on his right.
+
+    3. Marie Stopes as a student, with a group of professors, in the
+       mountains. Prof. Goebel on her left.
+
+    4. The first portrait in her robes as Doctor of Science of London.
+
+    5. Humphrey Verdon Roe.
+
+    6. Dr. Marie Stopes at the time of her marriage to Mr. H. V. Roe.
+       1918.
+
+    7. An Industrial Conference at Givons Grove.
+
+    8. Dr. Stopes, seated, with her husband’s father and mother.
+
+    9. Mr. H. V. Roe and “Wuffles” as a puppy.
+
+   10. Members of the Birth Rate Commission. The Bishop of Birmingham
+       in the centre. Dr. Stopes on his left.
+
+   11. Dr. Marie Stopes and her Baby, Harry Verdon Stopes-Roe, aged 3
+       months.
+
+   12. Dr. Marie Stopes.
+
+   13. Dr. Marie Stopes.
+
+   14. Inner home life: Dr. Stopes as gardener, and her husband with
+       the car.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE THEME.
+
+
+To write the life of a friend who is still very much alive presents
+difficulties, but they are compensated for in the present case by
+the fact that I am able to consult the subject of my work and her
+family, and draw much of my material direct from the fountain head.
+I had a similar experience when I wrote _The Life of Tolstoy_, but
+there my subject was eighty years of age and had nearly completed
+his life’s span, whereas my present subject is still young, and her
+work in full progress without any sign of exhaustion. In the former
+case I wrote of the ablest man I had met, and now I am writing of the
+ablest woman I have met. In both instances their personality and the
+influence exercised by their works, as well as misunderstanding and
+misrepresentation to which they have been exposed, invite attention.
+
+Dr. Stopes’s world-wide reputation as a scientist, especially as a
+leading authority on palæobotany and coal-research, is not the sort
+of reputation that quickly reaches the general public. What has made
+her name rapidly familiar the world over has been the revolution she
+has effected in the general attitude towards sex. When, under the
+influence of painful personal experience, she began to touch that
+question, six years ago, no intelligible principles were recognisable
+among us to guide people in their matrimonial arrangements. There was,
+on the one hand, an obscure impression that virginity, celibacy, and
+the suppression of the sex-instinct, were ideals for normal men and
+women to aim at, while on the other hand there was an equally cloudy
+belief that married couples ought either to avoid marital relations or
+produce as many offspring as chance might send--regardless of whether
+such offspring were likely to be healthy or unhealthy and whether
+the parents could support them or not; regardless also of the effect
+continuous child-bearing would have on the health, or even on the
+life, of the mother. Guidance was sometimes offered on the basis of
+a misapplication of the 38th chapter of Genesis--which relates to a
+pre-Mosaic state of morality and has to be violently twisted before
+it can even be made to appear to apply to the problems of to-day. All
+this was merely a darkening of counsel with words, unsatisfying alike
+to those who read the Bible for themselves, and to those who sought
+reasonable guidance elsewhere for their sex-relationships.
+
+Many felt the need of a sensible principle on which sex morality could
+rest, and in the chapter on “The Sex Question” in my book _Leo Tolstoy_
+I ventured to say: “It may be necessary to overhaul the accepted ideals
+on this subject and to consider it afresh,” and had suggested the
+principle that “those things are good in sexual relations which make
+for the health, happiness, and efficiency of the present and future
+generations”; but this was a cold philosophic conclusion, and it was
+Dr. Stopes who supplied what was really needed, namely, an application
+to the detailed treatment of the sex problem of a keenly trained
+scientific brain in combination with artistic ability to convey her
+feelings, and an appreciation of the immense importance of the subject
+for the welfare of mankind.
+
+Love and hunger are the two great driving forces of humanity, and we
+cannot afford to allow a taboo to inhibit the application of thought
+to the problems relating to either of these, nor can any system of
+morality be effective the reason for which cannot be so stated as to
+commend it to the acceptance of rational people frankly facing the
+facts life sets before us.
+
+In relation to ordinary normal humanity Dr. Stopes agrees with what
+is said in the Bible: that it is not good that “man should be alone,”
+and with the implication of the text which says that “male and female
+created he them.” She also agrees with St. Paul’s injunction to
+husbands and wives: “Defraud ye not one the other, except it be by
+consent for a season”; and she is sure that it is nothing less than a
+crime for people recklessly, or deliberately, to bring into the world
+children who cannot be healthy or be decently provided for, and that
+it is also a crime to sacrifice the health and lives of women by
+demanding that they shall bear children beyond their capacity to do so
+healthily and willingly.
+
+To indicate on the one hand scientific reasons why normal marital
+relations are favourable to the development of one’s mental and
+physical powers and one’s capacity to serve God and man, and why on
+the other hand the ascetic type of celibate is often cantankerous,
+embittered, and troublesome, required up-to-date knowledge of the
+action of secretions in the human body. To discover and point out the
+hidden rocks on which many marriages are wrecked owing to ignorance
+of a normal sex-rhythm in healthy women, was work specially suitable
+for a woman scientist. Considerable courage was needed to present
+these matters to the general public (whom they so greatly concern)
+in defiance of the social taboo that then still prevailed, and of a
+medical prejudice against the lay public being permitted to understand
+things that pertain to their peace. Besides these qualities, literary
+skill was needed, and much tact had to be employed, to present the case
+so that it should reach a wide circle of readers and convince them,
+without creating any avoidable friction.
+
+The effect of Dr. Stopes’s efforts, in so short a time as six years,
+has amounted to nothing less than a revolution in the general attitude
+towards sex. She has created a new atmosphere and a new terminology.
+Even her opponents now use her language; the difference noticeable
+before and after the publication of _Married Love_ is most marked.
+Heaps of imitators and heaps of converts have appeared.
+
+On the special question of birth control (which by the way is only
+briefly alluded to in a couple of pages of _Married Love_) a great
+deal had been written before Dr. Stopes dealt with the matter, and as
+long ago as 1868 there had even been a voluminous correspondence about
+it in a leading London newspaper, but, in spite of much discussion
+concerning this and some other special aspects of the sex problem,
+it somehow happened that up to the time when Dr. Stopes began her
+work ignorance on the general subject was so prevalent, and so
+widespread was the superstition that peculiar moral virtue pertained to
+ignorance, that it was still possible for an intelligent, alert, and
+scientifically-minded woman to experience great difficulty in obtaining
+information that to-day is readily accessible to every intelligent
+inquirer.
+
+The battle is now set between a reasonable and an unreasonable moral
+code; and though the force of inertia and a long tradition of ignorance
+are on the side of the obscurantists, the ultimate triumph of light
+against darkness is already assured.
+
+In this introductory chapter I will merely quote the opinions expressed
+by two writers well qualified to judge of the value of Dr. Stopes’s
+work. Owing to the extreme urgency of the need, the public has
+over-emphasized her birth control work and under-estimated her general
+work on sex. Concerning this latter Dr. Havelock Ellis, the leading
+world authority on sexology, writing in the _Medical Review of Reviews_
+(Vol. 25, No. 2, Feb., 1919), says of some of the new observations in
+_Married Love_:--
+
+  “This seems to represent the most notable advance made during recent
+  years in the knowledge of women’s psycho-physiological life.”
+
+And Mr. Luther Munday wrote:--
+
+  “There always have been situations experienced that neither the Bible
+  nor Science have hitherto explained.... But through your thought has
+  come, once for all, a message clean and pure, linking the mystery
+  of sex with the majesty of the Eternal and giving happiness to all
+  during life’s little part of immortality here on Earth.”
+
+The following chapters furnish some account of the preparation Dr.
+Stopes had for her work, of the fields in which she has made her mark,
+of what she herself is like, of the personal experiences that directed
+her attention to the problems of sex, and of the opposition she has
+encountered.
+
+It is greatly to be hoped that, both on the problems of sex and on
+other subjects, Dr. Stopes will add much in the future to what she has
+already given us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+GLIMPSES OF CHILDHOOD.
+
+
+Marie Carmichael Stopes, the first child of Henry Stopes and Charlotte
+Carmichael, his wife, was born in Edinburgh, the town of her mother’s
+birth and upbringing, but her father was pure English, and at the age
+of six weeks the baby girl became a Londoner, which, in essence, she
+has remained ever since.
+
+Henry Stopes was by profession an architect, but since early childhood
+had a passion for fossils and the stone tools left by prehistoric
+man. Indeed, at the age of eight years he was whipped soundly for
+insisting on taking his stones to bed with him, and through life his
+passion for archæological research furnished him with a second career,
+which undoubtedly greatly influenced the home surroundings of his
+children and, in the case of his elder daughter, largely directed
+the line of her development. Long before his death Henry Stopes had
+accumulated the largest private collection in the world of prehistoric
+stone implements, and their constant care and classification, as
+well as collection, was a great feature in his elder daughter’s life
+from her earliest childhood. Henry Stopes’s interests were profound
+in many directions and very human; in addition to these two main
+interests he was a noted agricultural expert, writing regularly under
+a _nom-de-plume_ for agricultural papers, and being Chairman of the
+British Judges of Barley; being indeed a pioneer in the critical
+judging of grain. He accumulated statistics on the effects of different
+rotations of crops in connection with prize-winning strains and so
+on, which meant a great deal of statistical work from the records of
+numerous entrants for the annual barley competitions, in which his
+little girl, before she was twelve years old, used to help him, or
+was led to believe that she was helping him, while undoubtedly he was
+training her in arithmetic and in a scientific attitude of mind towards
+life in general.
+
+Marie Stopes sometimes calls herself a “British Association Baby,” for
+Henry Stopes and Miss Carmichael were first introduced at a meeting
+of the British Association; and Marie was taken, from childhood, to
+almost every meeting of the Association during her school days, only
+missing those meetings which were held overseas.
+
+Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, her mother, was one of the pioneers of
+women’s University education, having been the first woman to take the
+University Certificate in Literature, Philosophy, and a number of other
+subjects at Edinburgh University when they were given by the Professors
+privately for the ladies, who were afterwards examined with the same
+examination papers as the men, but from whom degrees were withheld.
+Charlotte Carmichael headed many a list in the early days when Miss
+Jex Blake was studying medicine. After marriage Miss Carmichael
+came to live in London, and took up the study of Shakespearean
+contemporary history, becoming an expert in reading early records
+and ferreting out many of the facts time had rendered obscure about
+Shakespeare’s life history. She is the author, among other works, of
+“The Bacon-Shakespeare Question Answered,” “Shakespeare’s Warwickshire
+Contemporaries,” “The Life of the Earl of Southampton,” and a large
+number of serious original contributions published by the learned and
+periodical press.
+
+Thus on both sides the baby Marie inherited a variety of intellectual
+interests. One of her maternal great grandfathers was Brown, the Royal
+Architect, in Edinburgh, who not only repaired Holyrood Palace but
+designed and built many of the finest streets and squares in the West
+End of Edinburgh which still delight the town-planners of to-day.
+Another maternal great grandfather was William Carmichael, Writer to
+the Signet, assistant and then successor to Sir Walter Scott. The Scott
+family were intimate with the Carmichaels, and Lady Scott personally
+embroidered a beautiful Christening robe for one member of the family,
+which descended to Marie, was used for her own Christening, and is now
+handed on to her son.
+
+On her father’s side, behind an immediate Quaker connection, there was
+a long line of Anglican clergy.
+
+Inherited also was a great liking, indeed almost a passion, for
+travel. After the journey at six weeks from Edinburgh to London, the
+nine-months-old baby was taken to the seaside and plunged into the sea,
+and thereafter never less than twice a year, and often more frequently,
+she made a journey to some part of England or Scotland, becoming later
+on a world-wide traveller.
+
+After a few years little Marie had a sister, called Winifred, and these
+two were the only children of their parents, no boys being wished for.
+This fact, and the attitude of generous appreciation towards women
+that was characteristic of her father, undoubtedly had a favourable
+influence on her character and achievements through life, for she was
+brought up from her earliest consciousness not only to feel that her
+birth had been desired, but that she, as a girl, had been wished for
+and that no boy would have satisfied her parents as she did. For an
+eldest child who has the misfortune to be a girl when a boy is desired,
+a very different home and outlook must develop. Whilst still a tiny
+child, when asked by enquirers if, besides her sister there was no
+brother, she would gravely announce that pussy was her brother, and
+she thinks she was probably 8 or 9 years old before she realised
+that pussy was not a brother. Her father being particularly fond of
+cats, and having an almost magical power of training them, the family
+pussy had its own dinner-service and used to sit up at table with the
+children, eating off its own plate on the table from a high chair just
+like Marie’s little sister.
+
+From her uneventful childhood, a few points stand out in her memory
+as being of great importance in the development of her character. One
+of these was a nurse who was for many years their devoted attendant,
+and after whom the favourite doll was called “Little Annie.” Nurse
+Annie, one day, looking at the doll’s dress which the child was sewing,
+remarked that it was very good “for a lady,” and Marie, at that time
+not more than six or seven years of age, blazed with indignation that
+it should not be very good in itself. In some queer childish way she
+resented the fact that a lady should be considered incapable of doing
+things as well as other people, and determined that she would sew, at
+any rate, as well as a servant. This she did, but unfortunately the
+nurse said nothing about knitting like a lady; so that when she was
+twelve years old and went first to school, she immediately took first
+place in the sewing class and bottom place in the knitting class.
+
+A rather absurd introduction to her later well-known birth control
+ideas also may be traced to the nursery. Her mother one day, when the
+nurse told her that new boots were needed, laughingly remarked, “Oh,
+what should I do if I had a dozen children?” Little Marie gravely
+remarked: “You would drown all the others, and keep Winnie and me.”
+
+In London the Stopes family lived beside the Crystal Palace in a house
+in Cintra Park, overlooking private grounds on one side and with
+ground behind the three central gardens of the neighbouring circle of
+houses, which went uphill and downhill, so that the children had much
+space in which to play. Mr. Stopes built a wing on to the house that
+they took and, having very enlightened architectural ideas for those
+days, had an open verandah connecting the back parts of the house,
+for the convenience of the maids and to make an open-air playground
+for the children in wet weather. In the garden an old quince tree
+was a favourite resort of the children, because they could lie on
+its branches and overlook the stableyard, and watch the horses being
+groomed. It was under this quince tree, too, that Marie Stopes says
+she first got the idea, as a very small child, which finds expression
+in her pamphlet “Mother, how was I born?”--for it was just by that
+quince tree that, as a prattling child of four or five, she was talking
+about babies and where her little sister had come from, and she felt,
+rather than saw, that people were laughing while telling her the
+gooseberry-bush fiction, and she then felt, with a flush of insight
+and indignation, that they were lying to her. The matter however did
+not actually interest her, but the vivid impression of that moment
+has painted on her memory every leaf, and the exact arrangement of
+the grass and of the border walks, so that it is the most vividly
+remembered scene of the whole of that home.
+
+The children were taken regularly once or twice a year to some seaside
+place, and for many years they went to different seaside resorts in the
+South of Scotland. At about the age of nine, North Berwick was the
+choice, and Marie’s inherited passion for fossils had full vent in the
+collection of crinoids which were washed up thickly on the seashore.
+There too Marie Stopes tells me that she has a very vivid memory of
+lying on her back in the garden at North Berwick and really, for the
+first time in her life, noticing the clouds; noticing them, that is to
+say, in such a way that to this day she can remember their shapes and
+patterns and the thrilling sense of portentous glory their mounting
+and swiftly riding god-like forms created in her mind. She thinks
+this was connected in some way with the reading of a book, “Tales of
+Ancient Greece,” which had been given to her not long before; but she
+says it felt as though she had suddenly looked through a glass-door
+into the whole Universe, peopled with mysterious beings she had never
+seen before and never ceased to see thereafter. A little later, indeed
+she thinks that very summer, a sense of personal shame and inferiority
+developed in her, which she did not get over for many years, and
+at that time almost her only consolation was the story of the Ugly
+Duckling in Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales. The first sense of personal
+shame resulted from her mothers’ advanced, and as we moderns would
+think very sensible, ideas. Little Marie had been given a knitted
+dress to wear, when no one else, at any rate in that seaside place,
+was advanced enough to be wearing knitted dresses; and instead of
+feeling happy and distinctive in it she felt utterly ashamed to appear
+different from other children; a feeling that was accentuated by the
+fact that a young cousin laughed at her. About this same time, owing
+to the curious inaccuracy and incompleteness of a child’s ideas, this
+feeling was emphasised and increased by the following incident. The
+Stopes family and three or four other families in the district combined
+to employ the services of a private dance-mistress, who came in turn
+to each of the four houses, where the class was held in rotation.
+Mrs. Stopes, when her turn came, gave the children a nice tea of
+wholesome cakes without currants, and to make them attractive used to
+send to town for cakes with coloured icings and various fancy things
+she thought the children would like. One of the other households,
+however, gave only rock buns and milk. Poor little Marie thought that
+rock buns, as they contained currants, which she was never allowed to
+have at home, were something much grander and more expensive, and was
+always ashamed of the fact that they were not rich enough to have rock
+buns for tea. As usual with her however no external sign of this deep
+shame was ever shown, but for years she felt crushed and humiliated by
+the fact that to her a halfpenny rock bun was far grander than an iced
+gateau. At this time and all through her earlier childhood her father
+was very well-to-do--but he had great financial losses when she was
+about eleven, which left them permanently impoverished in comparison
+with the earlier expectations.
+
+Marie’s education was exceptional in many ways. Her mother having been
+brought up in the good old Scottish school, started the little girl of
+about five on Greek and Latin roots, so as to give her a fundamental
+knowledge of the structure of the English language. But Marie proved
+so stupid that this was dropped and, beyond being taught to read and
+write, she had indeed almost no education until, a few days before
+she was twelve, she was sent to school. This statement should however
+be qualified by mention of something that, again, greatly influenced
+her mental attitude towards the Universe. A large atlas was solemnly
+brought out every morning, and on its title-page this atlas had a
+circle in which part of the world was drawn with clouds around it. Her
+first memory of any lesson at all was pointing with a stubby little
+baby finger at this circle, representing a sphere, and repeating “The
+world is round and rolls in space.” This formula, which was repeated
+daily for years, so impressed itself on her that she was always trying
+to feel the world rolling in space and even, as a very small child,
+used to wonder which way up she was standing at any given moment.
+
+Marie and her sister Winifred were sent to St. George’s School in
+Edinburgh for their first schooling, and then the unusual nature of her
+preliminary training, pitted against the ordinary school curriculum,
+left her woefully behind her age in attainments, so that she was
+put with a class of girls much younger than herself. In half a term
+however she began to find her feet, but not before her backwardness had
+emphasised the feeling of shame and humiliation at her inferiority,
+which indeed throughout her schooldays was strongly characteristic of
+her, and which she tried to hide by making the most of any attainments
+that she thought she had; and she undoubtedly had some that were
+unusual in a child of her age. For instance, she had been entrusted
+by her father with a small collection of flint implements he was
+presenting to the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries in Edinburgh,
+and when she was taken down with them to Dr. Anderson, the learned
+Director of the Museum, without any hesitation or embarrassment she
+gave him what amounted to a lecture on their nature and uses, and told
+him what to write on the labels for the exhibition cases. So amused
+were her elders by her expert knowledge of these implements, that her
+head mistress asked her to lecture to the assembled school on the
+subject. This she did, her audience consisting of the entire school
+including the teachers. Having never been brought up to an acute
+personal consciousness or any personal conceit, she did not realise
+then that there was anything unusual or surprising in facing such an
+audience. A diary which Dr. Stopes kept as a child for some weeks still
+exists, and begins with an entry concerning her first day at school:
+“Oct. Tuesday 4. I went to school at 10 o’clock and did not like it
+at all. I went to bed very cross.” Three days later comes an entry
+relating to what subsequently became one of her chief studies. “Friday,
+7th. Went to school. It was so nice we had an object lesson on coal
+mines and coal.”
+
+While in Edinburgh she had the immense advantage of the kindly personal
+friendship of Miss S. E. S. Mair, her mother’s friend, one of the
+originators of the St. George’s Girls’ School, the best school in
+Edinburgh, and a leader of social life and advanced thought in that
+city. Miss Mair used to give famous parties for little girls, at which,
+after a sumptuous tea, each child was asked to make a clever remark to
+entertain the whole company. Marie’s remarks, though presumably not
+clever, were extremely embarrassing to her and kept her petrified with
+fear throughout the whole tea, so that she used to feel that it was a
+great pity the remarks were not asked for before tea, because then her
+appetite would have been so much better for the tea itself--a feeling
+that no doubt many after-dinner speakers have shared. In Edinburgh also
+the horizon of the two little girls was enlarged by the kindly care and
+interest of Miss Menzies, who had a great interest in Iceland and read
+many Icelandic and Northern sagas aloud to them. Miss Menzies too had
+a comfortable elderly cook who took Marie’s domestic education in hand
+and on Saturdays taught her home cooking and the making of real Scotch
+scones and shortbreads, interesting her in cooking, and sowing the
+seeds of an accomplishment which later in life proved of great value
+when she was out camping, or living under unusual conditions, as she
+often did.
+
+After two years in Edinburgh the children were brought back to
+London and were sent to the North London Collegiate School, whose
+head mistress was Dr. Sophie Bryant, the successor of Miss Buss, the
+original founder of the School. Although two years of Edinburgh
+schooling had made Marie rather better able to meet girls of her own
+age on an equality, she was still far behind her years in many of
+the routine school subjects; and when she finally passed the London
+matriculation, second-class, her Latin mistress said to her: “I do
+not know how you did it, you had no business to get through,” and she
+replied: “I did it by writing very clearly everything I knew and saying
+nothing about the things I did not know; for I thought it would save
+the Examiners’ time”--a remark which showed much penetration, for in
+later years, when Dr. Marie Stopes herself became an examiner, she
+learnt how examiners are worried by illegible handwriting and screeds
+of mazy reading which do not make it clear to them what the candidates
+know and what they do not know. At the North London Collegiate School
+the two girls were still educated in a rather unusual way. They were
+not permitted to go to afternoon school, and only lived in London from
+Monday mornings till Friday middays, going home to a country house
+in the then beautiful village of Swanscombe. The house there was
+an old Elizabethan oak-panelled house which Marie was old enough to
+appreciate, and the charm of which, and the mysterious beauty of some
+of its rooms, fascinated her in her early adolescence. At the age of
+about fourteen she often got up at four or five in the morning in order
+to be alone in the old rooms, one or two of which she sketched very
+industriously though with little talent. These pictures however are
+still precious to her as recalling the house she has ever loved. It had
+a very high stone wall along the tiny village street on one side, and
+opened into cherry orchards leading to woodlands on the other, and it
+was in these woods and flowery lanes that Marie first really saw the
+beauty of flowers. She says:
+
+  “At the age of fifteen I remember observing the faces of flowers as
+  passionately as I had at the age of about nine observed the sky. I
+  escaped by myself one day into the woods and spent several hours
+  lying motionless, gazing into the faces of the violets. That too was
+  the opening of a door into another universe. Of course, I suppose I
+  must have seen flowers before, but till then I had never felt the
+  sight of them.”
+
+This home in Swanscombe had been taken because of Henry Stopes’s
+great interest in the brick-earths and gravels of the surrounding
+neighbourhood, which teemed with relics of prehistoric man in the shape
+of both palæoliths and neoliths, and there Marie, and to a less extent
+her sister Winifred, spent nearly all their holiday time and almost the
+whole of every Saturday and Sunday, collecting specimens with their
+father in the quarries and on the fields, washing them, labelling them,
+and cataloguing them, with him. To this house also came many visitors
+of interest to the growing children.
+
+  “One of my schoolgirl memories of Swanscombe is the famous editor,
+  Mr. Norman Maccoll, the editor of the then thunderer, the _Athenæum_.
+  He was always very charming to us children, but disapproved of
+  our going into the woodlands without gloves, as he said we were
+  to be young ladies in the future and should have white hands. So
+  on the days that he came to lunch we used to put on gloves to go
+  round the woodlands with him, but never on other occasions. He was
+  a very stout, elderly gentleman with long beard and a benign,
+  fatherly face, though his literary criticisms were the terror of
+  many a serious author. We did not look upon him with such awe as we
+  undoubtedly should have done, and I remember once luring him to sit
+  on a very firm bush, through which he promptly went, leaving only his
+  head and his feet sticking up, and from which the united strength of
+  my little sister and myself were insufficient to extricate him, red
+  and indignant, and very much less pompously impressive than usual.
+  I remember another occasion when, to avoid climbing a high fence,
+  we children stepped through, and he, miscalculating the width of
+  the bar, followed us but stuck midway. No pushing or pulling could
+  get him either in or out. He became purple in the face, and we were
+  all frantic. My mother, as one of his reviewers and an author whose
+  reputation could be made or marred by his paper, was almost in
+  tears, and my father at last was so genuinely concerned that he ran
+  home for a saw. I also remember Seton Karr, the famous lion hunter,
+  lunching with us and being escorted across the cherry orchard by my
+  sister and myself, wherein we encountered two or three cows from
+  whom Seton Karr fled with teeth chattering, while my sister and I
+  remained a protective bodyguard between him and the cows. We were
+  firmly convinced at the time that he was in real fear of them, and I
+  remember preaching to myself a moral lesson on the vanity of courage.
+  Now, however, I begin to wonder whether he was not an adept in the
+  art of pleasing children. A man who also made a great impression
+  on my early childhood was the very lovable late Dr. Furnivall, the
+  famous Shakespearean, who often came to lunch with us in his pink
+  shirt and with his pink bald head, and went with us through the woods
+  in a state of childlike glee. He first among all my acquaintances
+  showed me the delight of lying flat on one’s back in the baking
+  sunshine, and I well remember his refusal to proceed round the
+  woodland with my mother and the rest of the party, and insisting on
+  lying where he was on the violet-decked slope in the sun for an hour
+  at a time, while the rest took the decorous walk round the crest
+  and picked him up on their return. I remember also there Professor
+  Sayce, the famous Assyriologist, whose life has just been published,
+  and who was much interested in my father’s implements; and also Mr.
+  Mabson, the owner and editor of the _Statist_, a journal for which my
+  father sometimes wrote.
+
+  “As a young girl I met so many of my parents’ friends, mostly
+  people who were doing something in the world of thought, that it is
+  difficult to say who influenced me and who did not; but I clearly
+  remember an outstanding influence from one talk with Sir Francis
+  Galton and also from Mrs. Alec Tweedie, whose house I was sometimes
+  taken to visit. Once at a party at Robert Mond’s country house she
+  introduced me to him as ‘a girl who is going to do great things.’
+  I felt it was incumbent upon me to try to live up to such an
+  introduction!”
+
+With the exception of one annual day for their chief school friends,
+the children had almost no young companionship, but listened to the
+talk of scientific or literary experts at their parents’ table, and
+found their chief amusement in the constant companionship of their
+father. When the elder girl was about fifteen however the parents
+thought it wise to come nearer to their school, and the family moved
+to Hampstead, by chance to the house next door to Professor Bonney,
+the geologist. Professor Bonney had not grasped who his new neighbour
+was, and when hundreds of butter boxes were piled in the garden, he
+gave out a groan round the neighbourhood, that his new neighbour was
+a wretched grocer. Professor Bonney, who was more a geologist than an
+archæologist, showed only a polite interest in the boxes when he found
+out that the contents were museum specimens of stone implements and not
+the remains of a grocery business.
+
+The continuous unconscious education which companionship with her
+father gave Marie was supplemented, whilst settling into this house, by
+really expert lessons in carpentry. Her father, always anxious that she
+should not do things in a “ladylike” way, taught the girl when and how
+to use screws instead of nails, and how to mitre a corner, in making
+cabinets or shelves, and both girls helped their father to put up many
+shelves and make arrangements for his specimens. This resulted in a
+passion to do things for herself, and a small room was allotted as a
+study for the girls, which Marie distempered with a stencilled design
+of her own make, and for which she constructed a good deal of the
+furniture. In this room she pursued her school studies in an erratic
+way, hurrying through the official homework and, as she grew older,
+reading many books it would probably have surprised her elders to
+know that she read. “Between the ages of sixteen and seventeen I read
+most of Kant and Swedenborg, a great deal of comparative theology, as
+well as a large number of out-of-the-way novels, and, of course, many
+scientific books, such as ‘The Origin of Species’ and others then new
+to me, which it would have shocked my mother very much to know that I
+was taking seriously.”
+
+In her later school years Marie had more or less caught up to the
+standard for her age, but until she reached the Sixth Form and was a
+Prefect, she never felt really sure among her school contemporaries.
+Even though in many classes she headed the list, she always came down
+in some other subject. She was seldom indisputably top of the class,
+but when she was nearly seventeen the chemistry mistress, Miss Aitken,
+developed scarlet fever, and for the next morning’s work there was
+no teacher. Marie, without hesitation, went to the headmistress and
+said that as she had been spending some hours in the laboratory she
+knew just what Miss Aitken had intended to give to those classes, and
+that she could show where the apparatus was ready prepared. Dr. Sophie
+Bryant, the headmistress, in view of the crisis, and also possibly
+to test the quality of a girl in whom she felt some interest, asked
+Marie if she could take the classes, which she did; and then for six
+weeks, directed only by correspondence from Miss Aitken, Marie took the
+chemistry for the whole school, including the class of which she was
+herself a member. She was very proud when she received a present of £5
+for having done this, and much humiliated when having sent a receipt
+without a stamp on it, this was returned for her to rectify the error.
+Nevertheless she went through the school leaving a general impression
+on most, if not all, the mistresses, except Miss Aitken and Dr. Sophie
+Bryant herself, that she was a stupid girl whose plodding perseverance
+alone saved her from disgracing herself in the examinations. Among
+her school-mates she made a few lasting friendships. Her great school
+friend, and the only one whose life has remained in close contact
+with her own, is Olga Kapteyn, a girl of Dutch descent, niece of
+Professor Kapteyn, the famous astronomer. These two girls, who both
+had a passion for colour, including a love of gold and orange tone for
+silk (which was then almost unattainable), came together over their
+intense appreciation of their teacher, Miss Aitken. Of Miss Aitken,
+Marie Stopes says: “She was, undoubtedly, the greatest influence in my
+school career. She opened to me the door that led to all the exquisite
+beauty of Italian art and of the school of artists represented by
+Watts, Rossetti, and their contemporaries. She taught me chemistry
+so well that I was doing work of honours degree standard in physical
+chemistry before I left school, and she strengthened and hardened my
+character by her mingled austerity and beauty. I had undoubtedly the
+usual schoolgirl’s ‘Schwärmerei’ for other teachers whom I thought I
+loved more at the time. But Miss Aitken and Dr. Sophie Bryant are the
+two mistresses who understood me and influenced me, and to whom I owe
+a lasting debt of gratitude.”
+
+On leaving school Marie Stopes was given a leaving Scholarship in
+Science, and under the influence of Miss Aitken she went to University
+College, London, rather than to a Woman’s College which had been
+suggested for her. Miss Aitken wisely said: “If you are going to do
+science at all, do it under the biggest men of the day.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE STUDENT.
+
+
+Whether Marie Stopes should go to a Women’s College or to University
+College, London, was being discussed by her parents, the headmistress
+and teachers. The girl however settled it for herself by going down
+to University College and entering herself there as a student in the
+faculty of science. That was in the days of Miss Rosa Morrison as the
+women’s tutor, and after due formalities and recommendations had been
+put through the question came up of the classes she would take. As her
+last two years at school had included considerably more training in
+zoology and chemistry than is usual for a schoolgirl, the chemistry
+indeed being far beyond the intermediate standard, and up to the
+degree standard, Marie wanted to enter for honours in the intermediate
+examination at the University. Professor Sir William Ramsay was
+always very sympathetic towards any student with ambitions, but did
+not himself conduct the practical classes for the juniors, though he
+gave them their lectures. The Professor naturally would not hear of
+her doing honours degree work until the intermediate examination had
+been passed, so that chemistry, from being the young student’s chief
+interest and most advanced study, dropped into second place. Receiving
+considerable encouragement from the Professor of Botany, Professor
+Oliver, who was willing to give the necessary attention even to one
+honours student, the girl took up honours in that subject, in which
+at school she had taken very little interest; and she made botany her
+main work for the first year at the University. At the close of the
+first year, naturally, there were the College class examinations,
+and owing to the curious lack of personal supervision--which, though
+it is in many respects one of the best features of University life,
+has its inconveniences--no one, not even the dons under whom she was
+working or the Dean of the University, ever told her that by taking the
+class examinations she would enable the Professors to place her for
+some of the various scholarships which were available. When the young
+student asked Professor Oliver at the end of the Session whether it
+was compulsory, or wise, for her to take the class examination, his
+reply was “It is a free country.” The Professor of Zoology, the famous
+protozoologist, Minchin, on the other hand, most kindly came to her in
+the laboratory one day shortly before the examinations, and urged her
+to take sufficient trouble with the nomenclature of the bones, saying
+that if only she would work up the bones with their foramina she would
+be nearly certain to get the medal for the class. But the obstinate
+young student replied that no medal would be worth her wasting the
+small amount of brains she felt she possessed on learning the names of
+the bones, and that she could not see the advantage of learning them,
+when they were always available in a book; what she wanted to do was to
+learn things she could not find in books. The Professor laughed, and
+had another friendly, but rather reproachful, smile when she took the
+second place in the class instead of the first.
+
+How much this unguided young student lacked orientation was also
+shown by the fact that on the annual Prize Day of the College she was
+spending the morning fishing for algæ in the Botanic Gardens with a
+fellow-student, who urged her to come to the College in the afternoon.
+Her dress was wet and covered with the slimy green of the algæ, and
+she did not feel inclined to go at all, but her fellow-student pressed
+her to do so, and she slipped into the back of the Hall when prize
+distribution was in progress, entirely unaware even of the possibility
+of any prizes coming her way, and was incredulous when the fact that
+she was the recipient of a gold medal was announced and her name was
+called. Instead of being pleased, she was much distressed at receiving
+this gold medal, for she felt that if work such as hers secured a gold
+medal, it must indeed be a disappointing thing to be a Professor with
+such poor students. She told me she stayed awake the whole night crying
+about it, and vowed to herself to be worthy of it in the future.
+
+Ridiculously unoriented also was she about the little feminine things
+generally of interest to girls. For some time after going to the
+University, for instance, she wore a ring on her engagement finger, and
+when asked by her fellow-students when she was going to be married,
+was amazed to learn that this was the engagement finger, as she had
+not known that there was any such thing. The ring had been given her
+by her mother, and the girl had no knowledge that any significance
+was involved in wearing it. Similarly, when in the first year of her
+college course she received her first proposal of marriage, the man was
+surprised at her reply: “But I am not nearly old enough to think about
+such things; surely I do not look twenty-five.” And he had to learn
+that, of course, she would not consider anything of the sort until she
+was twenty-five, “because nice girls do not.” Her father had brought
+her up in this belief, with the very proper intention of delaying her
+sex-consciousness as long as possible, and so strictly and implicitly
+had she accepted the idea, that nothing the man could say could
+persuade her that it was not most improper of him even to have thought
+it possible that marriage could be discussed with a nice girl under
+twenty-five. Naturally such a girl was not always understood by her
+fellow-students, but she was popular enough to be made the President of
+the Women’s Union Debating Society and one of the hockey eleven.
+
+Shortly after the College examinations the open University examinations
+took place. Marie Stopes took the first place in first-class honours
+and gained the University Scholarship.
+
+During that first year at the University, in addition to the
+Intermediate work at University College, she was pursuing, without the
+Professors or anyone else knowing it, work beyond the ordinary Degree
+standard in zoology--partially under the tuition of an old school
+teacher, a friend, and partly at Birkbeck College, where she went to
+the Evening Classes for the honours course in zoology--on the small
+animaculæ and invertebrates. In this way she gained a considerably
+wider training and experience in zoology than is generally recognised,
+and this point is of some importance in connection with the rather
+absurd criticisms sometimes levelled at her work in human research, to
+the effect that she is “only a botanist,” and therefore has no business
+to make discoveries in fields outside the floral world. She had in fact
+a very adequate training in a number of branches of science, including
+microscopic zoological work which pre-eminently qualified her to tackle
+scientifically the branch of human research work in connection with
+birth control which she took up later on.
+
+For the tripos for her degree she had originally intended to take
+chemistry, but having been diverted to an interest in botany greater
+than she had expected, and also from a sense of indebtedness to the
+Professor of Botany who had so kindly encouraged her work, as well as
+from the fact that her scholarship was given on the results of the
+botanic examination, she felt it incumbent on her to take botany as the
+main subject. Then, too, she had not outgrown the “inferiority complex”
+which always made her doubt her own powers, and without telling any of
+her Professors, she secretly decided that she would get some practice
+in taking examinations, so she quietly entered for the external honours
+degree at the end of one year instead of at the end of three. For this
+it was possible, in those days, to take only two subjects instead of
+three, if the student passed in honours standard in one subject and
+obtained a first-class pass in the second. When the Registrar of
+the University (Dr.--now Sir--Frank Heath) received this entry as an
+external examinee from an internal student at University College, he
+sent for her very kindly and begged her to reconsider what she was
+doing, saying it was ridiculous and impossible for anyone to try to
+do honours as well as first-class pass in one year. A kindly argument
+was of no avail, and the headstrong girl said: “I will not only get
+first-class pass, I will get honours in _both_ subjects at the end of
+the year,” an undertaking which, as the event proved, she made good
+under tragic circumstances. The two subjects she then decided on were
+botany and geology, and for the geological work she had the immense
+advantage of a practical training in the field all through the summer
+from a member of the Geological Survey who was training a couple of
+young men as mining engineers in survey work. Shortly before the actual
+examination took place, on which she had started rather as a joke or a
+purely experimental effort, it became seriously urgent and important
+for her to succeed, owing to the grave illness of her father. Indeed,
+on the night of the main examination in botany the girl was up all
+night with the fear that her father would die at any moment. This,
+though it reduced the quality of her work, fortunately did not prevent
+her winning a first-class honours place, and as her father’s death
+appeared imminent, her Professor very kindly obtained the results of
+the degree for her privately, so that she was able to tell her father,
+before his death, what greatly interested and pleased him, namely, that
+she had passed the Bachelor of Science Degree in double honours--though
+the published lists were not out until after his death. The mutual love
+between herself and her father was exceptionally intense, and the shock
+of his loss affected her inner life for many years.
+
+The result of her hurried examination brought her a further
+scholarship, which was sufficient to take her abroad; but as she had
+defied the Professors and taken the degree after too brief a period
+of study, she conscientiously made up the remains of another year at
+University College, doing minor research work and completing some
+of the classes she ought to have taken. At this period Professor
+Oliver and Dr. Scott were actively engaged on a research of great
+palæontological significance, which led to the recognition of an
+entirely new group of extinct plants. In order to find some small clues
+necessary to complete the association of the fragmentary remains of
+the fossils, some Sherlock-Holmes-like scientific detective work had
+to be done on all the leading collections of fossil plants in England,
+and the young student had the good fortune to be deputed by Professor
+Oliver and Dr. Scott to do this on their behalf in Manchester and
+in some private collection in the north, as well as at the Natural
+History Museum. The work on the Owens College collection in Manchester
+University was not only of technical value to that research, but of
+great educational value to the student, and an incident that occurred
+in connection with it proved important to Dr. Stopes later on.
+Professor, now Sir William Boyd Dawkins, was the Professor of geology
+in whose charge the collections were, and he very kindly arranged to
+take the student out on to the moors and show her horizons in which
+fossils occur in the Todmorden district. On the morning of the little
+expedition there was a hopeless downpour from early dawn, but the
+opportunity of going to these districts was too precious to lose, and
+of course Marie Stopes turned up at the station, but equally of course
+she found no Professor there to meet her. She then decided to go by
+herself, though she did not know the district at all; and she spent
+the day walking the eight or ten miles across the solitary moor in the
+drenching rain, very pleased with herself that she found the various
+spots they had planned to visit, but feeling all the time that the
+rain, and the absence of the instruction Professor Boyd Dawkins would
+have given, meant that she had seen much less than she would have done
+on a fine day. She thought no more of the event, but, curiously enough,
+this little incident proved to be a turning point in her career; for
+Professor Boyd Dawkins was so impressed by her serious interest in the
+subject and by her determination and independence of character, that
+later on, when a much-coveted post was open for election, he used his
+influence in her favour, and she was appointed the first woman to teach
+science in the University of Manchester. To return however to the
+young student, the post-graduate scholarship from the University was
+just sufficient to take her for a year to some foreign University, and
+her interest in fructifications and the study of egg-cells and ovules
+(fostered both by Professor Oliver’s researches and by her zoological
+work), led her to desire to study the fructifications of a unique group
+of plants, the cycads. For this purpose Munich was considered the best
+continental locality, as Professor Goebel, the famous morphologist, who
+had travelled far, had an exceptionally fine collection there, both of
+living and spirit material of the kind suitable for research.
+
+Languages had always at school been a main stumbling block between
+Marie Stopes and class prizes, and it was therefore rather adventurous
+of her to go to Germany, for she had only had three or four lessons in
+the language before she reached that country. She found however that
+learning a language in a country itself is a very different, and a much
+easier thing, than learning it in classes; and though her German was
+a source of great amusement to her fellow research-students in the
+laboratories, it carried her not only through her University course,
+but finally also through the _viva voce_ examination for the degree.
+
+On presenting herself to Professor Goebel, the English student
+announced that she had come to study under him the structure of the
+ovules and the fertilization of the cycads, and the genial and amused
+smile in the vivid blue eyes of the Viking-like Professor encouraged
+her, although his words were discouraging. Though some women had
+received degrees from Munich University, none had hitherto entered
+from the Botanical Institute, and it would require an alteration in
+the Regulations to make it possible. Marie Stopes was disappointed,
+but replied that she had come to work, and would rather stay and
+do the work than go elsewhere and get a degree for work that did
+not interest her as much; and after about three months in Professor
+Goebel’s research laboratories he came to her one day and said: “It is
+ridiculous that any Regulations should stand in the way of you getting
+your degree; I will have them changed.” And the Regulations were
+changed, so that at the end of the year she was allowed to enter for
+the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. During that year, though working
+hard in the laboratory which opened at eight o’clock in the morning,
+the young student enjoyed all the pre-war delights of Munich: the
+Opera, a great deal of dancing, excursions every week-end to the snow
+mountains in the winter and to the Tyrolese flowering valleys in the
+summer; while in Goebel’s laboratory she met as many nationalities as
+there were research-students, and entered with great zest into the
+profound discussions which knots of students often embarked on far from
+the fields of their own immediate work. Most of the research-students
+in the laboratory that year were themselves Professors or lecturers
+in their own countries, and they included a Polish Professor, a
+Japanese, a Norwegian, a Dutchman, an American, and a number of other
+nationalities and types. Frequently a quartet composed of a Buddhist, a
+Roman Catholic, an atheist, and Marie Stopes, would discuss with great
+earnestness and animation the problems of the Universe.
+
+[Illustration: The author at Givons Grove with Mrs. Zangwill on his
+left, Dr. Marie Stopes kneeling, and her mother on his right.]
+
+[Illustration: Marie Stopes as a student, with a group of professors,
+in the mountains. Prof. Goebel on her left.]
+
+Though life at a University College had somewhat educated the girl,
+she was still remarkably sexless, and quite unaware of the nature
+of the stimulant her presence must have been in this laboratory of
+men. One rather amusing incident may be cited. The geological and the
+botanical students were taken into the mountains by their Professors
+for scientific expeditions, and on one of these occasions a lecturer
+from another faculty joined the party and insisted on talking, in
+English, to the only girl there. His English however was very poor, and
+he neither attracted nor interested her. She spent most of the time
+chatting in lively colloquial German with a man on her other hand,
+merely saying “Yes, yes,” at intervals to be polite to the lecturer. A
+day or two later she was rather surprised to be sent for by Professor
+Goebel to his private sanctum, where he broke the news to her startled
+incredulity that the relatives of the lecturer who had bored her on
+the expedition had been to Professor Goebel with a request to induce
+her not to drive this man mad, as they feared for his reason and
+that he would have to go to a lunatic asylum if she persisted in her
+attitude of not recognising their engagement to be married. Marie
+Stopes, in open-mouthed amazement, denied any knowledge of being
+supposed to be engaged, and said that the man had never even proposed
+to her. It transpired however that the bad English and the many boring
+exclamations he had made, to which she had automatically replied “Yes,
+yes,” had really included a proposal of marriage, to which the “Yes,
+yes,” was naturally enough taken to signify her acceptance. The family
+were much distressed when it was made quite clear that no marriage
+would be contemplated by Marie Stopes, and they begged that she would
+at least permit the man to write to her until she left the country. As
+a result she possesses to this day a large pile of unread love letters
+in a very small German hand, unread and for her unreadable, as she has
+long since forgotten how to read German handwriting.
+
+In such a narrative as this it is perhaps difficult to make it clear
+how much hard brain work was included in her days. She told me once
+her longest spell of _uninterrupted_ mental work was thirty hours at
+a stretch, when she worked with beef-tea and a spirit stove at her
+elbow, and did not leave her work even for meals. Steady work, and
+the extremely valuable and interesting material supplied by Professor
+Goebel, yielded sufficient results in the discovery of new and
+interesting features in the cycads to justify the preparation of her
+thesis towards the end of the first year, and this she herself wrote in
+German, but it was German of such an amusing quality that the Professor
+kindly suggested that a Swiss student should sit at the same table as
+she did in the laboratory and go through it with her. He was a very
+handsome and attractive, but safely married, man, so that a few days
+later, when the Professor inquired how she was getting on with him, the
+whole laboratory was sent into convulsions, and the Professor himself,
+with tears hopping out of his bright blue eyes, sank into a chair
+shaking with laughter beyond his control, when she replied that he had
+been very kind, “Er ist es mit mir durchgegagen.”
+
+She meant this to be, as it is, a literal translation of “He has
+gone through it with me,” and was quite unaware of the fact that the
+German phrase means “He has eloped with me.” Laughable however as her
+German was, it was very fluent, and when the day of the _viva voce_
+examination came it served its purpose sufficiently well. Professor
+Hertwig, the great zoologist, meaning no doubt to be kind, questioned
+the young botanist on the structure of volvox, a microscopic organism;
+and Professor Rothpletz, also meaning to be kind, whispered, “Have they
+been nice to you?” before he began his _viva voce_ in geology--for
+the _viva voce_ examination for the German degree takes place audibly
+in the presence of the University Court, so that the student has not
+only the nervous work of replying to the Professor, but of knowing
+that outsiders, and critical outsiders at that, are listening to the
+replies. She however got a high degree, _Magna cum laude_, and all
+the members of the research laboratory were cordially enthusiastic.
+Professor Goebel was exceedingly generous and kind to the young foreign
+student, and of him Marie Stopes says:
+
+  “Although, of course, lots of people had been kind to me before,
+  Professor Goebel was the first who really treated me as a father
+  might have done. Toward the end of my time in Munich, when I told
+  him that I was returning to England, where I must take up work that
+  would bring me a salary, he said, ‘But it is a shame that you should
+  not continue doing research work, and if you would only permit me
+  I would, out of my own purse, defray all the expenses for you for
+  another few years if you would stay and do research work here.’ He
+  and his wife lived almost opposite the University Institute and were
+  on many occasions extraordinarily kind to me, and this was all the
+  more remarkable as Professor Goebel did not like women to study, and
+  until I went to his Department and practically forced my way in, he
+  had never permitted a woman student to work in his laboratories. I
+  shall never forget his noble generosity and his fine impatience at
+  the trend of modern life, particularly of German life, his hatred
+  of the Prussians, and his Viking-like appearance and zest and
+  joyous gallantry when, in Tyrolese costume, he went to his mountain
+  laboratories. Munich was a second home to me until the war and the
+  desolation the war brought.”
+
+A junior lectureship in botany at Manchester University was vacant at
+the close of the year in Germany, and for this Marie Stopes sent in
+her application. No woman had ever lectured in the science faculty at
+Manchester University, and the Committee was nervous about appointing a
+woman, for the classes of the junior students were large, and contained
+medical students who were notoriously hilarious. The Committee was
+helped in its decision to select Marie Stopes, in preference to any of
+the male applicants, by an extraordinarily cordial recommendation from
+Professor Boyd Dawkins, which resulted from the impression she had made
+on him more than a year before, when she had gone by herself through
+the drenching rain, over the moors to Todmorden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ACADEMIC LIFE.
+
+
+In other Universities women were beginning to obtain posts hitherto
+given only to men, but Manchester had not before had a woman on the
+science staff, though a lecturer in English literature had been in
+office for some years. Biological classes were attended by large
+numbers of the young medical students, who with the engineers are
+generally the rowdy element in any University, and the authorities
+of the College were in some trepidation as to the result of their
+experiment in appointing a young girl to the Staff. With Dr. Marie
+Stopes however no untoward events occurred, and the junior classes were
+indeed quieter when she lectured or demonstrated to them than they
+were in a good many other departments. The staff of Professors and
+Lecturers, mostly men from Oxford, Cambridge, and other Universities,
+formed a very friendly circle and became truly colleagues to the junior
+lady lecturer. Indeed in after years, when Dr. Stopes was appointed
+to the staff of her own college in London, she felt the contrast,
+for there the Professors’ Common Room was barred to women, whereas
+in Manchester she was immediately made a member of the Professors’
+Common Room and always cordially welcomed and made to feel at home
+whenever she used it. Her immediate chief and those members of the
+staff associated with her work made things very easy and pleasant,
+and outside the University, too, she made many friends, notably old
+Mr. R. D. Darbishire, the philanthropist and founder of the Whitworth
+Galleries, who with Miss Dymes, his secretary and companion, made his
+home in Victoria Park ever open with a warm welcome for the girl, who
+learnt both to reverence and love the fine autocratic old gentleman.
+Professor, now Sir Arthur, and Lady Schuster, also in Victoria Park,
+were friendly, and the social life in Manchester was an attractive
+feature and much more real and cordial than life in London. After the
+plentiful dancing and opera of Munich, Dr. Marie Stopes missed dancing
+very greatly and, in addition to private dances, took the then rather
+audacious social step of giving a dance herself, and cajoled the
+elderly Professors to come to it in fancy dress. Out of that sprang a
+little dancing club among the members of the staff, which survived for
+a good many years after Dr. Stopes left Manchester. The young lecturer,
+feeling that she was very inadequately trained in the art of lecturing,
+went to hear a number of the Professors and lecturers in the University
+deliver their lectures to their students. Mostly, it seems, she learnt
+what to avoid in lecturing; she observed a good many little points
+which explained the reputed rowdiness of the junior classes. On one
+occasion she was present at the back of the room when a distinguished
+Professor of world-wide fame faced his class of 200 juniors, and with
+a quivering hand took a piece of chalk, drawing a wriggly thing which
+might have been a triangle or a hexagon, and commenced his lecture by
+saying, “Let us suppose that a circle is a circle”; and he could not
+understand the roars, and the cloud of dust from the stamping feet,
+with which this opening was greeted. Dr. Marie Stopes was amused to see
+how well her own students behaved when they were given the chance.
+
+In addition to the teaching work in the biological classes, time was
+available for the young lecturer to follow up her own researches; and
+the great interest in fossil plants which must always associate itself
+with Manchester University where Williamson’s original work was done,
+combined with the fact that the coal mining districts lay so close
+all round the town, led her to penetrate to a number of collieries
+in search of fossils, as well as to follow out some research on the
+structure and deposition of the coal seams. In this connection she
+came into personal contact with a number of mine owners, who always
+met her with warm cordiality and helpfulness, and among whom a Mr.
+Sutcliffe should be particularly remembered. He purchased an extensive
+series of microscopic sections of a rare new fossil which had been
+discovered, and presented them to the University to be placed at
+the service of Dr. Marie Stopes, who undertook the work of their
+scientific investigation and description. The fossil proved to be a
+species unique in the British Isles, which she named _Tubicaulis
+sutcliffii_, and was the subject of the first paper that she read to
+the Manchester Philosophical and Literary Society. The work on the
+collieries and coal mining industry which began with this connection
+in Manchester was persisted in and is still actively continued by
+Dr. Stopes to the present time, and has led her to a large number of
+scientific discoveries and to the contribution of publications in the
+Royal Society and elsewhere (see Appendix B, p. 216). Among the many
+interesting people that this collegiate life gave her the opportunity
+of meeting, Captain Scott, the Antarctic explorer, was one who most
+impressed the girl. She was invited by Lady Schuster to meet him at a
+luncheon and, fired by her intense enthusiasm for the palæontological
+history of coal, she begged Captain Scott to take her with him on his
+then projected Antarctic Expedition. They met again at a dancing party
+in the evening. She found him the most “divine waltzer and reverser”
+she had ever met, and he promised to take both her and Lady Scott with
+him if that was possible, or failing that he undertook to bring her
+back the fossil she wanted from the Antarctic. He came down to the
+University before leaving Manchester and spent an hour or two with her
+studying the external appearance of the fossils, so as to bring back
+with him exactly what she desired. The tragedy of this expedition is
+known to the world, and it is also known that he was found dead with
+a few fragments of fossil plants by him. These however, although so
+obviously collected for her, were not given to Dr. Marie Stopes to
+describe; and she was glad of it, for unfortunately they were not those
+she had longed for from the Antarctic regions.
+
+In all this busy, happy life in Manchester there was however one secret
+trial, and that was that after a very few weeks there Dr. Stopes,
+whose vitality and general health were quite exceptional, developed
+acute neuralgia. This neuralgia vanished immediately vacations came
+and she could leave Manchester, but always returned within three days
+of sleeping in Manchester. In spite of this her intense vitality
+kept her going in many directions, and lectures to the students were
+followed by an attempt to organise a seminar on similar lines to those
+she had had experience of in Germany, excursions, plant collecting
+and fossil collecting up on the moors and, in addition, evening
+lecturing to the very poor in the slums at Ancoats; where the Ancoats
+Settlement had organised classes of factory hands and others anxious
+for intellectual work. There for a time she came in touch with some of
+the worst conditions of city life, and she only gave up these lectures
+when neuralgia and the acute pain of seeing human beings under such
+appalling conditions were undermining her strength to such an extent
+that it was impossible to go on. Among her treasured possessions is a
+glowing testimonial spontaneously given to her by her poor students at
+the Settlement.
+
+By no means exclusively serious, Dr. Stopes, in a skittish mood,
+instituted the first, and I believe the only, international comic
+scientific journal. She called it _The Sportophyte_, and in it made
+fun of a good many of the great biologists, and lampooned the style
+of more than one publication. It achieved not a little success, and
+one learned Professor said to her: “Oh, of course it is very funny,
+but you cannot possibly do it again.” “Why not?” said Dr. Stopes.
+“You must not be allowed to do it again; think what _power_ it gives
+you.” This was hardly the way to stop the activities of an independent
+and enterprising young woman, and _The Sportophyte_ lived until the
+international calamity of the war killed the spirit of international
+jocularity.
+
+The suffrage movement naturally attracted Dr. Stopes’s interest, and
+without becoming an aggressive extremist she put a good deal of time
+into quiet work for the suffrage, joining the Tax Resistance League
+and lecturing from time to time, as well as joining in processions and
+deputations. Fired by a sense of the injustice of obliging women either
+to forego marriage or to forego a career, she ardently supported the
+efforts to stop the restrictions on married women’s work, and in that
+connection met Miss Margaret Ashton, who was then a Councillor and one
+of the most active of women’s champions in the north. Her attention
+also was drawn to the yet deeper problems of married women by an
+incident which occurred to one of her own students, who happened to
+be a woman older than herself and who had been assisting a doctor in
+dealing with out-patients at a hospital, when a woman had brought in a
+miserable little baby which wailed all the time and which, the mother
+explained, would not put on any flesh or grow into a nice, healthy baby
+whatever she did with it. The mother, with tears in her eyes, made an
+intensely earnest appeal to the doctor to tell her what was, to her,
+unaccountably wrong with the infant. She said this was her fourth, and
+the others had all died when they were very little. The doctor put her
+off with some soothing platitudes, but the woman, driven to despair,
+said: “I believe there’s something wrong with my man. If there’s
+something wrong with my man I won’t have babies no more--it’s just
+cruel to see them miserable like this and have them dying one after
+the other. Won’t you, for God’s sake, tell me whether there’s anything
+wrong with my man or not?” This appeal was met by the assurance that
+there was nothing wrong, and she should do her duty by her husband
+and go on having babies. The medical woman student said that it was
+glaringly obvious that the baby was syphilitic.
+
+That not only such ill-fated mothers, but that _all_ mothers, should be
+freed from the appalling slavery of unwilling and undesired motherhood
+became a conviction so intense as to necessitate action. Dr. Stopes
+realized with the astonishment that youth always feels towards the
+cruelty of its elders, that although the knowledge of birth control has
+been freely circulating in our country for very many years, it has been
+available chiefly for the educated and the well-to-do.
+
+While Dr. Stopes studied more and more deeply the work on the coal
+mines, she was following up several branches of research in connection
+not only with fossils and their deposition but with their mode of
+origin, and in connection with the petrifaction of the internal
+tissues which is so wonderful a feature of some structurally preserved
+specimens, she was led to the belief that, given certain conditions
+in the surrounding horizons, the existence of the type of fossil for
+which she was searching could be more or less predicted. Combining
+this with an intense desire to discover the origin of the angiosperms,
+which was one of the desiderata then, as it still is, of biological
+science, she considered the horizons in any and every country in the
+world from which she could get the necessary data, and came to the
+conclusion that in an horizon in the northern mountainous Island of
+Hokkaido petrified specimens of angiosperms, such as she sought, should
+be found; and she applied to the Royal Society for financial assistance
+to go there and investigate the matter, at the same time having a
+sample specimen sent over from Japan, from the rocks _in situ_, and
+she had the thrilling experience of seeing her scientific prediction
+fulfilled, and finding in the very first cut a beautiful petrified
+angiosperm. This strengthened her application to the Royal Society,
+which was still under consideration, and though they had never before
+sent a young woman out of the country on any such work, her application
+was so well backed that an exception was made in her favour, and she
+finally went to Japan alone, with a grant from the Royal Society, and
+with the assistance of the Japanese Government, through the Imperial
+University at Tokio. There she went up country and collected large
+quantities of unique and hitherto unknown fossils which, on her return
+to Tokio, she cut with the assistance and collaboration of Professor
+Fujii, who together with her wrote a memoir, subsequently published
+by the Royal Society in its Transactions, containing an account of
+a number of plants new to science, and containing also the first
+petrifaction of the flower, and the only one yet discovered. In Japan,
+as in Manchester, she found the Professorial staff cordial and kindly,
+and Baron Hamao, the President of the Imperial University, made her
+an honorary member of the Professors’ Luncheon Club, where she met
+the personnel of the various faculties, and thus saw the true life of
+Japanese intellectual circles in a way seldom permitted to a foreigner.
+A room and research facilities were allotted to her in the Institute of
+the Imperial University, and in exchange for all this courtesy she gave
+a short course of lectures on plant palæontology to the students and to
+others of the staff who cared to attend. A fairly full account of her
+manifold interests and experiences in Japan was published by Blackie in
+her book entitled _A Journal from Japan_. She returned _via_ America,
+and a fresh post in Manchester University was offered to her: the
+first lectureship in palæobotany in this country. It was exactly the
+post for which her researches fitted her and which her heart desired,
+and she was happy to get back to her many friends in Manchester; but
+it was no good, for the neuralgia, which had not touched her all the
+time she was away, returned after a week in Manchester as violently as
+before and became intolerable, so that at the end of the first year of
+this new post she had to leave it and finally settle in London, which
+all along had been her home.
+
+[Illustration: The first portrait in her robes as Doctor of Science of
+London.]
+
+After obtaining the degree of Ph.D. in Munich she had, on returning to
+England, followed up her B.Sc. in London by obtaining the Doctorate
+of Science, London, when she became, I believe, the youngest Doctor
+of Science in England, and shortly afterwards she was made a Fellow
+of University College, London. She was invited by the Geological
+Department of the British Museum to prepare a special memoir for them
+on the Cretaceous Flora of the World, a memoir that took several years
+to complete, and which was published ultimately in two volumes by
+the Trustees of the British Museum. The Royal Society published in
+their Transactions some of the results of the Japanese Expedition and
+she was invited to exhibit her specimens from Japan at the ladies’
+soirée, where she met Count Solms-Laubach, the veteran palæontologist
+of Germany, whose classic treatise had been her original text-book.
+He, though a woman hater and extremely reserved, showed the kindliest
+appreciation of her new species. The advantage of meeting such men,
+which all men of any note in the scientific world can do by attending
+the Royal Society’s meetings, was a rare privilege to this young
+woman. When some of her later discoveries were made she was invited
+by representatives of the Royal Society to send her specimens for
+exhibition, but not on ladies’ night. She said she could not send them
+without being there herself to demonstrate and guard them, and was told
+that she could send any of her own men-students, or even her butler,
+but could not be admitted herself. With natural indignation she refused
+to exhibit. It seems strange that to this day, however brilliant a
+woman’s scientific work may be, her sex precludes her from equality
+of treatment in the senior Society of Science in the world, and she
+can never hope to be made an F.R.S. The Royal Society of Literature,
+however, early recognised her, and on the proposal of old Lord Halsbury
+she was elected a Fellow.
+
+In the course of her travels for palæontological research Dr. Stopes
+was once again in the United States, and took the opportunity of
+attending the American Association of Science at St. Louis, where
+she met Dr. Gates. He, like many others before him, immediately fell
+passionately in love, and proposed marriage within a few days of making
+her acquaintance. He was a botanist and in many respects apparently a
+suitable husband, and Dr. Stopes and he were married before her return
+to England a few months later.
+
+Dating from her earliest childhood, and strengthened by her interest
+in the suffrage, Dr. Marie Stopes has always very keenly felt the
+rightness of the old Scottish and Norwegian customs, whereby a married
+woman retains her patronymic after marriage, and she arranged with Dr.
+Gates that she should retain her own name. In English law--though
+many people are unaware of it--provision is made for such cases, and
+to retain her own name legally, all a married woman has to do is
+to announce at the time of her marriage that she intends to do so,
+and to use it systematically for legal documents and transactions.
+The effect of loss of personality arising from change of name has
+undoubtedly had a psychological influence on women, and such a change
+is most unreasonable when one has made such a name for herself as Dr.
+Stopes had; a name which was then already recorded in thousands of
+card-indexes and catalogues in Universities all over the world. A good
+deal of press interest was shown in her revival of this old custom of
+keeping her own name, and a number of women have followed the example
+since, though old-fashioned people try to make things difficult for
+a woman who thus desires to preserve her identity, and Dr. Stopes on
+more than one occasion has had to threaten to take legal action against
+scientific committees and other persons who endeavoured arbitrarily to
+decide for her what her name is to be.
+
+This marriage seems to have been arranged by destiny to give Dr.
+Stopes the almost unique experience which completed her fitness to
+undertake the work on sex-reform by which she is now best known. On her
+marriage she was still, in spite of her zoological training and her
+travel and experience of men of many countries, amazingly innocent,
+and she was quite happy for six months or more. After that she began
+to feel instinctively that something was lacking in her marriage.
+Although she was living within a stone’s throw of her mother and of
+her family doctor, they neither of them detected what was amiss or
+offered any help or solution of the problems which confronted her.
+Finally her life became quite intolerable, and I heard her say one
+day: “I should go mad if it were not that I say to myself, ‘Why have
+I a scientific brain and all my scientific knowledge, if it is not
+to find out things that seem to puzzle everybody?’” and, in a very
+impersonal manner, she took up her own case as a piece of scientific
+research. She went to the British Museum and read pretty nearly every
+book on sex in English, French, or German, just as she would read
+every book on palæontology before publishing on her own subject. She
+also read Lord Halsbury’s Laws of England, and then returned to her
+family doctor and family lawyer, and when matters were made thoroughly
+clear to them, it became a comparatively easy matter to put through
+a nullity suit, in which she sued as _virgo intacta_ for the legal
+annulment of her marriage, which her husband’s abnormality had never
+allowed him to consummate. Dr. Gates was a passionate lover but an
+incomplete husband, and as a result, after years of marriage, was not
+only leaving his wife a virgin, but had developed an absurd jealousy
+and attempted a domination which rendered life intolerable. At that
+time I was frequently a witness of ridiculous little scenes, one, for
+instance, in which he “forbade” this independent and high-spirited
+young woman even to purchase a paper which she had been reading for
+years. As was natural perhaps, Dr. Gates made things as difficult
+and in some respects as scandalous for her as he could, but the war
+was on before the legal case was finally settled, and shortly after
+its outbreak he left England and sought refuge in America, returning
+however before hostilities were over. Meanwhile, throughout all her
+heartbreaking difficulties, Dr. Marie Stopes remained outwardly very
+calm, and continued her palæontological work at the British Museum
+and at University College, where, following on her Manchester work, a
+palæobotanical lectureship was founded for her in London University.
+This attracted much interest and attention at the time and her first
+lecture was widely attended and published, and there is little doubt
+that but for the war, which swept away her classes of young men, it
+would have led to the founding of a regular school of palæobotany.
+Meanwhile however the war diverted all who were able to do anything
+of practical utility, and the more abstruse and academical aspects
+of palæobotany were left on one side, and Dr. Stopes concentrated
+on what seemed immediately useful, namely, the application of her
+knowledge to the problems of fuel, and of coal in particular. The
+Scientific and Industrial Research Department of the Government, under
+Sir Frank Heath, actively supported her work, and she collaborated
+with Dr. R. V. Wheeler of the Home Office Experimental Station in the
+preparation of what _Nature_ described as a “classic”--a Monograph on
+the Structure, Chemical and Palæontological, of Coal. (See Appendix B,
+p. 216.) Following on this, Dr. Stopes continued researches, both in
+collaboration with Professor Wheeler and independently; and the Royal
+Society, in 1919, published her short paper on the four ingredients of
+coal, in which she originated the now well-known words, clarain, durain
+and vitrain.
+
+Professor Wheeler and his students and collaborators, and many others
+now doing research on fuel, have followed up the initial research of
+Dr. Stopes on the ingredients of coal; for her work made possible for
+the first time a discrimination in the analysis of different zones
+in the same coal, which is leading to a knowledge of its intimate
+structure and potential uses of a much more accurate kind than was
+previously possible.
+
+In the course of her scientific researches Dr. Stopes has made a great
+number of original discoveries, and has published the results in a
+number of learned _Transactions_ and journals, a more or less complete
+list of which is given in Appendix B.
+
+Among so many additions to scientific knowledge it is difficult to
+say in a few words which are her most important contributions, but,
+in the main, they deal with three themes: (_a_) the structure of
+the reproductive organs both in living and extinct forms; (_b_) the
+composition and structure of coal; and (_c_) the structure of the
+vegetable inhabitants of the Cretaceous epoch.
+
+Her discoveries of fossils in Japan, which were published jointly with
+Professor Fujii in the _Transactions_ of the Royal Society (Appendix
+B, p. 219), brought to light a flora of the existence of which nothing
+was known, and which was of interest and importance as including the
+only petrified flower hitherto discovered in any part of the world. The
+public perhaps do not realize that the vegetation which is conspicuous
+to-day in the landscape, and which alone provides all our agricultural
+plants and food, did not come into existence until the early Cretaceous
+epoch.
+
+The earliest known angiosperms in the world were also discovered by
+Dr. Stopes and described in the _Transactions_ of the Royal Society
+(Appendix B, p. 218), and further facts about them are embodied in her
+big volume published by the Trustees of the British Museum. Of this Dr.
+(now Sir A.) Smith Woodward said: “There is so much that is new in it.
+No one would have believed it possible to get so much out of the Lower
+Greensand; it is quite wonderful.”
+
+As regards coal, when she was first appointed as a junior lecturer in
+Manchester, a centre of one of England’s coal mining districts, she
+enthusiastically investigated the local mines. She read an important
+paper on the subject before the British Association. It was the first
+time she had done so, and the then Director of the Geological Survey,
+Sir Jethro Teall, attended the lecture. The discussion proved most
+interesting and cleared up a number of points hitherto obscure, and Sir
+Jethro (then Dr.) Teall said that he was “astonished at the quality and
+quantity of the detail given. I went to encourage a young girl, and I
+remained to learn from a master.”
+
+Her short paper on the composition of coal before the Royal Society
+(Appendix B., p. 216) has led to an enormous change in the attitude
+both of palæontologists and chemists towards coal structure, and
+the terminology instituted by Dr. Stopes is now not only almost
+universally followed, but the ideas in that short paper of hers have
+proved fruitful in many directions--see, for instance the work of Dr.
+Lessing on coking, of Dr. Ivan Graham, the Assistant Director of Mining
+Research at Birmingham, and the many papers in the technical journals
+arising from the inspiration in her original paper.
+
+Although the outer public did not know her as a lecturer until
+recently, in the course of her academic career Dr. Stopes lectured
+regularly in Manchester and London Universities, and had given
+brief courses or single lectures in the University of Tokio, in the
+Parliament House in Hokkaido, in Chicago University, in Toronto
+University, and in many other institutes and halls in various parts of
+the British Isles and other countries, and her palæontological work was
+utilized by various Government Departments in addition to the British
+Museum and the Home Office. The Canadian Government, for instance,
+sent for her to settle a problem which had been in dispute for over
+40 years, about the age of certain potential coal-bearing deposits in
+Eastern Canada, and the results of her investigations were published
+by the Geological Survey of Canada in a large Memoir. (See Appendix
+B, p. 217.) Amidst this life of manifold activities her relation to
+her students was such that she always brought to every lecture some
+fresh idea of vital interest. No doubt had she taken up some popular
+subject instead of so remote and academic a field as she pursued, her
+name would have become a household word among us years sooner than was
+actually the case. Her personality was bound to make its impression on
+our national life even had she never touched so burning a subject as
+that with which she has been recently associated.
+
+In addition to her many scientific associates, Dr. Stopes has had
+warm friendships and interesting literary associations with many
+distinguished literary men. For instance, with Maurice Hewlett, the
+novelist and poet, who was so retiring and _difficile_, a warm
+friendship started long before she was known to the world. Hewlett
+wrote to her:--
+
+  “Yes, the writer of the ‘Letters to Sanchia’ is Senhouse. I can’t say
+  that he is a portrait of anybody in particular, though it does so
+  happen that I have known a man who lived, and still lives, much the
+  same life. But the two have nothing else in common, and I think my
+  man is more what I should like to believe myself to be than anything
+  more definite. _Video meliora._ He is one of the better things I see.
+  I won’t go nearer than that as yet.
+
+  “But if you, who have travelled far and been quit (for a time, at
+  all events) of our horrible trammel of circumstance, find truth and
+  reason in the substance of what I have imagined, I feel enormously
+  encouraged to go on. It was really kind of you to tell me so.”
+
+And soon after he wrote:--
+
+  “Senhouse will feel that he has done something when such a letter as
+  yours is communicated to him. You evidently haven’t read his third
+  volume, ‘Rest Harrow’--which I beg leave to send you herewith.
+  Therein you will discover how he and Mrs. Germain parted company, and
+  in what unearthly manner he and his Sanchia found each other--the
+  where and when as well as the how. I personally am unable to
+  distinguish the fairy tale from the other tales, or the dream from
+  the daylight reflection. I don’t know whether I write truth or lies.
+  To me they are truth--to a large proportion of mankind foolishness:
+  but I write for myself because I have to, and am lucky to have such
+  readers as you.”
+
+Israel Zangwill, the author-dramatist, and his wife, the novelist, were
+both cordial friends much interested in her literary work before she
+became well known through “Married Love,” and it was Edward Carpenter
+who first encouraged her to publish “Married Love.”
+
+Both before and after she was well known she has had some friendly and
+amusing little encounters with Bernard Shaw, and I may quote a postcard
+which he sent to the C.B.C. regretting his inability to attend the
+Annual Dinner in November, 1923:--
+
+  “I shall not be able to come as I shall not be in London. If it could
+  possibly be made an M.S. (Marie Stopes) dinner without being a B.C.
+  one, I should greatly regret this. As it is, it is rather convenient
+  for me, because I cannot find a satisfactory public position about
+  B.C. If I went into the movement merely to fight the Malthusians
+  I should do more harm than good; and I really could not sit quiet
+  in it and seem to acquiesce with them. I am sure M.’s (Marie’s)
+  psycho-physiology is right; but neither of us can prove it.
+
+                                                       “G. B. SHAW.”
+
+Her poems brought her many warm and interesting letters from literary
+men whom she had never met personally. For instance, about these poems
+Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch wrote:--
+
+  “First let me thank you for the little book that brought me such
+  jolly discoveries as ‘Marjorie’ and ‘Tokio Snow’--and such fine ones
+  as ‘The Beaters’ and ‘The Brother’ (this last the sort of thing that
+  walks straight and takes a seat in memory for the rest of one’s
+  days).”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+WORLD TRAVEL.
+
+
+The taste Dr. Stopes had inherited for travel found practical
+justification in many journeys in connection with her scientific
+research work. In addition to these expeditions, which were often
+long ones, she was continually travelling both in the British Isles
+and on the Continent. At the close of the first Session after her
+appointment to Manchester she attended a scientific Congress in
+Vienna, where she enjoyed the gathering of learned men, and also the
+city and its beautiful surroundings. She then returned to Munich for
+a further couple of months’ work in Professor Goebel’s department,
+including some research in his Alpine laboratory perched high up on the
+Bavarian Tyrolese mountains. The research she was engaged on was on the
+structure and development of the fertilized ovum or egg-cell, together
+with a study of its actual fertilization by the male sperm cell and the
+introduction of food granules from the sperm into the ovum. This work
+led to very interesting original observations, to make which she had to
+be up all night for a series of nights, cutting into the living ovules
+and examining their structure under the microscope at regular intervals
+through the whole 24 hours. These investigations, though minor in
+comparison with her other researches, were part of the preparation
+which subsequently enabled her to speak with authority on problems of
+fertilization in other connections; for the nucleus and the detailed
+structure of ovum and spermatozoa and the immediate after-effects of
+fertilization, are remarkably uniform wherever life is sufficiently
+evolved to have two distinct sexes.
+
+Holland, especially Amsterdam, and also Leiden, the home of so much
+of Holland’s scientific life, were visited several times, as also was
+Switzerland and France. On one occasion, after having spent a few weeks
+in the University of Caen where she was visiting Professor Lignier, one
+of France’s great palæobotanists, she set out to walk from that town
+to the distant coast of Brittany, there to form one of an expedition
+organized by Professor Oliver, on then new and interesting lines, for
+the study of œcology. Sending her luggage on in advance, she started
+with a knapsack across Normandy, first making a bee-line for the coast
+and then following the ins-and-outs of the rugged headlands and bays.
+A characteristic anecdote may be told of this expedition. Failing to
+find an hotel in one of the further portions of Brittany, she decided
+to sleep on a ledge of rock on the coast which seemed safely far from
+the sea and afforded some shelter approximating to a roof. Having a
+camper’s equipment with her, she made her evening meal and, curling
+up in her long cloak, went peacefully to sleep. Next morning she was
+waked by a gurgling suck of water at her very toes, and found that the
+ledge, that had afforded a roof at night, shut her in with no possible
+outlet of escape. The tide had come in much further than had seemed
+possible the evening before. Fortunately the sea was calm, and Dr.
+Stopes examined the rock on which she sat and, finding certain lichens
+in its crevices, she felt reassured that she would not be swamped out,
+and turning round went to sleep again until the tide had receded.
+
+It has sometimes been said by those anxious to destroy her reputation
+that she spent her vacations in “very curious ways,” implying that
+what she did was improper. Unusual many of her vacations undoubtedly
+were. Not the least so was one spent in Norway, when she and the only
+Norwegian woman Professor, Frau Resvoll, went together to the north on
+an œcological expedition, touching the Lofodon Islands and then going
+to the northern coast of Norway, into the Arctic Circle. They walked
+back in a bee-line over snowy mountain passes, and past glaciers,
+in places where houses were sometimes forty miles apart, carrying
+provisions, as well as their clothes, on their backs, sleeping on more
+than one occasion in little isolated huts provided by the community
+for those who travel in the only way possible in these districts,
+namely, on foot. In Norway, accompanied by one so well known and
+appreciated as Frau Professor Resvoll, she saw something of the type of
+life which years before had influenced Ibsen when writing his plays.
+A deep impression was made upon her by the austerity and difficulty
+of the life in some of those isolated homes, where the flatbrød was
+baked only once a year, and the muscles of dried reindeer were scraped
+to a kind of powder for meat, and where, except for brief seasons in
+the summer, potatoes and fruit were an unknown luxury. She will never
+forget looking down from a mountain crest and seeing a herd of reindeer
+fording the icy water below, and she has an equally keen recollection
+of the exhilarating effect of a sun that set at 11 p.m. and rose again
+at 1 a.m. In Christiania she and Frau Professor Resvoll were the only
+women present at the opening of the University by King Haakon, and was
+afterwards heard laughingly to say he was the only king with whom she
+could fall in love! However abstruse and scientific the work occupying
+her days in the laboratories and in the various Universities she
+visited, time was always found in the evening for opera or theatre, and
+she was fortunate enough to see “Peer Gynt” presented in its native
+theatre, as well as to meet some of those who had been connected with
+its original production.
+
+The journey to Japan, of which mention has already been made (p. 66)
+and which preceded her marriage to Dr. Gates, opened new and delightful
+vistas. Dr. Stopes went across the Continent, embarking at Genoa,
+visiting Naples and the great aquarium there, and then proceeded
+down the Red Sea. Of this she says: “I was peculiarly fortunate when
+travelling through the Red Sea to have it shown me in such a way as to
+understand its name. One evening I came on deck and found the whole sky
+from east to west and north to south one blazing crimson and copper
+fiery mass of light; this was reflected in the sea itself, so that
+it looked blood red, and the desert rocks on either side glowed in
+orange and coppery colours. I should never have believed such a sight
+possible had I not seen it with my own eyes. After a quarter of an
+hour or so it had almost faded, but I saw that the Red Sea undoubtedly
+can be red.” Aden, with its ostrich feathers and diving natives, its
+pathetic “ladies’ garden” and rock-bound sterility, was succeeded by
+the luxuriant beauty of Ceylon and Singapore. At Singapore the ship
+stayed in port two or three days, enabling Dr. Stopes to visit the
+botanical gardens, one of the famous gardens of the world, where she
+collected specimens, besides seeing living in their native haunts many
+plants which had hitherto only been significant names to her. Shanghai,
+with its great river, affords a curious little memory. Of this Dr.
+Stopes says: “I noticed telegraph lines, and thought them incongruous
+enough in ancient China, but I was surprised to see them made of what
+looked like barbed wire. On closer examination I found that what I had
+taken for the barbs were seated dragon-flies perched at intervals from
+each other as far as the eye could see all along the wire.” In Shanghai
+a sidelight on the population problem gripped the girl’s heart. With
+the rest of the tourists she was investigating the town in a rickshaw;
+there on the street, kicked aside by the passers-by like garbage in the
+gutter, was a dead baby.
+
+Penang left a memory of moonlight and wonderful sleeping trees. Some
+of the wide streets were lined by avenues of some kind of leguminous
+tree which folded its leaves in sleep as a clover does. In the native
+quarter an outdoor stage was showing one of the interminable Chinese
+plays, which had lasted all day and was still going on at midnight.
+Finally Japan was reached, and about this I need not say very much, for
+the _Journal_ kept by Dr. Stopes has been published. From that book, _A
+Journal from Japan_ (Blackie, 1909), one may take a few characteristic
+passages, but, first of all, let us note Dr. Stopes’s remarks on
+a trait in her own character which, though perhaps an inevitable
+accompaniment of some of her best qualities, has struck many people as
+a defect. It is not surprising that an able, energetic and successful
+woman should exhibit a high degree of self-confidence, tenacity and
+perseverance in pursuing her aims. There is a driving power about
+Dr. Stopes which, if mistakenly applied, would be blameworthy, and
+those who have not had experience of her uncanny trick of being right
+have often been taken aback by the decision and emphasis with which
+she speaks and acts. It is unwise to expect a racehorse always to go
+quietly, and if one expected Dr. Stopes to be placid in her activities
+and struggles, one would be courting disappointment. But let us see
+what she herself says on this matter in her _Journal_.
+
+  “In many ways I had wonderful opportunities of touching the living
+  reality in the Japanese; opportunities so exceptional that it is
+  to my lasting shame that my stock of patience and sympathy was not
+  always equal to them.... It is true that from an ordinary standpoint
+  there are many things in Japan which are exasperating to a Westerner,
+  but that was no excuse for me. Let me quote as an illustration a
+  small incident that I have ever since regretted. On page 43 (of the
+  _Journal_) you will find the account of my involuntary visit to the
+  courteous principal of a College, when I was really bound for a
+  coal mine. This young gentleman asked me to give a lecture to his
+  young men, and I refused. It is true that I was really anxious to go
+  directly to that mine, that it would upset my plans if I were at all
+  delayed, and that at the moment the disturbance of those plans seemed
+  a serious matter. But nevertheless I was the first European woman
+  that many of the people there had seen, and the first scientific
+  woman that any of them had seen or heard of. Their curiosity and
+  interest about me were as natural as my curiosity and interest about
+  their coal mine, but I gratified my own curiosity and not theirs....
+  It would be practically impossible for them to realize how many
+  other claims had been made on that hasty young scientist who visited
+  them; they would only feel that in place of the human interest and
+  understanding which might have been shown there was a blank wall of
+  refusal. I tried to explain that science is a hard taskmaster, but
+  what good are explanations?...”
+
+The following entries in the _Journal_ give some idea both of her work
+and her play while in Japan:--
+
+  “Some of the Professors kindly took me to visit the Principal of
+  the University in solemn state; he was most gracious, and (through
+  an interpreter) said most ridiculously flattering things. According
+  to him only one ‘specialist’ lady has visited Japan before, and she
+  was elderly. Therefore, they all marvel at me, as though I were some
+  curious kind of butterfly! We then visited the Director of the
+  Imperial Geological Survey. The Director is _most_ kind, as is also
+  the Chief Inspector of Mines, and they put every facility in my way.
+  The Director gave me all the information he could and the largest
+  geological map of the district, which is very small, only about
+  one-hundredth part of the scale I am accustomed to do geological
+  work with, so that things will be difficult. The Government here has
+  kindly written to the Governor of Hokkaido and to the owners of the
+  mines, so that I shall fare as well as possible.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  [In Hokkaido.] “The Governor insists that as well as Professor
+  Y---- (who is to be interpreter), _as well_ as an official from the
+  Department of Agriculture and Commerce, _as well_ as several coolies,
+  I must have a policeman to escort me to the mountains. I besought
+  him not to enforce him on me, but it is an honour they delight to
+  give me, and I had to submit. Too much zeal and too much kindness
+  are as difficult to contend with as too little. We then called on
+  the Department of Agriculture and Commerce, and there were more
+  formalities and more talk--when I shall get to the actual hammering
+  of rocks I can’t imagine.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “We began the day at five, and the regular escort is now raised to
+  ten, with temporary additions between every stage! I have given up
+  protesting that so many people require quantities of food, which will
+  have to be carried, and will now look on 100 without a murmur.
+
+  “We went through the forest and up the river prospecting, and found
+  scrambling along the steep banks of friable shale by no means easy;
+  but the escort assists me greatly, and one of them carries me on his
+  back on the frequent occasions when it is necessary to cross the
+  river. The only use the policeman has been so far was to lend his
+  sword to cut chopsticks which had been forgotten, and of course we
+  had no knives and forks with us at all, for I have learnt to get on
+  very comfortably without.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “A long day going up-stream collecting nodules, which are very
+  big and very hard to break. The scenery up the rivers, with the
+  magnificent forests, is very fine. It is a curious sensation to be
+  in the midst of this boundless forest and see peak after peak densely
+  clad by trees which no man has touched.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “Really it is hard work to carry tents and everything along these
+  rivers. Often I alone find it difficult to go, and I have nothing to
+  carry--except my fan and my hammer, both of which are in constant
+  use. Sometimes it would be impossible to go where we have been with
+  boots, the straw-sandals give such a clinging grasp that we are able
+  to get a foothold on a steep rock which in boots it would be mad to
+  attempt.
+
+  “Fortunately the river, into which one would be precipitated, is
+  seldom deep enough to be dangerous. The day’s scientific results are
+  solid, but not thrilling. Tents are a luxury, but I would rather
+  sleep out under the stars. With all these coolies and people I am not
+  allowed to do my own cooking, but I most fervently wish I might.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “Sapporo once more. A day of official calls, bowing, compliments
+  and formalities. They asked me to lecture to the women’s Aikoku
+  Fujinkai: the request of the Governor can hardly be refused after all
+  he has done, so it had to be. The lecture was held in the large hall
+  of the Government House, the body of the hall filled with women, the
+  galleries with men; the Governor acting as Chairman and giving an
+  immensely lengthy introductory speech, of which I could only guess
+  the drift from words here and there, Professor My---- following on
+  with another. It is easy to speak in an interpreted address, because
+  there is so much time to think between the paragraphs; but I am sure
+  it has not the same effect on an audience as the direct address.
+  Some, of course, understood my English. Before the lecture there was
+  a reception, and I was regaled with tea and cakes and left to the
+  tender mercies of the ladies, and men who can only speak Japanese;
+  later, however, the Governor’s German was available, and so it was
+  all right, and we were quite cheerful till the interpreter arrived
+  with a solemn face and a black suit.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “[Tokio.] Professor Sakurai took me to visit Count Okuma in the
+  morning; he has a lovely house and grounds, which he was gracious
+  enough to show me. Every ordinary day he has about thirty or forty
+  visitors, and is one of the busiest men in the country. He has an old
+  face, with almost no hair, and is tall for a Japanese, and dignified
+  in his silken robes, and distinctly pleasing. He could speak no
+  English, so that conversation was rather limited, as he spoke more
+  than usually indistinctly, but he was amused with Professor S----’s
+  account of me and very gracious. The rooms are nearly all provided
+  with European chairs and tables, rich and handsome, the drawing-room
+  in which he received me upholstered in gold brocaded silk, which
+  harmonized well with the handsome old gold and painted screens from
+  ancient Japan which stood around the room. I begged to see the
+  Japanese wing of the house, which he showed me. His Japanese guest
+  chambers were, to my taste, far more beautiful, though perforce less
+  able to display his wealth. He is the Chamberlain of Japan in one
+  sense, and has the finest orchid houses in the country.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “November 24.--This morning early I started off on foot in glorious
+  hot sunshine to get the fossils, and succeeded in getting more
+  than my coolie could carry. I am almost the only visitor in the
+  place, and everyone is very kind and very interested. My colloquial
+  Japanese comes a cropper now and then--but I get what I want, which
+  is the main thing. The rocky valleys and woods are very lovely, and
+  I appreciate the loneliness after these Tokio weeks. I should like
+  always to live in complete solitude two days in seven.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “[Tokio.] All yesterday the Institute had been undergoing
+  extensive cleaning, and this morning was spent in expectation and
+  preparation of exhibits--the great Dr. Koch, the world-famed German
+  bacteriologist, was coming to see the Institute. Professor Fujii was
+  brought back from the mountain before his cure was finished, to be
+  on duty; my fossil slides were borrowed and put under microscope,
+  and the spermatozoids of _ginkgo_ were on show. He came, after
+  the whole Institute and Baron Hamao had waited in a flutter of
+  excitement for nearly an hour; he is a big stout man, not very
+  intellectual-looking. Though interested, he had evidently been
+  trotted round a great deal. He seemed to like my fossils, and asked
+  me to show him a section of a leaf, as well as those I had under the
+  microscope.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “[Tokio.] I went early to the Institute, where there is grand
+  excitement over _ginkgo_; the sperms are just swimming out, and they
+  only do it for a day or two each year. It is no such easy business to
+  catch them, in 100 you can only get five with sperms at the best of
+  times, and may get one and be thankful. I spent pretty well the whole
+  day over them and got three, and several in the pollen tube, not yet
+  quite ripe. It is most entertaining to watch them swimming, their
+  spiral of cilia wave energetically.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “[Tokio.] At work all the morning, lunch with the Faculty at the
+  Goten, and then at work all the afternoon. The fossils proved so
+  enticing that though I had worn a traily frock all day intending to
+  go to the Belgian Legation garden party, when it came to the point
+  the fossils won, and I didn’t go. In the evening I cycled down to
+  dinner at our Embassy.
+
+  “When once one makes up one’s mind to a cycle, one can even go out to
+  dinner on it. I wondered, however, what the footman thought when he
+  had to lift it into the Embassy hall in case of thieves getting it
+  in the garden (I was told he has a brother who is an attaché at the
+  French Embassy! The Japanese are very quaint that way--one Count or
+  Baron or other is driven up to the door every day by his own brother
+  as a coachman). Thanks to the unmoved countenance of flunkeydom,
+  added to the immobility of the Japanese, I could sail into the
+  dining-room, past the same man, trailing a pink silk skirt with
+  apparent dignity.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “[Tokio.] ... When I got to the Embassy garden party (it was given
+  to welcome Admiral Sperry and the American fleet) I found it had
+  been postponed in the morning, but as the weather was now so lovely
+  it was put on again. That is to say, it was half on and would be
+  repeated to-morrow. So we had one of the bands and quite a lot of the
+  American officers and other people turned up. The chief sight was
+  seeing Admiral Sperry and Admiral Togo sitting side by side looking
+  on at a kind of sword dance.... Admiral Sperry, though not imposing
+  or impressive in any way, seemed pleasant and keen, and was tall.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “[Tokio.] Sven Hedin lectured to-day at the University, and I had
+  been asked to tea previously to meet him before it.... He gave me the
+  impression of being a genial, friendly, hardy, _pushful_, but not a
+  great man. The only other lady there was Madame G----, the mother of
+  the French Ambassador, whom I think I have mentioned before. She was
+  very gracious, as she always is, but cannot speak a word of anything
+  but French. We all walked over to the Lecture Hall from the Goten--a
+  slow and solemn procession. About the only people who spoke were
+  Hedin and Madame G----, a few people said a sentence or two to me,
+  but even the genial Dean seemed to be overpowered by the funereal
+  solemnity of the march. I had my cycle, and the French Ambassador
+  helped me to haul it up the steps! His only remark was _très
+  moderne_, which was very moderate of him. In the lecture I was placed
+  in the front row, between Madame G---- and Baron K----, and got into
+  nice hot water! The poor lady couldn’t understand a word of the
+  lecture, and Hedin often said things to make us laugh, and she could
+  not join in, so now and then I translated a word or two for her. This
+  upset Baron K----, who nudged me violently from the other side, so I
+  had to stop, but then I hurt the lady, for I didn’t dare answer her
+  further questions.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  “[Tokio.] Almost immediately after lunch we went over to--where do
+  you think?--Lafcadio Hearn’s house to see his wife and family! A
+  rare privilege, for the sanctum is unusually well guarded. But Mrs.
+  Noguchi’s friendship has won me the way in, for, as I said, the
+  eldest boy learns English from her and is devoted to her....
+
+  “As we entered we passed along an _engawa_ (verandah) bounding a tiny
+  internal square of garden on our way to the reception-room. This was
+  in the purest Japanese style, well-built, with pretty woodwork, a
+  thing one learns to notice in this country. I immediately observed
+  the _kakemono_, which was exceptionally beautiful, tall peaks of bare
+  rock pillars standing up against a grey sky, where a moon half shone
+  through a band of cloud. A picture that one could never forget and
+  yet would ever wish to see instead of merely remembering. I remarked
+  on it to Mrs. Hearn, who told me that ‘Lafcadio had very good taste
+  in _kakemonos_,’ and always bought only what pleased him exactly.
+  Wise man! when he had the cash! There was also a bronze in the room,
+  the bent stalk of a fading lotus leaf with the collapsed blade of the
+  leaf, and though there sounds no beauty in that, the bronze throbbed
+  with it. Mrs. Hearn was very friendly: less shy and quiet than most
+  Japanese women, she was yet distinctly Japanese in her shyness and
+  quietness. Without beauty, she pleased.
+
+  “She and the children were all in usual Japanese costume, and the
+  only ‘foreign’ things in the room were ourselves and the cakes and
+  cups of tea she brought us. I inquired if she liked foreign food, and
+  she told me that she did, _very_ much, and that ‘Lafcadio’ always
+  ate it, for though he liked all the things to be pure Japanese, and
+  would have nothing he could help that was not, Japanese food upset
+  him, and he always had foreign food, but that now she never prepared
+  it. We chatted about many things, and she spoke freely of Hearn, of
+  whom I did not dare at first to ask any questions till she had spoken
+  voluntarily so much, to show that she liked to speak of him....
+
+  “The children were with us most of the evening, showing Brownie
+  picture-books, of which they had a fine stock. Hearn evidently liked
+  Andrew Lang’s fairy books, for they were nearly all there.
+
+  “In his study, where we had supper, was the little family shrine,
+  built rather like a miniature temple of plain wood; within was
+  Hearn’s photo, and before it burnt a tiny lamp and stood dainty
+  vases of small flowers. According to Japanese ideas, the spirit of
+  the departed inhabits this dwelling and needs the love and attention
+  of his kindred, and takes part in their life. Is Christianity more
+  consoling to the bereaved than this? From the window by the shrine
+  could be seen the grove of the tall bamboo Hearn loved, and in the
+  room floated one or two of the mosquitoes with which he had such
+  sympathy.”
+
+Some of the Japanese ways must have startled a girl brought up in the
+propriety of the Stopes family. One finds indications of this in such
+passages as the following of _A Journal from Japan_:--
+
+  “The life in this train is different from anything I have yet
+  seen in trains, yet very comfortable, with dining-car where they
+  cook beside you what you order. Near me was sitting a smart man,
+  cultured-looking, and extremely well-dressed in perfect English
+  style. Thus he remained for an hour; then, the heat being great, he
+  took off his coat, then his waistcoat, and finally came to his shirt
+  alone! Then he pulled over him a loose kimono and removed every
+  stitch but that, finally winding a soft silk sash round his waist and
+  sitting down, all without removing his gold-rimmed glasses or turning
+  a hair! The transformation was extraordinary, and during the whole
+  ridiculous scene, acted within two feet of me, he was so utterly
+  unconscious and dignified, and so many others in the long car did
+  the same, that I began to wonder if we aren’t a little super-prudish
+  in England. During the night that man was most thoughtful and kind
+  to me, insisting on my using his rug, and finally doing an act
+  of service that called for such unselfishness that I am sure we
+  underrate the innate courtesy of Japanese men to women; and he was,
+  of course, a perfect stranger.”
+
+And also from Hokkaido:
+
+  “I arrived at Aomori early this morning, and lost much temper because
+  I had to lose much time in getting on to the ship. The language, of
+  course, was partly the difficulty, but the natives are excruciatingly
+  slow to move. After _three hours_ of talking and arguing and going
+  over things again and again, at last I reached the steamer--a very
+  good little ship with nice state-rooms and saloons; of course
+  _very_ small. The state-rooms have three berths, and I find my two
+  companions are men. It was a shock at first, but they seemed so
+  surprised at my being surprised, that I thought again that we have
+  too much of the trail of the serpent about our customs. I slept in
+  the train with men near me, why not in the steamer? It is only for
+  one night.”
+
+And again:
+
+  “Life in the Club-house last night was not without its interest.
+  I couldn’t get to bed for constant visits and interviews from
+  officials; the last gentleman came after I had prepared for bed,
+  and I conversed with him in my night-gown (which, mercifully, was
+  long and rather like a tea-gown), but he never turned a hair--coming
+  in on me before I could put on a dressing-gown. The maids are all
+  excessively sweet and polite, but they slide open the partitions
+  noiselessly, with no warning, and catch me unawares.
+
+  “I put up at a little hotel near the sea, and after six went down for
+  a bathe. The coast was perfect, shelving rocks sloping out to sea,
+  with little bathing coves and sheltering rocks, and, as I imagined,
+  perfect solitude. But, of course, in this out-of-the-way place I had
+  been noticed, and before I was in the water a minute a crowd of women
+  and children had collected. Nothing I could do or say would drive
+  them away, and so I had to get out and dress under the fire of their
+  eyes and criticisms. In their long-drawn country tones they kept up
+  a running commentary, ‘Ooá--how white she is!’ ‘Is she married?’ ‘Why
+  does she wear a dress in the sea?’ ‘How old can she be?’ ‘Perhaps
+  twenty years.’ There was no escape from nearly fifty people forming
+  a cordon but three feet away from me; if I had fled they would have
+  followed, so I dressed, as leisurely and as unconcernedly as if I
+  were at home, and gravely buttoned the little buttons of my bodice
+  and put on my stockings while I returned the compliment and made a
+  searching examination of them.
+
+  “The boy children were naked, with smooth glowing copper limbs like
+  sun-burned clay--as indeed they were. The girl children had usually
+  some floating robe of a dressing-gown nature, open to show the whole
+  body, or caught at the waist and turned down to leave the upper part
+  free. Bright-eyed they were and muddy-cheeked, but neither pretty
+  nor attractive. The women were naked to below the waist, the kimono
+  being turned down over the girdle to form a kind of double skirt.
+  No one wore any ornament of any kind, save a few coloured beads to
+  tie their hair, but few of them had even that. The men wore three
+  inches of cloth round their waists and sometimes a band round their
+  heads made of a small Japanese towel. All were perfectly quiet, and
+  the remarks were made one at a time by the older women; the children
+  stood open-mouthed. I know that the blue of the sea-water makes one
+  gleam like white ivory, and as all my clothes were white, I suppose
+  the effect must have seemed novel to them. The deep colour of the
+  Japanese is chiefly due to sunburn, but as they are exposed to it
+  from their earliest days, it gets so ingrained that they may not
+  realize it is an attempt at clothing on the part of a body otherwise
+  so unprotected.”
+
+From the above extracts it will be realized that, after a short stay
+at Tokio, Dr. Stopes set off by herself to the northern trackless
+forests in Hokkaido. She found however that the introductions kindly
+sent by Sir Edward Grey and the Royal Society left her less free than
+she would otherwise have been to travel in obscurity, and on arriving
+in Hokkaido an interchange of visits with the Governor was necessary.
+Before matters were settled she found that an escort of considerable
+magnitude was considered essential. Among them of course was an
+interpreter, as she had no knowledge of the Japanese language. Whilst
+on the expedition with a party of coolies however the town of Hakodate
+was burnt down entirely and the interpreter had to return hurriedly to
+see to his family affairs, leaving her, with the meagerest smattering
+of Japanese, to cope with her entire expedition, an experience she
+found most salutary and not a little amusing. In many of the villages
+to which Dr. Stopes penetrated, no white person of any sort, male
+or female, had ever been seen before, and the curiosity her arrival
+aroused was naturally great and often embarrassing, as, for instance,
+when an entire school was brought to watch her dress, the natives
+having noiselessly removed the sliding panels of her room before
+waking her. The fossils she sought proved to be there, and her coolies
+returned laden with specimens of great interest and new to science.
+From Tokio she made many expeditions in other directions, including
+one to the Southern Island of Amakusa, where coal mines of a very
+primitive sort existed. Throughout her stay in Japan she continually
+experienced difficulties in consequence of the ramifications of
+Japanese interests she aroused. “It was so difficult,” she said,
+“to get anywhere I wanted to go because they always wanted me to do
+something else!”
+
+In Japan the aristocratic or “No” plays greatly attracted and
+interested Dr. Stopes, and she attended as many performances of these
+as possible; and in collaboration with Professor Sakurai, then the Dean
+of the Imperial University, she made the first translation of three of
+them into English. They were published by Heinemann in 1913, with her
+notes on this most interesting and archaic of all still living forms of
+the drama. Concerning this, Baron Kato, then Japanese Ambassador, wrote
+of Dr. Stopes and her co-translator: “I am glad to be able to extend
+to them my sincere congratulations on their remarkable achievement.
+They have succeeded in their work to the best extent anyone can hope to
+succeed, and in my opinion have placed Western students of Japanese art
+and literature under a debt of gratitude to them.”
+
+After living for some time as a paying guest with a Japanese officer’s
+family, Dr. Stopes decided to try the experiment of having a little
+Japanese home of her own in Tokio, which city she always made her
+headquarters. To run this, she had a delightful Japanese maid, and
+lived as nearly as was convenient in the Japanese style, using
+chopsticks and sleeping on silk quilts on the floor, though she kept to
+European cooking. As the French Ambassador said, “Next to the French,
+the properly trained Japanese made the very best cooks in the world,”
+and her maid was remarkably skilful over a little charcoal brazier.
+
+The many dances and dinners, garden-parties, and receptions at the
+Embassies, which social life at Tokio offered, afforded ample gaiety as
+a contrast to her serious and arduous palæontological work. At an “At
+Home” in Tokio one day a matron, talking to a slender young woman in a
+pretty art gown of blue velvet, said: “Who is this Dr. Stopes people
+are talking about? He collects fossils, and I expect he is a bit of a
+fossil himself.” Later on the same lady said to her hostess: “Who is
+that nice girl I have been talking to in the blue dress?”--“That is
+Dr. Stopes, the learned geologist,” said the hostess, and the Yokohama
+matron collapsed. But Dr. Stopes wanted some social activity rather
+more serious than any that were available, and so she hit on the idea
+of founding a ladies’ debating society like one her mother founded
+many years earlier in London. For the ladies in Tokio nothing beyond
+the superficialities of social life existed, since, being foreigners,
+the various fields of social usefulness open to women in their own
+countries were not available, and her idea was taken up with zest. The
+debates were both animated and interesting, but, to the amazement of
+all concerned, no men were admitted. This of course, in such a circle
+as the Tokio diplomatic one, caused great astonishment, and Baroness
+d’Anethon, the English wife of the Belgian Minister, who was the doyen
+in Tokio, pleaded in vain when the debate was held in her house,
+for exception to be made in favour of the Baron. This being sternly
+refused, he hid in the room, and had to be dislodged amid laughter. In
+looking back, Dr. Stopes thinks that this unexpected attitude of the
+women was what secured the initial success of the little Society. It
+undoubtedly filled a want, and it took root, and in an expanded form,
+with many added activities, is now the Tokio Ladies’ Club. Dr. Stopes
+also initiated a club for both men and women, the London University
+Club, in Tokio. She, as a graduate of London University, felt that the
+graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, who each had their club in Japan,
+should not be the only ones to foregather. In this undertaking she
+was much helped by the fact that several of the most distinguished
+statesmen in Japan, as well as Professor Sakurai, the Dean of the
+Imperial University, were graduates, or had been students, at London
+University. That club, too, still maintains its existence and from time
+to time communicates with her.
+
+On leaving Japan Dr. Stopes was the recipient of many beautiful
+gifts from various departments, including a pair of exquisite silver
+cloisonné vases, with a dedication to her from the Japanese Government
+“in recognition of the service she had been to science in Japan.”
+
+After a year and a half in Japan Dr. Stopes returned home across the
+Pacific and _via_ Canada. The ship encountered a terrific storm. The
+manuscript containing her original drawings and the only copy of the
+results of Professor Fujii’s and her work for the last year and a half
+was with her in her cabin. The sea broke in, bursting the port-hole,
+and before anything could be done water was waist deep in her cabin
+and the precious manuscript was floating about with the rest of her
+luggage. When rescued it was well-nigh ruined, but, having been tightly
+tied up, there was some hope of saving it if it could be dried quickly.
+The storm by this time was so terrific that she could not walk along
+the corridor of the ship at all, and, with her heart in her mouth,
+had to see the manuscript taken out of her care to the engine-room to
+be dried, while she was tightly wedged in with pillows and fastened
+into her bunk. Some days later the manuscript, with its pages entirely
+disarranged, was retrieved; and from that experience the authoress
+learnt a lesson she has never forgotten, and never now allows a
+manuscript of hers to remain uncopied.
+
+On her arrival in Vancouver she was asked to lecture before the
+Women’s Canadian Club. In Toronto, too, she was most cordially received
+and made much of by Dr. Helen MacMurchy, a well-known figure in the
+medical and Government circles of Canada. She then proceeded to New
+York, where she received much cordial and friendly hospitality.
+
+It was not very long before she returned to America for a stay of
+over three months, a large part of which was spent in Washington,
+where she was correlating the palæontological collections with those
+in the British Museum, in preparation for the volumes published later
+by the Trustees of the British Museum. She was the guest then of
+Hennen Jennings and his charming wife, who gave her many delightful
+opportunities of meeting Americans of note. At a dinner-party to meet
+Viscount Bryce, in whom she found an Ambassador not merely broad and
+sympathetic, but with a profound knowledge of unexpected subjects, as
+he showed in his table talk. Of him she says: “He was the only man of
+general world-culture and note I have ever met who knew the correct
+scientific names of fossils in coal-bearing horizons and mentioned
+them as though they were everyday matters of conversation. He amazed
+and delighted me.”
+
+In New York she met Andrew Carnegie, who invited her to his palatial
+home, and she found him very different from the hard old man rumour had
+described him as being. He gave her tea in tête-à-tête comfort, and
+though he refused an endowment for palæontological research in London,
+which she asked him for, he received the request with such humour and
+such personal charm that she went away feeling she had gained a great
+deal. And perhaps she had, for this wise old man said to her: “You are
+far too clever, my dear, to be wasting your time over fossils; _things
+that live matter more_. If you had come to me with a proposition that
+would help the peace of the world, I would not have given you a quarter
+of a million” (dollars, presumably), “I would have given you a million,
+and gladly. Take my advice, and do not waste your time over these
+dead-and-gone things.” (Alas for the later work of Dr. Stopes, that
+is so essentially calculated to help the peace of the world, Carnegie
+died before she was ready to ask him to redeem his promise.) The
+palæontological enthusiast then pointed out to him that the whole of
+his wealth rested on the use of coal, and therefore the palæontological
+study of its nature and structure must have value, even to him. But
+he would not see it, and said: “You are clever enough to make all the
+millions you want for yourself. We dug coal before you scientists
+existed, and we can go on digging it without you.” Patting her kindly,
+he led her downstairs, right down his front steps on to the street in
+most kindly and fatherly fashion, and next day sent her a book of his
+own, inscribed as follows: “For relief from severer studies likely to
+destruct the brain.”
+
+In St. Louis, as has already been mentioned, Dr. Marie Stopes met
+Dr. Gates whom she afterwards married, and in Chicago, where she was
+invited to lecture at the University, she met Jane Adams, the great
+social worker, and a number of academic men of world note. Of American
+cities, Boston, next to Washington, attracted her most, and there
+she was entertained by old Mrs. Fields, whose home was one of the
+last links between modern times and the glorious days of American
+literature, and who showed her a manuscript collection of many of
+the great English authors. Other friends in Boston gave a dinner for
+her to meet Henry James on his native heath. “That night,” she said,
+“I really felt that I had achieved fame. Henry James entertained the
+dinner-table with a number of stories from one of my books. I suppose
+he had forgotten their origin, but I played up, and laughed in the
+proper place every time. I felt for the first time in my life that I
+really had accomplished something.”
+
+In Ottawa she was the guest, at Government House, of the
+Governor-General and Lady Grey. Here she met the Premier, Sir Wilfred
+Laurier, who was full of reminiscences and confidences about his youth.
+The Minister of Finance sat next to her at dinner one evening, and
+semi-officially asked her to name her own terms for remaining in Canada
+to develop palæontological work in connection with their Government
+departments, but she then felt that she would rather have a junior’s
+salary in London than comparative riches elsewhere.
+
+Shortly after this she went on to Montreal, staying only a few
+days. Lord Grey, who was visiting Montreal at the time, opened Lord
+Strathcona’s house and gave a luncheon party to Dr. Stopes. In Montreal
+she visited Professor Penhallow, the palæobotanist, who had charge of
+many interesting fossil specimens, some of them dating from the famous
+Dawson’s time. She also met Sir John Macdonell and Professor Adami and
+others of the University staff.
+
+In Montreal she was married to Dr. Gates, who came to meet her there
+for that purpose.
+
+Dr. Stopes has twice seen Niagara: once in brilliant summer sunshine,
+pouring over in torrential floods, and once frozen, with an ice halo
+round all the neighbouring trees, with an ice bridge across it, and a
+rainbow sparkling in the sunshine from the small central stream.
+
+In Stockholm, Professor Nathorst, one of the greatest palæobotanists
+in the world, had unique collections it was necessary for her to
+correlate with those in the British Museum. She stayed a good many
+weeks in Stockholm, and while she was there the city was also visited
+by Professor Seward (now the Master of Downing College, Cambridge), a
+palæobotanist, and his wife and daughter. This palæobotanical party,
+together with Professor Nathorst, was invited to a lunch by the British
+Minister, Sir Cecil Spring Rice, at his beautiful summer villa some way
+out of Stockholm, who made a deep personal impression on Dr. Stopes.
+His sympathetic and charming personality and real interest in science
+was unusual. She had often experienced in Japan, where she moved
+freely among the diplomats, and at Washington and elsewhere where she
+met Ambassadors and their kind, a superficial courtesy and a pretence
+of interest which seemed to her unreal, but Sir Cecil created an
+impression of noble sincerity and sympathetic understanding.
+
+Since the war Dr. Stopes has travelled little, though she has been once
+to New York and in 1923 attended the Fuel Congress in Paris, where she
+had been invited to give a paper on her researches on the structure of
+coal.
+
+[Illustration: HUMPHREY VERDON ROE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+MARRIAGE.
+
+
+About eighteen months after having been freed from the legal
+matrimonial entanglement which had proved itself no true marriage,
+Dr. Marie Stopes and her real husband met at a luncheon party given
+by a mutual friend. They were immediately attracted to each other
+under rather curious circumstances, each having been invited to meet
+the other and each of them thinking that the other had not turned up,
+but that the delightful young person they were meeting was a son or
+daughter of the one they were to have met.
+
+Humphrey Verdon Roe was the son of Dr. Edwin H. Roe and Annie Verdon,
+his wife, and was one of seven children. Medical men were numerous in
+his family, and he was the son, nephew, and brother, of medicals. He
+himself went straight into the Army from school and from his crammer,
+and entered the First Battalion of the Manchester Regiment as a
+subaltern. The regiment was stationed in Gibraltar, where he first saw
+foreign service with its vivid new experiences, and the regiment was
+drafted to South Africa in 1899, where he served through the whole
+siege of Ladysmith, suffering permanently in health to some slight
+extent from the starvation he then endured. At the end of the South
+African war he resigned his commission and entered first one and then
+another business, making himself independent of his family. A brother
+a year older than he, Alliott, who had a varied engineering experience
+and a great gift for invention, was interested from a very early date
+in the possibilities of flying. Humphrey Verdon Roe placed his business
+knowledge and resources at his brother’s command, and the two worked
+in partnership: a partnership in which Alliott benefited by the keen
+common sense of Humphrey, who kept a steering-wheel on the development
+of the many ideas coruscating from his brother. The development of
+those that could lead to solid results was organized by Humphrey, and
+the machine they then constructed is still of value. Together the
+two brothers founded the firm which manufactured the “Avro” biplane
+in 1910, when flying was still thought to be almost an impossibility,
+and only a few years after _The Times_ had published an article saying
+that from an engineering point of view it was not possible to fly, the
+brothers had mastered the obstacles before them. In the first year
+of the war Humphrey Roe’s policy was more than justified. Avros were
+on active service all over the place, and in November, 1914, Avros
+were selected for the successful raid on the Zeppelin headquarters at
+Fridrichshafen.
+
+The development of the production of Avros, and others modelled on
+them, naturally expanded enormously during the war, but Humphrey
+Roe, though at the head of a rapidly increasing business, at once
+endeavoured to take up a fresh commission in the Army, but was held
+back as being of more service to the country as a producer of flying
+machines. In 1917 however, the huge expansion of production having been
+fully organized and established, he succeeded in rejoining the Army;
+and resigning all direct interest in the firm, got his commission, and
+went flying in France. At this time, at the age of 39, he was in such
+good physical condition that he went night-bombing over the German
+lines. His machine was brought down, and he was sent home with a broken
+foot and a jarred spine, gaining a wound stripe early in 1918. An
+account, with a photograph, of his night-bombing work is given in the
+“Annals of the 100th Squadron.”
+
+Besides being a successful business man of many interests, H. V.
+Roe has been through life a most abstemious liver, a teetotaller, a
+non-smoker, and of very simple personal tastes and habits. Before he
+met Dr. Marie Stopes, in conjunction with Councillor Margaret Ashton,
+M.A., the well-known philanthropist and social worker in Manchester, he
+had, for some time, been endeavouring to improve the lot of the working
+women by founding a clinic for birth control. Indeed he made an offer
+to a Manchester Hospital of £1,000 a year for five years and £12,000 at
+his death if they would open such a clinic, but through fear of losing
+some of their other supporters if they took such an advanced step, they
+regretfully refused to do so. On going to the front Mr. Roe made a
+will, leaving his whole property for the endowment of birth control
+and the foundation of various scholarships. It is an indication of the
+extraordinary ignorance that then prevailed on that very important
+subject, that his solicitors in 1917 were exceedingly chary about
+allowing him to make any bequest for birth control, warning him that
+probate might be refused. Fortunately however his marriage with Dr.
+Marie Stopes in 1918, who was equally anxious to promote birth control,
+resulted in the mutual efforts they have made to do this in their own
+lifetimes. They founded the first clinic for birth control in the
+British Empire, which under their supervision has steadily progressed.
+
+[Illustration: Dr. Marie Stopes at the time of her marriage to Mr. H.
+V. Roe. 1918.]
+
+His meeting with Dr. Marie Stopes took place just before he went to
+France, but on his return he and she decided to marry as soon as he was
+allowed out of hospital, and arrangements were made for the marriage to
+take place at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, the Bishop of Birmingham, an
+old friend of Dr. Stopes, and Mr. Roe’s uncle, the Rev. Russell Napier,
+the Vicar of Old Windsor, were to officiate. The demand for officers
+was then so great however that he was ordered to the front sooner
+than had been anticipated, and they were hastily and secretly married
+a month earlier than had been planned, at the Registrar’s Office at
+Westminster. Then, fortunately, his orders were changed, and the
+religious marriage at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, could proceed. The
+couple were then in the amusing position of having been really married
+a month when, with all due pomp and solemnity, they were in the eyes of
+the world, being married for the first time. No one but myself, and one
+other friend,--not even the bride’s mother--had been informed of the
+first marriage hastily arranged in view of the tragic possibilities at
+that time.
+
+Humphrey Verdon Roe had many years previously determined to retire
+from business at 40, and, after his marriage, he and his wife decided,
+when the war should be over, to devote their whole leisure to public
+service in one form or another. In addition to his interest in birth
+control Mr. Roe, as an employer of labour, had often endeavoured to
+bring employers and employed to a better understanding, and he
+actively took up the work of the Industrial League and Council, joining
+its committee and furthering its efforts to promote Whitleyism. He was
+also interested in other public service, in particular, town planning.
+Dr. Stopes had for some time been living at Leatherhead, and as the
+district offered just the kind of beauty and facility of access to
+London they desired, he bought a beautiful property and they settled
+down at Givons Grove, where they now live.
+
+[Illustration: An Industrial Conference at Givons Grove.]
+
+After they had been married fifteen months their first baby son was
+born, a beautiful and well-built boy of 8-3/4 lb., whose tragic death,
+and all the attendant circumstances, involve a story too strange and
+horrible for me to tell here. Fortunately, their second son, who was
+born in 1924 (and who also weighed 8-3/4 lb. at birth), is another
+beautiful and sturdy baby, so like the first that he might be his own
+elder brother come to life again.
+
+Humphrey Verdon Roe was so severely injured in France, where he had a
+foot broken and two bones in his spine jarred, that he was invalided
+out of the Army before the close of the war. With the exception of
+a brief visit to Switzerland, he and his wife have done none of the
+travelling they had planned, but have lived very quietly since their
+marriage. Whatever strength each of them has had has been devoted
+principally to work in connection with birth control: the founding of
+the clinic for birth control, and the Society for Constructive Birth
+Control, of which H. V. Roe is honorary secretary. Further reference to
+this will be given later (p. 221).
+
+Those who, like myself, have often stayed at Givons Grove, know
+well how complete and real a marriage this is. Much is said of the
+Brownings’ ideal marriage, but here, in living fact, is another
+equally perfect in harmony and sentiment and in many respects more
+actively vital. Each with a pioneering instinct, though exercised
+in different directions, each serene in disregard of their own
+immediate advancement, each having an almost childlike sentiment and
+sensitiveness, they have strengthened and completed each other in the
+happiest way. No reference to life at Givons Grove would be complete
+without mention of their beloved Chow dog, who goes everywhere with
+them, even on their honeymoons, and whose affectionate disposition fits
+well into the home life there.
+
+[Illustration: Dr. Stopes, seated, with her husband’s father and
+mother.]
+
+[Illustration: Mr. H. V. Roe and “Wuffles” as a puppy.]
+
+I am convinced that Dr. Stopes is one of those rare people whose mental
+and moral energy never allows them to rest long on their oars, but who
+when they have mastered one problem have to engage on another. The mere
+diversity of tasks she has already undertaken indicates this, including
+as it does a considerable body of important scientific work, besides
+elementary text-books, a book of travels, a book of poems, plays, a
+cinema story, and fairy tales, as well as the series of works on sex
+that have had such a large circulation here, and have been translated
+into French, German, Swedish, Danish, Czeck, Polish, Roumanian, Dutch
+and Spanish. This forms a surprisingly varied output for anyone, and
+still more for a woman of her age, and there is every reason to expect
+much more from her yet.
+
+The characteristics observable when one gets to know her well are a
+curious blend of feminine charm with a trenchant intellectuality such
+as one rarely encounters. She is clear-headed, but not of the aridly
+intellectual type; on the contrary she frequently jumps to conclusions
+by a kind of intuition, though she verifies and tests them afterwards.
+I have already alluded to the exceptional tenacity--some people would
+say obstinacy--with which she clings to her purpose, great or small,
+and also to the surprising frequency with which she reaches her aim
+when an onlooker does not see at all why she should. Perhaps I may
+illustrate this by an example. When her husband bought Givons Grove,
+Dr. Stopes set to work to beautify and decorate it, a task for which
+she is highly qualified. Well, at Givons Grove she resolved, among
+other things, that the upper part of the dining-room walls were to be
+painted a particular shade of blue. It was war-time, and after the
+decorators at her instigation had tried a dozen different sources,
+they declared the required paint to be quite unobtainable. Dr. Stopes
+would not have the walls painted any other colour. About that time she
+underwent the serious operation previously mentioned, and stayed at
+Torquay to recuperate. The first day she was strong enough to go
+out, she asked a policeman to direct her to the best oil and colour
+shop in the town. He did so, and on reaching it Dr. Stopes asked for
+two pots of the shade of blue paint she required. The shop-keeper said
+he had none of it, but Dr. Stopes insisted he had. She said she must
+have it, and would he please be quick and examine the stock in his
+cellar, as she was not at all well and very weak, did not want to wait
+long, and _knew_ he had it in the shop. She was, in fact, by this time
+so exhausted with weakness as to be almost collapsing over the counter
+at which she sat. The man replied that he had no cellar; but, on being
+questioned, he admitted that he had a small attic, and at her bidding
+he went to see what was there. He soon returned, having to his surprise
+found just two pots of the identical shade required, which Dr. Stopes
+promptly purchased, and the paint from which is now on her dining-room
+walls.
+
+[Illustration: Members of the Birth Rate Commission. The Bishop of
+Birmingham in the centre. Dr. Stopes on his left.]
+
+[Illustration: Dr. Marie Stopes and her Baby, Harry Verdon Stopes-Roe,
+aged 3 months.]
+
+Physically Dr. Stopes matured slowly, and must have been nearly thirty
+before her sex-instincts were at all fully developed. Slowness of
+development does not however imply any incompleteness, and besides
+being very happily married, she is the mother of an unusually fine
+baby: a particularly bonny, healthy little chap, whom she nurses
+herself and who, in the first six months of his life, has never had a
+wakeful night, and spends all his waking daylight hours laughing and
+crowing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+“MARRIED LOVE” AND ITS DEVELOPMENTS.
+
+
+The book, _Married Love_, was the outcome of Dr. Stopes’s scientific
+investigation of her own case, in the course of which, as already
+mentioned, she had read in the British Museum and elsewhere nearly
+everything that mattered on cognate subjects. This research revealed
+to her the great gaps that exist in the information available to
+ordinary people, as well as the lack of a book of instruction in
+sex, sufficiently simple to be understood, scientifically accurate,
+yet sympathetic, and written with a basis of romance and poetry,
+which she deemed to be the atmosphere in which alone the subject can
+properly be broached. In addition to this, she made a very fundamental
+physiological discovery on the subject of women’s spontaneous
+sex-rhythm and potential response to sex appeal. Concerning this Dr.
+Stopes brought to the science of human physiology a contribution which
+has already had, and should yet have, far-reaching sociological
+results. In her chapter on Rhythm, together with charts, a fundamental
+law was laid down, or rather the existence of it was detected, but
+couched in simple and direct language suitable for the readers of any
+ordinary book instead of for the _Transactions_ of a learned Society.
+Its profound value has still perhaps not been fully realized, although
+it was followed up by Havelock Ellis, whose reference to it has already
+been quoted.
+
+_Married Love_, drafted at first to crystallize her own ideas, was
+approximately completed in 1914, but Dr. Stopes then made no definite
+effort to publish it, and it was early in 1918 before she felt that
+the time for it was absolutely ripe and that it should immediately
+be published. I had read it in manuscript, and thought it of great
+interest, but I did not think it would find a ready market, and
+told her she would be fortunate if 2,000 copies of it were sold in
+twenty years in the form in which it was being published. In her
+usual independent way Dr. Marie Stopes laughed, and her laughter was
+justified, for the first 2,000 copies were sold in a fortnight. The
+second and third editions were sold without a single advertisement,
+and Mr. Fifield, who was the original publisher, soon began to be
+oppressed with the burden of keeping the market supplied. When Dr.
+Marie Stopes, who knew him to be in general an active, efficient and
+capable publisher, went to him with the book (sole control of which
+she retained), she asked him in the initial interview whether he could
+deal with a book likely to sell by the ten thousand for some years,
+and probably ultimately by the million, and Mr. Fifield assured her
+that such was his capacity and desire. He put his heart into the
+publication of the book, and it owes much to his initial care. When,
+however, it had begun to get into the ten thousands the successful
+author was rather astonished to receive urgent telegrams from the
+publisher saying, “Stop this boom,” and letters bewailing that he had
+to sit up all night to deal with the orders, and she was startled to
+find that where she had ordered a printing of 10,000 copies he had cut
+it down to 7,000. She pathetically remarked, “Most publishers, I should
+have thought, would be only too glad to have an author who helped them
+sell their books,” particularly when no financial responsibility was
+involved. In order to get the book out early in 1918, when paper was
+at a premium, Dr. Marie Stopes took everything in hand herself, and
+within three weeks of deciding it should be published, had it on the
+market. She bought the paper herself, and had to go from one wholesaler
+to another to obtain the supplies of paper needed for the successive
+reprintings, as paper was at that time rationed, and it was no small
+achievement to have kept the book on the market in the way it was.
+Ultimately, as Mr. Fifield was in any case retiring from business, in
+the most friendly fashion she transferred the book to Messrs. Putnam,
+who have published since then.
+
+When first bringing out _Married Love_ I remember hearing Dr. Stopes
+say that she thought knowledge on these sex matters now so urgent and
+so well worth her time that she would risk her academic position in
+London University and everything short of life itself to bring it out.
+She was quite prepared to be imprisoned. The one thing she was not
+prepared for was the avalanche of thanks and heartfelt gratitude, the
+thousands and tens of thousands of touching letters which inundated
+her from all parts of the world. Indeed, for the first year or two
+after the publication of _Married Love_ Dr. Stopes’s life was made
+a positive burden by grateful readers. She had deliberately in this
+book said very little on the subject of birth control, deeming it a
+minor matter, for _Married Love_ presupposes a knowledge of birth
+control, and was planned to give instruction in the general problems
+facing potentially happy married people. But such a large number of
+her letters were not only from private individuals requiring birth
+control help, but from those who had been to their doctors and been
+refused information, or whose doctors knew nothing satisfactory to
+tell them, and so large a proportion were from medical men themselves
+thanking her for the information she gave and asking for more, that it
+became impossible to reply to the individual letters, and instead of
+a letter she wrote a very small book called _Wise Parenthood_, which
+was first published in paper covers as a pamphlet. This has grown, and
+been kept up-to-date as a small book concerning several methods of
+contraception, and is planned for the general reader. Public memory
+is very short, and it may not be generally realized or remembered how
+great has been the effect of Dr. Stopes’s outspoken and scientific
+work on the subject of sex in general and contraception in particular.
+Before 1918 it was the exceptional doctor who was able and willing to
+give contraceptive information to his parents; to-day the position is
+almost reversed. After some time a further need became apparent, for
+a centre where trained experts could give personal advice to the very
+large number of people who require individual attention and cannot
+follow written instructions, and Dr. Stopes and Mr. Roe often spoke of
+the idea of a clinic and endeavoured to urge suitable societies and
+institutions to found one. Everyone feared to do so and shirked the
+responsibility. At last they said: “We seem to be the only two people
+independent enough, and with the necessary freedom, resources, and
+determination, to do it. No one can oust us from our positions, no one
+can stop us; obviously _we have got to do it ourselves_.”
+
+The first birth control clinic in the British Empire therefore was
+founded by Dr. Marie Stopes and her husband in 1921 as a demonstration
+of what was needed throughout the country. It was deliberately kept
+small and simple, because they did not desire, as reformers often do,
+to create a large institution with an expensive staff, but desired
+to demonstrate how, with a simple everyday shop and rooms, easy of
+access, with equipment costing only a small sum well within the means
+of every welfare centre in the country, the knowledge of the control
+of conception could be brought to the very poor and ignorant. As they
+explain in the little brochure describing the first foundation of the
+clinic: “Here mothers will be considered not only as the producers of
+mere babies, _but as the creators of splendid babies_. Only motherhood
+which is in the control of the mother, can now truly advance our
+race.... Birth control knowledge will be given not in the crude
+repulsive form it is advocated in some quarters, but as the keystone in
+the arch of progress towards racial health and happiness.”
+
+In order not to be hampered by the conflict of ideas and ideals, no
+committee was organized in connection with this first clinic, but a
+number of distinguished persons from different social circles kindly
+showed their interest in the work by lending their names as patrons,
+including several distinguished medical men and women. The clinic was
+opened on March 17, 1921, and its simple accommodation was very soon
+overtaxed to such an extent that it has hardly dared to advertise its
+existence since the first great meeting of welcome which was held at
+the Queen’s Hall.
+
+Dr. Stopes served as a member both on the Cinema Commission and on the
+Birth Rate Commission. The latter in its previous Report had dealt with
+birth control questions, and in the Sessions arranged for 1920-1921
+intended not to deal with that subject. Dr. Stopes was willing to take
+no active part in drawing attention to it; but witness after witness
+skirted so near the subject in giving evidence, that questions on it
+were unavoidable, and it ultimately became one of the most important
+topics before this Commission as it had been on the former one.
+
+At the conclusion, however, contrary to the weight of the evidence, a
+majority of the Commission signed a reservation opposed to scientific
+birth control; whereupon a minority resolution was drawn up by Dr.
+Marie Stopes, which was signed by Lord and Lady Willoughby de Broke,
+Dr. C. W. Saleeby and herself.
+
+About the time of the foundation of the clinic Dr. Marie Stopes, in
+connection with coal mining and other work, was to some extent in
+touch with Downing Street and met the Prime Minister personally, who
+naturally could not at that stage commit himself to any open approval
+of a subject which had not yet been voiced in a reputable public
+manner. He said to her however, “Show us that there is a public behind
+you; hold great meetings. There has never been a really _respectable_
+great meeting on the subject in the country.” Dr. Marie Stopes
+responded. “All right,” she said, “I will take the Queen’s Hall myself
+and pack it,” and this she did without any committee or backing beyond
+that of a small number of private friends, and a brilliant platform of
+speakers gathered round her. The Hall itself was packed to overflowing,
+and the phrase “Constructive Birth Control” coined and set in
+circulation. An American journalist who was present said: “That meeting
+took my breath away; twice you knocked us sideways. Once by daring to
+do it at all, and the second time when you gave us that idea that birth
+control could be _constructive_, a pro-baby idea; we had always thought
+of it as a purely negative and repressive movement.” Letters of cordial
+approval and support were sent for public reading at this meeting by
+Miss Maude Royden, Lady Constance Lytton, the Lady Glenconnor, Sir
+James Barr, C.B.E., M.D., and many others.
+
+Speeches were made by Rt. Hon. G. H. Roberts, Dr. Jane L. Hawthorne,
+Dr. Killick Millard, Admiral Sir Percy Scott, Councillor H. V. Roe, Dr.
+Marie Stopes, and myself.
+
+All the speeches were reported verbatim, and are published in a
+pamphlet,[1] together with some impressions of the meeting by people
+who were present.
+
+Dr. Jane Hawthorne said:
+
+  “I am here this evening to represent those who have neither the
+  opportunity nor the power to make their own appeal, and therefore I
+  am anxious to put before you as clearly as possible the position of
+  the very poor, hard-worked wife and mother.... The other week a woman
+  came into one of our clinics to tell us that in twelve years she was
+  the mother of nine children, and of these two only were alive, and
+  this, ladies and gentlemen, is the history of that family.”
+
+After giving terrible details of this and a second family, Dr.
+Hawthorne continued:
+
+  “Another woman, whom I know well, comes regularly to the Infant
+  Welfare Clinic every eighteen months with a new baby, and that mother
+  is mentally deficient, whilst her husband is deaf and dumb. None of
+  these children are normal, and so they are born to very quickly find
+  their way into the hospitals, the asylums and other institutions.
+
+  “These, ladies and gentlemen, are only a few--a very few--of the
+  hundreds of similar cases which one meets with in the year, and
+  yet it seems to me that these few voice an appeal which ought to
+  be irresistible to those of us who have ears to hear, and those
+  of us who have the knowledge and power to help. By what right
+  do we withhold this knowledge and take upon ourselves so great a
+  responsibility?”
+
+In the course of her own speech Dr. Stopes said:
+
+  “Sometimes those who feel intensely with me, yet shrink from doing
+  anything for the poor mothers, because they think that by so helping
+  them young girls and others will learn methods of birth control and
+  may thus be sent downhill on a life they ought not to embark upon.
+  So I want to make it clear once and for all that such an idea must
+  not be allowed to hinder us. One of the very first experiences in the
+  Birth Control Clinic was a strong case to show how misguided that
+  would be. The second person who came to my Clinic when it was first
+  opened came on behalf of a girl of twenty who was pregnant for the
+  sixth time! And every previous time she had had an abortion performed
+  by her own mother! We, of course, had no help for that girl. We
+  cannot deal with such cases. Yet it shows that in that terrible
+  underworld of misery and anguish which we selfish, self-centred,
+  lazy people so seldom visualize and understand, there _is_ already
+  ‘knowledge’ of a kind. ‘Knowledge’ is going round which is utterly
+  detrimental, utterly unwholesome and tragic in its effects. The
+  true knowledge which we are bringing to counteract that is clean
+  and wholesome, and is pure physiological information to replace the
+  miserable half-knowledge which already exists.
+
+  “Then, too, another aspect of my Birth Control Clinic is lit up
+  by the fact that by the word ‘control’ I mean CONTROL. It is
+  extraordinary how the words ‘birth control’ have become associated
+  with a negative and repressive movement. Now, in my opinion, control
+  consists in being able to go uphill just as well as to go downhill;
+  to turn to the right as well as to the left. I will tell you the
+  story of one woman who came a fortnight ago.
+
+  “She was one of the type that certain clergymen in their pulpits
+  would refer to as ‘those wicked women who refuse maternity.’ All
+  through her marriage she had openly declared she did not want
+  children. But to me she came for help and said: ‘I have been married
+  seventeen years and have not had a child.’ I asked her whether she
+  wished she had one and she said: ‘Of course, _of course_ I want a
+  child, but I’ve never told anyone; I pretend that I do not want one
+  because I can’t get it,’ and then she cried, and exclaimed: ‘I would
+  give my life, and suffer any torture to have a child.’ We gave her
+  information which I think will help, and I hope that in about nine
+  months there may be a Clinic baby in that home.”
+
+There have been many other cases yielding “Clinic babies” since then.
+
+Dr. Stopes continued:
+
+  “Another incredible thing is the general lack of knowledge about sex
+  and all the wonderful and beautiful mysteries of marriage. The extent
+  of this ignorance is extraordinary. Do you know we had five cases of
+  people married for years, and in each case the husband has not known
+  how to play his part, and the wife is still a virgin and she wonders
+  why she does not have a child!...
+
+  “We have already to-day sufficient sound physiological knowledge to,
+  from this moment (if one could only get everyone to know of it),
+  check the birth of every diseased, unhealthy, unprepared-for child.
+  We really can, as Dr. Killick Millard quoted, stem at the source
+  this incessant stream of misery which is always greater than our
+  resources can deal with.
+
+  “How great this misery, and how great the expense of it is to
+  our race, can be found by reading a few of these Blue-books. You
+  could very advantageously spend a few shillings at Imperial House,
+  Kingsway, buying Reports in regard to prisons, costs of maintenance
+  of schools of detention for the feeble-minded, asylums for the blind,
+  schools for the defective, and so forth. Surely it is far better to
+  spend the money on healthy, happy children who cost us far less per
+  head than the wastrels! (Applause.)
+
+  “To get rid of the wastrels in a Christian way we must see that they
+  are not born.
+
+  “Beyond this, this ideal which I present is not _merely_ that we
+  shall be simply healthy people and have only healthy children born;
+  it is further that we shall consciously step forward to a greater
+  potentiality of health, beauty, happiness, and understanding of life.
+  An old false idea, which early got incorporated into Christianity, is
+  that the enjoyment of beauty and sex-life in marriage was a wrong,
+  or at any rate a lesser thing than the ascetic and repressed life.
+  That idea is now doing us infinite harm. It is a lower and baser
+  ideal which was suited to the earlier stages of evolution, but we
+  have now passed through the stages of human evolution, when that
+  idea is of any further use. The ideal which humanity to-day needs is
+  the ideal of a full joyous life of real understanding, coupled with
+  control, and with the full use of every beautiful aspect of the life
+  of man and woman together....
+
+  “I absolutely deny that the so-called ‘self-control’ which consists
+  of the ascetic repressing of mutual love between man and woman is a
+  high ideal. It was a temporary ideal suited to a phase of life in
+  which there was no scientific knowledge. I now say quite clearly that
+  the truest and a far higher ideal is for a man and woman to love each
+  other profoundly as a pair of individuals, and to benefit by that
+  love and interchange which each needs from the other. And at the same
+  time, but as a separate conscious act, to create only those children
+  for which they have sufficient means, sufficient love, and sufficient
+  health. That is to say, that married lovers should play the part of
+  parents _only_ when they can add individuals of value to the race.”
+
+Following Dr. Stopes, I said:
+
+  “Some three or four thousand years ago Moses and his successors,
+  using the scientific knowledge of their times, and well understanding
+  the difficulties and dangers of the small Jewish tribe they
+  represented, formulated a code of morality based on the broad
+  common-sense principle that everything possible should be done to
+  induce their women to bear as many children as possible for fear
+  the race should be exterminated by the hostile nations and the wild
+  beasts that surrounded them on all sides.
+
+  “That morality no longer fits our case to-day. If every woman in
+  England were induced to bear a score of children the resulting misery
+  would totally eclipse the sufferings caused by the Great War. It
+  was very well 3,000 years ago to say: ‘Happy is the man that hath
+  his quiver full of them (i.e., children); they shall not be ashamed
+  when they speak with their enemies in the gate.’ With twenty fine,
+  strapping sons of his own, he could indeed talk ‘like a father’ to
+  any foe.
+
+  “But times have changed. We no longer insist on a man going to his
+  deceased brother’s widow to perform the husband’s duty and raise
+  up seed to increase the family. We even place obstacles in the way
+  of his marrying his deceased brother’s widow if he wants to. Then
+  again, we do not tolerate public polygamy in the old-fashioned way,
+  and we should be much scandalized if we had a king whose matrimonial
+  experiences were as melancholy and as multitudinous as those of King
+  Solomon.
+
+  “Evidently in our new conditions we need some clear guidance suited
+  to our present-day conditions, but which shall preserve the spirit
+  of ancient religion by dealing with the questions of marriage and
+  motherhood on lines as clear, broad, reasonable, and humane, as were
+  the precepts of Mosaic morality for the people and time when they
+  were formulated. It is not creditable to those who now sit in Moses’s
+  seat that they have made no serious attempt to do this. They have
+  tithed the mint and anise of church ceremonies and legal enactments
+  while forgetting the weightier matters necessary to the promotion
+  of healthy and happy homes for men and women rearing cheerier and
+  sturdier offspring to fill our places when we have passed to the
+  Great Beyond. It was under these circumstances that Dr. Stopes, three
+  years ago, produced her great work, ‘Married Love,’ which has since
+  been followed by ‘Radiant Motherhood’ and other works.
+
+  “These offer sound and sane guidance which we can oppose to the
+  quackery, ignorant confusion of thought, and ascetic malignity, of
+  those who love the darkness rather than the light. That is why I wish
+  particularly to emphasize the thanks due to Dr. Marie Stopes.”
+
+Mrs. Zangwill, the authoress, wrote of that meeting:
+
+  “I had not heard Dr. Stopes speak in public before, and so was
+  unprepared for the beauty of her voice, and the amazing way in which
+  it carries. She put forward yet another aspect of the case. Birth
+  control is control and not negation, she insisted. Her clinic is not
+  only to prevent the unwanted baby; it is to produce the wanted. She
+  touched on instances of disastrous marital ignorance--ignorance that
+  is only possible through our ignoring the most important subject in
+  life--the subject that _is_ life.”
+
+It seemed that the enthusiasm and interest showed at this meeting
+should not be allowed to die down with no permanent growth, and
+consequently a Society was founded to carry on birth control propaganda
+and work on the lines indicated at the meeting. The Society for
+Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress was founded at the
+Hotel Cecil on August 16, 1921, Mr. H. V. Roe being elected honorary
+secretary and Dr. Marie Stopes president, with a distinguished
+committee and list of vice-presidents. In a few weeks this Society
+secured more public support than the old Malthusian League had done
+in forty years, for it was run in a way more in keeping with the
+feeling of the time, a yearning for constructive help for a pro-baby
+organization which recognized the sacredness of motherhood and the need
+of knowledge to space babies so as to give the best conditions for both
+mother and child. This spirit is embodied in the tenets of the Society
+(see Appendix C). Regular meetings have been held in London, and a
+number of others all over the country, which have stimulated men and
+women in many directions, so that now the birth control movement is a
+powerful constructive movement in the country, though it is not yet
+fully organized, nor are its adherents all conscious of how large is
+the number of those who, like themselves, privately approve but still
+fear their next door neighbour--who also probably privately approves,
+but fears to say so.
+
+Following her first presidential address to the Constructive Birth
+Control Society, Dr. Marie Stopes responded to an invitation to speak
+in the Town Hall in New York, and “popped across” the Atlantic for a
+three-days’ visit. She found herself compelled to stay five days, as
+there was no suitable return sailing, and during that time she gave an
+address to the first great meeting on the subject in the Town Hall in
+New York, a verbatim report of which was published by the Voluntary
+Parenthood League; besides which she spoke at some private drawing-room
+meetings at which the formation of clinics for birth control in America
+was discussed and a scheme set on foot.
+
+Dr. Stopes’s little book, “Truth About Venereal Disease,” had the
+good fortune to be mentioned with praise and approval in the House of
+Lords by the presidents of both the then opposing Societies that were
+combating the evil--Lord Gorell and Lord Willoughby de Broke--and it
+did something towards the object with which it was written, namely, the
+unification of the opposing factions.
+
+The Society for Constructive Birth Control, finding the press
+indifferent, needed an organ, and when it held its first public dinner
+(a very successful affair), Dr. Marie Stopes produced from under her
+dinner napkin, as a surprise, the first number of the _Birth Control
+News_, which was circulated among the guests. This monthly, in the
+form of an ordinary newspaper so as to be readable and attractive to
+the man-in-the-street, has ever since then chronicled the world-wide
+development and interest in birth control, which is now beginning to be
+recognized by thinkers in all directions as one of the most useful and
+urgent subjects for social consideration.
+
+When _Married Love_ was first published Dr. Marie Stopes won the
+approval of almost everyone, as it was written in a sympathetic strain
+of idealism. With its plea for temperate wholesome living and the
+spread of sound knowledge it was difficult to disagree, and she had
+too, in the first six editions of the book, the cordially expressed
+support of a Roman Catholic priest of the Society of Jesus, who said:
+
+
+“DEAR DR. STOPES,--
+
+  “I have read _Married Love_ with deep interest. As a piece of
+  thoughtful, scientific writing I find it admirable throughout, and
+  it seems to me that your theme could not have been treated in more
+  beautiful or more delicate language, or with a truer ring of sympathy
+  for those who, through ignorance or want of thought, make shipwreck
+  of their married happiness.
+
+  “Your clear exposition of the rhythmic curve of sex-feeling and of
+  the misinterpretation on the part of so many husbands of what they
+  call their wives’ contrariness, arising from their ignorance of its
+  existence, should bring happiness to many married couples whose lives
+  are drifting apart through want of knowledge. In the exercise of my
+  ministry I have repeatedly traced the beginnings of the rift to this
+  want of knowledge, and consequently of sympathy.
+
+  “So far we are in complete agreement, but our ways part when you
+  treat of birth control.”
+
+Then follow the usual Roman Catholic objections to birth control, in
+the course of which he says:
+
+  “Let me take in illustration of my meaning the case you give of the
+  worn-out mother of twelve. The Catholic belief is that the loss
+  of health on her part for a few years of life and the diminished
+  vitality on the part of her later children would be a very small
+  price indeed to pay for an endless happiness on the part of all.”
+
+He does not explain why “endless happiness” should be obtained by
+irrational conduct, but concludes his letter with the words:
+
+  “I cannot end without thanking you very sincerely for allowing me
+  to read your book. Apart from what, as a Catholic, I object to in
+  it, it contains so much most helpful matter that I feel sure it will
+  bring to many a happiness in married life now wanting through the
+  ignorance and the consequent want of sympathy which you so rightly
+  deplore.”
+
+After Dr. Stopes and her husband founded the clinic however, and
+thus came into the arena not merely as dreamers and talkers, but
+as people who were practically active, hostilities arose of which
+something will be said in the next chapter. These pioneers naturally
+enough encountered sporadic animosity often in unexpected quarters,
+and sometimes, much to their distress and surprise, in the very
+quarters from which they had expected helpful co-operation; but no
+organized opposition exists except in one direction, namely, in the
+official attitude of the Roman Catholic Church and its associates,
+which became actively hostile after the founding of the clinic. Until
+then many Roman Catholics had been Dr. Stopes’s ardent admirers and
+public supporters, but after that date they were forbidden to express
+public approval, and were positively encouraged to suppress knowledge
+of her and of her work, as well as to pursue a hostile policy. These
+hostilities began to take the form of scurrilous articles in the press,
+which Dr. Stopes was advised to ignore. Later however a Roman Catholic
+medical practitioner published a book which contained statements
+against which Dr. Stopes, as the leader of a movement, felt herself
+bound to take legal proceedings. Owing to the fact that at the time of
+writing an appeal is before the House of Lords, this case is still _sub
+judice_, and cannot be discussed in detail; but I may be permitted to
+say that among its remarkable features were the medical contradictions
+voiced by the defendant’s witnesses. In the _Birth Control News_ for
+November, 1923, some of this medical evidence was analysed.
+
+This case, though costing Dr. Stopes many thousands of pounds and
+incalculable worry and waste of time, did not hinder the birth control
+movement; on the contrary it gave it a great advertisement and educated
+large numbers of people into becoming sympathizers who had previously
+held aloof not realizing the issue at stake. All over the country,
+meetings continued to be held on the whole question of contraception,
+social economics, and sex life. Among the larger meetings addressed
+by Mr. H. V. Roe and Dr. Marie Stopes was one at Stockport, organized
+by the Labour Party, which was attended by a packed audience of 3,000.
+A couple of thousand squeezed into the Central Hall in Edinburgh; a
+meeting of 1,000 was held in the Battersea Town Hall; a meeting of over
+1,000 in Liverpool.
+
+Previously, in 1922, a meeting had been held at the Town Hall at
+Deptford, when the mayor in office officially countenanced the meeting
+by taking the chair. Delicate health alone has prevented Dr. Marie
+Stopes from “stumping the country”; for a few years ago she had to
+undergo a serious operation, and has never regained sufficient strength
+to travel as she did previously. From the point of view of the movement
+this is unfortunate, for undoubtedly the time is ripe, and Dr. Marie
+Stopes, going from town to town, would set fire to the great mass of
+public opinion now smouldering red hot in its demand that birth control
+shall be made available at the Welfare Centres, or in small clinics all
+over the country, and that the self-respecting, thrifty, and healthy,
+members of the community shall no longer be burdened with the upkeep
+of large families of C3’s and wastrels who are on the rates, and, still
+more important, that the enslavement of mother shall no longer exist
+among us.
+
+Unable herself to speak night after night, she devised the idea of
+making others speak for her, and wrote a play. Nothing has so far been
+said here of Dr. Stopes’s interest in the drama. That also is, perhaps,
+inherited from her mother’s passionate interest in Shakespeare. But I
+know that if she had not so many other calls on her time, she would
+have devoted herself to the drama. As it is she has published an
+interesting volume on the _No_ plays of Japan (see p. 110 and Appendix
+A), one of which was produced at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre,
+besides being set to music by Boughton and performed several times
+by the Glastonbury Festival Company. She has also published two or
+three modern plays besides “Our Ostriches.” One of them, “Conquest,”
+is symptomatic of the tendencies which led up to the inception of the
+League of Nations.
+
+The birth control play, “Our Ostriches,” ran at the Royal Court
+Theatre, London, for three months, and contained an amusing scene in
+which a Commission (a replica of many official Commissions) sat on
+the stage, the heroine of the play eliciting ardent applause every
+night from the audience. “Our Ostriches” afforded Dr. Marie Stopes the
+experience of a riotously successful first night, when, in reply to
+calls for “Author,” she gave a short speech in which she mentioned that
+this birth control play had been permitted, but another play of hers, a
+pro-baby one, had been blocked by the Lord Chamberlain.
+
+
+[1] _Queen’s Hall Meeting on Constructive Birth Control._ Putnam’s
+Sons, Ltd. 1921. 1s. net.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+OPPONENTS.
+
+
+No one of so dynamic a temperament could pass through life without
+making some enemies and rousing opposition, but until recent years
+the number of Dr. Stopes’s opponents or enemies was remarkably few.
+Before she published “Married Love” she once said to me: “I believe
+the only people who do not like me, and try to minimize what I do, are
+the men who have made love to me--and, of course, to whom I have not
+been able to respond.” There were also a few small-minded wives of the
+professional men with whom she came in contact, whose instinct was
+to feel that any woman who could enter into the intellectual fields
+pursued by their husbands must be dangerous, but beyond these trifling
+and sporadic difficulties she might be said to have had no enemies
+until she encountered the Roman Catholics. That she encountered them,
+purely by accident, was due to the publication of her book of poems,
+_Man, Other Poems and a Preface_. Up to that date she had not realized
+that such a thing as organized Roman Catholic hostility to any person
+existed, nor, consequently, that it was possible to arouse it, and
+she was much surprised to find she had aroused the rabid hostility of
+a botanist on the staff of the British Museum, Mr. James Britten. He
+was a Roman Catholic and an exceedingly active worker for the Catholic
+Truth Society.
+
+Dr. Stopes tried, but failed, to make him understand she had had no
+intention of offending Roman Catholics, and could not imagine that
+they would apply to themselves the words of her poem, as she had no
+antagonistic thought when they were penned. The hostility of this Roman
+Catholic botanical editor was unappeasable however.
+
+Warned by this previous encounter, when she published _Married Love_,
+she thought she would secure herself by obtaining a commendation from a
+Roman Catholic, and, as previously mentioned (see p. 155), she obtained
+a most cordial foreword of approval of the book from a member of the
+Society of Jesus. Undoubtedly this safeguarded the first appearance
+of the work, which was hailed by many Roman Catholics and was pushed
+actively by them in many directions until her more practical work in
+the foundation of a birth control clinic aroused the hostility of the
+Church of Rome. Thereafter her books were taboo, the cordial treatment
+she had received from many experienced Catholics who well knew the
+value of her work was quenched, and organized hostility against her was
+instituted which, to those who have not themselves suffered from such
+organized hostility, may appear incredible in England in the twentieth
+century. What Dr. Stopes has to tell of underground opposition would
+fill a volume, and includes whispered slander of the most personal
+kind, definite tales and stories circulated in London clubs, some of
+which sound very plausible, for almost correct anecdotes about her are
+subtly twisted to convey a false meaning. Almost every newspaper has
+been bombarded by her enemies.
+
+In illustration, let me note what happened in _The Times_. Up to the
+date of this hostility, and after the publication of _Married Love_,
+Dr. Marie Stopes had always had very kindly treatment from _The Times_
+newspaper. She was, for instance, one of the few people of a literary
+tendency who had never had a letter refused for publication, nor an
+article rejected. Indeed, one day she took down an article of a column
+length and said: “This simply _must_ go in to-morrow, and I hope you
+will put it in,” and it appeared. Other papers would often telegraph to
+her to send articles by return, but since the Roman Catholic campaign
+against her began changes in the attitude of the newspaper press became
+so remarkable that some details of them should be mentioned. One may
+say, in general, that editors and advertisement managers are very busy
+people whose chief contact with their public is through correspondence,
+and that if they receive two or three dozen letters expressing more
+or less similar opinions, they are apt to imagine that these letters
+represent a general feeling, and to allow themselves to be guided by
+them.
+
+A skilfully organized campaign of anonymous and also of signed letters,
+against Dr. Stopes and the work that she stands for, is a part of the
+Roman Catholic campaign. Evidence of this appeared in the course of
+the trial in the High Court between herself and Dr. Sutherland, a Roman
+Catholic, when, before giving judgment, Lord Justice Scrutton made the
+following statement:--
+
+  “Since we reserved judgment in this case I, in common with other
+  members of the Court, have been pestered by anonymous communications
+  all proceeding from and advocating the side of the defendant.
+  Of course, I acquit the legal representatives of the defendant
+  absolutely of having anything to do with these communications. I have
+  also no reason to believe that the defendant himself had anything to
+  do with these communications, but I think it is right to say that
+  such communications are absolutely improper and are punishable as
+  contempt of Court.”
+
+Judges in the High Court are not, of course, swayed by correspondents,
+but letters fictitiously signed, or signed by persons paid to write
+them, in addition to those written by individuals who really feel what
+they write, are handy weapons to use against an opponent whose natural
+outlet through the press certain people wish to stop. The result of
+such influences is seen in _The Times’_ refusal of advertisements
+of her books for the last year or two, though they were previously
+advertised in its columns, as indeed in those of almost every other
+reputable paper in the country. _The Times_ also began to refuse the
+lecture announcements of the C.B.C. Society when they contained Dr.
+Stopes’ name as taking the chair, and it was necessary to see one of
+the Directors to get this ban lifted, as it has recently been, since
+when the Society’s announcements have regularly appeared. Still more
+incredible seems the fact that a double advertisement of the birth
+of her son was refused by _The Times_, although the announcement
+was worded in the simplest and quite usual form,[2] first, under
+the surname “Roe”; second, under the surname “Stopes” (as the baby
+will have both surnames, Stopes-Roe), and in the exact wording of
+the announcement which appeared in the _Morning Post_, the _Daily
+Telegraph_, and other first-class papers. Moreover this refusal was
+not made to an employee, but personally to Mr. Roe, who took the
+advertisement himself to all the offices that there should be no
+mistake. After the birth of her son Dr. Marie Stopes was seriously ill
+for a long time.--As a consequence of her world-wide travels she has
+many friends in various parts of the world who are anxious to have
+news of her. _The Times_ is the principal paper to penetrate Embassies
+and outlying British homes, and was therefore practically the only
+convenient medium of communication with those friends, but a short
+paragraph for the Social Column, announcing that she was out of danger,
+was also refused, and friends consequently remained in ignorance of the
+state of her health, although a little later on an advertisement was
+accepted by a different department for the personal column. Neither Dr.
+Stopes nor her friends attribute such disheartening incidents to any
+definite policy on the part of the press, but to the sporadic successes
+her enemies achieve through individuals who come directly or indirectly
+under their influence.
+
+_The Times_ report of the Sutherland case had been quite fair, yet in
+its legal columns reporting her application against two Roman Catholic
+editors, the words of her own Counsel, as also of the Judge, were
+altered so as to degrade her from being “Dr. Stopes” to “Mrs. Stopes.”
+On the day that this appeared, her solicitor wrote to _The Times_
+drawing the editor’s attention to this mistake. Nevertheless a few days
+later in the Judgment of Mr. Justice Roche _The Times_ report again
+altered his words so as to alter her description, and this in a case
+in which the title to which, as a learned Doctor of Science, she is by
+Act of Parliament entitled, was of material importance to her. This is
+amazing, considering the reputation _The Times_ has long enjoyed for
+accuracy, and the fact that it is frequently referred to in Court as
+evidence of what has occurred.
+
+It is hard to calculate what Dr. Stopes’s movement has lost by the
+absence of the normal press publicity and support to which her work is
+entitled, and which it would no doubt have continued to receive from
+the press had it not been for the machinations of the Roman Catholics,
+for the public forms its opinions of persons and movements very largely
+by what it reads of them in the press.
+
+Those who wish to minimize her work sometimes say of Dr. Stopes: “But
+she is not a _proper_ doctor, and is therefore not qualified to deal
+with these matters.” But, in the first place, under the laws of the
+land, only the learned doctors of the various Faculties, that is to
+say, Doctors of Science, Doctors of Laws, Doctors of Medicine, Doctors
+of Music, Doctors of Divinity, and so on, are legally entitled to
+be called “Doctor,” though the practising medical profession very
+frequently and impudently appropriates that title, and many who are
+only Bachelors of Medicine, or even less, call themselves “Doctors,”
+and are so called by the public.
+
+An M.B. (_bachelor_ of medicine) is, of course, fully qualified to
+practise in this country as a physician, but this does not legally, and
+should not in any way, confuse him with the learned _doctors_. If a
+short name is wanted, he should be called a “Medico.” Dr. Marie Stopes,
+as a learned Doctor of Science, has more right to the title than the
+majority of the medical profession.
+
+It should also be pointed out that what the ordinary medico practises,
+he or she has learned from the Doctors of Biological and Medical
+Science. Pasteur was not a practising medical, but nearly the whole
+science of medicine now bases itself upon his scientific foundations.
+It is fully within the province of a learned Doctor of Biology to
+instruct practising medicals on the scientific bases of any advances in
+any branch of their science, and to contribute new knowledge to it. To
+give a more recent example, the late lamented Sir William Bayliss, the
+greatest physiologist in the world, was not a practising medical, but
+medical practitioners all over the world are proud to learn from him.
+
+Dr. Stopes has even lectured to medical students at more than one
+medical school. As a fully trained biologist she has published the
+first medical and scientific manual in any language on contraception.
+This book is entitled “Contraception: Its Theory, History and Practice,
+A Manual for the Medical and Legal Professions.” It is published by
+a Medical Publisher, and has been cordially received by the medical
+press, the _Lancet_ saying:
+
+  “Much of the evidence contained in the book is quite unobtainable
+  elsewhere.”
+
+Dr. Christopher Rolleston, a Medical Officer of Health, said of this
+publication:
+
+  “I predict a great success for the work, and I wish to record my
+  thanks to the author for her pioneer work in preventive medicine.”
+
+It is also warmly endorsed by Sir James Barr, M.D., a former president
+of the Medical Association, and many doctors from all over the world
+use it as the source of their practice.
+
+The fact is that the medical profession had in the past seriously
+neglected this subject, which greatly affects the health of the present
+and future generations. No instruction in the use of contraceptives
+was included in the training of doctors at any of our hospitals before
+Dr. Stopes’s work appeared, and practising doctors are generally too
+busy to investigate matters not included in their training, and even
+if they had the time, most of them lack the kind of training needed
+for original research in sex-problems and especially in the relation
+of those problems to women. Yet when a qualified woman scientist
+specializes in the matter and supplies what the doctors had failed to
+provide--the objection is raised that she does not belong to their
+trade union, and that matters should continue to be neglected till one
+of them some day finds time to deal with the matter.
+
+But while the doctors neglected the subject, another class of people
+were actively harmful in disseminating erroneous information. These
+were the Roman Catholic priests, whose celibacy, one would suppose,
+deprives them of sexual experience and renders them ill-qualified to
+deal with the problems of married life, even apart from the fact that a
+theological training is a poor substitute for the scientific training
+needed for the investigation of such questions.
+
+I have no feeling of ill-will towards the Roman Catholics, whose Church
+at various times has rendered great service to humanity, but I feel
+sure that many Catholics who value intellectual integrity must blush to
+read the pitiful futilities that are put forward as the Catholic case
+against birth control.
+
+Beyond the bald assertion that it is “wrong”--which, being the very
+question at issue, cannot be decided by mere assertion--they rely on an
+obvious misrepresentation of the plain meaning of the 38th chapter of
+Genesis, and on other statements and arguments that are so childish as
+to be ridiculous. For instance, they habitually confuse abortion--that
+is, the killing of the embryo after conception--which is a dangerous
+and harmful practice, and a criminal offence in English law, with the
+prevention of conception, which is neither dangerous, nor harmful, nor
+a legal offence. Those who confuse these two different matters are
+either so ignorant that they have no business to offer guidance on the
+subject, or they seek with deliberate mendacity to darken counsel by
+their words.
+
+Besides this, we have statements that a rational control of births,
+to ensure a moderate birth rate with a high survival rate among those
+who are born, and a healthy posterity, is “race suicide,” leading
+to the depopulation of the world, the spread of immorality, and
+various other evils. These assertions are backed by references to the
+state of France (a Roman Catholic country, in which birth control
+information and the sale of contraceptives is illegal), where, in
+spite of a terrible amount of abortion, the birth rate, as shown by
+recent statistics, is higher than in England, but the death-rate among
+children is so great that the survival rate is very low.
+
+It is natural that people who obstinately opposed the dissemination of
+knowledge on these subjects, and have no better arguments than these
+to adduce in support of their views, are tempted to betake themselves
+to methods such as those referred to above in what has been said about
+the pressure exerted on the press to stifle news of the birth control
+movement, and the falsehoods disseminated about Dr. Stopes herself.
+
+Before long it may occur to the more intelligent among Dr. Stopes’s
+opponents, that when a great public question fundamentally affects
+the vigour of the race, the health of mothers and children, and the
+happiness of the whole people, a thin black line of priests and their
+dupes cannot permanently block the way to the free and open discussion
+of the subject.
+
+The public is naturally asking for an authoritative statement from
+the medical profession on the matter, and it should be more generally
+known that there is now a Medical Research Committee dealing with
+the technique of contraception. When it issued a statement to the
+medical and general press early this year after sitting two years
+its composition was as follows: Sir James Barr, C.B.E., M.D., LL.D.,
+F.R.C.P., F.R.S.E.; Professor Sir William Bayliss, F.R.S., M.A., D.Sc.;
+Harold Chapple, Esq., M.C., F.R.C.S.; Dr. Jane L. Hawthorne; Geo.
+Jones, Esq., M.A., M.B., D.P.H., Barrister-at-Law; Dr. Maude Kerslake;
+Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane, Bart., C.B., M.B., M.S.; Sir John MacAlister,
+F.S.A., F.R.G.S.; Sir Archdall Reid, M.B., F.R.S. Ed.; Christopher
+Rolleston, Esq., M.D., M.R.C.P., D.P.H.; D. Sommerville, Esq., B.A.,
+M.Sc., M.D., M.R.C.P.; Marie C. Stopes, D.Sc., Ph.D., F.L.S., F.G.S.;
+H. M. Telling, Esq., M.D., F.R.C.P.; Dr. Mather Thomson; E. B. Turner,
+Esq., F.R.C.S.
+
+It will be noted that the majority of the Committee are medicals,
+and biological science was represented by Sir William Bayliss, Dr.
+Sommerville, and the President of the Society, Dr. Marie Stopes. In
+addition to the medical members of the Committee, other distinguished
+practitioners are in helpful association with it.
+
+In accordance with the objects of its foundation, the Committee
+considers a variety of current affairs concerning Contraception, but
+its proceedings and minutes are strictly confidential and none of its
+deliberations are published, except about points which are specially
+passed for publication. The Committee, feeling the importance of the
+questions concerned, is in no hurry to draw up reports or make public
+statements, but desires to observe and investigate carefully. A number
+of new, or supposedly new methods have been brought before it from
+various quarters. Due consideration confirms the view that no one
+method is applicable, but that several of the simple and well-known
+methods which have had a long trial still are the best to meet ordinary
+requirements.
+
+At a Committee meeting last spring the following resolution was passed
+for publication in suitable quarters:
+
+  “The Medical Research Committee of the Society for Constructive
+  Birth Control and Racial Progress wishes to place on record its
+  joint and several opinion that the methods now used at the _Mothers’
+  Clinic_ are the best known at the present time.”
+
+The Mothers’ Clinic, it will be remembered, is the Birth Control Clinic
+founded by Dr. Stopes and her husband which has been the subject of so
+much ignorant attack.
+
+[Illustration: DR. MARIE STOPES.]
+
+Her Roman Catholic opponents scored a great coup in connection with
+Dr. Marie Stopes’s film _Married Love_, or _Maisie’s Marriage_,
+which was beautifully produced by Messrs. Samuelsons. The producers,
+Captain Walter Summers who collaborated and Dr. Stopes, all agreed
+that it should _not_ be pre-eminently a birth control play, but a
+melodramatic story of general interest. Dr. Stopes had been a member of
+the Cinema Commission, and always desired to produce a film to which
+no exception could be taken. This she thought she had done, and the
+producers did not believe it possible that any objection could be made
+to a film which had been so cautiously produced. The trade show was
+very successful, but the Censor, instead of giving the certificate
+necessary for universal exhibition in a few hours or a day or two as is
+usually done, _held up the matter for four weeks_, a delay which caused
+great loss to the producers, for in the cinema world everything must
+come like hot cakes after the first announcements. It is an unfortunate
+coincidence in this case that the Chief Censor, Mr. T. P. O’Connor,
+is a Roman Catholic. In a personal interview all the facts presented
+to him failed to influence him, and he insisted on alterations so
+harassing that the author could not consent to them. For instance,
+though no exception was taken to a cabaret scene that occurs in the
+picture, he considered a beautiful rose which faded into a baby’s face
+to be improper, and demanded its excision! The play however in its
+_complete_ form, exactly as written by the author, was shown to the
+trade, was rapturously received, and obtained excellent reviews in many
+solid papers such as the _Daily Telegraph_, and has been shown in its
+original form in many of the large towns in England with the approval
+of the local Watch Committees; for instance, the very strict Manchester
+Watch Committee approved of it, and the film was shown to packed
+houses in Manchester. Sometimes efforts were made locally to block it,
+but generally the committees came out in its favour; for as Colonel
+Giles, of the Folkestone Watch Committee, reported in the _Morning
+Post_, said: “One could safely take one’s grandmother to see it,
+there being nothing obnoxious in it.” Scotland too welcomed it in its
+original form. Mr. T. P. O’Connor wanted to enforce his alterations,
+though he had no real _power_ to do so if local Watch Committees
+approve of a film he bans. The L.C.C., misinformed about details,
+backed the Censor, and at one time even endeavoured to stop the use of
+the words “Married Love” in association with the film. Dr. Marie Stopes
+received a letter from the L.C.C., however, as a result of her personal
+interview with the Theatres and Music Halls Committee, in which they
+stated: “The Council has not raised, and will not raise, objection to
+the use, in posters and descriptive pamphlets issued in connection with
+the film, of the description ‘Maisie’s Marriage,’ a story by Dr. Marie
+Stopes, the author of ‘Married Love,’ provided that the words ‘the
+author of “Married Love”’ are printed in type which is appropriate to
+the description of that nature, and relatively small compared with the
+type used for the title ‘Maisie’s Marriage.’”
+
+One wonders under what statutory right they dictated to the advertising
+world of the cinema the size of type they may use!
+
+Mr. O’Connor’s intervention with the Home Office led to a circular
+letter being sent out from the Home Office to every Chief Constable in
+England. Such communications from the Home Office led to local trouble
+here and there, notably in Portsmouth, where the booking was cancelled.
+Dr. Stopes was personally in Portsmouth the same week and saw the Chief
+Constable, and the Town Clerk under whose orders he acted, and they
+assured her that there was a misapprehension and mistake in the matter,
+and if it came up again no exception would be taken to the display
+and exhibition of the film under the above title. Fortunately those
+authorities did not take a tape measure to the lettering.
+
+It was a curious coincidence that the week she was banned in the
+cinema, Dr. Stopes spoke from the pulpit in Portsmouth. At the Sunday
+evening service at which she spoke, the crowds down the aisle, and
+standing even on the gravestones outside to hear through the windows,
+were so great that people asked if some member of the Royal Family was
+there, as they could think of no other attraction likely to draw such
+crowds.
+
+Mr. T. P. O’Connor’s interference seemed likely to become the subject
+of a public inquiry. In the printed order of the day for the House of
+Lords, “Bills appointed and Notices” for Wednesday, November 13, 1923,
+the following appeared:
+
+  “The Earl Russell.--To call attention to a communication from the
+  Home Office, of June 30 last, addressed to the Chief Constables and
+  Watch Committees and marked ‘Confidential,’ attempting to interfere
+  with the production of a film entitled ‘Married Love,’ by Dr. Marie
+  Stopes, and to ask His Majesty’s’ Government what official status, if
+  any, the Board of Film Censors has; whether the censorship is in fact
+  administered by Mr. T. P. O’Connor; and whether it is the practice
+  of the Home Office to act as Mr. T. P. O’Connor’s representative in
+  endeavouring to interfere with the production of particular films
+  without any independent inquiry on their part.”
+
+Unfortunately it was a few hours too late, for the Baldwin Ministry
+resigned, and under the rules of the House the subject could not again
+be raised in the succeeding Administration, despite the injury done to
+private individuals, who, one would think, should have some means of
+obtaining redress from those who succeeded to office. It is a pity that
+Mr. Baldwin did not hold the reins a little longer, for in a debate in
+the Lords many things of considerable general interest would have come
+to light.
+
+
+[2] Exact wording of the advertisement was--“Roe--On the 27th March
+to Dr. Marie Stopes, wife of H. V. Roe, of Givons Grove, Leatherhead,
+Surrey--a son”; and “Stopes--On the 27th March, to Marie Carmichael
+Stopes and her husband, Humphrey Verdon Roe, of Givons Grove,
+Leatherhead, Surrey--a son.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+INNER LIFE.
+
+
+In any life that is worth writing at all the outward events have
+but a superficial interest in comparison with the landmarks in the
+development of consciousness and the soul. This was pre-eminently so in
+the life of Tolstoy, whose biography I wrote chiefly because it was in
+so marked a degree a spiritual adventure.
+
+My many years’ acquaintance with Dr. Marie Stopes have made me in
+some small degree acquainted with the landmarks in the development
+of her inner life, but as in the case of Tolstoy the data carrying
+conviction are those afforded by autobiographical evidence. So I feel
+in the present instance that we must await an autobiography fully to
+understand the character whose life it has here been my task to sketch
+in outline.
+
+A certain amount of autobiographical detail is to be found in the
+volume of travels already referred to, the _Journal from Japan_, as
+also in the preface to _Man, Other Poems, and a Preface_; on these I
+have drawn, but for the main outline of her spiritual growth I depend
+upon personal notes which I asked Dr. Stopes to write.
+
+  “From my earliest childhood religion, not in its narrowest sense
+  of outward performance but in the inner sense of absolute reality,
+  has been a matter of the very greatest concern to me. My mother was
+  Scottish of almost Calvinistic tendencies, and my father a Quaker,
+  but one who felt that the religious education of a little girl should
+  be left absolutely to the mother. I was brought up in the rigours
+  of the stern Scottish old-fashioned Presbyterianism, in which hell
+  was presented to me as an absolute reality which I stood in imminent
+  danger of inheriting; special books were kept for Sunday reading; no
+  toys were allowed on Sundays, when Bible chapters and texts had to
+  be learnt as well as church attendances fulfilled. All this I took
+  with childlike literalness, which was rendered all the more intense
+  by a feeling of guilt at being unable to _see_ Christ and the angels,
+  which I felt, somehow, was my own fault. In spite of my father’s lack
+  of interference I used, even in the very earliest days, to feel that
+  he was wiser than mother, and that his aloofness from our religious
+  observances was not hostile, but something superior; that in fact he
+  dwelt in more direct communion with God than we, who had to make an
+  outward office of it. This, I think, shows how through all the early
+  years of my childhood he must have exercised the greatest care not to
+  interfere in any way with my mother’s more specific instructions.
+
+  “One of the earliest religious landmarks that I remember was when, at
+  the age of six or seven, my manifold sins had been made very evident
+  to me, and I felt that if only I were a better girl I would _feel_
+  the actual floods of the Blood of Jesus which would purify me. I
+  felt I must try to be converted in such a way that I really could
+  see and feel these things. I remember placing myself at the foot of
+  a long flight of stairs at the bottom of which was a sheepskin mat,
+  dyed crimson, and I rubbed myself in the crimson wool of the mat and
+  shut my eyes and tried to picture the stream of the Blood of the Lamb
+  cascading down the stairs and over me, purifying me and taking away
+  my manifold sins. I was discovered by nurse before this process had
+  completed itself, and was led away, but I remember to this day the
+  feeling that the only barrier between me and an actual sensation
+  of the Blood of the Lamb was my manifold crimes of omission and
+  commission, and that I stood in imminent danger of hell-fire if I did
+  not succeed in persuading my senses really to feel the Blood of Jesus.
+
+  “Childhood’s memory fades concerning the resolution of that problem;
+  and next I remember clearly, at the age of about eight, getting into
+  very profound religious difficulties over the conflict between the
+  existence of hell-fire, in which human beings, and even children,
+  were burnt eternally, and an all-loving and all-kind God. These
+  difficulties worried me to the extent of keeping me awake at night.
+  The problem was not one that I could take to my mother, because
+  when I was seven years old I had one day observed her sewing in her
+  bedroom on a Sunday, and had hence come to the conclusion that she
+  was ‘not truly religious.’ My grandmother, however, who read the
+  Bible every day and was always spoken of as a very saintly woman,
+  seemed to me to be in immediate communication with God and to be the
+  person to whom I should take this very profound difficulty. I well
+  remember going into her room with her breakfast tray, finding her
+  reading her Bible as usual in bed. Sitting down near her, I began to
+  ask her about the problem of hell and a loving God. She laughed; I
+  suppose I must have sounded absurd, but it shut me up so completely
+  within myself that I do not think I ever spoke of the difficulty
+  to anyone for years. But I remember, most clearly, thinking it out
+  for myself, and in the course of a few months evolving in elaborate
+  detail, something that resembled the Roman Catholic faith, with the
+  exception that I omitted, of course, any idea of the Pope. No Roman
+  Catholic was in contact with me, and my home, as I have explained,
+  was a Calvinistic and Quaker establishment, and yet I came to the
+  conclusion that the only possible God, that was the true God, must
+  be one who did not entirely burn people up in hell, but only allowed
+  them to burn so far as to burn the badness out of them, and that the
+  goodness was then allowed to go into Heaven as a very tiny baby and
+  grow there big enough to be a grown-up soul in Heaven; in short, the
+  theory of purgatory. I evolved also, in my inner consciousness, the
+  theory of saints, and I remember most clearly, night after night
+  through the winter, lying on my side, taking up the least possible
+  room at the edge of my bed, and spreading the bed-clothes comfortably
+  across the part of the bed that I did not inhabit, so as to allow
+  the saints, whom I fancied were there guarding me and talking to me,
+  to be comfortable and warm while they were there. I was convinced
+  that they were there, and felt that it was my own wickedness which
+  prevented my feeling their presence.
+
+  “This phase, of course, also passed, although I do not remember when.
+  Then I remember clearly, from the age of about eight to ten, or nine
+  to ten, reading the whole of the Bible through, including all the
+  enormously long and dreary chapters in the Old Testament. I was still
+  ignorant of the Roman numerals, and could not understand them, and
+  I remember going through the Bible with a pencil and counting up on
+  my fingers the numbers of the chapters as I read them and writing
+  them in ordinary numerals, so that I should know how far I had got.
+  The thin pages adhering here and there, naturally the sequence of
+  the Roman numerals was transcribed quite wrongly, a thing I only
+  discovered a good many years after, when I came to look through the
+  same Bible again. At the time I felt that perhaps, if I were good
+  enough to read the whole Bible without skipping a word, I might
+  understand the religious puzzles which still haunted me. At the age
+  of eleven I was still so much a believer in the literal understanding
+  of the Bible that when I was asked by one of my aunts what I wanted
+  for a birthday present, I asked for a New Testament small enough to
+  put in my little pocket, so that I could continue to study it and try
+  to learn the whole of the New Testament by heart.
+
+  “At the age of eleven I remember most vividly another experience
+  which was perhaps rather remarkable for a young child. My grandmother
+  was then apparently in good health, living in Edinburgh, and my
+  mother and we children were staying a night or two in Edinburgh.
+  No anxiety had warned us of my grandmother’s condition, but one
+  evening, after being put to bed, I could not sleep for a terrible
+  feeling of icy coldness and death. I had never thought of death
+  before, and my sister and I were sharing a large bed, and all night
+  through I kept putting my hand across, quietly, to see if she were
+  cold, or if it was only I who was cold, and wondering who was dead
+  and what death meant, feeling that it was very, very near. The next
+  day my grandmother was found, quietly sleeping after her afternoon
+  nap, dead in her bed. I may say that quite a number of times during
+  my life similar premonitions of events before they have happened have
+  come to me, but not with a sufficient regularity to allow me to plan
+  my life on the assurance that they will come. Such foreknowledge is
+  always scrappy and incompletely conveyed.
+
+  “A few days before I was twelve I was sent to school in Edinburgh,
+  living with a family and attending St. George’s School. The family
+  with whom I stayed were also old-fashioned, extremely Protestant,
+  Scottish people, and I remember being shown, with such strong
+  expressions of disapproval that I looked upon the whole surrounding
+  atmosphere as contaminated by it, an Anglican Church near Alva
+  Street in which the people were wicked enough to have an organ to
+  sing with. I remember my young indignation at such ‘Popery,’ a word
+  that by that time I had learnt, although I still did not realize its
+  meaning. At that age, too, the sense of responsibility, which I felt
+  very early became intensely oppressive. I think it was due to the
+  fact that my parents had admonished me so very much to take care of
+  my younger sister, but it was deeper in origin and seemed to embrace
+  the whole world. It developed about that age into a feeling that I
+  was so terribly guilty that I corresponded to a ‘Jonah,’ like the
+  one whose presence risked the lives of all his fellow-travellers in
+  the ship, and that my guilty presence in the world was responsible
+  for disasters to others. I remember clearly one day the lady with
+  whom we stayed reading some paragraph from a paper about a great
+  calamity abroad--I think an earthquake--when I burst out crying, and
+  said: ‘Oh, but I can’t help it; I can’t help it. It is really not my
+  fault.’ I have never entirely lost this sense of _burden_, and I
+  still do my birth control work because I feel that the responsibility
+  for the unborn whom I had not helped would be unbearable if I were
+  not to carry it on.
+
+  “Life in the more mellowed atmosphere of Kent, where the only church
+  possible for us to attend at Swanscombe was the English Parish
+  church, removed some of the childish supersensitive feeling of guilt,
+  and life became a little easier, more normal, and less narrow. I
+  remember, however, always feeling on my guard against the errors
+  of the Anglican Church, and although I became a communicant, there
+  were certain words and phrases in the creeds and hymns that would
+  cause me to close my mouth firmly, and that nothing could induce
+  me to say. My father still held aloof from religious discussion,
+  but I had a feeling that when I grew up to him, there within him
+  was wisdom that would understand me and that I could meet. Looking
+  back on the extraordinary intimacy and quite exceptionally profound
+  affection between my father and myself, I feel it very curious that
+  I did not go to him with my religious puzzles. I think possibly I
+  may have done so, and that he may have said that I must do what my
+  mother told me in these things till I was older. Certainly about the
+  age of fifteen or sixteen I began to realize the difference between
+  a Friend, that is, a member of the Quaker Society of Friends, and
+  members of other religions, and to feel all my sympathies with the
+  Friends.
+
+  “When at the age of sixteen I was away at the seaside, somewhere near
+  Folkestone, in a little village (I do not know what was its name),
+  I used to take long rambles by myself, and I remember one Sunday
+  attending a Quaker meeting on an explorative expedition of my own.
+  At that Quakers’ meeting a very remarkable incident occurred which
+  made the profoundest impression upon me, and which I have narrated
+  literally in a poem called ‘The Brother’ in _Man, Other Poems, and
+  a Preface_. This incident coloured my life for many years, and
+  inhibited all further desire openly to become a Quaker. So deep was
+  my affection for my father and our mutual understanding, that I
+  always felt that if I could find the proper, old-fashioned type of
+  Quaker community, there would be my spiritual home.
+
+  “About this time we gave up the Swanscombe home and moved to
+  Hampstead. In this house I had a little study in which I prepared my
+  ordinary school work and, in addition, read unobserved and without
+  even the companionship of my sister. This was a great pleasure, for
+  by this time I had developed a characteristic which has remained with
+  me, that is, intensely to desire as much solitude as is possible,
+  and to feel certain powers and the capacity to understand what I am
+  reading very much reduced by the presence of any other person in
+  the room. From the age of sixteen to eighteen I read voraciously.
+  The Hampstead Lending Library was an exceptionally good one, and I
+  tapped its uttermost resources. I also had access to a number of
+  other supplies of books. I read all sorts of things, but particularly
+  comparative theology, and a number of works seldom read even by
+  adults to-day; for instance, in these years I read pretty nearly
+  everything that I could get in English by Swedenborg, all Kant’s
+  voluminous philosophy, and a number of old-fashioned and curiously
+  abstruse books, such as the early histories of the Rosicrucians,
+  translations of the Vedas, books of Buddhistic philosophy,
+  Confucius’s writings, and many theological works. Walter Pater and
+  George Meredith were my favourite authors of a lighter kind. I also
+  read all Darwin’s published books, and can well remember one Sunday,
+  when about sixteen or seventeen, my mother’s sister, a very religious
+  Scottish woman, being shocked by some chance phrase of my father,
+  who was speaking of his collection of flint implements. This aunt
+  was shocked to learn that my father read Darwin and took his work
+  seriously, and still more shocked that mention of such a man should
+  be made in the presence of an innocent young girl. I, naturally
+  enough, championed the cause for which my father stood, and proudly
+  boasted that I also had read Darwin. I remember my aunt said no more,
+  but followed me up to my little study to demand my repentance and
+  recantation. When she could not obtain these, she solemnly committed
+  me to hell. I was still young enough, and the childish memories of
+  hell were still sufficiently easily revived, for this to make a
+  great impression upon me, but, of course, not in the least to alter
+  my loyalty to my father or to affect the scientific attitude of
+  mind which was growing in me. I remember not very long after that,
+  I think when I was sixteen and a half, being taken for our spring
+  vacation to Jersey, and there delighting in the stretches of rock and
+  solitude into which it was possible to escape owing to the fact that
+  my sister had caught a cold on the voyage and was laid up, and, my
+  mother taking care of her, I was sent out for walks by myself. Here
+  then I found sunny corners and enjoyed what had already become, and
+  has remained through life, one of my deepest enjoyments as well as my
+  greatest restorative--lying flat on my back without moving for hours.
+  In Jersey a spiritual renaissance, one might call it, took place
+  after a succession of such happy days, and that experience is also
+  published in _Man_, in a form written at the time, ‘Revelation.’
+
+  “I was always very sensitive to the marital relations of those with
+  whom I came in contact, and I remember, as a very young girl, being
+  shocked and hurt by matrimonial bickering. We met Mr. and Mrs. James
+  Huddart (the Huddart who originally planned, many years before, the
+  All Red Route _via_ Canada and Australia), and I was enchanted by
+  something exceptionally feminine and sweet in Mrs. Huddart, and also
+  by the beautiful devotion of her husband and sons. She reciprocated
+  to some extent the feeling I had for her and became one of my warmest
+  friends, and as a girl I was often invited to stay at her house,
+  and there learnt many things that only an older woman of sweet
+  disposition could teach a girl, and which I should never have learnt
+  but for her. Certainly chief among the lessons she taught me was the
+  recognition of the vital importance of the relationship between the
+  two who are the centre of any home life, and how far-reaching may be
+  the influence of any home. I think I may say that here was laid the
+  first seeds of a desire to do the work which ultimately resulted in
+  _Married Love_.
+
+  “The religious phases of my early childhood having been lived
+  through, I naturally enough entered into a phase of scientific
+  materialism, but had already grown out of it by the time I was
+  commencing my college studies, and I remember the keen sense of
+  appreciation and delight with which I listened to Professor Sir
+  William Ramsay, whose classes I attended, once speaking to his large
+  chemistry class, when dealing with the waves of light in vacuum
+  tubes, of the mysticism which is compatible with a profound knowledge
+  of science. I cannot remember his exact words, but they were to
+  the effect that atheism and hostility to religion was no longer in
+  keeping with a really profound knowledge of the wonders of natural
+  science, and that whenever one knew more deeply the details of any
+  subject, it led always to an ultimate mystery in which one might well
+  maintain that the truths of religion could reside. So far as I can
+  remember that was the only reference of any sort at all that I heard
+  to either religion or the deeper philosophy of life in the whole of
+  my time as a student at the University, and his few words, passed
+  over so swiftly in his physical chemistry lecture, left me with a
+  sense of tremendous respect for Sir William Ramsay.
+
+  “Before my first term at college I had reached the phase in my inner
+  development that included a great deal of reading on psychological
+  and psychic themes, and so, naturally enough, I wanted to see if
+  I had any psychic powers. At first I spoke to no one about these
+  subjects. No one at all, neither my teacher, nor my college friends;
+  only my school friend, Olga Kapteyn, was in the least degree in my
+  confidence, and she not very completely, as by this time she was
+  staying once more in Amsterdam. I tested in one or two ways at the
+  University whether I had power to hypnotize and perform some of the
+  various semi-psychic tricks made much of in some of the books I was
+  then reading. Under the influence of a member of the Theosophical
+  Society I found I had undoubtedly such powers, but I very sanely came
+  to the conclusion that their use was mean--not quite playing the
+  game--and also that I should undoubtedly be in danger of becoming
+  nervous and ‘queer,’ as I observed the people who claimed such
+  powers generally were. Hence I, to myself, formally, definitely and
+  specifically renounced their use, and decided for the next few years,
+  at any rate, to lead my life in accordance with the revelation in
+  Jersey. I have never again attempted to use these powers.
+
+[Illustration: DR. MARIE STOPES.]
+
+  “Now, many years later, I still think it most important not
+  to hasten the human acquisition of what we call supernatural or
+  supernormal powers. I feel that having taken so long a time to become
+  human, and being now in the present imperfect link between the past
+  and the future, we serve the race and whatever cosmic design there
+  may be behind our existence best by being the best kind of human
+  beings we can; by starving neither our bodies nor our minds, nor
+  wearing out one aspect of ourselves at the expense of normality. The
+  neurotic, half-starved, highly-abnormal ascetic, the psychic, the
+  ‘spiritual’ healer, and other cranks generally fill me with a slight
+  feeling of repugnance and a profound feeling of regret that they
+  took on a job for which they are so obviously unfitted. Even as a
+  young girl I did not wish to become like that. My ambition is to be
+  as normal, healthy, and wholesome a human being as I can be while I
+  am a human being; it will not be very long in any event, even if one
+  outlives the Biblical three-score years and ten.
+
+  “I have always had a peculiar sympathy with stones, undoubtedly
+  inherited, for my father’s delight in fossils and flint implements
+  is traceable to his earliest childhood, and I have a sympathy with
+  them which, curiously enough, often includes a knowledge of where
+  they are, almost as if I were a stone-diviner, like water-diviners.
+  Their smell delights me. Of course not all stones have a very
+  noticeable smell, but to me, in quarries, almost every freshly
+  chipped stone has a peculiar, and most have a pleasing, smell. The
+  consciousness of fossils, even at a distance from them, has often
+  manifested itself most usefully in my expeditions, and I may give
+  just one example of this. I remember Dr. D. H. Scott, the leading
+  English palæobotanist, in a discussion at the Linnean Society,
+  speaking of a classical find of a well-preserved fossil in the
+  Isle of Wight, saying that in this deposit, which he had himself
+  examined, there remained no more petrifactions. Like a sudden flash
+  of light a queer, intense feeling came to me that there were lots of
+  petrifactions there calling to me and waiting to be found. Within
+  a few weeks I was able to take my vacation in that locality, at
+  Luccomb Chine in the Isle of Wight, and spent the first day lying
+  comfortably on the shore in hot sunshine gazing up at the cliffs. By
+  the afternoon I had come to the conclusion that at a certain point
+  up the cliffs I should find these specimens, and the next day I went
+  there and found enough to enable me to bring away nearly a bushel,
+  many of which were new to science, and some of which are described
+  and illustrated in my volume on the Palæontology of this horizon,
+  published by the Trustees of the British Museum (Appendix B, p. 217).
+
+  “Useful in another way is this sympathy with stones, and I remember
+  on one occasion my sister and I had spent a whole holiday together
+  camping in a cave on the coast of Devonshire. She and I had played
+  at Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday for five or six weeks, sleeping in
+  this cave by the sea with a sense of perfect security and peace, when
+  one night I suddenly felt that I must not allow her to stop there,
+  for it would be most dangerous for us to sleep there, and we must go
+  into the open. We shifted our sleeping bags along the pebbles of the
+  beach, right into the open and away from the cave, leaving however
+  all our little cooking utensils and other camp equipment in the cave.
+  When I went back next morning I found part of the roof had fallen
+  in, with a large slab of stone just where my head would have been.
+  The next night we were quite calmly and happily sleeping in the cave
+  again, probably most foolishly, but nothing happened.
+
+  “Possibly correlated with this feeling for stones is the
+  consciousness I have had since early childhood in my spine of the
+  direction of the north. It is as though I were a magnet, and I
+  shall never forget my delight, when I was a girl, at discovering Du
+  Maurier’s book, ‘Peter Ibbetson,’ in which one of the characters is
+  conscious of the position of the north, for I thought I alone was
+  peculiar in this, and was greatly pleased to find that someone else
+  shared that sensitiveness. In childhood it took the curious form of
+  making me twist round and wake with a dazed feeling in bed if my bed
+  was placed wrongly. And still, unless I sleep either north and south,
+  or south and north, I tend to twist round in the night and lie in the
+  direction of the magnetic field, sometimes waking up to find myself
+  lying right across the bed if I am staying in a house where the bed
+  cannot be placed correctly before I go to sleep. A long illness, or
+  a number of nights in London or a big city, tend to reduce this
+  sensitiveness, but when I have been long alone or in the country it
+  becomes intensely strong, and I remember being tested once in a thick
+  fog--a fog so blanket-like that one could not see a yard before one’s
+  face, when I was being trained by Mr. W. H. Dalton, F.G.S., a member
+  of the Geological Survey. At first he laughed at my saying that I
+  could feel the north, and led me zigzags and twists and turns, and
+  then tested me with his compass. Every time I was dead right. Since
+  I have had an operation however this capacity is much reduced, and I
+  only feel it intermittently, depending, I fancy, on some electrical
+  condition of the atmosphere.
+
+  “My passion for solitude resulted in a very curious initiation
+  for me at the beginning of the war. I had, when staying earlier
+  as a guest of Lord and Lady Grey at Howick Castle, been greatly
+  attracted by the long stretches of sandy bays and quiet rocks in the
+  neighbourhood, absolutely out of reach of the tripper, and longed
+  to pitch my tent there, which I did, through their kindness, in the
+  summer of 1914. This time I had not even my sister with me, desiring
+  to be absolutely alone, because I felt within me ripe for birth
+  a very long poem which, at the time, seemed important. Life in my
+  tiny tent, weighing only two pounds, had for years been one of my
+  principal enjoyments, and I fixed my tent on psamma grass at the
+  corner of a rocky bay with wide stretches of sand between me and the
+  sunsets. There I deliberately cut myself off from everyone, only
+  going into a neighbouring farmhouse now and then to get fresh scones
+  and bread, and having milk brought to me by one of the farmer’s bonny
+  children. I deliberately refused to read newspapers, and the result
+  was that I had no conception that even a cloud or rumour of war had
+  settled on Europe. I had not heard of the murders at Serajevo. One
+  evening, however, I suddenly felt that the long poem I had come
+  to write had died within me. In the dusk I felt, literally, that
+  I suddenly saw, green and horrible, the corpse of a young man and
+  another standing over him smiting at his dead body. The impression
+  was most vivid, and for two days afterwards I was restless, and could
+  not concentrate in the least on the work I had intended to do. The
+  third night after this I, still unconscious as an unborn babe that
+  anything in the way of war was affecting Europe, tucked myself into
+  my sleeping bag, lying with my head and shoulders outside my tent, as
+  I generally slept, and went off into a sound sleep, to be awakened
+  most startlingly by a young man with a bayonet shouting to me ‘Halt!
+  Who goes there?’ Wakened out of sleep, I replied rather absurdly,
+  ‘Halt yourself; I am lying down.’ I had not succeeded in explaining
+  my existence to the young man before another young man with a fixed
+  bayonet rushed up to him and the bayonets clashed. I thought the two
+  were going to fight each other, both contending that I was their
+  prisoner. I, thinking it was some absurd joke and that an appeal to
+  Lord Grey would straighten matters out, explained that I was there,
+  although not in the house, in a sense as the guest and under the
+  protection of the Greys, and they might leave me in peace until the
+  morning and then decide whose prisoner I really was. Their story that
+  a war was on I took as nonsense. They allowed me to sleep, and by six
+  o’clock in the morning, after some hours of cold, wet mists, both of
+  them were very thankful, rancour ended, to creep to my tent for a cup
+  of hot cocoa. One, a young fellow from Manchester, had not weathered
+  a night on a solitary coast before, and his teeth were literally
+  chattering. I got out my maps and directed them to the nearest place
+  where they could get a square meal, and that was the last I heard
+  of being anybody’s prisoner. I went however into the village to buy
+  newspapers and, running across Viscount Howick (now Lord Grey), was
+  reassured by his telling me that his uncle, Sir Edward, was at the
+  helm and doing everything possible to maintain peace. He asked me
+  to hop into his car, and went round villages and outlying districts
+  reassuring and calming the people. Soon, warships were stationed
+  directly opposite us and rushed up and down, because a landing was
+  actually expected within a mile or two of where I was camping, and
+  the Greys were hurriedly turning Howick Castle into a potential
+  hospital. I think no one who was plunged into the horror of the war
+  thus with no preparation, can ever get over the shock of the first
+  few days and of the news of what was done in Belgium. Perhaps the
+  next generation may again feel the ease and security that we all felt
+  before this war, but shall never feel again. Since that poem was
+  slain on Howick shore, I have never really been able to do the things
+  that I have personally wanted most to do, always being impelled to
+  expend what power I had only on things that seem urgently necessary,
+  either in connection with scientific research on coal and fuel, or in
+  connection with the sex and birth control work. Since the publication
+  of _Married Love_ early in 1918, nearly the whole of my time has been
+  spent in a very inadequate response to the anguished cries of poor
+  mothers and their potential babies for that knowledge and help which
+  is available if it can but be brought to them.
+
+[Illustration: Inner home life: Dr. Stopes as gardener, and her husband
+with the car.]
+
+  “1918 was an important year; I published _Married Love_, _Wise
+  Parenthood_, and, in conjunction with Dr. R. V. Wheeler, _The
+  Constitution of Coal_, and I met and married my husband, Humphrey
+  Verdon Roe.
+
+  “In 1920 I was impelled, against my worldly judgment, to publish a
+  brief piece of writing called _The New Gospel to All Peoples_. In its
+  preface I explained how and why it was written, and sent to each
+  of the Bishops in Conference at Lambeth in that year. About sending
+  it to the Bishops I had no hesitation, my orders were so explicit,
+  but my mundane intelligence was perfectly aware that from a purely
+  worldly point of view I was doing a foolish thing in _publishing_ it.
+  The matter was simply taken out of my hands however, and my inner
+  life rendered unlivable until I decided to do what was necessary to
+  get it published. When I say that I was unwilling to publish it, I
+  do not mean to imply that I in any way shirk what is said therein;
+  but knowing the materialistic spirit which rules the greater part
+  of the intellectual world at present, I knew very well that I was,
+  to some extent, jeopardizing the approval of those whose opinion
+  I valued. Beyond a little chaff however and the antagonism of a
+  few materialists, I have suffered nothing to weigh in the balance
+  against the wonderful adherence of other souls and the joy of seeing
+  my message spreading in the whole Empire, now often from the lips
+  of others. For instance, that great heroine, Lady Constance Lytton,
+  wrote to me: ‘I cannot say how much I thank you for sending me
+  your beautiful _A New Gospel_. It is so reverently given forth, so
+  beautiful in the way it is given. I have promised to write a little
+  article on Constructive Birth Control. I hope you will approve of it,
+  for all I know of constructive birth control is through you.’
+
+  “The work for birth control and a reformation in the sex life of the
+  people has for years been a consciously performed task--but all the
+  time I realize that the need for it is a phase in human progress,
+  and my immortal soul has other interests--and a desire ‘to paint
+  the things as I see them for the God of things as they are.’ And
+  among the things I have always desired to do is to write a volume of
+  fairy tales. In my opinion, fairy tales rank among the very highest
+  form of literature. I remember Professor Alexander, the Professor
+  of Philosophy, once saying that all our scientific discoveries were
+  ephemeral and bound to be swept away, and that the only really
+  lasting thing anyone could do is to write a poem. I incline now to
+  agree with him, although then I hotly disputed his conclusion. A
+  good fairy tale, being essentially a poem though in prose, might
+  have well-nigh as long a life as a poem. But in the press of work of
+  recent years I have not had time to write the volume of tales I so
+  much desire, and only one or two have been completed and published.
+  Certainly one of my proudest achievements is the fact that I have
+  had a fairy tale in the _Fortnightly Review_, the only fairy tale, I
+  think, that periodical ever published. I have also had two or three
+  fairy tales in the _English Review_; but the rest have either been
+  slaughtered unborn, or await the leisure I am always longing once
+  more to have, to do the things that _I want to do_ instead of those I
+  am impelled to do by the present crisis in human affairs.
+
+  “What am I? An immortal soul, having lived previously to this
+  particular life on earth, and destined to live again after my body
+  wears out; of that I am as certain as that I am in the world at
+  present. _Nothing_ can remove me from the universe; one plays at
+  being human for a while, and it is great fun. _Why_ one is given such
+  hard jobs and has to encounter such difficulties on one’s own behalf
+  and on behalf of others I don’t know, but I still feel as I felt at
+  the age of sixteen and a half when I wrote the poem ‘Revelation’
+  (later on published in _Man, Other Poems, and a Preface_), that
+  one should ‘be tranquil, at the same time that you strive ... for
+  _joyous_ life alone is perfected.’”
+
+The sketch of her inner life given in the above autobiographical notes
+may well conclude this short life of one who is still in mid-career.
+
+Dr. Stopes is an example of the truth of John Stuart Mill’s forecast
+that, as soon as the obstacles that hampered the exercise of women’s
+powers were removed, they would prove themselves the equals of the
+best men in fields where they had heretofore always been regarded as
+inferior. Though she is a very modern woman, Dr. Stopes, in another
+aspect, reminds one by the variety of her achievements of those
+artist-scientists of the Renaissance who, before specialization had
+become so customary as it is to-day, claimed all science and all art as
+their province.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX A.
+
+List of Books and Pamphlets by Dr. Marie Stopes.
+
+
+SEXOLOGY.
+
+  “=Contraception.=” Published by Bale and Danielsson, 1923, pp. xxiii,
+  1-418, plates iv.
+
+  “=Married Love.=” First published by Fifield, 1918; now in Fourteenth
+  Edition, published by Putnams, pp. xxi, 1-169.
+
+  “=Wise Parenthood.=” First published by Fifield, 1918; now in
+  Eleventh Edition, published by Putnams, 1918, pp. xii, 1-62.
+
+  “=Radiant Motherhood.=” Published by Putnams, 1920, pp. ix, 1-236.
+
+  “=Truth about Venereal Disease.=” Published by Putnams, 1921, pp.
+  vii, 1-52.
+
+  “=A New Gospel.=” Published by A. L. Humphreys, 1922, pp. 1-27.
+
+  “=A Letter to Working Mothers.=” Published by the Author, 1919; now
+  by the Clinic; pp. 1-16.
+
+  “=Early Days of Birth Control.=” Published by Putnams, 1922, pp. 1-32.
+
+  “=Mother, how was I Born?=” Published by Putnams, 1923, pp. 1-25.
+
+  “=The Control of Parenthood.=” By the Bishop of Birmingham and
+  others. Edited by Rev. Sir James Marchant. (One Chapter in this
+  published by Putnams.)
+
+  “=Queen’s Hall Meeting on C.B.C.=” Published by Putnams, 1921, pp.
+  1-48. (Contains report of Dr. Stopes’s speech.)
+
+  “=Verbatim Report of the Town Hall Meeting.=” Published by the
+  Voluntary Parenthood League, New York City, 1921, pp. 1-23. (Contains
+  report of Dr. Stopes’s speech.)
+
+
+BOTANY.
+
+  “=Ancient Plants.=” Published by Blackie and Son, 1910. Pp. viii,
+  1-199.
+
+  “=The Study of Plant Life.=” Published by Blackie, 1906. Pp. xii,
+  1-202.
+
+  “=Exploitation of Plants.=” Edited by Prof. Oliver. Published by
+  Dent. (One Chapter in this.)
+
+  “=The Sportophyte: ‘The Botanical Punch.=’” Founded and Edited for
+  the years 1911-1914.
+
+
+TRAVEL.
+
+  “=A Journal from Japan.=” Pp. 1-250, illustrated. Published by
+  Blackie.
+
+
+LITERARY.
+
+  “=Man, Other Poems and a Preface.=” Pp. 1-76. Published by Heinemann.
+
+  “=Conquest=,” a Three-Act Play. Published by French. Pp. 1-94.
+
+  “=Gold in the Wood=” and “=The Race=.” Two Plays. Published by
+  Fifield. Pp. 1-101.
+
+  “=Our Ostriches.=” Produced at the Court Theatre. Published by
+  Putnams, 1923, pp. 1-105.
+
+  “=Plays of Old Japan: The Nõ.=” (With Prof. J. Sakurai.) Published by
+  Heinemann. Pp. 1-102, illustrated.
+
+  “=A Japanese Mediæval Drama.=” _Transactions of the Royal Society of
+  Literature_, vol. 29; (separate) pp. 1-26.
+
+Also fairy stories in the _Fortnightly Review_, _English Review_;
+articles in _The Times_, _Manchester Guardian_, _Science Progress_,
+Reviews in the _Athenæum_, etc.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX B.
+
+List of Dr. Stopes’s Scientific Memoirs, etc., Embodying her New
+Discoveries.
+
+
+  “=Contribution Paléobotanique à la Connaissance du Charbon.=” Résumé
+  of Communication to the Congress in Paris. Published in _Chaleur et
+  Industrie_, Paris, 1923.
+
+  “=The Spontaneous Combustion of Coal.=” (With Prof. R. V. Wheeler.)
+  Bulletin No. 1 of “Fuel.” Published _Colliery Guardian_, London,
+  1923, pp. 1-125, 2 plates and text figs.
+
+  “=Terminology in Coal Research.=” (With Prof. R. V. Wheeler.) In
+  “Fuel,” London, 1923, pp. 5-9, 1 plate.
+
+  “=The Constitution of Coal, Palæobotanical Aspects.=” Lecture
+  published (with those of others in pamphlet called “Coal”), Colliery
+  Guardian Company, London, 1922, pp. 1-8, and text figs.
+
+  “=The Missing Link in _Osmundites_.=” _Annals of Botany_, vol. 35,
+  1921, pp. 56-61, text fig. and plate.
+
+  “_Bennettites Scottii_, Sp. Nov., =A European Petrifaction with
+  Foliage=.” Extr. _Linnean Society’s Journal_, 1920, vol. 44, pp.
+  483-496, plates xix and xx.
+
+  “=The Four Visible Ingredients in Banded Bituminous Coal: Studies in
+  the Composition of Coal=,” No. 1. _Proceedings Royal Society B_, vol.
+  90, 1919, pp. 470-487, plates xi and xii.
+
+  “=New Bennettitean Cones from the British Cretaceous.=” _Phil.
+  Transactions Royal Society B_, vol. 208, 1918, pp. 389-440, plates
+  xix-xxiv.
+
+  “=The Constitution of Coal.=” (With Dr. R. V. Wheeler.) Monograph,
+  published by H.M. Stationery Office for the Department of Scientific
+  and Industrial Research, 1918, pp. 1-58, plates i-iii.
+
+  “=Roots in _Bennettites_.=” _Annals of Botany_, vol. 31, 1917, No.
+  122, pp. 257-259, plate xiv.
+
+  “=Plants as a Source of National Power in the Exploitation of
+  Plants.=” Edited by Prof. F. W. Oliver. Published Dent, 1917, pp.
+  155-170.
+
+  “=An Early Type of the Abietineæ (?) from the Cretaceous of New
+  Zealand.=” _Annals of Botany_, vol. 30, 1916, pp. 111-125, text figs.
+  1-7, plates iv.
+
+  “=The Cretaceous Flora in the British Museum (Natural History), Part
+  II: Lower Greensand (Aptian) Plants of Britain.=” Published by the
+  Trustees of the British Museum, 1915, pp. i-xxxvi, 1-360, plates
+  i-xxxii, 112 text figs.
+
+  “=The ‘Fern Ledges’ Carboniferous Flora of St. John, New Brunswick.=”
+  Published by the Geological Survey of Canada: Memoir 41, Ottawa 1914,
+  pp. i-vi, 1-142, plates i-xxv, 21 text figs.
+
+  “=The Cretaceous Flora in the British Museum (Natural History), Part
+  I: Bibliography, Algæ and Fungi.=” Published by the Trustees of the
+  British Museum, 1913, pp. i-xxiii, 1-285, plates i-xi, 25 text figs.
+
+  “=A New Cretaceous Plant from Nigeria.=” _Geological Magazine_, Dec.
+  5, 1914, vol. 1, No. 604, pp. 433-435, plate xxxiii, text fig.
+
+  “=A New _Araucarioxylon_ from New Zealand.=” (Published by permission
+  of the Director of the Geological Survey of New Zealand.) _Annals of
+  Botany_, vol. 28, 1914, pp. 341-350, plates xx, text figs. 1-3.
+
+  “=Palæobotany: Its Past and Its Future.=” _Knowledge_, vol. 37, 1914,
+  pp. 15-24, figs. 24-30.
+
+  “=Palæobotany versus Stratigraphy in New Brunswick.=” _British
+  Association Report_, 1912, Dundee.
+
+  “=The Red Crag Portrait.=” _Geological Magazine_, vol. 9, Dec. 5,
+  1912, pp. 285-6, text fig. 1.
+
+  “=Petrifactions of the Earliest European Angiosperms.=” _Proceedings
+  Royal Society B_, vol. 85, 1912 (Abstract).
+
+  “=Petrifactions of the Earliest European Angiosperms.=” _Transactions
+  Royal Society B_, vol. 203, 1912, pp. 75-100, plates vi-viii.
+
+  “=The Correct Name for the Dragon Tree of the Kentish Rag.=”
+  _Geological Magazine_, vol. 8, 1911, No. 568, pp. 467-9.
+
+  “=The Dragon Tree of the Kentish Rag.=” _Geological Magazine_, vol.
+  8, Dec. 5, 1911, pp. 55-59, text fig.
+
+  “=On the True Nature of the Cretaceous Plant _Ophioglossum
+  granulatum_, Heer.=” _Annals of Botany_, vol. 25, 1911, pp. 903-907,
+  text figs. 1-2.
+
+  “=A Reply to Prof. Jeffrey’s Article on _Yezonia_ and
+  _Cryptomeriopsis_.=” _Annals of Botany_, vol. 25, 1911, pp. 269-270.
+
+  “=The Value and Interest of Japanese Fossils.=” _Transactions Japan
+  Society_, vol. 9, 1910, pp. 1-12, plates i-iii.
+
+  “=Further Observations on the Fossil Flower, _Cretovarium_.=” _Annals
+  of Botany_, vol. 24, 1910, pp. 679-681, plates lvi-lvii.
+
+  “=Adventitious Budding and Branching in Cycas.=” _New Phytologist_,
+  vol. 9, 1910, pp. 235-241, text figs. 8-14.
+
+  “=The Anatomy of Cretaceous Pine Leaves.=” (With Miss Kershaw.)
+  _Annals of Botany_, vol. 24, 1910, pp. 395-402, plates xxvii-xxviii.
+
+  “=The Internal Anatomy of _Nilssonia Orientalis_.=” _Annals of
+  Botany_, vol. 24, 1910, pp. 389-393, plate xxvi.
+
+  “=Studies on the Structure and Affinities of Cretaceous Plants.=”
+  (With Prof. Fujii.) _Phil. Transactions Royal Society B_, vol. 201,
+  1910, pp. 1-90, plates i-ix.
+
+  “=Plant containing Nodules from Japan.=” _Quarterly Journal
+  Geological Society_, vol. 65, 1909, pp. 195-205, plate ix.
+
+  “=On the Tent-building Habits of the Ant _Lasius niger_ Linn. in
+  Japan.=” (With Dr. Gordon Hewitt.) “Memoirs” and _Proceedings
+  Manchester Literary Philo. Society_, vol. 53, 1909, pt. 3, pp. 1-6,
+  plate 1.
+
+  “=On the Present Distribution and Origin of the Calcareous
+  Concretions in Coal Seams, known as ‘Coal Balls.’=” (With D. M. S.
+  Watson.) _Phil. Transactions Royal Society B_, vol. 200, 1908, pp.
+  167-218, plates xvii-xix.
+
+  “=The Flora of the Inferior Oolite of Brora.=” _Quarterly Journal
+  Geological Society_, vol. 63, 1907, pp. 375-382, plate xxvii.
+
+  “=The Relation of the Concretionary Nodules of the Yarra to the
+  Calcareous Nodules known as ‘Coal Balls.’=” _Geological Magazine_,
+  Dec. 5, 1907, vol. 4, pp. 106-108.
+
+  “=The Xerophytic Character of the Gymnosperms.=” _New Phytologist_,
+  vol. 6, 1907, pp. 46-50.
+
+  “=A Note on a Wounded Calamite.=” _Annals Botany_, vol. 21, 1907, pp.
+  277-280, plate xxiii, text figs. 1-4.
+
+  “=The Nutritive Relations of the Surrounding Tissues to the
+  Archegonia in Gymnosperms.=” (With Prof. Fujii.) _Beihefte zum Botan.
+  Centralblatt_, vol. 20, 1906, pp. 1-24, plate 1.
+
+  “=A New Fern from the Coal Measures: _Tubicaulis Sutcliffii_=, Sp.
+  Nov.” “Memoirs” and _Proceedings Manchester Literary Philo. Society_,
+  vol. 50, 1906, pp. 1-34, plates i-iii.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX C.
+
+THE TENETS OF THE C.B.C.
+
+
+=The objects for which the C.B.C. was founded are as follows:--=
+
+The objects of the Society are (_a_) to bring home to all the
+fundamental nature of the reforms involved in conscious and
+constructive control of conception and the illumination of sex life as
+a basis of racial progress; (_b_) to consider the individual, national,
+international, racial, political, economic, scientific, spiritual and
+other aspects of the theme, for which purpose meetings will be held,
+publications issued, Research Committees, Commissions of Enquiry and
+other activities will be organized from time to time as circumstances
+require and facilities offer; (_c_) to supply all who still need it
+with the full knowledge of sound physiological methods of control.
+
+As these objects indicate, =the scope of the Society is very wide, its
+interests far-reaching, and its possibilities of future development
+very elastic=. Even to-day the tenets which appear fundamental to
+different members of the Society will naturally vary, hence =no one of
+the following is binding on an individual member. General agreement
+with the objects of the Society suffices for membership.=
+
+Nevertheless, it has been felt that it would be useful explicitly to
+state in concise form what may be described as the bedrock of general
+agreement in the Society. This is as follows:--
+
+1.--The hygiene of sex is as suitable and proper a subject for
+scientific and serious study as the hygiene of nutrition, locomotion,
+or any other human function.
+
+2.--Owing to the shamefaced attitude which has until recently
+characterized our dealings with the subject, all the manifold data
+involved in the different aspects of sex life have not had the direct,
+scientific and physiological handling they deserve and require. We
+deplore this and shall endeavour to remedy it.
+
+3.--We maintain that the highest spiritual development, the noblest
+intellectual illumination, and the sweetest romantic possibilities
+of individual sex experience, are not damaged by sound scientific
+knowledge, but contrariwise, are enhanced and elevated.
+
+4.--We consider that in relation to the procreation of additional
+members of the community, the best possible knowledge of scientific
+and technical details should be available to those undertaking this
+important social duty.
+
+5.--We believe that the haphazard production of children by ignorant,
+coerced, or diseased mothers is profoundly detrimental to the race. We
+believe, therefore, that parenthood should no longer be the result of
+ignorance or accident, but should be a power used voluntarily and with
+knowledge.
+
+6.--We maintain that to achieve this result a knowledge of the simple
+hygiene of contraception is essential.
+
+7.--We advocate no individual contraceptive measure as final or
+fundamental, but maintain that the =best= measures =available= at any
+time should be taught and known by the people.
+
+8.--We desire to keep constantly in touch with all advances in science
+which may have a bearing on the practical details of contraceptive
+measures, and for this purpose we have organized a Medical Research
+Committee to keep our Society informed as to the current scientific
+position of the hygiene of contraception.
+
+9.--AS REGARDS THE POPULATION AT PRESENT. We say that there are
+unfortunately many men and women who should be prevented from
+procreating children at all, because of their individual ill-health, or
+the diseased and degenerate nature of the offspring that they may be
+expected to produce. These considerations would not apply to a better
+and healthier world.
+
+10.--There are many women unfortunately so constructed--suffering from
+weakness of certain organs--that they would risk death if they were to
+attempt to bear children, and who, therefore, should not bear them.
+
+11.--There are unfortunately many couples so ill-provided with this
+world’s goods, or with means to acquire them, that they cannot support
+further children, and therefore should not bear them. Women, owing to
+their own or their husband’s incapacity to be self-supporting, may be
+permanently or temporarily in such a position owing to disaster or
+unemployment. The following Resolution was passed by our Society:
+
+
+_Resolution passed at General Meeting November 22nd, 1921._
+
+  “Both to spare your own personal distress and to avoid bringing
+  a weakly child into the world, it is important that all should
+  realize that no one should conceive in times of individual misery
+  or ill-health. Of course wherever a child is already on the way,
+  the best must be made of it. But sound and wholesome methods of
+  Birth Control (Control of Conception) are known, and advice will be
+  given free by a qualified nurse to all unemployed married persons
+  who present this slip at the Mother’s Clinic, 61, Marlborough Road,
+  Holloway, London, N. 19.”
+
+12.--The Society approves and welcomes the work done by the first
+British Birth Control Clinic (The Mother’s Clinic, 61, Marlborough
+Road, Holloway, N.19), where the very poor and ignorant receive
+personal instruction; but we consider that this public service should
+not be left to private enterprise to maintain, and hence that the
+Ministry of Health should supply suitable help and contraceptive
+instruction to working-class women at the many Ante-natal Clinics,
+Welfare Centres, etc., already in existence all over the country.
+
+13.--We maintain that science has already made available contraceptive
+measures as safe and as simple to use as any other hygienic measures
+widely known and practised, such as brushing one’s teeth, or the
+removal daily of a dental plate by one who has artificial teeth. We,
+therefore, maintain that knowledge and instruction in these matters
+for the normal and healthy is an =hygienic= and not a medical matter.
+The problem of controlling conception on the part of those who are
+diseased, abnormal and unhealthy is on the other hand a purely medical
+matter and may involve measures which this Society would not advocate
+for general use.
+
+14.--We as a Society are at present working for the dissemination of
+the best possible hygienic knowledge to all who are intelligent enough
+to be capable of using it, but we recognize the grave National problem
+raised by the fertility of those too degenerate or too careless to be
+capable of using any form of contraceptive.
+
+15.--We are convinced that children spaced by voluntary means have
+a less mortality, and that the mother of such children has time to
+recover her health and attend to the young child in a better way, than
+if the pregnancies follow rapidly one after the other, and we are
+therefore in favour of voluntarily spacing all the desired children of
+even the healthiest woman.
+
+16.--In short, we are profoundly and fundamentally a pro-baby
+organisation, in favour of producing the largest possible number of
+healthy, happy children without detriment to the mother, and with the
+minimum wastage of infants by premature death. We, therefore, as a
+Society, regret the relatively small families of those best fitted to
+care for children. In this connection our motto has been “Babies in
+the right place,” and it is just as much the aim of Constructive Birth
+Control to secure conception to those married people who are healthy,
+childless, and desire children, as it is to furnish security from
+conception to those who are racially diseased, already overburdened
+with children, or in any specific way unfitted for parenthood.
+
+17.--We hold no fixed opinions concerning the total numbers either of
+individual families or of populations, desiring only that the =optimum=
+shall be attained.
+
+                           Passed by the Executive Committee, C.B.C.
+
+                           March, 1923.
+
+
+_Everyone who is interested in securing the best future for our Race
+should join the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial
+Progress._ _Apply for Membership forms to the Hon. Secretary_, =C.B.C.,
+4-5, Adam St., Adelphi, London, W.C.2. Gerrard 4431.=
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes.
+
+Italic text is indicated with _underscores_, bold text with =equals=.
+Small/mixed capitals have been replaced with ALL CAPITALS.
+
+Evident typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected
+silently. Inconsistent spelling/hyphenation has been normalised.
+
+Half-titles and reiterations of chapter titles have been discarded.
+
+End of page footnotes have been sequentially numbered and relocated to
+the end of the relevant chapter.
+
+Illustrations have been relocated between paragraphs.
+
+A Table of Contents and List of Illustrations have been compiled by the
+transcriber.
+
+New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
+public domain.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78278 ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78278 ***</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">i</span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="i_f001" style="max-width: 30.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_f001.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <span class="smcap">Dr. Marie Stopes</span><br>
+    as thousands have seen her on the lecture platform.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ii">ii</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h1>
+<span class="sm">THE</span><br>
+AUTHORIZED LIFE<br>
+<span class="sm">OF</span><br>
+<span class="big">MARIE C. STOPES</span><br>
+</h1>
+<p class="center">
+<span class="sm">BY</span><br>
+AYLMER MAUDE<br>
+<br>
+<span class="sm">AUTHOR OF</span><br>
+<br>
+<i>Life of Tolstoy</i>.
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Editor of the “Maude Tolstoy” in the World’s
+Classics Series.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="center sm">
+<p class="p4 center">
+LONDON:<br>
+WILLIAMS &amp; NORGATE, LTD.<br>
+14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.2<br>
+<br>
+1924
+</p>
+<p class="p2 center">
+MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">iii</span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">iv</span></p>
+
+
+  <p class="center bold">
+    ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
+  </p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="tight">The author expresses his grateful thanks
+to the following firms who have kindly given
+permission for the use of some of the photographs
+illustrating this book:—Messrs.
+Swaine, Elliott &amp; Fry and Neame.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<table class="autotable3">
+<tr>
+<th colspan="2">
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+</th>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+<span class="smcap">The Theme.</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+<span class="smcap">Glimpses of Childhood.</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+<span class="smcap">The Student.</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+<span class="smcap">Academic Life.</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+<span class="smcap">World Travel.</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+<span class="smcap">Marriage.</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+<span class="smcap">“Married Love” and its Developments.</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+<span class="smcap">Opponents.</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc">
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+<span class="smcap">Inner Life.</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr nw">
+<a href="#APPENDIX_A">APP. A.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+List of Books and Pamphlets by Dr. Marie Stopes.
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc nw">
+<a href="#APPENDIX_B">APP. B.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+List of Dr. Stopes’s Scientific Memoirs, etc., Embodying her New Discoveries.
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc nw">
+<a href="#APPENDIX_C">APP. C.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+The tenets of the C.B.C.
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<table class="autotable3">
+<tr>
+<th colspan="2">
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+</th>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_f001">1.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Dr. Marie Stopes as thousands have seen her on the lecture platform.
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p048b_top">2.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+The author at Givons Grove with Mrs. Zangwill on his left, Dr. Marie Stopes kneeling, and her mother on his right.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p048b_bottom">3.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Marie Stopes as a student, with a group of professors, in the mountains. Prof. Goebel on her left.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p066b">4.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+The first portrait in her robes as Doctor of Science of London.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p120b">5.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Humphrey Verdon Roe.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p124b">6.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Dr. Marie Stopes at the time of her marriage to Mr. H. V. Roe. 1918.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p126b">7.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+An Industrial Conference at Givons Grove.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p128a_top">8.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Dr. Stopes, seated, with her husband’s father and mother.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p128a_bottom">9.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Mr. H. V. Roe and “Wuffles” as a puppy.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p130a">10.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Members of the Birth Rate Commission. The Bishop of Birmingham in the centre. Dr. Stopes on his left.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p130d">11.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Dr. Marie Stopes and her Baby, Harry Verdon Stopes-Roe, aged 3 months.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p178a">12.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Dr. Marie Stopes.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p200a">13.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Dr. Marie Stopes.
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#i_p208a">14.</a>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Inner home life: Dr. Stopes as gardener, and her husband with the car.
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v"></a><a id="Page_1"></a>1</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">
+    CHAPTER I.
+    <br>
+    <span class="smcap">The Theme.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>To write the life of a friend who is still
+very much alive presents difficulties,
+but they are compensated for in the
+present case by the fact that I am able to
+consult the subject of my work and her
+family, and draw much of my material
+direct from the fountain head. I had a
+similar experience when I wrote <i>The
+Life of Tolstoy</i>, but there my subject was
+eighty years of age and had nearly completed
+his life’s span, whereas my present
+subject is still young, and her work in full
+progress without any sign of exhaustion. In
+the former case I wrote of the ablest man I
+had met, and now I am writing of the ablest
+woman I have met. In both instances their
+personality and the influence exercised by
+their works, as well as misunderstanding
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">2</span>and misrepresentation to which they have
+been exposed, invite attention.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Stopes’s world-wide reputation as a
+scientist, especially as a leading authority
+on palæobotany and coal-research, is not the
+sort of reputation that quickly reaches the
+general public. What has made her name
+rapidly familiar the world over has been the
+revolution she has effected in the general
+attitude towards sex. When, under the influence
+of painful personal experience, she
+began to touch that question, six years ago,
+no intelligible principles were recognisable
+among us to guide people in their matrimonial
+arrangements. There was, on the
+one hand, an obscure impression that virginity,
+celibacy, and the suppression of the
+sex-instinct, were ideals for normal men and
+women to aim at, while on the other hand
+there was an equally cloudy belief that
+married couples ought either to avoid
+marital relations or produce as many offspring
+as chance might send—regardless
+of whether such offspring were likely to be
+healthy or unhealthy and whether the
+parents could support them or not; regardless
+also of the effect continuous child-bearing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">3</span>would have on the health, or even on the
+life, of the mother. Guidance was sometimes
+offered on the basis of a misapplication
+of the 38th chapter of Genesis—which
+relates to a pre-Mosaic state of morality and
+has to be violently twisted before it can even
+be made to appear to apply to the problems
+of to-day. All this was merely a darkening
+of counsel with words, unsatisfying alike to
+those who read the Bible for themselves, and
+to those who sought reasonable guidance
+elsewhere for their sex-relationships.</p>
+
+<p>Many felt the need of a sensible principle
+on which sex morality could rest, and in the
+chapter on “The Sex Question” in my book
+<i>Leo Tolstoy</i> I ventured to say: “It may
+be necessary to overhaul the accepted ideals
+on this subject and to consider it afresh,”
+and had suggested the principle that “those
+things are good in sexual relations which
+make for the health, happiness, and efficiency
+of the present and future generations”;
+but this was a cold philosophic conclusion,
+and it was Dr. Stopes who supplied what
+was really needed, namely, an application
+to the detailed treatment of the sex problem
+of a keenly trained scientific brain in combination
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">4</span>with artistic ability to convey her
+feelings, and an appreciation of the immense
+importance of the subject for the welfare of
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Love and hunger are the two great driving
+forces of humanity, and we cannot afford to
+allow a taboo to inhibit the application of
+thought to the problems relating to either of
+these, nor can any system of morality be
+effective the reason for which cannot be so
+stated as to commend it to the acceptance
+of rational people frankly facing the facts
+life sets before us.</p>
+
+<p>In relation to ordinary normal humanity
+Dr. Stopes agrees with what is said in the
+Bible: that it is not good that “man should
+be alone,” and with the implication of the
+text which says that “male and female
+created he them.” She also agrees with
+St. Paul’s injunction to husbands and
+wives: “Defraud ye not one the other,
+except it be by consent for a season”; and
+she is sure that it is nothing less than a crime
+for people recklessly, or deliberately, to
+bring into the world children who cannot be
+healthy or be decently provided for, and
+that it is also a crime to sacrifice the health
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">5</span>and lives of women by demanding that they
+shall bear children beyond their capacity
+to do so healthily and willingly.</p>
+
+<p>To indicate on the one hand scientific
+reasons why normal marital relations are
+favourable to the development of one’s
+mental and physical powers and one’s
+capacity to serve God and man, and why on
+the other hand the ascetic type of celibate is
+often cantankerous, embittered, and troublesome,
+required up-to-date knowledge of the
+action of secretions in the human body. To
+discover and point out the hidden rocks on
+which many marriages are wrecked owing
+to ignorance of a normal sex-rhythm in
+healthy women, was work specially suitable
+for a woman scientist. Considerable courage
+was needed to present these matters to the
+general public (whom they so greatly concern)
+in defiance of the social taboo that then
+still prevailed, and of a medical prejudice
+against the lay public being permitted to
+understand things that pertain to their
+peace. Besides these qualities, literary skill
+was needed, and much tact had to be employed,
+to present the case so that it should
+reach a wide circle of readers and convince
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">6</span>them, without creating any avoidable
+friction.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of Dr. Stopes’s efforts, in so
+short a time as six years, has amounted to
+nothing less than a revolution in the general
+attitude towards sex. She has created a
+new atmosphere and a new terminology.
+Even her opponents now use her language;
+the difference noticeable before and after the
+publication of <i>Married Love</i> is most marked.
+Heaps of imitators and heaps of converts
+have appeared.</p>
+
+<p>On the special question of birth control
+(which by the way is only briefly alluded to
+in a couple of pages of <i>Married Love</i>) a
+great deal had been written before Dr.
+Stopes dealt with the matter, and as long
+ago as 1868 there had even been a voluminous
+correspondence about it in a leading
+London newspaper, but, in spite of much
+discussion concerning this and some other
+special aspects of the sex problem, it somehow
+happened that up to the time when Dr.
+Stopes began her work ignorance on the
+general subject was so prevalent, and so
+widespread was the superstition that peculiar
+moral virtue pertained to ignorance,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">7</span>that it was still possible for an intelligent,
+alert, and scientifically-minded woman to
+experience great difficulty in obtaining information
+that to-day is readily accessible to
+every intelligent inquirer.</p>
+
+<p>The battle is now set between a reasonable
+and an unreasonable moral code; and
+though the force of inertia and a long tradition
+of ignorance are on the side of the
+obscurantists, the ultimate triumph of light
+against darkness is already assured.</p>
+
+<p>In this introductory chapter I will merely
+quote the opinions expressed by two writers
+well qualified to judge of the value of Dr.
+Stopes’s work. Owing to the extreme
+urgency of the need, the public has over-emphasized
+her birth control work and
+under-estimated her general work on sex.
+Concerning this latter Dr. Havelock Ellis,
+the leading world authority on sexology,
+writing in the <i>Medical Review of Reviews</i>
+(Vol. 25, No. 2, Feb., 1919), says of some of
+the new observations in <i>Married Love</i>:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“This seems to represent the most notable
+advance made during recent years in the
+knowledge of women’s psycho-physiological
+life.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>And Mr. Luther Munday wrote:—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">8</span></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“There always have been situations experienced
+that neither the Bible nor Science
+have hitherto explained.... But through
+your thought has come, once for all, a message
+clean and pure, linking the mystery of
+sex with the majesty of the Eternal and
+giving happiness to all during life’s little
+part of immortality here on Earth.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The following chapters furnish some
+account of the preparation Dr. Stopes had
+for her work, of the fields in which she has
+made her mark, of what she herself is like,
+of the personal experiences that directed her
+attention to the problems of sex, and of the
+opposition she has encountered.</p>
+
+<p>It is greatly to be hoped that, both on the
+problems of sex and on other subjects, Dr.
+Stopes will add much in the future to what
+she has already given us.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">9</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">
+    CHAPTER II.
+    <br>
+    <span class="smcap">Glimpses of Childhood.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Marie Carmichael Stopes, the
+first child of Henry Stopes and
+Charlotte Carmichael, his wife, was
+born in Edinburgh, the town of her mother’s
+birth and upbringing, but her father was
+pure English, and at the age of six weeks
+the baby girl became a Londoner, which, in
+essence, she has remained ever since.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Stopes was by profession an architect,
+but since early childhood had a passion
+for fossils and the stone tools left by prehistoric
+man. Indeed, at the age of eight
+years he was whipped soundly for insisting
+on taking his stones to bed with him, and
+through life his passion for archæological
+research furnished him with a second career,
+which undoubtedly greatly influenced the
+home surroundings of his children and, in
+the case of his elder daughter, largely directed
+the line of her development. Long before
+his death Henry Stopes had accumulated the
+largest private collection in the world of prehistoric
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">10</span>stone implements, and their constant
+care and classification, as well as
+collection, was a great feature in his elder
+daughter’s life from her earliest childhood.
+Henry Stopes’s interests were profound in
+many directions and very human; in addition
+to these two main interests he was a
+noted agricultural expert, writing regularly
+under a <i>nom-de-plume</i> for agricultural
+papers, and being Chairman of the British
+Judges of Barley; being indeed a pioneer in
+the critical judging of grain. He accumulated
+statistics on the effects of different
+rotations of crops in connection with prize-winning
+strains and so on, which meant a
+great deal of statistical work from the
+records of numerous entrants for the annual
+barley competitions, in which his little girl,
+before she was twelve years old, used to help
+him, or was led to believe that she was helping
+him, while undoubtedly he was training
+her in arithmetic and in a scientific attitude
+of mind towards life in general.</p>
+
+<p>Marie Stopes sometimes calls herself a
+“British Association Baby,” for Henry
+Stopes and Miss Carmichael were first introduced
+at a meeting of the British Association;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">11</span>and Marie was taken, from childhood,
+to almost every meeting of the Association
+during her school days, only missing
+those meetings which were held overseas.</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, her mother,
+was one of the pioneers of women’s University
+education, having been the first woman
+to take the University Certificate in Literature,
+Philosophy, and a number of other
+subjects at Edinburgh University when they
+were given by the Professors privately for
+the ladies, who were afterwards examined
+with the same examination papers as the
+men, but from whom degrees were withheld.
+Charlotte Carmichael headed many a list in
+the early days when Miss Jex Blake was
+studying medicine. After marriage Miss
+Carmichael came to live in London, and
+took up the study of Shakespearean contemporary
+history, becoming an expert in reading
+early records and ferreting out many of
+the facts time had rendered obscure about
+Shakespeare’s life history. She is the
+author, among other works, of “The Bacon-Shakespeare
+Question Answered,” “Shakespeare’s
+Warwickshire Contemporaries,”
+“The Life of the Earl of Southampton,”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">12</span>and a large number of serious original contributions
+published by the learned and
+periodical press.</p>
+
+<p>Thus on both sides the baby Marie inherited
+a variety of intellectual interests.
+One of her maternal great grandfathers was
+Brown, the Royal Architect, in Edinburgh,
+who not only repaired Holyrood Palace but
+designed and built many of the finest streets
+and squares in the West End of Edinburgh
+which still delight the town-planners of to-day.
+Another maternal great grandfather
+was William Carmichael, Writer to the
+Signet, assistant and then successor to
+Sir Walter Scott. The Scott family were
+intimate with the Carmichaels, and Lady
+Scott personally embroidered a beautiful
+Christening robe for one member of the
+family, which descended to Marie, was used
+for her own Christening, and is now handed
+on to her son.</p>
+
+<p>On her father’s side, behind an immediate
+Quaker connection, there was a long
+line of Anglican clergy.</p>
+
+<p>Inherited also was a great liking, indeed
+almost a passion, for travel. After the
+journey at six weeks from Edinburgh to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">13</span>London, the nine-months-old baby was
+taken to the seaside and plunged into the
+sea, and thereafter never less than twice a
+year, and often more frequently, she made
+a journey to some part of England or Scotland,
+becoming later on a world-wide
+traveller.</p>
+
+<p>After a few years little Marie had a sister,
+called Winifred, and these two were the
+only children of their parents, no boys being
+wished for. This fact, and the attitude of
+generous appreciation towards women that
+was characteristic of her father, undoubtedly
+had a favourable influence on her character
+and achievements through life, for she was
+brought up from her earliest consciousness
+not only to feel that her birth had been
+desired, but that she, as a girl, had been
+wished for and that no boy would have
+satisfied her parents as she did. For an
+eldest child who has the misfortune to be a
+girl when a boy is desired, a very different
+home and outlook must develop. Whilst
+still a tiny child, when asked by enquirers
+if, besides her sister there was no brother,
+she would gravely announce that pussy was
+her brother, and she thinks she was probably
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">14</span>8 or 9 years old before she realised that
+pussy was not a brother. Her father being
+particularly fond of cats, and having an
+almost magical power of training them, the
+family pussy had its own dinner-service and
+used to sit up at table with the children,
+eating off its own plate on the table from a
+high chair just like Marie’s little sister.</p>
+
+<p>From her uneventful childhood, a few
+points stand out in her memory as being of
+great importance in the development of her
+character. One of these was a nurse who
+was for many years their devoted attendant,
+and after whom the favourite doll was called
+“Little Annie.” Nurse Annie, one day,
+looking at the doll’s dress which the child
+was sewing, remarked that it was very good
+“for a lady,” and Marie, at that time not
+more than six or seven years of age, blazed
+with indignation that it should not be very
+good in itself. In some queer childish way
+she resented the fact that a lady should be
+considered incapable of doing things as well
+as other people, and determined that she
+would sew, at any rate, as well as a servant.
+This she did, but unfortunately the nurse
+said nothing about knitting like a lady; so
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">15</span>that when she was twelve years old and
+went first to school, she immediately took
+first place in the sewing class and bottom
+place in the knitting class.</p>
+
+<p>A rather absurd introduction to her later
+well-known birth control ideas also may be
+traced to the nursery. Her mother one day,
+when the nurse told her that new boots were
+needed, laughingly remarked, “Oh, what
+should I do if I had a dozen children?”
+Little Marie gravely remarked: “You would
+drown all the others, and keep Winnie and
+me.”</p>
+
+<p>In London the Stopes family lived beside
+the Crystal Palace in a house in Cintra
+Park, overlooking private grounds on one
+side and with ground behind the three
+central gardens of the neighbouring circle
+of houses, which went uphill and downhill,
+so that the children had much space in
+which to play. Mr. Stopes built a wing on
+to the house that they took and, having very
+enlightened architectural ideas for those
+days, had an open verandah connecting the
+back parts of the house, for the convenience
+of the maids and to make an open-air playground
+for the children in wet weather.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">16</span>In the garden an old quince tree was a
+favourite resort of the children, because
+they could lie on its branches and overlook
+the stableyard, and watch the horses being
+groomed. It was under this quince tree,
+too, that Marie Stopes says she first got the
+idea, as a very small child, which finds expression
+in her pamphlet “Mother, how was
+I born?”—for it was just by that quince
+tree that, as a prattling child of four or five,
+she was talking about babies and where her
+little sister had come from, and she felt,
+rather than saw, that people were laughing
+while telling her the gooseberry-bush fiction,
+and she then felt, with a flush of insight and
+indignation, that they were lying to her.
+The matter however did not actually
+interest her, but the vivid impression of
+that moment has painted on her memory
+every leaf, and the exact arrangement of the
+grass and of the border walks, so that it is
+the most vividly remembered scene of the
+whole of that home.</p>
+
+<p>The children were taken regularly once or
+twice a year to some seaside place, and for
+many years they went to different seaside
+resorts in the South of Scotland. At about
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">17</span>the age of nine, North Berwick was the
+choice, and Marie’s inherited passion for
+fossils had full vent in the collection of
+crinoids which were washed up thickly on
+the seashore. There too Marie Stopes tells
+me that she has a very vivid memory of
+lying on her back in the garden at North
+Berwick and really, for the first time in her
+life, noticing the clouds; noticing them, that
+is to say, in such a way that to this day she
+can remember their shapes and patterns
+and the thrilling sense of portentous glory
+their mounting and swiftly riding god-like
+forms created in her mind. She thinks this
+was connected in some way with the reading
+of a book, “Tales of Ancient Greece,”
+which had been given to her not long before;
+but she says it felt as though she had suddenly
+looked through a glass-door into the
+whole Universe, peopled with mysterious
+beings she had never seen before and never
+ceased to see thereafter. A little later,
+indeed she thinks that very summer, a sense
+of personal shame and inferiority developed
+in her, which she did not get over for many
+years, and at that time almost her only consolation
+was the story of the Ugly Duckling
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">18</span>in Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales. The first
+sense of personal shame resulted from her
+mothers’ advanced, and as we moderns
+would think very sensible, ideas. Little
+Marie had been given a knitted dress to
+wear, when no one else, at any rate in that
+seaside place, was advanced enough to be
+wearing knitted dresses; and instead of feeling
+happy and distinctive in it she felt
+utterly ashamed to appear different from
+other children; a feeling that was accentuated
+by the fact that a young cousin
+laughed at her. About this same time,
+owing to the curious inaccuracy and incompleteness
+of a child’s ideas, this feeling was
+emphasised and increased by the following
+incident. The Stopes family and three or
+four other families in the district combined
+to employ the services of a private dance-mistress,
+who came in turn to each of the
+four houses, where the class was held in
+rotation. Mrs. Stopes, when her turn came,
+gave the children a nice tea of wholesome
+cakes without currants, and to make them
+attractive used to send to town for cakes
+with coloured icings and various fancy
+things she thought the children would like.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">19</span>One of the other households, however, gave
+only rock buns and milk. Poor little Marie
+thought that rock buns, as they contained
+currants, which she was never allowed to
+have at home, were something much
+grander and more expensive, and was
+always ashamed of the fact that they were
+not rich enough to have rock buns for tea.
+As usual with her however no external sign
+of this deep shame was ever shown, but for
+years she felt crushed and humiliated by the
+fact that to her a halfpenny rock bun was
+far grander than an iced gateau. At this
+time and all through her earlier childhood
+her father was very well-to-do—but he had
+great financial losses when she was about
+eleven, which left them permanently impoverished
+in comparison with the earlier
+expectations.</p>
+
+<p>Marie’s education was exceptional in
+many ways. Her mother having been
+brought up in the good old Scottish school,
+started the little girl of about five on Greek
+and Latin roots, so as to give her a fundamental
+knowledge of the structure of the
+English language. But Marie proved so
+stupid that this was dropped and, beyond
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">20</span>being taught to read and write, she had
+indeed almost no education until, a few
+days before she was twelve, she was sent to
+school. This statement should however be
+qualified by mention of something that,
+again, greatly influenced her mental attitude
+towards the Universe. A large atlas
+was solemnly brought out every morning,
+and on its title-page this atlas had a circle
+in which part of the world was drawn with
+clouds around it. Her first memory of any
+lesson at all was pointing with a stubby
+little baby finger at this circle, representing
+a sphere, and repeating “The world is round
+and rolls in space.” This formula, which
+was repeated daily for years, so impressed
+itself on her that she was always trying to
+feel the world rolling in space and even, as
+a very small child, used to wonder which
+way up she was standing at any given
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>Marie and her sister Winifred were sent
+to St. George’s School in Edinburgh for
+their first schooling, and then the unusual
+nature of her preliminary training, pitted
+against the ordinary school curriculum, left
+her woefully behind her age in attainments,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">21</span>so that she was put with a class of girls
+much younger than herself. In half a term
+however she began to find her feet, but not
+before her backwardness had emphasised
+the feeling of shame and humiliation at her
+inferiority, which indeed throughout her
+schooldays was strongly characteristic of
+her, and which she tried to hide by making
+the most of any attainments that she
+thought she had; and she undoubtedly had
+some that were unusual in a child of her age.
+For instance, she had been entrusted by her
+father with a small collection of flint implements
+he was presenting to the Museum of
+the Society of Antiquaries in Edinburgh,
+and when she was taken down with them to
+Dr. Anderson, the learned Director of the
+Museum, without any hesitation or embarrassment
+she gave him what amounted to a
+lecture on their nature and uses, and told
+him what to write on the labels for the
+exhibition cases. So amused were her
+elders by her expert knowledge of these
+implements, that her head mistress asked
+her to lecture to the assembled school on
+the subject. This she did, her audience
+consisting of the entire school including the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">22</span>teachers. Having never been brought up to
+an acute personal consciousness or any personal
+conceit, she did not realise then that
+there was anything unusual or surprising in
+facing such an audience. A diary which
+Dr. Stopes kept as a child for some weeks
+still exists, and begins with an entry concerning
+her first day at school: “Oct.
+Tuesday 4. I went to school at 10 o’clock
+and did not like it at all. I went to bed very
+cross.” Three days later comes an entry
+relating to what subsequently became one of
+her chief studies. “Friday, 7th. Went to
+school. It was so nice we had an object
+lesson on coal mines and coal.”</p>
+
+<p>While in Edinburgh she had the immense
+advantage of the kindly personal friendship
+of Miss S. E. S. Mair, her mother’s friend,
+one of the originators of the St. George’s
+Girls’ School, the best school in Edinburgh,
+and a leader of social life and advanced
+thought in that city. Miss Mair used to
+give famous parties for little girls, at which,
+after a sumptuous tea, each child was asked
+to make a clever remark to entertain the
+whole company. Marie’s remarks, though
+presumably not clever, were extremely
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">23</span>embarrassing to her and kept her petrified
+with fear throughout the whole tea, so that
+she used to feel that it was a great pity the
+remarks were not asked for before tea, because
+then her appetite would have been so
+much better for the tea itself—a feeling that
+no doubt many after-dinner speakers have
+shared. In Edinburgh also the horizon of
+the two little girls was enlarged by the
+kindly care and interest of Miss Menzies,
+who had a great interest in Iceland and read
+many Icelandic and Northern sagas aloud to
+them. Miss Menzies too had a comfortable
+elderly cook who took Marie’s domestic
+education in hand and on Saturdays taught
+her home cooking and the making of real
+Scotch scones and shortbreads, interesting
+her in cooking, and sowing the seeds of an
+accomplishment which later in life proved
+of great value when she was out camping,
+or living under unusual conditions, as she
+often did.</p>
+
+<p>After two years in Edinburgh the children
+were brought back to London and were sent
+to the North London Collegiate School,
+whose head mistress was Dr. Sophie Bryant,
+the successor of Miss Buss, the original
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">24</span>founder of the School. Although two years
+of Edinburgh schooling had made Marie
+rather better able to meet girls of her own
+age on an equality, she was still far behind
+her years in many of the routine school subjects;
+and when she finally passed the
+London matriculation, second-class, her
+Latin mistress said to her: “I do not know
+how you did it, you had no business to get
+through,” and she replied: “I did it by
+writing very clearly everything I knew and
+saying nothing about the things I did not
+know; for I thought it would save the
+Examiners’ time”—a remark which showed
+much penetration, for in later years, when
+Dr. Marie Stopes herself became an examiner,
+she learnt how examiners are worried
+by illegible handwriting and screeds of
+mazy reading which do not make it clear to
+them what the candidates know and what
+they do not know. At the North London
+Collegiate School the two girls were still
+educated in a rather unusual way. They
+were not permitted to go to afternoon school,
+and only lived in London from Monday
+mornings till Friday middays, going home
+to a country house in the then beautiful
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">25</span>village of Swanscombe. The house there
+was an old Elizabethan oak-panelled house
+which Marie was old enough to appreciate,
+and the charm of which, and the mysterious
+beauty of some of its rooms, fascinated her
+in her early adolescence. At the age of
+about fourteen she often got up at four or
+five in the morning in order to be alone in
+the old rooms, one or two of which she
+sketched very industriously though with
+little talent. These pictures however are
+still precious to her as recalling the house
+she has ever loved. It had a very high stone
+wall along the tiny village street on one side,
+and opened into cherry orchards leading to
+woodlands on the other, and it was in these
+woods and flowery lanes that Marie first
+really saw the beauty of flowers. She says:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“At the age of fifteen I remember observing
+the faces of flowers as passionately as I had
+at the age of about nine observed the sky.
+I escaped by myself one day into the woods
+and spent several hours lying motionless,
+gazing into the faces of the violets. That
+too was the opening of a door into another
+universe. Of course, I suppose I must have
+seen flowers before, but till then I had never
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">26</span>felt the sight of them.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>This home in
+Swanscombe had been taken because of
+Henry Stopes’s great interest in the brick-earths
+and gravels of the surrounding neighbourhood,
+which teemed with relics of prehistoric
+man in the shape of both palæoliths
+and neoliths, and there Marie, and to a less
+extent her sister Winifred, spent nearly all
+their holiday time and almost the whole of
+every Saturday and Sunday, collecting specimens
+with their father in the quarries and
+on the fields, washing them, labelling them,
+and cataloguing them, with him. To this
+house also came many visitors of interest to
+the growing children.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“One of my schoolgirl
+memories of Swanscombe is the famous
+editor, Mr. Norman Maccoll, the editor of
+the then thunderer, the <i>Athenæum</i>. He
+was always very charming to us children,
+but disapproved of our going into the woodlands
+without gloves, as he said we were to
+be young ladies in the future and should
+have white hands. So on the days that he
+came to lunch we used to put on gloves to
+go round the woodlands with him, but never
+on other occasions. He was a very stout,
+elderly gentleman with long beard and a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">27</span>benign, fatherly face, though his literary
+criticisms were the terror of many a serious
+author. We did not look upon him with
+such awe as we undoubtedly should have
+done, and I remember once luring him to
+sit on a very firm bush, through which he
+promptly went, leaving only his head and
+his feet sticking up, and from which the
+united strength of my little sister and myself
+were insufficient to extricate him, red and
+indignant, and very much less pompously
+impressive than usual. I remember another
+occasion when, to avoid climbing a high
+fence, we children stepped through, and he,
+miscalculating the width of the bar, followed
+us but stuck midway. No pushing or pulling
+could get him either in or out. He
+became purple in the face, and we were all
+frantic. My mother, as one of his reviewers
+and an author whose reputation could be
+made or marred by his paper, was almost in
+tears, and my father at last was so genuinely
+concerned that he ran home for a saw. I
+also remember Seton Karr, the famous lion hunter,
+lunching with us and being escorted
+across the cherry orchard by my sister and
+myself, wherein we encountered two or three
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">28</span>cows from whom Seton Karr fled with teeth
+chattering, while my sister and I remained
+a protective bodyguard between him and the
+cows. We were firmly convinced at the time
+that he was in real fear of them, and I remember
+preaching to myself a moral lesson
+on the vanity of courage. Now, however, I
+begin to wonder whether he was not an
+adept in the art of pleasing children. A
+man who also made a great impression on
+my early childhood was the very lovable late
+Dr. Furnivall, the famous Shakespearean,
+who often came to lunch with us in his pink
+shirt and with his pink bald head, and went
+with us through the woods in a state of
+childlike glee. He first among all my
+acquaintances showed me the delight of
+lying flat on one’s back in the baking sunshine,
+and I well remember his refusal to
+proceed round the woodland with my mother
+and the rest of the party, and insisting on
+lying where he was on the violet-decked
+slope in the sun for an hour at a time, while
+the rest took the decorous walk round the
+crest and picked him up on their return. I
+remember also there Professor Sayce, the
+famous Assyriologist, whose life has just
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">29</span>been published, and who was much interested
+in my father’s implements; and also
+Mr. Mabson, the owner and editor of the
+<i>Statist</i>, a journal for which my father sometimes
+wrote.</p>
+
+<p>“As a young girl I met so many of my
+parents’ friends, mostly people who were
+doing something in the world of thought,
+that it is difficult to say who influenced me
+and who did not; but I clearly remember an
+outstanding influence from one talk with Sir
+Francis Galton and also from Mrs. Alec
+Tweedie, whose house I was sometimes
+taken to visit. Once at a party at Robert
+Mond’s country house she introduced me to
+him as ‘a girl who is going to do great
+things.’ I felt it was incumbent upon me
+to try to live up to such an introduction!”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>With the exception of one annual day for
+their chief school friends, the children had
+almost no young companionship, but listened
+to the talk of scientific or literary experts at
+their parents’ table, and found their chief
+amusement in the constant companionship
+of their father. When the elder girl was
+about fifteen however the parents thought
+it wise to come nearer to their school, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">30</span>the family moved to Hampstead, by chance
+to the house next door to Professor Bonney,
+the geologist. Professor Bonney had not
+grasped who his new neighbour was, and
+when hundreds of butter boxes were piled in
+the garden, he gave out a groan round the
+neighbourhood, that his new neighbour was
+a wretched grocer. Professor Bonney, who
+was more a geologist than an archæologist,
+showed only a polite interest in the boxes
+when he found out that the contents were
+museum specimens of stone implements and
+not the remains of a grocery business.</p>
+
+<p>The continuous unconscious education
+which companionship with her father gave
+Marie was supplemented, whilst settling
+into this house, by really expert lessons in
+carpentry. Her father, always anxious that
+she should not do things in a “ladylike”
+way, taught the girl when and how to use
+screws instead of nails, and how to mitre
+a corner, in making cabinets or shelves,
+and both girls helped their father to put up
+many shelves and make arrangements for
+his specimens. This resulted in a passion
+to do things for herself, and a small room
+was allotted as a study for the girls, which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">31</span>Marie distempered with a stencilled design
+of her own make, and for which she constructed
+a good deal of the furniture. In
+this room she pursued her school studies in
+an erratic way, hurrying through the official
+homework and, as she grew older, reading
+many books it would probably have surprised
+her elders to know that she read. “Between
+the ages of sixteen and seventeen I
+read most of Kant and Swedenborg, a great
+deal of comparative theology, as well as a
+large number of out-of-the-way novels, and,
+of course, many scientific books, such as
+‘The Origin of Species’ and others then new
+to me, which it would have shocked my
+mother very much to know that I was taking
+seriously.”</p>
+
+<p>In her later school years Marie had more
+or less caught up to the standard for her age,
+but until she reached the Sixth Form and
+was a Prefect, she never felt really sure
+among her school contemporaries. Even
+though in many classes she headed the list,
+she always came down in some other subject.
+She was seldom indisputably top of
+the class, but when she was nearly seventeen
+the chemistry mistress, Miss Aitken,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">32</span>developed scarlet fever, and for the next
+morning’s work there was no teacher.
+Marie, without hesitation, went to the headmistress
+and said that as she had been spending
+some hours in the laboratory she knew
+just what Miss Aitken had intended to give
+to those classes, and that she could show
+where the apparatus was ready prepared.
+Dr. Sophie Bryant, the headmistress, in
+view of the crisis, and also possibly to test
+the quality of a girl in whom she felt some
+interest, asked Marie if she could take the
+classes, which she did; and then for six
+weeks, directed only by correspondence from
+Miss Aitken, Marie took the chemistry for
+the whole school, including the class of
+which she was herself a member. She was
+very proud when she received a present of
+£5 for having done this, and much humiliated
+when having sent a receipt without
+a stamp on it, this was returned for her
+to rectify the error. Nevertheless she went
+through the school leaving a general impression
+on most, if not all, the mistresses,
+except Miss Aitken and Dr. Sophie Bryant
+herself, that she was a stupid girl whose
+plodding perseverance alone saved her from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">33</span>disgracing herself in the examinations.
+Among her school-mates she made a few
+lasting friendships. Her great school friend,
+and the only one whose life has remained in
+close contact with her own, is Olga Kapteyn,
+a girl of Dutch descent, niece of Professor
+Kapteyn, the famous astronomer. These
+two girls, who both had a passion for colour,
+including a love of gold and orange tone for
+silk (which was then almost unattainable),
+came together over their intense appreciation
+of their teacher, Miss Aitken. Of Miss
+Aitken, Marie Stopes says: “She was, undoubtedly,
+the greatest influence in my
+school career. She opened to me the door
+that led to all the exquisite beauty of Italian
+art and of the school of artists represented
+by Watts, Rossetti, and their contemporaries.
+She taught me chemistry so well that I was
+doing work of honours degree standard in
+physical chemistry before I left school, and
+she strengthened and hardened my character
+by her mingled austerity and beauty. I
+had undoubtedly the usual schoolgirl’s
+‘Schwärmerei’ for other teachers whom I
+thought I loved more at the time. But Miss
+Aitken and Dr. Sophie Bryant are the two
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">34</span>mistresses who understood me and influenced
+me, and to whom I owe a lasting debt
+of gratitude.”</p>
+
+<p>On leaving school Marie Stopes was given
+a leaving Scholarship in Science, and under
+the influence of Miss Aitken she went to
+University College, London, rather than to
+a Woman’s College which had been suggested
+for her. Miss Aitken wisely said:
+“If you are going to do science at all, do it
+under the biggest men of the day.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">35</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">
+    CHAPTER III.
+    <br>
+    <span class="smcap">The Student.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Whether Marie Stopes should go to a
+Women’s College or to University
+College, London, was being discussed
+by her parents, the headmistress
+and teachers. The girl however settled it
+for herself by going down to University
+College and entering herself there as a
+student in the faculty of science. That
+was in the days of Miss Rosa Morrison as
+the women’s tutor, and after due formalities
+and recommendations had been put
+through the question came up of the classes
+she would take. As her last two years at
+school had included considerably more training
+in zoology and chemistry than is usual
+for a schoolgirl, the chemistry indeed being
+far beyond the intermediate standard, and
+up to the degree standard, Marie wanted to
+enter for honours in the intermediate examination
+at the University. Professor Sir
+William Ramsay was always very sympathetic
+towards any student with ambitions,
+but did not himself conduct the practical
+classes for the juniors, though he gave them
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">36</span>their lectures. The Professor naturally
+would not hear of her doing honours degree
+work until the intermediate examination
+had been passed, so that chemistry, from
+being the young student’s chief interest and
+most advanced study, dropped into second
+place. Receiving considerable encouragement
+from the Professor of Botany, Professor
+Oliver, who was willing to give the
+necessary attention even to one honours
+student, the girl took up honours in that
+subject, in which at school she had taken
+very little interest; and she made botany her
+main work for the first year at the University.
+At the close of the first year, naturally,
+there were the College class examinations,
+and owing to the curious lack of personal
+supervision—which, though it is in
+many respects one of the best features of
+University life, has its inconveniences—no
+one, not even the dons under whom she was
+working or the Dean of the University, ever
+told her that by taking the class examinations
+she would enable the Professors to
+place her for some of the various scholarships
+which were available. When the
+young student asked Professor Oliver at the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">37</span>end of the Session whether it was compulsory,
+or wise, for her to take the class examination,
+his reply was “It is a free country.”
+The Professor of Zoology, the famous protozoologist,
+Minchin, on the other hand, most
+kindly came to her in the laboratory one
+day shortly before the examinations, and
+urged her to take sufficient trouble with the
+nomenclature of the bones, saying that if
+only she would work up the bones with their
+foramina she would be nearly certain to get
+the medal for the class. But the obstinate
+young student replied that no medal would
+be worth her wasting the small amount of
+brains she felt she possessed on learning the
+names of the bones, and that she could not
+see the advantage of learning them, when
+they were always available in a book; what
+she wanted to do was to learn things she
+could not find in books. The Professor
+laughed, and had another friendly, but
+rather reproachful, smile when she took the
+second place in the class instead of the first.</p>
+
+<p>How much this unguided young student lacked
+orientation was also shown by the
+fact that on the annual Prize Day of the
+College she was spending the morning fishing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">38</span>for algæ in the Botanic Gardens with a
+fellow-student, who urged her to come to
+the College in the afternoon. Her dress was
+wet and covered with the slimy green of the
+algæ, and she did not feel inclined to go at
+all, but her fellow-student pressed her to do
+so, and she slipped into the back of the Hall
+when prize distribution was in progress,
+entirely unaware even of the possibility of
+any prizes coming her way, and was incredulous
+when the fact that she was the recipient
+of a gold medal was announced and her name
+was called. Instead of being pleased, she
+was much distressed at receiving this gold
+medal, for she felt that if work such as hers
+secured a gold medal, it must indeed be a
+disappointing thing to be a Professor with
+such poor students. She told me she stayed
+awake the whole night crying about it, and
+vowed to herself to be worthy of it in the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>Ridiculously unoriented also was she
+about the little feminine things generally of
+interest to girls. For some time after going
+to the University, for instance, she wore a
+ring on her engagement finger, and when
+asked by her fellow-students when she was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">39</span>going to be married, was amazed to learn
+that this was the engagement finger, as she
+had not known that there was any such
+thing. The ring had been given her by her
+mother, and the girl had no knowledge that
+any significance was involved in wearing it.
+Similarly, when in the first year of her
+college course she received her first proposal
+of marriage, the man was surprised at her
+reply: “But I am not nearly old enough to
+think about such things; surely I do not
+look twenty-five.” And he had to learn
+that, of course, she would not consider anything
+of the sort until she was twenty-five,
+“because nice girls do not.” Her father
+had brought her up in this belief, with the
+very proper intention of delaying her sex-consciousness
+as long as possible, and so
+strictly and implicitly had she accepted the
+idea, that nothing the man could say could
+persuade her that it was not most improper
+of him even to have thought it possible that
+marriage could be discussed with a nice girl
+under twenty-five. Naturally such a girl
+was not always understood by her fellow-students,
+but she was popular enough to be
+made the President of the Women’s Union
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">40</span>Debating Society and one of the hockey
+eleven.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after the College examinations
+the open University examinations took
+place. Marie Stopes took the first place in
+first-class honours and gained the University
+Scholarship.</p>
+
+<p>During that first year at the University,
+in addition to the Intermediate work at
+University College, she was pursuing, without
+the Professors or anyone else knowing it,
+work beyond the ordinary Degree standard
+in zoology—partially under the tuition of an
+old school teacher, a friend, and partly at
+Birkbeck College, where she went to the
+Evening Classes for the honours course in
+zoology—on the small animaculæ and invertebrates.
+In this way she gained a considerably
+wider training and experience in zoology
+than is generally recognised, and this point
+is of some importance in connection with the
+rather absurd criticisms sometimes levelled
+at her work in human research, to the effect
+that she is “only a botanist,” and therefore
+has no business to make discoveries in fields
+outside the floral world. She had in fact a
+very adequate training in a number of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">41</span>branches of science, including microscopic
+zoological work which pre-eminently qualified
+her to tackle scientifically the branch of
+human research work in connection with
+birth control which she took up later on.</p>
+
+<p>For the tripos for her degree she had
+originally intended to take chemistry, but
+having been diverted to an interest in botany
+greater than she had expected, and also from
+a sense of indebtedness to the Professor of
+Botany who had so kindly encouraged her
+work, as well as from the fact that her
+scholarship was given on the results of the
+botanic examination, she felt it incumbent
+on her to take botany as the main subject.
+Then, too, she had not outgrown the “inferiority
+complex” which always made her
+doubt her own powers, and without telling
+any of her Professors, she secretly decided
+that she would get some practice in taking
+examinations, so she quietly entered for the
+external honours degree at the end of one
+year instead of at the end of three. For this
+it was possible, in those days, to take only
+two subjects instead of three, if the student
+passed in honours standard in one subject
+and obtained a first-class pass in the second.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">42</span>When the Registrar of the University (Dr.—now
+Sir—Frank Heath) received this entry
+as an external examinee from an internal
+student at University College, he sent for
+her very kindly and begged her to reconsider
+what she was doing, saying it was ridiculous
+and impossible for anyone to try to do
+honours as well as first-class pass in one
+year. A kindly argument was of no avail,
+and the headstrong girl said: “I will not
+only get first-class pass, I will get honours
+in <i>both</i> subjects at the end of the year,” an
+undertaking which, as the event proved, she
+made good under tragic circumstances. The
+two subjects she then decided on were botany
+and geology, and for the geological work she
+had the immense advantage of a practical
+training in the field all through the summer
+from a member of the Geological Survey
+who was training a couple of young men as
+mining engineers in survey work. Shortly
+before the actual examination took place, on
+which she had started rather as a joke or a
+purely experimental effort, it became seriously
+urgent and important for her to
+succeed, owing to the grave illness of her
+father. Indeed, on the night of the main
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">43</span>examination in botany the girl was up all
+night with the fear that her father would die
+at any moment. This, though it reduced
+the quality of her work, fortunately did not
+prevent her winning a first-class honours
+place, and as her father’s death appeared
+imminent, her Professor very kindly obtained
+the results of the degree for her
+privately, so that she was able to tell her
+father, before his death, what greatly
+interested and pleased him, namely, that
+she had passed the Bachelor of Science
+Degree in double honours—though the published
+lists were not out until after his
+death. The mutual love between herself
+and her father was exceptionally intense,
+and the shock of his loss affected her inner
+life for many years.</p>
+
+<p>The result of her hurried examination
+brought her a further scholarship, which
+was sufficient to take her abroad; but as she
+had defied the Professors and taken the
+degree after too brief a period of study, she
+conscientiously made up the remains of
+another year at University College, doing
+minor research work and completing some
+of the classes she ought to have taken. At
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">44</span>this period Professor Oliver and Dr. Scott
+were actively engaged on a research of great
+palæontological significance, which led to
+the recognition of an entirely new group of
+extinct plants. In order to find some small
+clues necessary to complete the association
+of the fragmentary remains of the fossils,
+some Sherlock-Holmes-like scientific detective
+work had to be done on all the leading
+collections of fossil plants in England, and
+the young student had the good fortune to
+be deputed by Professor Oliver and Dr. Scott
+to do this on their behalf in Manchester and
+in some private collection in the north, as
+well as at the Natural History Museum.
+The work on the Owens College collection
+in Manchester University was not only of
+technical value to that research, but of great
+educational value to the student, and an
+incident that occurred in connection with it
+proved important to Dr. Stopes later on.
+Professor, now Sir William Boyd Dawkins,
+was the Professor of geology in whose charge
+the collections were, and he very kindly
+arranged to take the student out on to the
+moors and show her horizons in which fossils
+occur in the Todmorden district. On the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">45</span>morning of the little expedition there was a
+hopeless downpour from early dawn, but the
+opportunity of going to these districts was
+too precious to lose, and of course Marie
+Stopes turned up at the station, but equally
+of course she found no Professor there to
+meet her. She then decided to go by herself,
+though she did not know the district at
+all; and she spent the day walking the eight
+or ten miles across the solitary moor in the
+drenching rain, very pleased with herself
+that she found the various spots they had
+planned to visit, but feeling all the time that
+the rain, and the absence of the instruction
+Professor Boyd Dawkins would have given,
+meant that she had seen much less than she
+would have done on a fine day. She thought
+no more of the event, but, curiously enough,
+this little incident proved to be a turning
+point in her career; for Professor Boyd
+Dawkins was so impressed by her serious
+interest in the subject and by her determination
+and independence of character, that
+later on, when a much-coveted post was
+open for election, he used his influence in
+her favour, and she was appointed the first
+woman to teach science in the University of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">46</span>Manchester. To return however to the
+young student, the post-graduate scholarship
+from the University was just sufficient
+to take her for a year to some foreign University,
+and her interest in fructifications
+and the study of egg-cells and ovules
+(fostered both by Professor Oliver’s researches
+and by her zoological work), led
+her to desire to study the fructifications of a
+unique group of plants, the cycads. For
+this purpose Munich was considered the best
+continental locality, as Professor Goebel, the
+famous morphologist, who had travelled far,
+had an exceptionally fine collection there,
+both of living and spirit material of the kind
+suitable for research.</p>
+
+<p>Languages had always at school been a
+main stumbling block between Marie Stopes
+and class prizes, and it was therefore rather
+adventurous of her to go to Germany, for
+she had only had three or four lessons in
+the language before she reached that country.
+She found however that learning a language
+in a country itself is a very different, and a
+much easier thing, than learning it in classes;
+and though her German was a source of
+great amusement to her fellow research-students
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">47</span>in the laboratories, it carried her
+not only through her University course, but
+finally also through the <i>viva voce</i> examination
+for the degree.</p>
+
+<p>On presenting herself to Professor Goebel,
+the English student announced that she had
+come to study under him the structure of
+the ovules and the fertilization of the cycads,
+and the genial and amused smile in the vivid
+blue eyes of the Viking-like Professor encouraged
+her, although his words were discouraging.
+Though some women had
+received degrees from Munich University,
+none had hitherto entered from the Botanical
+Institute, and it would require an alteration
+in the Regulations to make it possible. Marie
+Stopes was disappointed, but replied that
+she had come to work, and would rather
+stay and do the work than go elsewhere and
+get a degree for work that did not interest
+her as much; and after about three months
+in Professor Goebel’s research laboratories
+he came to her one day and said: “It is
+ridiculous that any Regulations should stand
+in the way of you getting your degree; I will
+have them changed.” And the Regulations
+were changed, so that at the end of the year
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">48</span>she was allowed to enter for the degree of
+Doctor of Philosophy. During that year,
+though working hard in the laboratory
+which opened at eight o’clock in the morning,
+the young student enjoyed all the pre-war
+delights of Munich: the Opera, a great
+deal of dancing, excursions every week-end
+to the snow mountains in the winter and to
+the Tyrolese flowering valleys in the summer;
+while in Goebel’s laboratory she met as many
+nationalities as there were research-students,
+and entered with great zest into the profound
+discussions which knots of students
+often embarked on far from the fields of
+their own immediate work. Most of the
+research-students in the laboratory that
+year were themselves Professors or lecturers
+in their own countries, and they included a
+Polish Professor, a Japanese, a Norwegian,
+a Dutchman, an American, and a number of
+other nationalities and types. Frequently a
+quartet composed of a Buddhist, a Roman
+Catholic, an atheist, and Marie Stopes, would
+discuss with great earnestness and animation
+the problems of the Universe.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp94" id="i_p048b_top" style="max-width: 30.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p048b_top.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    The author at Givons Grove with Mrs. Zangwill on his left,
+    Dr. Marie Stopes kneeling, and her mother on his right.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p048b_bottom" style="max-width: 30.875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p048b_bottom.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    Marie Stopes as a student, with a group of professors, in the
+    mountains. Prof. Goebel on her left.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Though life at a University College had
+somewhat educated the girl, she was still
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">49</span>remarkably sexless, and quite unaware of
+the nature of the stimulant her presence
+must have been in this laboratory of men.
+One rather amusing incident may be cited.
+The geological and the botanical students
+were taken into the mountains by their Professors
+for scientific expeditions, and on one
+of these occasions a lecturer from another
+faculty joined the party and insisted on
+talking, in English, to the only girl there.
+His English however was very poor, and
+he neither attracted nor interested her. She
+spent most of the time chatting in lively
+colloquial German with a man on her other
+hand, merely saying “Yes, yes,” at intervals
+to be polite to the lecturer. A day or
+two later she was rather surprised to be sent
+for by Professor Goebel to his private sanctum,
+where he broke the news to her startled
+incredulity that the relatives of the lecturer
+who had bored her on the expedition had
+been to Professor Goebel with a request to
+induce her not to drive this man mad, as
+they feared for his reason and that he would
+have to go to a lunatic asylum if she persisted
+in her attitude of not recognising their
+engagement to be married. Marie Stopes,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">50</span>in open-mouthed amazement, denied any
+knowledge of being supposed to be engaged,
+and said that the man had never even proposed
+to her. It transpired however that
+the bad English and the many boring exclamations
+he had made, to which she had
+automatically replied “Yes, yes,” had really
+included a proposal of marriage, to which
+the “Yes, yes,” was naturally enough taken
+to signify her acceptance. The family were
+much distressed when it was made quite
+clear that no marriage would be contemplated
+by Marie Stopes, and they begged
+that she would at least permit the man to
+write to her until she left the country. As
+a result she possesses to this day a large pile
+of unread love letters in a very small German
+hand, unread and for her unreadable, as she
+has long since forgotten how to read German
+handwriting.</p>
+
+<p>In such a narrative as this it is perhaps
+difficult to make it clear how much hard
+brain work was included in her days. She
+told me once her longest spell of <i>uninterrupted</i>
+mental work was thirty hours at a
+stretch, when she worked with beef-tea
+and a spirit stove at her elbow, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">51</span>did not leave her work even for meals.
+Steady work, and the extremely valuable
+and interesting material supplied by Professor
+Goebel, yielded sufficient results in
+the discovery of new and interesting features
+in the cycads to justify the preparation of
+her thesis towards the end of the first year,
+and this she herself wrote in German, but it
+was German of such an amusing quality
+that the Professor kindly suggested that a
+Swiss student should sit at the same table
+as she did in the laboratory and go through
+it with her. He was a very handsome and
+attractive, but safely married, man, so that
+a few days later, when the Professor inquired
+how she was getting on with him,
+the whole laboratory was sent into convulsions,
+and the Professor himself, with tears
+hopping out of his bright blue eyes, sank
+into a chair shaking with laughter beyond
+his control, when she replied that he had
+been very kind, “Er ist es mit mir durchgegagen.”</p>
+
+<p>She meant this to be, as it is, a literal
+translation of “He has gone through it with
+me,” and was quite unaware of the fact that
+the German phrase means “He has eloped
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">52</span>with me.” Laughable however as her
+German was, it was very fluent, and when
+the day of the <i>viva voce</i> examination came
+it served its purpose sufficiently well. Professor
+Hertwig, the great zoologist, meaning
+no doubt to be kind, questioned the
+young botanist on the structure of volvox,
+a microscopic organism; and Professor
+Rothpletz, also meaning to be kind, whispered,
+“Have they been nice to you?” before
+he began his <i>viva voce</i> in geology—for the
+<i>viva voce</i> examination for the German
+degree takes place audibly in the presence
+of the University Court, so that the student
+has not only the nervous work of replying to
+the Professor, but of knowing that outsiders,
+and critical outsiders at that, are listening
+to the replies. She however got a high
+degree, <i>Magna cum laude</i>, and all the members
+of the research laboratory were cordially
+enthusiastic. Professor Goebel was
+exceedingly generous and kind to the young
+foreign student, and of him Marie Stopes
+says:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Although, of course, lots of people
+had been kind to me before, Professor
+Goebel was the first who really treated me
+as a father might have done. Toward the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">53</span>end of my time in Munich, when I told him
+that I was returning to England, where I
+must take up work that would bring me a
+salary, he said, ‘But it is a shame that you
+should not continue doing research work,
+and if you would only permit me I would,
+out of my own purse, defray all the expenses
+for you for another few years if you would
+stay and do research work here.’ He and
+his wife lived almost opposite the University
+Institute and were on many occasions
+extraordinarily kind to me, and this was all
+the more remarkable as Professor Goebel
+did not like women to study, and until I
+went to his Department and practically
+forced my way in, he had never permitted a
+woman student to work in his laboratories.
+I shall never forget his noble generosity and
+his fine impatience at the trend of modern
+life, particularly of German life, his hatred
+of the Prussians, and his Viking-like appearance
+and zest and joyous gallantry when, in
+Tyrolese costume, he went to his mountain
+laboratories. Munich was a second home to
+me until the war and the desolation the war
+brought.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>A junior lectureship in botany at Manchester
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">54</span>University was vacant at the close
+of the year in Germany, and for this Marie
+Stopes sent in her application. No woman
+had ever lectured in the science faculty at
+Manchester University, and the Committee
+was nervous about appointing a woman, for
+the classes of the junior students were large,
+and contained medical students who were
+notoriously hilarious. The Committee was
+helped in its decision to select Marie Stopes,
+in preference to any of the male applicants,
+by an extraordinarily cordial recommendation
+from Professor Boyd Dawkins, which
+resulted from the impression she had made
+on him more than a year before, when she
+had gone by herself through the drenching
+rain, over the moors to Todmorden.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">55</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">
+    CHAPTER IV.
+    <br>
+    <span class="smcap">Academic Life.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In other Universities women were beginning
+to obtain posts hitherto given only
+to men, but Manchester had not before
+had a woman on the science staff, though a
+lecturer in English literature had been in
+office for some years. Biological classes were
+attended by large numbers of the young
+medical students, who with the engineers
+are generally the rowdy element in any
+University, and the authorities of the
+College were in some trepidation as to the
+result of their experiment in appointing a
+young girl to the Staff. With Dr. Marie
+Stopes however no untoward events occurred,
+and the junior classes were indeed quieter
+when she lectured or demonstrated to them
+than they were in a good many other departments.
+The staff of Professors and Lecturers,
+mostly men from Oxford, Cambridge,
+and other Universities, formed a very
+friendly circle and became truly colleagues
+to the junior lady lecturer. Indeed in after
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">56</span>years, when Dr. Stopes was appointed to the
+staff of her own college in London, she felt
+the contrast, for there the Professors’ Common
+Room was barred to women, whereas
+in Manchester she was immediately made a
+member of the Professors’ Common Room
+and always cordially welcomed and made to
+feel at home whenever she used it. Her
+immediate chief and those members of the
+staff associated with her work made things
+very easy and pleasant, and outside the
+University, too, she made many friends,
+notably old Mr. R. D. Darbishire, the
+philanthropist and founder of the Whitworth
+Galleries, who with Miss Dymes, his
+secretary and companion, made his home in
+Victoria Park ever open with a warm welcome
+for the girl, who learnt both to reverence
+and love the fine autocratic old gentleman.
+Professor, now Sir Arthur, and Lady
+Schuster, also in Victoria Park, were
+friendly, and the social life in Manchester
+was an attractive feature and much more
+real and cordial than life in London. After
+the plentiful dancing and opera of Munich,
+Dr. Marie Stopes missed dancing very
+greatly and, in addition to private dances,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">57</span>took the then rather audacious social step
+of giving a dance herself, and cajoled the
+elderly Professors to come to it in fancy
+dress. Out of that sprang a little dancing
+club among the members of the staff, which
+survived for a good many years after Dr.
+Stopes left Manchester. The young lecturer,
+feeling that she was very inadequately
+trained in the art of lecturing, went to hear
+a number of the Professors and lecturers in
+the University deliver their lectures to
+their students. Mostly, it seems, she learnt
+what to avoid in lecturing; she observed a
+good many little points which explained the
+reputed rowdiness of the junior classes. On
+one occasion she was present at the back of
+the room when a distinguished Professor of
+world-wide fame faced his class of 200
+juniors, and with a quivering hand took a
+piece of chalk, drawing a wriggly thing
+which might have been a triangle or a hexagon,
+and commenced his lecture by saying,
+“Let us suppose that a circle is a circle”;
+and he could not understand the roars, and
+the cloud of dust from the stamping feet,
+with which this opening was greeted. Dr.
+Marie Stopes was amused to see how well
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">58</span>her own students behaved when they were
+given the chance.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to the teaching work in the
+biological classes, time was available for the
+young lecturer to follow up her own researches;
+and the great interest in fossil
+plants which must always associate itself
+with Manchester University where Williamson’s
+original work was done, combined with
+the fact that the coal mining districts lay so
+close all round the town, led her to penetrate
+to a number of collieries in search of fossils,
+as well as to follow out some research on
+the structure and deposition of the coal
+seams. In this connection she came into
+personal contact with a number of mine
+owners, who always met her with warm
+cordiality and helpfulness, and among whom
+a Mr. Sutcliffe should be particularly remembered.
+He purchased an extensive
+series of microscopic sections of a rare new
+fossil which had been discovered, and presented
+them to the University to be placed
+at the service of Dr. Marie Stopes, who
+undertook the work of their scientific investigation
+and description. The fossil proved
+to be a species unique in the British Isles,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">59</span>which she named <i>Tubicaulis sutcliffii</i>, and
+was the subject of the first paper that she
+read to the Manchester Philosophical and
+Literary Society. The work on the collieries
+and coal mining industry which began with
+this connection in Manchester was persisted
+in and is still actively continued by Dr.
+Stopes to the present time, and has led her
+to a large number of scientific discoveries
+and to the contribution of publications in
+the Royal Society and elsewhere (see Appendix
+B, p. 216). Among the many interesting
+people that this collegiate life gave her the
+opportunity of meeting, Captain Scott, the
+Antarctic explorer, was one who most impressed
+the girl. She was invited by Lady
+Schuster to meet him at a luncheon and,
+fired by her intense enthusiasm for the
+palæontological history of coal, she begged
+Captain Scott to take her with him on his
+then projected Antarctic Expedition. They
+met again at a dancing party in the evening.
+She found him the most “divine waltzer
+and reverser” she had ever met, and he
+promised to take both her and Lady Scott
+with him if that was possible, or failing
+that he undertook to bring her back the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">60</span>fossil she wanted from the Antarctic. He
+came down to the University before leaving
+Manchester and spent an hour or two with
+her studying the external appearance of the
+fossils, so as to bring back with him exactly
+what she desired. The tragedy of this expedition
+is known to the world, and it is also
+known that he was found dead with a few
+fragments of fossil plants by him. These
+however, although so obviously collected for
+her, were not given to Dr. Marie Stopes to
+describe; and she was glad of it, for unfortunately
+they were not those she had longed
+for from the Antarctic regions.</p>
+
+<p>In all this busy, happy life in Manchester
+there was however one secret trial, and that
+was that after a very few weeks there Dr.
+Stopes, whose vitality and general health
+were quite exceptional, developed acute
+neuralgia. This neuralgia vanished immediately
+vacations came and she could leave
+Manchester, but always returned within
+three days of sleeping in Manchester. In
+spite of this her intense vitality kept her
+going in many directions, and lectures to
+the students were followed by an attempt to
+organise a seminar on similar lines to those
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">61</span>she had had experience of in Germany, excursions,
+plant collecting and fossil collecting
+up on the moors and, in addition, evening
+lecturing to the very poor in the slums at
+Ancoats; where the Ancoats Settlement had
+organised classes of factory hands and others
+anxious for intellectual work. There for a
+time she came in touch with some of the
+worst conditions of city life, and she only
+gave up these lectures when neuralgia and
+the acute pain of seeing human beings under
+such appalling conditions were undermining
+her strength to such an extent that it was
+impossible to go on. Among her treasured
+possessions is a glowing testimonial spontaneously
+given to her by her poor students
+at the Settlement.</p>
+
+<p>By no means exclusively serious, Dr.
+Stopes, in a skittish mood, instituted the first,
+and I believe the only, international comic
+scientific journal. She called it <i>The Sportophyte</i>,
+and in it made fun of a good many of
+the great biologists, and lampooned the style
+of more than one publication. It achieved
+not a little success, and one learned Professor
+said to her: “Oh, of course it is very funny,
+but you cannot possibly do it again.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">62</span>“Why not?” said Dr. Stopes. “You must
+not be allowed to do it again; think what
+<i>power</i> it gives you.” This was hardly the
+way to stop the activities of an independent
+and enterprising young woman, and <i>The
+Sportophyte</i> lived until the international
+calamity of the war killed the spirit of international
+jocularity.</p>
+
+<p>The suffrage movement naturally attracted
+Dr. Stopes’s interest, and without becoming
+an aggressive extremist she put a good deal
+of time into quiet work for the suffrage,
+joining the Tax Resistance League and
+lecturing from time to time, as well as joining
+in processions and deputations. Fired
+by a sense of the injustice of obliging women
+either to forego marriage or to forego a
+career, she ardently supported the efforts to
+stop the restrictions on married women’s
+work, and in that connection met Miss
+Margaret Ashton, who was then a Councillor
+and one of the most active of women’s
+champions in the north. Her attention also
+was drawn to the yet deeper problems of
+married women by an incident which
+occurred to one of her own students, who
+happened to be a woman older than herself
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">63</span>and who had been assisting a doctor in dealing
+with out-patients at a hospital, when a
+woman had brought in a miserable little
+baby which wailed all the time and which,
+the mother explained, would not put on any
+flesh or grow into a nice, healthy baby whatever
+she did with it. The mother, with
+tears in her eyes, made an intensely earnest
+appeal to the doctor to tell her what was, to
+her, unaccountably wrong with the infant.
+She said this was her fourth, and the others
+had all died when they were very little. The
+doctor put her off with some soothing platitudes,
+but the woman, driven to despair,
+said: “I believe there’s something wrong
+with my man. If there’s something wrong
+with my man I won’t have babies no more—it’s
+just cruel to see them miserable like
+this and have them dying one after the
+other. Won’t you, for God’s sake, tell me
+whether there’s anything wrong with my
+man or not?” This appeal was met by the
+assurance that there was nothing wrong,
+and she should do her duty by her husband
+and go on having babies. The medical
+woman student said that it was glaringly
+obvious that the baby was syphilitic.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">64</span></p>
+
+<p>That not only such ill-fated mothers, but
+that <i>all</i> mothers, should be freed from the
+appalling slavery of unwilling and undesired
+motherhood became a conviction so intense
+as to necessitate action. Dr. Stopes realized
+with the astonishment that youth always
+feels towards the cruelty of its elders, that
+although the knowledge of birth control has
+been freely circulating in our country for
+very many years, it has been available
+chiefly for the educated and the well-to-do.</p>
+
+<p>While Dr. Stopes studied more and more
+deeply the work on the coal mines, she was
+following up several branches of research in
+connection not only with fossils and their
+deposition but with their mode of origin,
+and in connection with the petrifaction of
+the internal tissues which is so wonderful
+a feature of some structurally preserved
+specimens, she was led to the belief that,
+given certain conditions in the surrounding
+horizons, the existence of the type of fossil
+for which she was searching could be more
+or less predicted. Combining this with an
+intense desire to discover the origin of the
+angiosperms, which was one of the desiderata
+then, as it still is, of biological
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">65</span>science, she considered the horizons in any
+and every country in the world from which
+she could get the necessary data, and came
+to the conclusion that in an horizon in the
+northern mountainous Island of Hokkaido
+petrified specimens of angiosperms, such as
+she sought, should be found; and she applied
+to the Royal Society for financial assistance
+to go there and investigate the matter, at the
+same time having a sample specimen sent
+over from Japan, from the rocks <i>in situ</i>, and
+she had the thrilling experience of seeing her
+scientific prediction fulfilled, and finding in
+the very first cut a beautiful petrified angiosperm.
+This strengthened her application
+to the Royal Society, which was still under
+consideration, and though they had never
+before sent a young woman out of the
+country on any such work, her application
+was so well backed that an exception was
+made in her favour, and she finally went to
+Japan alone, with a grant from the Royal
+Society, and with the assistance of the
+Japanese Government, through the Imperial
+University at Tokio. There she went up
+country and collected large quantities of
+unique and hitherto unknown fossils which,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">66</span>on her return to Tokio, she cut with the
+assistance and collaboration of Professor
+Fujii, who together with her wrote a
+memoir, subsequently published by the
+Royal Society in its Transactions, containing
+an account of a number of plants new to
+science, and containing also the first petrifaction
+of the flower, and the only one yet
+discovered. In Japan, as in Manchester,
+she found the Professorial staff cordial and
+kindly, and Baron Hamao, the President
+of the Imperial University, made her
+an honorary member of the Professors’
+Luncheon Club, where she met the personnel
+of the various faculties, and thus saw
+the true life of Japanese intellectual circles
+in a way seldom permitted to a foreigner.
+A room and research facilities were allotted
+to her in the Institute of the Imperial
+University, and in exchange for all this
+courtesy she gave a short course of lectures
+on plant palæontology to the students and
+to others of the staff who cared to attend. A
+fairly full account of her manifold interests
+and experiences in Japan was published by
+Blackie in her book entitled <i>A Journal
+from Japan</i>. She returned <i>via</i> America, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">67</span>a fresh post in Manchester University was
+offered to her: the first lectureship in palæobotany
+in this country. It was exactly the
+post for which her researches fitted her and
+which her heart desired, and she was happy to
+get back to her many friends in Manchester;
+but it was no good, for the neuralgia, which
+had not touched her all the time she was
+away, returned after a week in Manchester
+as violently as before and became intolerable,
+so that at the end of the first year of
+this new post she had to leave it and finally
+settle in London, which all along had been
+her home.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp51" id="i_p066b" style="max-width: 30.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p066b.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    The first portrait in her robes as Doctor of Science of London.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>After obtaining the degree of Ph.D. in
+Munich she had, on returning to England,
+followed up her B.Sc. in London by obtaining
+the Doctorate of Science, London, when
+she became, I believe, the youngest Doctor
+of Science in England, and shortly afterwards
+she was made a Fellow of University
+College, London. She was invited by the
+Geological Department of the British
+Museum to prepare a special memoir for
+them on the Cretaceous Flora of the World,
+a memoir that took several years to complete,
+and which was published ultimately
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">68</span>in two volumes by the Trustees of the British
+Museum. The Royal Society published in
+their Transactions some of the results of
+the Japanese Expedition and she was
+invited to exhibit her specimens from Japan
+at the ladies’ soirée, where she met Count
+Solms-Laubach, the veteran palæontologist
+of Germany, whose classic treatise had been
+her original text-book. He, though a woman
+hater and extremely reserved, showed the
+kindliest appreciation of her new species.
+The advantage of meeting such men, which
+all men of any note in the scientific world
+can do by attending the Royal Society’s
+meetings, was a rare privilege to this young
+woman. When some of her later discoveries
+were made she was invited by representatives
+of the Royal Society to send her specimens
+for exhibition, but not on ladies’ night.
+She said she could not send them without
+being there herself to demonstrate and guard
+them, and was told that she could send any
+of her own men-students, or even her butler,
+but could not be admitted herself. With
+natural indignation she refused to exhibit.
+It seems strange that to this day, however
+brilliant a woman’s scientific work may be,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">69</span>her sex precludes her from equality of treatment
+in the senior Society of Science in the
+world, and she can never hope to be made
+an F.R.S. The Royal Society of Literature,
+however, early recognised her, and on the
+proposal of old Lord Halsbury she was
+elected a Fellow.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of her travels for palæontological
+research Dr. Stopes was once again
+in the United States, and took the opportunity
+of attending the American Association
+of Science at St. Louis, where she met
+Dr. Gates. He, like many others before
+him, immediately fell passionately in love,
+and proposed marriage within a few days
+of making her acquaintance. He was a
+botanist and in many respects apparently a
+suitable husband, and Dr. Stopes and he
+were married before her return to England
+a few months later.</p>
+
+<p>Dating from her earliest childhood, and
+strengthened by her interest in the suffrage,
+Dr. Marie Stopes has always very keenly felt
+the rightness of the old Scottish and Norwegian
+customs, whereby a married woman
+retains her patronymic after marriage, and
+she arranged with Dr. Gates that she should
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">70</span>retain her own name. In English law—though
+many people are unaware of it—provision
+is made for such cases, and to
+retain her own name legally, all a married
+woman has to do is to announce at the time
+of her marriage that she intends to do so,
+and to use it systematically for legal documents
+and transactions. The effect of loss
+of personality arising from change of name
+has undoubtedly had a psychological influence
+on women, and such a change is most
+unreasonable when one has made such a
+name for herself as Dr. Stopes had; a name
+which was then already recorded in thousands
+of card-indexes and catalogues in
+Universities all over the world. A good
+deal of press interest was shown in her
+revival of this old custom of keeping her
+own name, and a number of women have
+followed the example since, though old-fashioned
+people try to make things difficult
+for a woman who thus desires to preserve
+her identity, and Dr. Stopes on more than
+one occasion has had to threaten to take
+legal action against scientific committees
+and other persons who endeavoured arbitrarily
+to decide for her what her name
+is to be.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">71</span></p>
+
+<p>This marriage seems to have been
+arranged by destiny to give Dr. Stopes
+the almost unique experience which completed
+her fitness to undertake the work
+on sex-reform by which she is now best
+known. On her marriage she was still, in
+spite of her zoological training and her
+travel and experience of men of many
+countries, amazingly innocent, and she was
+quite happy for six months or more.
+After that she began to feel instinctively
+that something was lacking in her marriage.
+Although she was living within a stone’s
+throw of her mother and of her family
+doctor, they neither of them detected what
+was amiss or offered any help or solution of
+the problems which confronted her. Finally
+her life became quite intolerable, and I
+heard her say one day: “I should go mad
+if it were not that I say to myself, ‘Why
+have I a scientific brain and all my scientific
+knowledge, if it is not to find out things that
+seem to puzzle everybody?’” and, in a very
+impersonal manner, she took up her own
+case as a piece of scientific research. She
+went to the British Museum and read pretty
+nearly every book on sex in English, French,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">72</span>or German, just as she would read every
+book on palæontology before publishing on
+her own subject. She also read Lord
+Halsbury’s Laws of England, and then returned
+to her family doctor and family
+lawyer, and when matters were made
+thoroughly clear to them, it became a comparatively
+easy matter to put through a
+nullity suit, in which she sued as <i>virgo
+intacta</i> for the legal annulment of her marriage,
+which her husband’s abnormality had
+never allowed him to consummate. Dr.
+Gates was a passionate lover but an incomplete
+husband, and as a result, after years of
+marriage, was not only leaving his wife a
+virgin, but had developed an absurd jealousy
+and attempted a domination which rendered
+life intolerable. At that time I was frequently
+a witness of ridiculous little scenes,
+one, for instance, in which he “forbade”
+this independent and high-spirited young
+woman even to purchase a paper which she
+had been reading for years. As was natural
+perhaps, Dr. Gates made things as difficult
+and in some respects as scandalous for her
+as he could, but the war was on before the
+legal case was finally settled, and shortly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">73</span>after its outbreak he left England and
+sought refuge in America, returning however
+before hostilities were over. Meanwhile,
+throughout all her heartbreaking
+difficulties, Dr. Marie Stopes remained outwardly
+very calm, and continued her
+palæontological work at the British Museum
+and at University College, where, following
+on her Manchester work, a palæobotanical
+lectureship was founded for her in London
+University. This attracted much interest
+and attention at the time and her first
+lecture was widely attended and published,
+and there is little doubt that but for the war,
+which swept away her classes of young men,
+it would have led to the founding of a
+regular school of palæobotany. Meanwhile
+however the war diverted all who were able
+to do anything of practical utility, and the
+more abstruse and academical aspects of
+palæobotany were left on one side, and Dr.
+Stopes concentrated on what seemed immediately
+useful, namely, the application of
+her knowledge to the problems of fuel, and
+of coal in particular. The Scientific and
+Industrial Research Department of the
+Government, under Sir Frank Heath,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">74</span>actively supported her work, and she collaborated
+with Dr. R. V. Wheeler of the Home
+Office Experimental Station in the preparation
+of what <i>Nature</i> described as a
+“classic”—a Monograph on the Structure,
+Chemical and Palæontological, of Coal.
+(See Appendix B, p. 216.) Following on this,
+Dr. Stopes continued researches, both in
+collaboration with Professor Wheeler and
+independently; and the Royal Society, in
+1919, published her short paper on the four
+ingredients of coal, in which she originated
+the now well-known words, clarain, durain
+and vitrain.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Wheeler and his students and
+collaborators, and many others now doing
+research on fuel, have followed up the initial
+research of Dr. Stopes on the ingredients of
+coal; for her work made possible for the
+first time a discrimination in the analysis
+of different zones in the same coal, which is
+leading to a knowledge of its intimate structure
+and potential uses of a much more
+accurate kind than was previously possible.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of her scientific researches
+Dr. Stopes has made a great number of
+original discoveries, and has published the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">75</span>results in a number of learned <i>Transactions</i>
+and journals, a more or less complete list of
+which is given in Appendix B.</p>
+
+<p>Among so many additions to scientific
+knowledge it is difficult to say in a few
+words which are her most important contributions,
+but, in the main, they deal with
+three themes: (<i>a</i>) the structure of the reproductive
+organs both in living and extinct
+forms; (<i>b</i>) the composition and structure of
+coal; and (<i>c</i>) the structure of the vegetable
+inhabitants of the Cretaceous epoch.</p>
+
+<p>Her discoveries of fossils in Japan, which
+were published jointly with Professor Fujii
+in the <i>Transactions</i> of the Royal Society
+(Appendix B, p. 219), brought to light a
+flora of the existence of which nothing was
+known, and which was of interest and importance
+as including the only petrified
+flower hitherto discovered in any part of the
+world. The public perhaps do not realize
+that the vegetation which is conspicuous to-day
+in the landscape, and which alone provides
+all our agricultural plants and food,
+did not come into existence until the early
+Cretaceous epoch.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest known angiosperms in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">76</span>world were also discovered by Dr. Stopes
+and described in the <i>Transactions</i> of the
+Royal Society (Appendix B, p. 218), and
+further facts about them are embodied in
+her big volume published by the Trustees of
+the British Museum. Of this Dr. (now Sir A.)
+Smith Woodward said: “There is so much
+that is new in it. No one would have believed
+it possible to get so much out of the
+Lower Greensand; it is quite wonderful.”</p>
+
+<p>As regards coal, when she was first appointed
+as a junior lecturer in Manchester,
+a centre of one of England’s coal mining
+districts, she enthusiastically investigated
+the local mines. She read an important
+paper on the subject before the British Association.
+It was the first time she had done
+so, and the then Director of the Geological
+Survey, Sir Jethro Teall, attended the
+lecture. The discussion proved most interesting
+and cleared up a number of points
+hitherto obscure, and Sir Jethro (then Dr.)
+Teall said that he was “astonished at the
+quality and quantity of the detail given. I
+went to encourage a young girl, and I remained
+to learn from a master.”</p>
+
+<p>Her short paper on the composition of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">77</span>coal before the Royal Society (Appendix B.,
+p. 216) has led to an enormous change in
+the attitude both of palæontologists and
+chemists towards coal structure, and the
+terminology instituted by Dr. Stopes is now
+not only almost universally followed, but
+the ideas in that short paper of hers have
+proved fruitful in many directions—see, for
+instance the work of Dr. Lessing on coking,
+of Dr. Ivan Graham, the Assistant Director
+of Mining Research at Birmingham, and the
+many papers in the technical journals arising
+from the inspiration in her original
+paper.</p>
+
+<p>Although the outer public did not know
+her as a lecturer until recently, in the course
+of her academic career Dr. Stopes lectured
+regularly in Manchester and London Universities,
+and had given brief courses or
+single lectures in the University of Tokio,
+in the Parliament House in Hokkaido, in
+Chicago University, in Toronto University,
+and in many other institutes and halls in
+various parts of the British Isles and other
+countries, and her palæontological work was
+utilized by various Government Departments
+in addition to the British Museum
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">78</span>and the Home Office. The Canadian
+Government, for instance, sent for her to
+settle a problem which had been in dispute
+for over 40 years, about the age of certain
+potential coal-bearing deposits in Eastern
+Canada, and the results of her investigations
+were published by the Geological
+Survey of Canada in a large Memoir. (See
+Appendix B, p. 217.) Amidst this life of manifold
+activities her relation to her students
+was such that she always brought to every
+lecture some fresh idea of vital interest. No
+doubt had she taken up some popular subject
+instead of so remote and academic a
+field as she pursued, her name would have
+become a household word among us years
+sooner than was actually the case. Her personality
+was bound to make its impression
+on our national life even had she never
+touched so burning a subject as that with
+which she has been recently associated.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to her many scientific associates,
+Dr. Stopes has had warm friendships
+and interesting literary associations with
+many distinguished literary men. For instance,
+with Maurice Hewlett, the novelist
+and poet, who was so retiring and <i>difficile</i>,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">79</span>a warm friendship started long before she
+was known to the world. Hewlett wrote to
+her:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Yes, the writer of the ‘Letters to
+Sanchia’ is Senhouse. I can’t say that he
+is a portrait of anybody in particular,
+though it does so happen that I have known
+a man who lived, and still lives, much the
+same life. But the two have nothing else
+in common, and I think my man is more
+what I should like to believe myself to be
+than anything more definite. <i>Video meliora.</i>
+He is one of the better things I see. I won’t
+go nearer than that as yet.</p>
+
+<p>“But if you, who have travelled far and
+been quit (for a time, at all events) of our
+horrible trammel of circumstance, find truth
+and reason in the substance of what I have
+imagined, I feel enormously encouraged to
+go on. It was really kind of you to tell me
+so.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>And soon after he wrote:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Senhouse will feel that he has done something
+when such a letter as yours is communicated
+to him. You evidently haven’t
+read his third volume, ‘Rest Harrow’—which
+I beg leave to send you herewith.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">80</span>Therein you will discover how he and Mrs.
+Germain parted company, and in what unearthly
+manner he and his Sanchia found
+each other—the where and when as well as
+the how. I personally am unable to distinguish
+the fairy tale from the other tales, or
+the dream from the daylight reflection. I
+don’t know whether I write truth or lies.
+To me they are truth—to a large proportion
+of mankind foolishness: but I write for
+myself because I have to, and am lucky to
+have such readers as you.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Israel Zangwill, the author-dramatist, and
+his wife, the novelist, were both cordial
+friends much interested in her literary work
+before she became well known through
+“Married Love,” and it was Edward Carpenter
+who first encouraged her to publish
+“Married Love.”</p>
+
+<p>Both before and after she was well known
+she has had some friendly and amusing
+little encounters with Bernard Shaw, and I
+may quote a postcard which he sent to the
+C.B.C. regretting his inability to attend the
+Annual Dinner in November, 1923:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“I shall not be able to come as I shall not
+be in London. If it could possibly be made<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">81</span>
+an M.S. (Marie Stopes) dinner without
+being a B.C. one, I should greatly regret
+this. As it is, it is rather convenient for
+me, because I cannot find a satisfactory
+public position about B.C. If I went into
+the movement merely to fight the Malthusians
+I should do more harm than good; and
+I really could not sit quiet in it and seem
+to acquiesce with them. I am sure M.’s
+(Marie’s) psycho-physiology is right; but
+neither of us can prove it.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="right">
+  “<span class="smcap">G. B. Shaw.</span>”
+</p>
+
+<p>Her poems brought her many warm and
+interesting letters from literary men whom
+she had never met personally. For instance,
+about these poems Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
+wrote:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“First let me thank you for the little book
+that brought me such jolly discoveries as
+‘Marjorie’ and ‘Tokio Snow’—and such fine
+ones as ‘The Beaters’ and ‘The Brother’
+(this last the sort of thing that walks straight
+and takes a seat in memory for the rest of
+one’s days).”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">82</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">
+    CHAPTER V.
+    <br>
+    <span class="smcap">World Travel.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The taste Dr. Stopes had inherited for
+travel found practical justification in
+many journeys in connection with
+her scientific research work. In addition to
+these expeditions, which were often long
+ones, she was continually travelling both in
+the British Isles and on the Continent. At
+the close of the first Session after her
+appointment to Manchester she attended a
+scientific Congress in Vienna, where she
+enjoyed the gathering of learned men, and
+also the city and its beautiful surroundings.
+She then returned to Munich for a further
+couple of months’ work in Professor Goebel’s
+department, including some research in his
+Alpine laboratory perched high up on the
+Bavarian Tyrolese mountains. The research
+she was engaged on was on the structure and
+development of the fertilized ovum or egg-cell,
+together with a study of its actual fertilization
+by the male sperm cell and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">83</span>introduction of food granules from the
+sperm into the ovum. This work led to
+very interesting original observations, to
+make which she had to be up all night for
+a series of nights, cutting into the living
+ovules and examining their structure under
+the microscope at regular intervals through
+the whole 24 hours. These investigations,
+though minor in comparison with her other
+researches, were part of the preparation
+which subsequently enabled her to speak
+with authority on problems of fertilization in
+other connections; for the nucleus and the
+detailed structure of ovum and spermatozoa
+and the immediate after-effects of fertilization,
+are remarkably uniform wherever life
+is sufficiently evolved to have two distinct
+sexes.</p>
+
+<p>Holland, especially Amsterdam, and also
+Leiden, the home of so much of Holland’s
+scientific life, were visited several times, as
+also was Switzerland and France. On one
+occasion, after having spent a few weeks in
+the University of Caen where she was visiting
+Professor Lignier, one of France’s great
+palæobotanists, she set out to walk from
+that town to the distant coast of Brittany,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">84</span>there to form one of an expedition organized
+by Professor Oliver, on then new and interesting
+lines, for the study of œcology. Sending
+her luggage on in advance, she started with a
+knapsack across Normandy, first making a
+bee-line for the coast and then following the
+ins-and-outs of the rugged headlands and
+bays. A characteristic anecdote may be told
+of this expedition. Failing to find an hotel
+in one of the further portions of Brittany,
+she decided to sleep on a ledge of rock on the
+coast which seemed safely far from the sea
+and afforded some shelter approximating to
+a roof. Having a camper’s equipment with
+her, she made her evening meal and, curling
+up in her long cloak, went peacefully to
+sleep. Next morning she was waked by a
+gurgling suck of water at her very toes, and
+found that the ledge, that had afforded a roof
+at night, shut her in with no possible outlet
+of escape. The tide had come in much
+further than had seemed possible the evening
+before. Fortunately the sea was calm,
+and Dr. Stopes examined the rock on which
+she sat and, finding certain lichens in its
+crevices, she felt reassured that she would
+not be swamped out, and turning round
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">85</span>went to sleep again until the tide had
+receded.</p>
+
+<p>It has sometimes been said by those
+anxious to destroy her reputation that she
+spent her vacations in “very curious ways,”
+implying that what she did was improper.
+Unusual many of her vacations undoubtedly
+were. Not the least so was one spent in
+Norway, when she and the only Norwegian
+woman Professor, Frau Resvoll, went together
+to the north on an œcological expedition,
+touching the Lofodon Islands and then
+going to the northern coast of Norway, into
+the Arctic Circle. They walked back in a
+bee-line over snowy mountain passes, and
+past glaciers, in places where houses were
+sometimes forty miles apart, carrying provisions,
+as well as their clothes, on their backs,
+sleeping on more than one occasion in little
+isolated huts provided by the community
+for those who travel in the only way possible
+in these districts, namely, on foot. In
+Norway, accompanied by one so well known
+and appreciated as Frau Professor Resvoll,
+she saw something of the type of life which
+years before had influenced Ibsen when
+writing his plays. A deep impression was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">86</span>made upon her by the austerity and difficulty
+of the life in some of those isolated homes,
+where the flatbrød was baked only once a
+year, and the muscles of dried reindeer were
+scraped to a kind of powder for meat, and
+where, except for brief seasons in the summer,
+potatoes and fruit were an unknown
+luxury. She will never forget looking down
+from a mountain crest and seeing a herd of
+reindeer fording the icy water below, and
+she has an equally keen recollection of the
+exhilarating effect of a sun that set at 11 p.m.
+and rose again at 1 a.m. In Christiania she
+and Frau Professor Resvoll were the only
+women present at the opening of the University
+by King Haakon, and was afterwards
+heard laughingly to say he was the
+only king with whom she could fall in love!
+However abstruse and scientific the work
+occupying her days in the laboratories and in
+the various Universities she visited, time
+was always found in the evening for opera
+or theatre, and she was fortunate enough to
+see “Peer Gynt” presented in its native
+theatre, as well as to meet some of those
+who had been connected with its original
+production.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">87</span></p>
+
+<p>The journey to Japan, of which mention
+has already been made (p. 66) and which
+preceded her marriage to Dr. Gates, opened
+new and delightful vistas. Dr. Stopes went
+across the Continent, embarking at Genoa,
+visiting Naples and the great aquarium
+there, and then proceeded down the Red
+Sea. Of this she says: “I was peculiarly
+fortunate when travelling through the Red
+Sea to have it shown me in such a way as to
+understand its name. One evening I came
+on deck and found the whole sky from east
+to west and north to south one blazing crimson
+and copper fiery mass of light; this was
+reflected in the sea itself, so that it looked
+blood red, and the desert rocks on either side
+glowed in orange and coppery colours. I
+should never have believed such a sight possible
+had I not seen it with my own eyes.
+After a quarter of an hour or so it had
+almost faded, but I saw that the Red Sea
+undoubtedly can be red.” Aden, with its
+ostrich feathers and diving natives, its
+pathetic “ladies’ garden” and rock-bound
+sterility, was succeeded by the luxuriant
+beauty of Ceylon and Singapore. At Singapore
+the ship stayed in port two or three
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">88</span>days, enabling Dr. Stopes to visit the
+botanical gardens, one of the famous
+gardens of the world, where she collected
+specimens, besides seeing living in their
+native haunts many plants which had
+hitherto only been significant names to her.
+Shanghai, with its great river, affords a
+curious little memory. Of this Dr. Stopes
+says: “I noticed telegraph lines, and thought
+them incongruous enough in ancient China,
+but I was surprised to see them made of
+what looked like barbed wire. On closer
+examination I found that what I had taken
+for the barbs were seated dragon-flies
+perched at intervals from each other as far
+as the eye could see all along the wire.” In
+Shanghai a sidelight on the population problem
+gripped the girl’s heart. With the rest
+of the tourists she was investigating the
+town in a rickshaw; there on the street,
+kicked aside by the passers-by like garbage
+in the gutter, was a dead baby.</p>
+
+<p>Penang left a memory of moonlight and
+wonderful sleeping trees. Some of the wide
+streets were lined by avenues of some kind
+of leguminous tree which folded its leaves
+in sleep as a clover does. In the native
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">89</span>quarter an outdoor stage was showing one
+of the interminable Chinese plays, which
+had lasted all day and was still going on at
+midnight. Finally Japan was reached, and
+about this I need not say very much, for the
+<i>Journal</i> kept by Dr. Stopes has been published.
+From that book, <i>A Journal from
+Japan</i> (Blackie, 1909), one may take a few
+characteristic passages, but, first of all, let us
+note Dr. Stopes’s remarks on a trait in her
+own character which, though perhaps an
+inevitable accompaniment of some of her
+best qualities, has struck many people as a
+defect. It is not surprising that an able,
+energetic and successful woman should exhibit
+a high degree of self-confidence, tenacity
+and perseverance in pursuing her aims.
+There is a driving power about Dr. Stopes
+which, if mistakenly applied, would be
+blameworthy, and those who have not had
+experience of her uncanny trick of being
+right have often been taken aback by the
+decision and emphasis with which she
+speaks and acts. It is unwise to expect a
+racehorse always to go quietly, and if one
+expected Dr. Stopes to be placid in her
+activities and struggles, one would be courting
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">90</span>disappointment. But let us see what
+she herself says on this matter in her
+<i>Journal</i>.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“In many ways I had wonderful opportunities
+of touching the living reality in the
+Japanese; opportunities so exceptional that
+it is to my lasting shame that my stock of
+patience and sympathy was not always
+equal to them.... It is true that from
+an ordinary standpoint there are many
+things in Japan which are exasperating to
+a Westerner, but that was no excuse for me.
+Let me quote as an illustration a small incident
+that I have ever since regretted. On
+page 43 (of the <i>Journal</i>) you will find the
+account of my involuntary visit to the courteous
+principal of a College, when I was
+really bound for a coal mine. This young
+gentleman asked me to give a lecture to his
+young men, and I refused. It is true that
+I was really anxious to go directly to that
+mine, that it would upset my plans if I were
+at all delayed, and that at the moment the
+disturbance of those plans seemed a serious
+matter. But nevertheless I was the first
+European woman that many of the people
+there had seen, and the first scientific
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">91</span>woman that any of them had seen or heard
+of. Their curiosity and interest about me
+were as natural as my curiosity and interest
+about their coal mine, but I gratified my
+own curiosity and not theirs.... It
+would be practically impossible for them to
+realize how many other claims had been
+made on that hasty young scientist who
+visited them; they would only feel that in
+place of the human interest and understanding
+which might have been shown there was
+a blank wall of refusal. I tried to explain
+that science is a hard taskmaster, but what
+good are explanations?...”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The following entries in the <i>Journal</i> give
+some idea both of her work and her play
+while in Japan:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Some of the Professors kindly took me
+to visit the Principal of the University in
+solemn state; he was most gracious, and
+(through an interpreter) said most ridiculously
+flattering things. According to him
+only one ‘specialist’ lady has visited Japan
+before, and she was elderly. Therefore, they
+all marvel at me, as though I were some
+curious kind of butterfly! We then visited
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">92</span>the Director of the Imperial Geological
+Survey. The Director is <i>most</i> kind, as is
+also the Chief Inspector of Mines, and they
+put every facility in my way. The Director
+gave me all the information he could and
+the largest geological map of the district,
+which is very small, only about one-hundredth
+part of the scale I am accustomed
+to do geological work with, so that
+things will be difficult. The Government
+here has kindly written to the Governor of
+Hokkaido and to the owners of the mines,
+so that I shall fare as well as possible.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>[In Hokkaido.] “The Governor insists
+that as well as Professor Y—— (who is to
+be interpreter), <i>as well</i> as an official from
+the Department of Agriculture and Commerce,
+<i>as well</i> as several coolies, I must have
+a policeman to escort me to the mountains.
+I besought him not to enforce him on me,
+but it is an honour they delight to give me,
+and I had to submit. Too much zeal and
+too much kindness are as difficult to contend
+with as too little. We then called on the
+Department of Agriculture and Commerce,
+and there were more formalities and more
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">93</span>talk—when I shall get to the actual hammering
+of rocks I can’t imagine.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“We began the day at five, and the regular
+escort is now raised to ten, with temporary
+additions between every stage! I have
+given up protesting that so many people
+require quantities of food, which will have
+to be carried, and will now look on 100 without
+a murmur.</p>
+
+<p>“We went through the forest and up the
+river prospecting, and found scrambling
+along the steep banks of friable shale by no
+means easy; but the escort assists me greatly,
+and one of them carries me on his back on
+the frequent occasions when it is necessary
+to cross the river. The only use the policeman
+has been so far was to lend his sword
+to cut chopsticks which had been forgotten,
+and of course we had no knives and forks
+with us at all, for I have learnt to get on
+very comfortably without.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“A long day going up-stream collecting
+nodules, which are very big and very hard
+to break. The scenery up the rivers, with
+the magnificent forests, is very fine. It is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">94</span>a curious sensation to be in the midst of this
+boundless forest and see peak after peak
+densely clad by trees which no man has
+touched.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“Really it is hard work to carry tents and
+everything along these rivers. Often I alone
+find it difficult to go, and I have nothing to
+carry—except my fan and my hammer, both
+of which are in constant use. Sometimes it
+would be impossible to go where we have
+been with boots, the straw-sandals give such
+a clinging grasp that we are able to get a
+foothold on a steep rock which in boots it
+would be mad to attempt.</p>
+
+<p>“Fortunately the river, into which one
+would be precipitated, is seldom deep
+enough to be dangerous. The day’s scientific
+results are solid, but not thrilling.
+Tents are a luxury, but I would rather sleep
+out under the stars. With all these coolies
+and people I am not allowed to do my own
+cooking, but I most fervently wish I might.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“Sapporo once more. A day of official
+calls, bowing, compliments and formalities.
+They asked me to lecture to the women’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">95</span>
+Aikoku Fujinkai: the request of the Governor
+can hardly be refused after all he has
+done, so it had to be. The lecture was held
+in the large hall of the Government House,
+the body of the hall filled with women, the
+galleries with men; the Governor acting as
+Chairman and giving an immensely lengthy
+introductory speech, of which I could only
+guess the drift from words here and there,
+Professor My—— following on with another.
+It is easy to speak in an interpreted address,
+because there is so much time to think between
+the paragraphs; but I am sure it has
+not the same effect on an audience as the
+direct address. Some, of course, understood
+my English. Before the lecture there was
+a reception, and I was regaled with tea and
+cakes and left to the tender mercies of the
+ladies, and men who can only speak
+Japanese; later, however, the Governor’s
+German was available, and so it was all
+right, and we were quite cheerful till the
+interpreter arrived with a solemn face and
+a black suit.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“[Tokio.] Professor Sakurai took me to
+visit Count Okuma in the morning; he has<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">96</span>
+a lovely house and grounds, which he was
+gracious enough to show me. Every ordinary
+day he has about thirty or forty
+visitors, and is one of the busiest men in the
+country. He has an old face, with almost
+no hair, and is tall for a Japanese, and dignified
+in his silken robes, and distinctly pleasing.
+He could speak no English, so that
+conversation was rather limited, as he spoke
+more than usually indistinctly, but he was
+amused with Professor S——’s account of
+me and very gracious. The rooms are nearly
+all provided with European chairs and
+tables, rich and handsome, the drawing-room
+in which he received me upholstered
+in gold brocaded silk, which harmonized
+well with the handsome old gold and painted
+screens from ancient Japan which stood
+around the room. I begged to see the
+Japanese wing of the house, which he
+showed me. His Japanese guest chambers
+were, to my taste, far more beautiful, though
+perforce less able to display his wealth. He
+is the Chamberlain of Japan in one sense,
+and has the finest orchid houses in the
+country.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">97</span></p>
+
+<p>“November 24.—This morning early I
+started off on foot in glorious hot sunshine
+to get the fossils, and succeeded in getting
+more than my coolie could carry. I am
+almost the only visitor in the place, and
+everyone is very kind and very interested.
+My colloquial Japanese comes a cropper now
+and then—but I get what I want, which is
+the main thing. The rocky valleys and
+woods are very lovely, and I appreciate the
+loneliness after these Tokio weeks. I should
+like always to live in complete solitude two
+days in seven.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“[Tokio.] All yesterday the Institute had
+been undergoing extensive cleaning, and
+this morning was spent in expectation and
+preparation of exhibits—the great Dr. Koch,
+the world-famed German bacteriologist,
+was coming to see the Institute. Professor
+Fujii was brought back from the mountain
+before his cure was finished, to be on duty;
+my fossil slides were borrowed and put
+under microscope, and the spermatozoids of
+<i>ginkgo</i> were on show. He came, after the
+whole Institute and Baron Hamao had
+waited in a flutter of excitement for nearly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">98</span>an hour; he is a big stout man, not very
+intellectual-looking. Though interested, he
+had evidently been trotted round a great
+deal. He seemed to like my fossils, and
+asked me to show him a section of a leaf, as
+well as those I had under the microscope.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“[Tokio.] I went early to the Institute,
+where there is grand excitement over
+<i>ginkgo</i>; the sperms are just swimming out,
+and they only do it for a day or two each
+year. It is no such easy business to catch
+them, in 100 you can only get five with
+sperms at the best of times, and may get one
+and be thankful. I spent pretty well the
+whole day over them and got three, and
+several in the pollen tube, not yet quite ripe.
+It is most entertaining to watch them swimming,
+their spiral of cilia wave energetically.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“[Tokio.] At work all the morning,
+lunch with the Faculty at the Goten, and
+then at work all the afternoon. The fossils
+proved so enticing that though I had worn
+a traily frock all day intending to go to the
+Belgian Legation garden party, when it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">99</span>
+came to the point the fossils won, and I
+didn’t go. In the evening I cycled down to
+dinner at our Embassy.</p>
+
+<p>“When once one makes up one’s mind to
+a cycle, one can even go out to dinner on it.
+I wondered, however, what the footman
+thought when he had to lift it into the
+Embassy hall in case of thieves getting it in
+the garden (I was told he has a brother who
+is an attaché at the French Embassy! The
+Japanese are very quaint that way—one
+Count or Baron or other is driven up to the
+door every day by his own brother as a
+coachman). Thanks to the unmoved countenance
+of flunkeydom, added to the immobility
+of the Japanese, I could sail into
+the dining-room, past the same man, trailing
+a pink silk skirt with apparent dignity.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“[Tokio.] ... When I got to the Embassy
+garden party (it was given to welcome
+Admiral Sperry and the American fleet) I
+found it had been postponed in the morning,
+but as the weather was now so lovely it was
+put on again. That is to say, it was half on
+and would be repeated to-morrow. So we
+had one of the bands and quite a lot of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">100</span>American officers and other people turned
+up. The chief sight was seeing Admiral
+Sperry and Admiral Togo sitting side by
+side looking on at a kind of sword dance....
+Admiral Sperry, though not imposing
+or impressive in any way, seemed
+pleasant and keen, and was tall.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“[Tokio.] Sven Hedin lectured to-day at
+the University, and I had been asked to tea
+previously to meet him before it.... He
+gave me the impression of being a genial,
+friendly, hardy, <i>pushful</i>, but not a great
+man. The only other lady there was
+Madame G——, the mother of the French
+Ambassador, whom I think I have mentioned
+before. She was very gracious, as
+she always is, but cannot speak a word of
+anything but French. We all walked over
+to the Lecture Hall from the Goten—a slow
+and solemn procession. About the only
+people who spoke were Hedin and Madame
+G——, a few people said a sentence or two
+to me, but even the genial Dean seemed to
+be overpowered by the funereal solemnity
+of the march. I had my cycle, and the
+French Ambassador helped me to haul it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">101</span>up the steps! His only remark was <i>très
+moderne</i>, which was very moderate of him.
+In the lecture I was placed in the front row,
+between Madame G—— and Baron K——,
+and got into nice hot water! The poor lady
+couldn’t understand a word of the lecture,
+and Hedin often said things to make us
+laugh, and she could not join in, so now and
+then I translated a word or two for her.
+This upset Baron K——, who nudged me
+violently from the other side, so I had to
+stop, but then I hurt the lady, for I didn’t
+dare answer her further questions.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“[Tokio.] Almost immediately after
+lunch we went over to—where do you think?—Lafcadio
+Hearn’s house to see his wife
+and family! A rare privilege, for the sanctum
+is unusually well guarded. But Mrs.
+Noguchi’s friendship has won me the way
+in, for, as I said, the eldest boy learns
+English from her and is devoted to her....</p>
+
+<p>“As we entered we passed along an
+<i>engawa</i> (verandah) bounding a tiny internal
+square of garden on our way to the reception-room.
+This was in the purest Japanese
+style, well-built, with pretty woodwork, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">102</span>a
+thing one learns to notice in this country. I
+immediately observed the <i>kakemono</i>, which
+was exceptionally beautiful, tall peaks of
+bare rock pillars standing up against a grey
+sky, where a moon half shone through a
+band of cloud. A picture that one could
+never forget and yet would ever wish to see
+instead of merely remembering. I remarked
+on it to Mrs. Hearn, who told me that
+‘Lafcadio had very good taste in <i>kakemonos</i>,’
+and always bought only what
+pleased him exactly. Wise man! when he
+had the cash! There was also a bronze in
+the room, the bent stalk of a fading lotus
+leaf with the collapsed blade of the leaf, and
+though there sounds no beauty in that, the
+bronze throbbed with it. Mrs. Hearn was
+very friendly: less shy and quiet than most
+Japanese women, she was yet distinctly
+Japanese in her shyness and quietness.
+Without beauty, she pleased.</p>
+
+<p>“She and the children were all in usual
+Japanese costume, and the only ‘foreign’
+things in the room were ourselves and the
+cakes and cups of tea she brought us. I inquired
+if she liked foreign food, and she told
+me that she did, <i>very</i> much, and that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">103</span>‘Lafcadio’ always ate it, for though he
+liked all the things to be pure Japanese, and
+would have nothing he could help that was
+not, Japanese food upset him, and he
+always had foreign food, but that now she
+never prepared it. We chatted about many
+things, and she spoke freely of Hearn, of
+whom I did not dare at first to ask any questions
+till she had spoken voluntarily so
+much, to show that she liked to speak of
+him....</p>
+
+<p>“The children were with us most of the
+evening, showing Brownie picture-books,
+of which they had a fine stock. Hearn evidently
+liked Andrew Lang’s fairy books, for
+they were nearly all there.</p>
+
+<p>“In his study, where we had supper, was
+the little family shrine, built rather like a
+miniature temple of plain wood; within was
+Hearn’s photo, and before it burnt a tiny
+lamp and stood dainty vases of small
+flowers. According to Japanese ideas, the
+spirit of the departed inhabits this dwelling
+and needs the love and attention of his
+kindred, and takes part in their life. Is
+Christianity more consoling to the bereaved
+than this? From the window by the shrine
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">104</span>could be seen the grove of the tall bamboo
+Hearn loved, and in the room floated one or
+two of the mosquitoes with which he had
+such sympathy.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Some of the Japanese ways must have
+startled a girl brought up in the propriety of
+the Stopes family. One finds indications of
+this in such passages as the following of
+<i>A Journal from Japan</i>:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“The life in this train is different from
+anything I have yet seen in trains, yet very
+comfortable, with dining-car where they
+cook beside you what you order. Near me
+was sitting a smart man, cultured-looking,
+and extremely well-dressed in perfect English
+style. Thus he remained for an hour;
+then, the heat being great, he took off his
+coat, then his waistcoat, and finally came to
+his shirt alone! Then he pulled over him a
+loose kimono and removed every stitch but
+that, finally winding a soft silk sash round
+his waist and sitting down, all without
+removing his gold-rimmed glasses or turning
+a hair! The transformation was extraordinary,
+and during the whole ridiculous
+scene, acted within two feet of me, he was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">105</span>so utterly unconscious and dignified, and so
+many others in the long car did the same,
+that I began to wonder if we aren’t a little
+super-prudish in England. During the night
+that man was most thoughtful and kind to
+me, insisting on my using his rug, and
+finally doing an act of service that called for
+such unselfishness that I am sure we underrate
+the innate courtesy of Japanese men to
+women; and he was, of course, a perfect
+stranger.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>And also from Hokkaido:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“I arrived at
+Aomori early this morning, and lost much
+temper because I had to lose much time in
+getting on to the ship. The language, of
+course, was partly the difficulty, but the
+natives are excruciatingly slow to move.
+After <i>three hours</i> of talking and arguing and
+going over things again and again, at last I
+reached the steamer—a very good little ship
+with nice state-rooms and saloons; of course
+<i>very</i> small. The state-rooms have three
+berths, and I find my two companions are
+men. It was a shock at first, but they
+seemed so surprised at my being surprised,
+that I thought again that we have too much
+of the trail of the serpent about our customs.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">106</span>I slept in the train with men near me, why
+not in the steamer? It is only for one night.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>And again:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Life in the Club-house last
+night was not without its interest. I
+couldn’t get to bed for constant visits and
+interviews from officials; the last gentleman
+came after I had prepared for bed, and I
+conversed with him in my night-gown
+(which, mercifully, was long and rather like
+a tea-gown), but he never turned a hair—coming
+in on me before I could put on a
+dressing-gown. The maids are all excessively
+sweet and polite, but they slide open the
+partitions noiselessly, with no warning, and
+catch me unawares.</p>
+
+<p>“I put up at a little hotel near the sea, and
+after six went down for a bathe. The coast
+was perfect, shelving rocks sloping out to
+sea, with little bathing coves and sheltering
+rocks, and, as I imagined, perfect solitude.
+But, of course, in this out-of-the-way place
+I had been noticed, and before I was in the
+water a minute a crowd of women and children
+had collected. Nothing I could do or
+say would drive them away, and so I had to
+get out and dress under the fire of their eyes
+and criticisms. In their long-drawn country
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">107</span>tones they kept up a running commentary,
+‘Ooá—how white she is!’ ‘Is she married?’
+‘Why does she wear a dress in the sea?’
+‘How old can she be?’ ‘Perhaps twenty
+years.’ There was no escape from nearly
+fifty people forming a cordon but three feet
+away from me; if I had fled they would have
+followed, so I dressed, as leisurely and as
+unconcernedly as if I were at home, and
+gravely buttoned the little buttons of my
+bodice and put on my stockings while I returned
+the compliment and made a searching
+examination of them.</p>
+
+<p>“The boy children were naked, with
+smooth glowing copper limbs like sun-burned
+clay—as indeed they were. The girl
+children had usually some floating robe of
+a dressing-gown nature, open to show the
+whole body, or caught at the waist and
+turned down to leave the upper part free.
+Bright-eyed they were and muddy-cheeked,
+but neither pretty nor attractive. The
+women were naked to below the waist, the
+kimono being turned down over the girdle to
+form a kind of double skirt. No one wore any
+ornament of any kind, save a few coloured
+beads to tie their hair, but few of them had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">108</span>even that. The men wore three inches
+of cloth round their waists and sometimes
+a band round their heads made of a small
+Japanese towel. All were perfectly quiet,
+and the remarks were made one at a time by
+the older women; the children stood open-mouthed.
+I know that the blue of the sea-water
+makes one gleam like white ivory,
+and as all my clothes were white, I suppose
+the effect must have seemed novel to them.
+The deep colour of the Japanese is chiefly
+due to sunburn, but as they are exposed to
+it from their earliest days, it gets so ingrained
+that they may not realize it is an
+attempt at clothing on the part of a body
+otherwise so unprotected.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>From the above extracts it will be realized
+that, after a short stay at Tokio, Dr. Stopes
+set off by herself to the northern trackless
+forests in Hokkaido. She found however
+that the introductions kindly sent by Sir
+Edward Grey and the Royal Society left her
+less free than she would otherwise have been
+to travel in obscurity, and on arriving in
+Hokkaido an interchange of visits with the
+Governor was necessary. Before matters
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">109</span>were settled she found that an escort of
+considerable magnitude was considered
+essential. Among them of course was an
+interpreter, as she had no knowledge of the
+Japanese language. Whilst on the expedition
+with a party of coolies however the
+town of Hakodate was burnt down entirely
+and the interpreter had to return hurriedly
+to see to his family affairs, leaving her, with
+the meagerest smattering of Japanese, to
+cope with her entire expedition, an experience
+she found most salutary and not a little
+amusing. In many of the villages to which
+Dr. Stopes penetrated, no white person of
+any sort, male or female, had ever been seen
+before, and the curiosity her arrival aroused
+was naturally great and often embarrassing,
+as, for instance, when an entire school was
+brought to watch her dress, the natives
+having noiselessly removed the sliding
+panels of her room before waking her. The
+fossils she sought proved to be there, and
+her coolies returned laden with specimens of
+great interest and new to science. From
+Tokio she made many expeditions in other
+directions, including one to the Southern
+Island of Amakusa, where coal mines of a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">110</span>very primitive sort existed. Throughout her
+stay in Japan she continually experienced
+difficulties in consequence of the ramifications
+of Japanese interests she aroused. “It
+was so difficult,” she said, “to get anywhere
+I wanted to go because they always
+wanted me to do something else!”</p>
+
+<p>In Japan the aristocratic or “No” plays
+greatly attracted and interested Dr. Stopes,
+and she attended as many performances of
+these as possible; and in collaboration with
+Professor Sakurai, then the Dean of the
+Imperial University, she made the first
+translation of three of them into English.
+They were published by Heinemann in 1913,
+with her notes on this most interesting and
+archaic of all still living forms of the drama.
+Concerning this, Baron Kato, then Japanese
+Ambassador, wrote of Dr. Stopes and her
+co-translator: “I am glad to be able to
+extend to them my sincere congratulations
+on their remarkable achievement. They
+have succeeded in their work to the best
+extent anyone can hope to succeed, and in
+my opinion have placed Western students
+of Japanese art and literature under a debt
+of gratitude to them.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">111</span></p>
+
+<p>After living for some time as a paying
+guest with a Japanese officer’s family, Dr.
+Stopes decided to try the experiment of
+having a little Japanese home of her own
+in Tokio, which city she always made her
+headquarters. To run this, she had a delightful
+Japanese maid, and lived as nearly
+as was convenient in the Japanese style,
+using chopsticks and sleeping on silk quilts
+on the floor, though she kept to European
+cooking. As the French Ambassador said,
+“Next to the French, the properly trained
+Japanese made the very best cooks in the
+world,” and her maid was remarkably skilful
+over a little charcoal brazier.</p>
+
+<p>The many dances and dinners, garden-parties,
+and receptions at the Embassies,
+which social life at Tokio offered, afforded
+ample gaiety as a contrast to her serious and
+arduous palæontological work. At an “At
+Home” in Tokio one day a matron, talking
+to a slender young woman in a pretty art
+gown of blue velvet, said: “Who is this Dr.
+Stopes people are talking about? He collects
+fossils, and I expect he is a bit of a fossil
+himself.” Later on the same lady said to
+her hostess: “Who is that nice girl I have
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">112</span>been talking to in the blue dress?”—“That
+is Dr. Stopes, the learned geologist,” said
+the hostess, and the Yokohama matron
+collapsed. But Dr. Stopes wanted some
+social activity rather more serious than any
+that were available, and so she hit on the
+idea of founding a ladies’ debating society
+like one her mother founded many years
+earlier in London. For the ladies in Tokio
+nothing beyond the superficialities of social
+life existed, since, being foreigners, the
+various fields of social usefulness open to
+women in their own countries were not
+available, and her idea was taken up with
+zest. The debates were both animated and
+interesting, but, to the amazement of all
+concerned, no men were admitted. This of
+course, in such a circle as the Tokio diplomatic
+one, caused great astonishment, and
+Baroness d’Anethon, the English wife of the
+Belgian Minister, who was the doyen in
+Tokio, pleaded in vain when the debate
+was held in her house, for exception to be
+made in favour of the Baron. This being
+sternly refused, he hid in the room, and had
+to be dislodged amid laughter. In looking
+back, Dr. Stopes thinks that this unexpected
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">113</span>attitude of the women was what secured the
+initial success of the little Society. It undoubtedly
+filled a want, and it took root,
+and in an expanded form, with many added
+activities, is now the Tokio Ladies’ Club.
+Dr. Stopes also initiated a club for both men
+and women, the London University Club,
+in Tokio. She, as a graduate of London
+University, felt that the graduates of Oxford
+and Cambridge, who each had their club in
+Japan, should not be the only ones to foregather.
+In this undertaking she was much
+helped by the fact that several of the most
+distinguished statesmen in Japan, as well as
+Professor Sakurai, the Dean of the Imperial
+University, were graduates, or had been
+students, at London University. That club,
+too, still maintains its existence and from
+time to time communicates with her.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving Japan Dr. Stopes was the
+recipient of many beautiful gifts from
+various departments, including a pair of
+exquisite silver cloisonné vases, with a dedication
+to her from the Japanese Government
+“in recognition of the service she had been
+to science in Japan.”</p>
+
+<p>After a year and a half in Japan Dr.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">114</span>Stopes returned home across the Pacific and
+<i>via</i> Canada. The ship encountered a terrific
+storm. The manuscript containing her
+original drawings and the only copy of the
+results of Professor Fujii’s and her work for
+the last year and a half was with her in her
+cabin. The sea broke in, bursting the port-hole,
+and before anything could be done
+water was waist deep in her cabin and the
+precious manuscript was floating about with
+the rest of her luggage. When rescued it
+was well-nigh ruined, but, having been
+tightly tied up, there was some hope of
+saving it if it could be dried quickly. The
+storm by this time was so terrific that she
+could not walk along the corridor of the ship
+at all, and, with her heart in her mouth, had
+to see the manuscript taken out of her care
+to the engine-room to be dried, while she
+was tightly wedged in with pillows and
+fastened into her bunk. Some days later
+the manuscript, with its pages entirely disarranged,
+was retrieved; and from that experience
+the authoress learnt a lesson she
+has never forgotten, and never now allows
+a manuscript of hers to remain uncopied.</p>
+
+<p>On her arrival in Vancouver she was asked
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">115</span>to lecture before the Women’s Canadian
+Club. In Toronto, too, she was most cordially
+received and made much of by Dr.
+Helen MacMurchy, a well-known figure in
+the medical and Government circles of
+Canada. She then proceeded to New York,
+where she received much cordial and
+friendly hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>It was not very long before she returned
+to America for a stay of over three months,
+a large part of which was spent in Washington,
+where she was correlating the palæontological
+collections with those in the British
+Museum, in preparation for the volumes
+published later by the Trustees of the
+British Museum. She was the guest then
+of Hennen Jennings and his charming wife,
+who gave her many delightful opportunities
+of meeting Americans of note. At a dinner-party
+to meet Viscount Bryce, in whom she
+found an Ambassador not merely broad and
+sympathetic, but with a profound knowledge
+of unexpected subjects, as he showed
+in his table talk. Of him she says: “He
+was the only man of general world-culture
+and note I have ever met who knew the
+correct scientific names of fossils in coal-bearing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">116</span>horizons and mentioned them as
+though they were everyday matters of conversation.
+He amazed and delighted me.”</p>
+
+<p>In New York she met Andrew Carnegie,
+who invited her to his palatial home, and
+she found him very different from the hard
+old man rumour had described him as being.
+He gave her tea in tête-à-tête comfort, and
+though he refused an endowment for palæontological
+research in London, which she
+asked him for, he received the request with
+such humour and such personal charm that
+she went away feeling she had gained a
+great deal. And perhaps she had, for this
+wise old man said to her: “You are far too
+clever, my dear, to be wasting your time
+over fossils; <i>things that live matter more</i>.
+If you had come to me with a proposition
+that would help the peace of the world, I
+would not have given you a quarter of a
+million” (dollars, presumably), “I would
+have given you a million, and gladly. Take
+my advice, and do not waste your time over
+these dead-and-gone things.” (Alas for the
+later work of Dr. Stopes, that is so essentially
+calculated to help the peace of the
+world, Carnegie died before she was ready
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">117</span>to ask him to redeem his promise.) The
+palæontological enthusiast then pointed out
+to him that the whole of his wealth rested
+on the use of coal, and therefore the palæontological
+study of its nature and structure
+must have value, even to him. But he
+would not see it, and said: “You are clever
+enough to make all the millions you want
+for yourself. We dug coal before you scientists
+existed, and we can go on digging it
+without you.” Patting her kindly, he led
+her downstairs, right down his front steps
+on to the street in most kindly and fatherly
+fashion, and next day sent her a book of his
+own, inscribed as follows: “For relief from
+severer studies likely to destruct the brain.”</p>
+
+<p>In St. Louis, as has already been mentioned,
+Dr. Marie Stopes met Dr. Gates
+whom she afterwards married, and in
+Chicago, where she was invited to lecture at
+the University, she met Jane Adams, the
+great social worker, and a number of
+academic men of world note. Of American
+cities, Boston, next to Washington, attracted
+her most, and there she was entertained by
+old Mrs. Fields, whose home was one of the
+last links between modern times and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">118</span>glorious days of American literature, and
+who showed her a manuscript collection of
+many of the great English authors. Other
+friends in Boston gave a dinner for her to
+meet Henry James on his native heath.
+“That night,” she said, “I really felt that
+I had achieved fame. Henry James entertained
+the dinner-table with a number of
+stories from one of my books. I suppose he
+had forgotten their origin, but I played up,
+and laughed in the proper place every time.
+I felt for the first time in my life that I really
+had accomplished something.”</p>
+
+<p>In Ottawa she was the guest, at Government
+House, of the Governor-General and
+Lady Grey. Here she met the Premier, Sir
+Wilfred Laurier, who was full of reminiscences
+and confidences about his youth.
+The Minister of Finance sat next to her at
+dinner one evening, and semi-officially asked
+her to name her own terms for remaining in
+Canada to develop palæontological work in
+connection with their Government departments,
+but she then felt that she would
+rather have a junior’s salary in London than
+comparative riches elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this she went on to Montreal,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">119</span>staying only a few days. Lord Grey, who
+was visiting Montreal at the time, opened
+Lord Strathcona’s house and gave a
+luncheon party to Dr. Stopes. In Montreal
+she visited Professor Penhallow, the palæobotanist,
+who had charge of many interesting
+fossil specimens, some of them dating
+from the famous Dawson’s time. She also
+met Sir John Macdonell and Professor
+Adami and others of the University staff.</p>
+
+<p>In Montreal she was married to Dr. Gates,
+who came to meet her there for that purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Stopes has twice seen Niagara: once
+in brilliant summer sunshine, pouring over
+in torrential floods, and once frozen, with an
+ice halo round all the neighbouring trees,
+with an ice bridge across it, and a rainbow
+sparkling in the sunshine from the small
+central stream.</p>
+
+<p>In Stockholm, Professor Nathorst, one of
+the greatest palæobotanists in the world,
+had unique collections it was necessary for
+her to correlate with those in the British
+Museum. She stayed a good many weeks
+in Stockholm, and while she was there the
+city was also visited by Professor Seward
+(now the Master of Downing College, Cambridge),
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">120</span>a palæobotanist, and his wife and
+daughter. This palæobotanical party, together
+with Professor Nathorst, was invited
+to a lunch by the British Minister, Sir Cecil
+Spring Rice, at his beautiful summer villa
+some way out of Stockholm, who made
+a deep personal impression on Dr. Stopes.
+His sympathetic and charming personality
+and real interest in science was unusual.
+She had often experienced in Japan, where
+she moved freely among the diplomats, and
+at Washington and elsewhere where she
+met Ambassadors and their kind, a superficial
+courtesy and a pretence of interest
+which seemed to her unreal, but Sir Cecil
+created an impression of noble sincerity and
+sympathetic understanding.</p>
+
+<p>Since the war Dr. Stopes has travelled
+little, though she has been once to New York
+and in 1923 attended the Fuel Congress in
+Paris, where she had been invited to give a
+paper on her researches on the structure of
+coal.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="i_p120b" style="max-width: 35.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p120b.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <span class="smcap">Humphrey Verdon Roe.</span>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">121</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">
+    CHAPTER VI.
+    <br>
+    <span class="smcap">Marriage.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>About eighteen months after having
+been freed from the legal matrimonial
+entanglement which had
+proved itself no true marriage, Dr. Marie
+Stopes and her real husband met at a
+luncheon party given by a mutual friend.
+They were immediately attracted to each
+other under rather curious circumstances,
+each having been invited to meet the other
+and each of them thinking that the other
+had not turned up, but that the delightful
+young person they were meeting was a son
+or daughter of the one they were to have
+met.</p>
+
+<p>Humphrey Verdon Roe was the son of Dr.
+Edwin H. Roe and Annie Verdon, his wife,
+and was one of seven children. Medical
+men were numerous in his family, and he
+was the son, nephew, and brother, of medicals.
+He himself went straight into the
+Army from school and from his crammer,
+and entered the First Battalion of the Manchester
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">122</span>Regiment as a subaltern. The regiment
+was stationed in Gibraltar, where he
+first saw foreign service with its vivid new
+experiences, and the regiment was drafted
+to South Africa in 1899, where he served
+through the whole siege of Ladysmith,
+suffering permanently in health to some
+slight extent from the starvation he then
+endured. At the end of the South African
+war he resigned his commission and entered
+first one and then another business, making
+himself independent of his family. A brother
+a year older than he, Alliott, who had a
+varied engineering experience and a great
+gift for invention, was interested from a
+very early date in the possibilities of flying.
+Humphrey Verdon Roe placed his business
+knowledge and resources at his brother’s
+command, and the two worked in partnership:
+a partnership in which Alliott benefited
+by the keen common sense of Humphrey,
+who kept a steering-wheel on the
+development of the many ideas coruscating
+from his brother. The development of those
+that could lead to solid results was organized
+by Humphrey, and the machine they then
+constructed is still of value. Together the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">123</span>two brothers founded the firm which manufactured
+the “Avro” biplane in 1910, when
+flying was still thought to be almost an impossibility,
+and only a few years after <i>The
+Times</i> had published an article saying
+that from an engineering point of view it
+was not possible to fly, the brothers had
+mastered the obstacles before them. In the
+first year of the war Humphrey Roe’s policy
+was more than justified. Avros were on
+active service all over the place, and in
+November, 1914, Avros were selected for
+the successful raid on the Zeppelin headquarters
+at Fridrichshafen.</p>
+
+<p>The development of the production of
+Avros, and others modelled on them,
+naturally expanded enormously during the
+war, but Humphrey Roe, though at the head
+of a rapidly increasing business, at once
+endeavoured to take up a fresh commission
+in the Army, but was held back as being of
+more service to the country as a producer of
+flying machines. In 1917 however, the huge
+expansion of production having been fully
+organized and established, he succeeded in
+rejoining the Army; and resigning all
+direct interest in the firm, got his commission,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">124</span>and went flying in France. At this
+time, at the age of 39, he was in such good
+physical condition that he went night-bombing
+over the German lines. His machine
+was brought down, and he was sent home
+with a broken foot and a jarred spine, gaining
+a wound stripe early in 1918. An
+account, with a photograph, of his night-bombing
+work is given in the “Annals of
+the 100th Squadron.”</p>
+
+<p>Besides being a successful business man
+of many interests, H. V. Roe has been
+through life a most abstemious liver, a teetotaller,
+a non-smoker, and of very simple
+personal tastes and habits. Before he met
+Dr. Marie Stopes, in conjunction with Councillor
+Margaret Ashton, M.A., the well-known
+philanthropist and social worker in
+Manchester, he had, for some time, been
+endeavouring to improve the lot of the
+working women by founding a clinic for
+birth control. Indeed he made an offer to
+a Manchester Hospital of £1,000 a year for
+five years and £12,000 at his death if they
+would open such a clinic, but through fear
+of losing some of their other supporters if
+they took such an advanced step, they
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">125</span>regretfully refused to do so. On going to
+the front Mr. Roe made a will, leaving his
+whole property for the endowment of birth
+control and the foundation of various
+scholarships. It is an indication of the
+extraordinary ignorance that then prevailed
+on that very important subject, that his solicitors
+in 1917 were exceedingly chary about
+allowing him to make any bequest for birth
+control, warning him that probate might be
+refused. Fortunately however his marriage
+with Dr. Marie Stopes in 1918, who was
+equally anxious to promote birth control,
+resulted in the mutual efforts they have made
+to do this in their own lifetimes. They
+founded the first clinic for birth control in
+the British Empire, which under their supervision
+has steadily progressed.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp61" id="i_p124b" style="max-width: 30.3125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p124b.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    Dr. Marie Stopes at the time of her marriage to Mr. H. V. Roe. 1918.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>His meeting with Dr. Marie Stopes took
+place just before he went to France, but on
+his return he and she decided to marry as
+soon as he was allowed out of hospital, and
+arrangements were made for the marriage to
+take place at St. Margaret’s, Westminster,
+the Bishop of Birmingham, an old friend of
+Dr. Stopes, and Mr. Roe’s uncle, the Rev.
+Russell Napier, the Vicar of Old Windsor,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">126</span>were to officiate. The demand for officers
+was then so great however that he was
+ordered to the front sooner than had been
+anticipated, and they were hastily and
+secretly married a month earlier than had
+been planned, at the Registrar’s Office at
+Westminster. Then, fortunately, his orders
+were changed, and the religious marriage at
+St. Margaret’s, Westminster, could proceed.
+The couple were then in the amusing position
+of having been really married a month when,
+with all due pomp and solemnity, they were
+in the eyes of the world, being married for
+the first time. No one but myself, and one
+other friend,—not even the bride’s mother—had
+been informed of the first marriage
+hastily arranged in view of the tragic possibilities
+at that time.</p>
+
+<p>Humphrey Verdon Roe had many years
+previously determined to retire from business
+at 40, and, after his marriage, he and
+his wife decided, when the war should be
+over, to devote their whole leisure to public
+service in one form or another. In addition
+to his interest in birth control Mr. Roe, as
+an employer of labour, had often endeavoured
+to bring employers and employed to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">127</span>a better understanding, and he actively
+took up the work of the Industrial League
+and Council, joining its committee and
+furthering its efforts to promote Whitleyism.
+He was also interested in other public
+service, in particular, town planning. Dr.
+Stopes had for some time been living at
+Leatherhead, and as the district offered just
+the kind of beauty and facility of access to
+London they desired, he bought a beautiful
+property and they settled down at Givons
+Grove, where they now live.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p126b" style="max-width: 53.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p126b.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    An Industrial Conference at Givons Grove.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>After they had been married fifteen
+months their first baby son was born, a
+beautiful and well-built boy of 8-3/4 lb., whose
+tragic death, and all the attendant circumstances,
+involve a story too strange and
+horrible for me to tell here. Fortunately,
+their second son, who was born in 1924 (and
+who also weighed 8-3/4 lb. at birth), is another
+beautiful and sturdy baby, so like the first
+that he might be his own elder brother come
+to life again.</p>
+
+<p>Humphrey Verdon Roe was so severely
+injured in France, where he had a foot
+broken and two bones in his spine jarred,
+that he was invalided out of the Army before
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">128</span>the close of the war. With the exception of
+a brief visit to Switzerland, he and his wife
+have done none of the travelling they had
+planned, but have lived very quietly since
+their marriage. Whatever strength each of
+them has had has been devoted principally
+to work in connection with birth control:
+the founding of the clinic for birth control,
+and the Society for Constructive Birth Control,
+of which H. V. Roe is honorary secretary.
+Further reference to this will be given
+later (p. 221).</p>
+
+<p>Those who, like myself, have often stayed
+at Givons Grove, know well how complete
+and real a marriage this is. Much is said of
+the Brownings’ ideal marriage, but here, in
+living fact, is another equally perfect in
+harmony and sentiment and in many
+respects more actively vital. Each with a
+pioneering instinct, though exercised in
+different directions, each serene in disregard
+of their own immediate advancement, each
+having an almost childlike sentiment and
+sensitiveness, they have strengthened and
+completed each other in the happiest way.
+No reference to life at Givons Grove would
+be complete without mention of their beloved
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">129</span>Chow dog, who goes everywhere with
+them, even on their honeymoons, and whose
+affectionate disposition fits well into the
+home life there.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp95" id="i_p128a_top" style="max-width: 30.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p128a_top.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    Dr. Stopes, seated, with her husband’s father and mother.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp94" id="i_p128a_bottom" style="max-width: 30.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p128a_bottom.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    Mr. H. V. Roe and “Wuffles” as a puppy.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>I am convinced that Dr. Stopes is one of
+those rare people whose mental and moral
+energy never allows them to rest long on
+their oars, but who when they have mastered
+one problem have to engage on another.
+The mere diversity of tasks she has already
+undertaken indicates this, including as it
+does a considerable body of important scientific
+work, besides elementary text-books, a
+book of travels, a book of poems, plays, a
+cinema story, and fairy tales, as well as the
+series of works on sex that have had such a
+large circulation here, and have been translated
+into French, German, Swedish,
+Danish, Czeck, Polish, Roumanian, Dutch
+and Spanish. This forms a surprisingly
+varied output for anyone, and still more for
+a woman of her age, and there is every
+reason to expect much more from her yet.</p>
+
+<p>The characteristics observable when one
+gets to know her well are a curious blend of
+feminine charm with a trenchant intellectuality
+such as one rarely encounters. She is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">130</span>clear-headed, but not of the aridly intellectual
+type; on the contrary she frequently
+jumps to conclusions by a kind of intuition,
+though she verifies and tests them afterwards.
+I have already alluded to the exceptional
+tenacity—some people would say
+obstinacy—with which she clings to her
+purpose, great or small, and also to the surprising
+frequency with which she reaches
+her aim when an onlooker does not see at all
+why she should. Perhaps I may illustrate
+this by an example. When her husband
+bought Givons Grove, Dr. Stopes set to
+work to beautify and decorate it, a task for
+which she is highly qualified. Well, at
+Givons Grove she resolved, among other
+things, that the upper part of the dining-room
+walls were to be painted a particular
+shade of blue. It was war-time, and after
+the decorators at her instigation had
+tried a dozen different sources, they declared
+the required paint to be quite unobtainable.
+Dr. Stopes would not have the
+walls painted any other colour. About that
+time she underwent the serious operation
+previously mentioned, and stayed at Torquay
+to recuperate. The first day she was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">131</span>strong enough to go out, she asked a policeman
+to direct her to the best oil and colour
+shop in the town. He did so, and on reaching
+it Dr. Stopes asked for two pots of the
+shade of blue paint she required. The shop-keeper
+said he had none of it, but Dr. Stopes
+insisted he had. She said she must have it,
+and would he please be quick and examine
+the stock in his cellar, as she was not at all
+well and very weak, did not want to wait
+long, and <i>knew</i> he had it in the shop. She
+was, in fact, by this time so exhausted with
+weakness as to be almost collapsing over the
+counter at which she sat. The man replied
+that he had no cellar; but, on being questioned,
+he admitted that he had a small
+attic, and at her bidding he went to see what
+was there. He soon returned, having to
+his surprise found just two pots of the identical
+shade required, which Dr. Stopes
+promptly purchased, and the paint from
+which is now on her dining-room walls.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p130a" style="max-width: 50.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p130a.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    Members of the Birth Rate Commission. The Bishop of Birmingham in the centre.
+    Dr. Stopes on his left.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp55" id="i_p130d" style="max-width: 29.9375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p130d.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    Dr. Marie Stopes and her Baby, Harry Verdon Stopes-Roe,
+    aged 3 months.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Physically Dr. Stopes matured slowly, and
+must have been nearly thirty before her sex-instincts
+were at all fully developed. Slowness
+of development does not however imply
+any incompleteness, and besides being very
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">132</span>happily married, she is the mother of an
+unusually fine baby: a particularly bonny,
+healthy little chap, whom she nurses herself
+and who, in the first six months of his life,
+has never had a wakeful night, and spends
+all his waking daylight hours laughing and
+crowing.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">133</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">
+    CHAPTER VII.
+    <br>
+    <span class="smcap">“Married Love” and its Developments.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The book, <i>Married Love</i>, was the
+outcome of Dr. Stopes’s scientific
+investigation of her own case, in the
+course of which, as already mentioned, she
+had read in the British Museum and elsewhere
+nearly everything that mattered on
+cognate subjects. This research revealed to
+her the great gaps that exist in the information
+available to ordinary people, as well as
+the lack of a book of instruction in sex, sufficiently
+simple to be understood, scientifically
+accurate, yet sympathetic, and written
+with a basis of romance and poetry, which
+she deemed to be the atmosphere in which
+alone the subject can properly be broached.
+In addition to this, she made a very fundamental
+physiological discovery on the subject
+of women’s spontaneous sex-rhythm
+and potential response to sex appeal. Concerning
+this Dr. Stopes brought to the science
+of human physiology a contribution which
+has already had, and should yet have, far-reaching
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">134</span>sociological results. In her chapter
+on Rhythm, together with charts, a fundamental
+law was laid down, or rather the
+existence of it was detected, but couched in
+simple and direct language suitable for the
+readers of any ordinary book instead of for
+the <i>Transactions</i> of a learned Society. Its
+profound value has still perhaps not been
+fully realized, although it was followed up
+by Havelock Ellis, whose reference to it has
+already been quoted.</p>
+
+<p><i>Married Love</i>, drafted at first to crystallize
+her own ideas, was approximately completed
+in 1914, but Dr. Stopes then made no
+definite effort to publish it, and it was early
+in 1918 before she felt that the time for it
+was absolutely ripe and that it should immediately
+be published. I had read it in manuscript,
+and thought it of great interest, but
+I did not think it would find a ready market,
+and told her she would be fortunate if
+2,000 copies of it were sold in twenty years
+in the form in which it was being published.
+In her usual independent way Dr. Marie
+Stopes laughed, and her laughter was justified,
+for the first 2,000 copies were sold in a
+fortnight. The second and third editions
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">135</span>were sold without a single advertisement,
+and Mr. Fifield, who was the original publisher,
+soon began to be oppressed with the
+burden of keeping the market supplied.
+When Dr. Marie Stopes, who knew him to
+be in general an active, efficient and capable
+publisher, went to him with the book (sole
+control of which she retained), she asked
+him in the initial interview whether he
+could deal with a book likely to sell by the
+ten thousand for some years, and probably
+ultimately by the million, and Mr. Fifield
+assured her that such was his capacity and
+desire. He put his heart into the publication
+of the book, and it owes much to his initial
+care. When, however, it had begun to get
+into the ten thousands the successful author
+was rather astonished to receive urgent telegrams
+from the publisher saying, “Stop this
+boom,” and letters bewailing that he had to
+sit up all night to deal with the orders, and
+she was startled to find that where she had
+ordered a printing of 10,000 copies he had
+cut it down to 7,000. She pathetically remarked,
+“Most publishers, I should have
+thought, would be only too glad to have an
+author who helped them sell their books,”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">136</span>particularly when no financial responsibility
+was involved. In order to get the book out
+early in 1918, when paper was at a premium,
+Dr. Marie Stopes took everything in hand
+herself, and within three weeks of deciding
+it should be published, had it on the market. She
+bought the paper herself, and had to go
+from one wholesaler to another to obtain the
+supplies of paper needed for the successive
+reprintings, as paper was at that time
+rationed, and it was no small achievement
+to have kept the book on the market in the
+way it was. Ultimately, as Mr. Fifield was
+in any case retiring from business, in the
+most friendly fashion she transferred the
+book to Messrs. Putnam, who have published
+since then.</p>
+
+<p>When first bringing out <i>Married Love</i>
+I remember hearing Dr. Stopes say that she
+thought knowledge on these sex matters now
+so urgent and so well worth her time that
+she would risk her academic position in
+London University and everything short of
+life itself to bring it out. She was quite
+prepared to be imprisoned. The one thing
+she was not prepared for was the avalanche
+of thanks and heartfelt gratitude, the thousands
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">137</span>and tens of thousands of touching
+letters which inundated her from all parts of
+the world. Indeed, for the first year or two
+after the publication of <i>Married Love</i> Dr.
+Stopes’s life was made a positive burden by
+grateful readers. She had deliberately in
+this book said very little on the subject of
+birth control, deeming it a minor matter,
+for <i>Married Love</i> presupposes a knowledge
+of birth control, and was planned to give
+instruction in the general problems facing
+potentially happy married people. But such
+a large number of her letters were not only
+from private individuals requiring birth
+control help, but from those who had been to
+their doctors and been refused information,
+or whose doctors knew nothing satisfactory
+to tell them, and so large a proportion were
+from medical men themselves thanking her
+for the information she gave and asking for
+more, that it became impossible to reply to
+the individual letters, and instead of a letter
+she wrote a very small book called <i>Wise
+Parenthood</i>, which was first published in
+paper covers as a pamphlet. This has
+grown, and been kept up-to-date as a
+small book concerning several methods of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">138</span>contraception, and is planned for the
+general reader. Public memory is very
+short, and it may not be generally realized
+or remembered how great has been the effect
+of Dr. Stopes’s outspoken and scientific
+work on the subject of sex in general and
+contraception in particular. Before 1918 it
+was the exceptional doctor who was able
+and willing to give contraceptive information
+to his parents; to-day the position is
+almost reversed. After some time a further
+need became apparent, for a centre where
+trained experts could give personal advice to
+the very large number of people who require
+individual attention and cannot follow written
+instructions, and Dr. Stopes and Mr.
+Roe often spoke of the idea of a clinic and
+endeavoured to urge suitable societies and
+institutions to found one. Everyone feared
+to do so and shirked the responsibility. At
+last they said: “We seem to be the only two
+people independent enough, and with the
+necessary freedom, resources, and determination,
+to do it. No one can oust us from
+our positions, no one can stop us; obviously
+<i>we have got to do it ourselves</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>The first birth control clinic in the British
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">139</span>Empire therefore was founded by Dr. Marie
+Stopes and her husband in 1921 as a demonstration
+of what was needed throughout the
+country. It was deliberately kept small and
+simple, because they did not desire, as reformers
+often do, to create a large institution
+with an expensive staff, but desired to
+demonstrate how, with a simple everyday
+shop and rooms, easy of access, with equipment
+costing only a small sum well within
+the means of every welfare centre in the
+country, the knowledge of the control of
+conception could be brought to the very poor
+and ignorant. As they explain in the little
+brochure describing the first foundation of
+the clinic: “Here mothers will be considered
+not only as the producers of mere babies, <i>but
+as the creators of splendid babies</i>. Only
+motherhood which is in the control of the
+mother, can now truly advance our race....
+Birth control knowledge will be
+given not in the crude repulsive form it is
+advocated in some quarters, but as the keystone
+in the arch of progress towards racial
+health and happiness.”</p>
+
+<p>In order not to be hampered by the conflict
+of ideas and ideals, no committee was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">140</span>organized in connection with this first clinic,
+but a number of distinguished persons from
+different social circles kindly showed their
+interest in the work by lending their names
+as patrons, including several distinguished
+medical men and women. The clinic was
+opened on March 17, 1921, and its simple
+accommodation was very soon overtaxed
+to such an extent that it has hardly dared
+to advertise its existence since the first
+great meeting of welcome which was held at
+the Queen’s Hall.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Stopes served as a member both on
+the Cinema Commission and on the Birth
+Rate Commission. The latter in its previous
+Report had dealt with birth control questions,
+and in the Sessions arranged for 1920-1921
+intended not to deal with that subject.
+Dr. Stopes was willing to take no active part
+in drawing attention to it; but witness after
+witness skirted so near the subject in giving
+evidence, that questions on it were unavoidable,
+and it ultimately became one of the
+most important topics before this Commission
+as it had been on the former one.</p>
+
+<p>At the conclusion, however, contrary to
+the weight of the evidence, a majority of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">141</span>the Commission signed a reservation opposed
+to scientific birth control; whereupon
+a minority resolution was drawn up by Dr.
+Marie Stopes, which was signed by Lord
+and Lady Willoughby de Broke, Dr. C. W.
+Saleeby and herself.</p>
+
+<p>About the time of the foundation of the
+clinic Dr. Marie Stopes, in connection with
+coal mining and other work, was to some
+extent in touch with Downing Street and
+met the Prime Minister personally, who
+naturally could not at that stage commit
+himself to any open approval of a subject
+which had not yet been voiced in a reputable
+public manner. He said to her however,
+“Show us that there is a public behind you;
+hold great meetings. There has never been
+a really <i>respectable</i> great meeting on the
+subject in the country.” Dr. Marie Stopes
+responded. “All right,” she said, “I will
+take the Queen’s Hall myself and pack it,”
+and this she did without any committee or
+backing beyond that of a small number of
+private friends, and a brilliant platform of
+speakers gathered round her. The Hall
+itself was packed to overflowing, and the
+phrase “Constructive Birth Control” coined
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">142</span>and set in circulation. An American journalist
+who was present said: “That meeting
+took my breath away; twice you knocked
+us sideways. Once by daring to do it at all,
+and the second time when you gave us that
+idea that birth control could be <i>constructive</i>,
+a pro-baby idea; we had always thought of
+it as a purely negative and repressive movement.”
+Letters of cordial approval and
+support were sent for public reading at this
+meeting by Miss Maude Royden, Lady Constance
+Lytton, the Lady Glenconnor, Sir
+James Barr, C.B.E., M.D., and many others.</p>
+
+<p>Speeches were made by Rt. Hon. G. H.
+Roberts, Dr. Jane L. Hawthorne, Dr.
+Killick Millard, Admiral Sir Percy Scott,
+Councillor H. V. Roe, Dr. Marie Stopes, and
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>All the speeches were reported verbatim,
+and are published in a pamphlet,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> together
+with some impressions of the meeting by
+people who were present.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Jane Hawthorne said:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“I am here this evening to represent those
+who have neither the opportunity nor the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">143</span>power to make their own appeal, and therefore
+I am anxious to put before you as
+clearly as possible the position of the very
+poor, hard-worked wife and mother....
+The other week a woman came into one of
+our clinics to tell us that in twelve years she
+was the mother of nine children, and of
+these two only were alive, and this, ladies
+and gentlemen, is the history of that family.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>After giving terrible details of this and a
+second family, Dr. Hawthorne continued:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Another woman, whom I know well,
+comes regularly to the Infant Welfare Clinic
+every eighteen months with a new baby,
+and that mother is mentally deficient, whilst
+her husband is deaf and dumb. None of
+these children are normal, and so they are
+born to very quickly find their way into the
+hospitals, the asylums and other institutions.</p>
+
+<p>“These, ladies and gentlemen, are only a
+few—a very few—of the hundreds of similar
+cases which one meets with in the year, and
+yet it seems to me that these few voice an
+appeal which ought to be irresistible to those
+of us who have ears to hear, and those of us
+who have the knowledge and power to help.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">144</span>By what right do we withhold this knowledge
+and take upon ourselves so great a
+responsibility?”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>In the course of her own speech Dr. Stopes
+said:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Sometimes those who feel intensely with
+me, yet shrink from doing anything for the
+poor mothers, because they think that by so
+helping them young girls and others will
+learn methods of birth control and may thus
+be sent downhill on a life they ought not to
+embark upon. So I want to make it clear
+once and for all that such an idea must not
+be allowed to hinder us. One of the very
+first experiences in the Birth Control Clinic
+was a strong case to show how misguided
+that would be. The second person who
+came to my Clinic when it was first opened
+came on behalf of a girl of twenty who was
+pregnant for the sixth time! And every
+previous time she had had an abortion performed
+by her own mother! We, of course,
+had no help for that girl. We cannot deal
+with such cases. Yet it shows that in that
+terrible underworld of misery and anguish
+which we selfish, self-centred, lazy people so
+seldom visualize and understand, there <i>is</i>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">145</span>already ‘knowledge’ of a kind. ‘Knowledge’
+is going round which is utterly detrimental,
+utterly unwholesome and tragic in
+its effects. The true knowledge which we
+are bringing to counteract that is clean and
+wholesome, and is pure physiological information
+to replace the miserable half-knowledge
+which already exists.</p>
+
+<p>“Then, too, another aspect of my Birth
+Control Clinic is lit up by the fact that by
+the word ‘control’ I mean <span class="allsmcap">CONTROL</span>. It is
+extraordinary how the words ‘birth control’
+have become associated with a negative and
+repressive movement. Now, in my opinion,
+control consists in being able to go uphill
+just as well as to go downhill; to turn to the
+right as well as to the left. I will tell you
+the story of one woman who came a fortnight
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>“She was one of the type that certain
+clergymen in their pulpits would refer to as
+‘those wicked women who refuse maternity.’
+All through her marriage she had
+openly declared she did not want children.
+But to me she came for help and said: ‘I
+have been married seventeen years and have
+not had a child.’ I asked her whether she
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">146</span>wished she had one and she said: ‘Of
+course, <i>of course</i> I want a child, but I’ve
+never told anyone; I pretend that I do not
+want one because I can’t get it,’ and then
+she cried, and exclaimed: ‘I would give
+my life, and suffer any torture to have a
+child.’ We gave her information which I
+think will help, and I hope that in about
+nine months there may be a Clinic baby in
+that home.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>There have been many other cases yielding
+“Clinic babies” since then.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Stopes continued:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Another incredible thing is the general
+lack of knowledge about sex and all the
+wonderful and beautiful mysteries of marriage.
+The extent of this ignorance is extraordinary.
+Do you know we had five cases
+of people married for years, and in each case
+the husband has not known how to play his
+part, and the wife is still a virgin and she
+wonders why she does not have a child!...</p>
+
+<p>“We have already to-day sufficient sound
+physiological knowledge to, from this
+moment (if one could only get everyone to
+know of it), check the birth of every diseased,
+unhealthy, unprepared-for child. We<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">147</span>
+really can, as Dr. Killick Millard quoted,
+stem at the source this incessant stream of
+misery which is always greater than our
+resources can deal with.</p>
+
+<p>“How great this misery, and how great
+the expense of it is to our race, can be found
+by reading a few of these Blue-books. You
+could very advantageously spend a few
+shillings at Imperial House, Kingsway, buying
+Reports in regard to prisons, costs of
+maintenance of schools of detention for the
+feeble-minded, asylums for the blind, schools
+for the defective, and so forth. Surely it is far
+better to spend the money on healthy, happy
+children who cost us far less per head than
+the wastrels! (Applause.)</p>
+
+<p>“To get rid of the wastrels in a Christian
+way we must see that they are not born.</p>
+
+<p>“Beyond this, this ideal which I present
+is not <i>merely</i> that we shall be simply healthy
+people and have only healthy children born;
+it is further that we shall consciously step
+forward to a greater potentiality of health,
+beauty, happiness, and understanding of life.
+An old false idea, which early got incorporated
+into Christianity, is that the enjoyment
+of beauty and sex-life in marriage was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">148</span>a wrong, or at any rate a lesser thing than
+the ascetic and repressed life. That idea is
+now doing us infinite harm. It is a lower
+and baser ideal which was suited to the
+earlier stages of evolution, but we have now
+passed through the stages of human evolution,
+when that idea is of any further use.
+The ideal which humanity to-day needs is the
+ideal of a full joyous life of real understanding,
+coupled with control, and with the full
+use of every beautiful aspect of the life of
+man and woman together....</p>
+
+<p>“I absolutely deny that the so-called ‘self-control’
+which consists of the ascetic repressing
+of mutual love between man and
+woman is a high ideal. It was a temporary
+ideal suited to a phase of life in which there
+was no scientific knowledge. I now say
+quite clearly that the truest and a far higher
+ideal is for a man and woman to love each
+other profoundly as a pair of individuals,
+and to benefit by that love and interchange
+which each needs from the other. And at
+the same time, but as a separate conscious
+act, to create only those children for which
+they have sufficient means, sufficient love,
+and sufficient health. That is to say, that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">149</span>married lovers should play the part of
+parents <i>only</i> when they can add individuals
+of value to the race.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Following Dr. Stopes, I said:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Some three or four thousand years ago
+Moses and his successors, using the scientific
+knowledge of their times, and well understanding
+the difficulties and dangers of the
+small Jewish tribe they represented, formulated
+a code of morality based on the broad
+common-sense principle that everything
+possible should be done to induce their
+women to bear as many children as possible
+for fear the race should be exterminated by
+the hostile nations and the wild beasts that
+surrounded them on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>“That morality no longer fits our case to-day.
+If every woman in England were induced
+to bear a score of children the resulting
+misery would totally eclipse the sufferings
+caused by the Great War. It was very
+well 3,000 years ago to say: ‘Happy is the
+man that hath his quiver full of them (i.e.,
+children); they shall not be ashamed when
+they speak with their enemies in the gate.’
+With twenty fine, strapping sons of his own,
+he could indeed talk ‘like a father’ to any
+foe.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">150</span></p>
+
+<p>“But times have changed. We no longer
+insist on a man going to his deceased
+brother’s widow to perform the husband’s
+duty and raise up seed to increase the
+family. We even place obstacles in the way
+of his marrying his deceased brother’s
+widow if he wants to. Then again, we do
+not tolerate public polygamy in the old-fashioned
+way, and we should be much
+scandalized if we had a king whose matrimonial
+experiences were as melancholy and
+as multitudinous as those of King Solomon.</p>
+
+<p>“Evidently in our new conditions we need
+some clear guidance suited to our present-day
+conditions, but which shall preserve the
+spirit of ancient religion by dealing with the
+questions of marriage and motherhood on
+lines as clear, broad, reasonable, and
+humane, as were the precepts of Mosaic
+morality for the people and time when they
+were formulated. It is not creditable to
+those who now sit in Moses’s seat that they
+have made no serious attempt to do this.
+They have tithed the mint and anise of
+church ceremonies and legal enactments
+while forgetting the weightier matters necessary
+to the promotion of healthy and happy
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">151</span>homes for men and women rearing cheerier
+and sturdier offspring to fill our places when
+we have passed to the Great Beyond. It
+was under these circumstances that Dr.
+Stopes, three years ago, produced her great
+work, ‘Married Love,’ which has since been
+followed by ‘Radiant Motherhood’ and
+other works.</p>
+
+<p>“These offer sound and sane guidance
+which we can oppose to the quackery,
+ignorant confusion of thought, and ascetic
+malignity, of those who love the darkness
+rather than the light. That is why I wish
+particularly to emphasize the thanks due to
+Dr. Marie Stopes.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Mrs. Zangwill, the authoress, wrote of
+that meeting:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“I had not heard Dr. Stopes speak in
+public before, and so was unprepared for
+the beauty of her voice, and the amazing
+way in which it carries. She put forward
+yet another aspect of the case. Birth control
+is control and not negation, she insisted.
+Her clinic is not only to prevent the unwanted
+baby; it is to produce the wanted.
+She touched on instances of disastrous
+marital ignorance—ignorance that is only
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">152</span>possible through our ignoring the most important
+subject in life—the subject that <i>is</i>
+life.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>It seemed that the enthusiasm and interest
+showed at this meeting should not be
+allowed to die down with no permanent
+growth, and consequently a Society was
+founded to carry on birth control propaganda
+and work on the lines indicated at
+the meeting. The Society for Constructive
+Birth Control and Racial Progress was
+founded at the Hotel Cecil on August
+16, 1921, Mr. H. V. Roe being elected
+honorary secretary and Dr. Marie Stopes
+president, with a distinguished committee
+and list of vice-presidents. In a few weeks
+this Society secured more public support
+than the old Malthusian League had done in
+forty years, for it was run in a way more in
+keeping with the feeling of the time, a yearning
+for constructive help for a pro-baby
+organization which recognized the sacredness
+of motherhood and the need of knowledge
+to space babies so as to give the best
+conditions for both mother and child. This
+spirit is embodied in the tenets of the Society
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">153</span>(see Appendix C). Regular meetings have
+been held in London, and a number of others
+all over the country, which have stimulated
+men and women in many directions, so that
+now the birth control movement is a powerful
+constructive movement in the country,
+though it is not yet fully organized, nor are
+its adherents all conscious of how large is
+the number of those who, like themselves,
+privately approve but still fear their next
+door neighbour—who also probably privately
+approves, but fears to say so.</p>
+
+<p>Following her first presidential address
+to the Constructive Birth Control Society,
+Dr. Marie Stopes responded to an invitation
+to speak in the Town Hall in New York, and
+“popped across” the Atlantic for a three-days’
+visit. She found herself compelled to
+stay five days, as there was no suitable
+return sailing, and during that time she
+gave an address to the first great meeting on
+the subject in the Town Hall in New York,
+a verbatim report of which was published by
+the Voluntary Parenthood League; besides
+which she spoke at some private drawing-room
+meetings at which the formation of
+clinics for birth control in America was
+discussed and a scheme set on foot.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">154</span></p>
+
+<p>Dr. Stopes’s little book, “Truth About
+Venereal Disease,” had the good fortune to
+be mentioned with praise and approval in
+the House of Lords by the presidents of both
+the then opposing Societies that were combating
+the evil—Lord Gorell and Lord
+Willoughby de Broke—and it did something
+towards the object with which it was written,
+namely, the unification of the opposing
+factions.</p>
+
+<p>The Society for Constructive Birth Control,
+finding the press indifferent, needed an
+organ, and when it held its first public
+dinner (a very successful affair), Dr. Marie
+Stopes produced from under her dinner
+napkin, as a surprise, the first number of the
+<i>Birth Control News</i>, which was circulated
+among the guests. This monthly, in the
+form of an ordinary newspaper so as to be
+readable and attractive to the man-in-the-street,
+has ever since then chronicled the
+world-wide development and interest in
+birth control, which is now beginning to be
+recognized by thinkers in all directions as
+one of the most useful and urgent subjects
+for social consideration.</p>
+
+<p>When <i>Married Love</i> was first published
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">155</span>Dr. Marie Stopes won the approval of almost
+everyone, as it was written in a sympathetic
+strain of idealism. With its plea for temperate
+wholesome living and the spread of
+sound knowledge it was difficult to disagree,
+and she had too, in the first six
+editions of the book, the cordially expressed
+support of a Roman Catholic priest of the
+Society of Jesus, who said:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Dr. Stopes</span>,—</p>
+
+<p>“I have read <i>Married Love</i> with deep
+interest. As a piece of thoughtful, scientific
+writing I find it admirable throughout, and
+it seems to me that your theme could not
+have been treated in more beautiful or more
+delicate language, or with a truer ring of
+sympathy for those who, through ignorance
+or want of thought, make shipwreck of their
+married happiness.</p>
+
+<p>“Your clear exposition of the rhythmic
+curve of sex-feeling and of the misinterpretation
+on the part of so many husbands
+of what they call their wives’ contrariness,
+arising from their ignorance of its existence,
+should bring happiness to many married
+couples whose lives are drifting apart
+through want of knowledge. In the exercise
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">156</span>of my ministry I have repeatedly traced the
+beginnings of the rift to this want of knowledge,
+and consequently of sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>“So far we are in complete agreement, but
+our ways part when you treat of birth control.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Then follow the usual Roman Catholic
+objections to birth control, in the course of
+which he says:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Let me take in illustration of my meaning
+the case you give of the worn-out mother
+of twelve. The Catholic belief is that the
+loss of health on her part for a few years of
+life and the diminished vitality on the part
+of her later children would be a very small
+price indeed to pay for an endless happiness
+on the part of all.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>He does not explain why “endless happiness”
+should be obtained by irrational conduct,
+but concludes his letter with the
+words:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“I cannot end without thanking you very
+sincerely for allowing me to read your book.
+Apart from what, as a Catholic, I object to
+in it, it contains so much most helpful
+matter that I feel sure it will bring to many
+a happiness in married life now wanting
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">157</span>through the ignorance and the consequent
+want of sympathy which you so rightly deplore.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>After Dr. Stopes and her husband founded
+the clinic however, and thus came into the
+arena not merely as dreamers and talkers,
+but as people who were practically active,
+hostilities arose of which something will
+be said in the next chapter. These pioneers
+naturally enough encountered sporadic animosity
+often in unexpected quarters, and
+sometimes, much to their distress and surprise,
+in the very quarters from which they
+had expected helpful co-operation; but no
+organized opposition exists except in one
+direction, namely, in the official attitude of
+the Roman Catholic Church and its associates,
+which became actively hostile after
+the founding of the clinic. Until then many
+Roman Catholics had been Dr. Stopes’s
+ardent admirers and public supporters, but
+after that date they were forbidden to express
+public approval, and were positively
+encouraged to suppress knowledge of her and
+of her work, as well as to pursue a hostile
+policy. These hostilities began to take the
+form of scurrilous articles in the press, which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">158</span>Dr. Stopes was advised to ignore. Later
+however a Roman Catholic medical practitioner
+published a book which contained
+statements against which Dr. Stopes, as the
+leader of a movement, felt herself bound to
+take legal proceedings. Owing to the fact
+that at the time of writing an appeal is
+before the House of Lords, this case is still
+<i>sub judice</i>, and cannot be discussed in detail;
+but I may be permitted to say that among
+its remarkable features were the medical
+contradictions voiced by the defendant’s
+witnesses. In the <i>Birth Control News</i> for
+November, 1923, some of this medical evidence
+was analysed.</p>
+
+<p>This case, though costing Dr. Stopes many
+thousands of pounds and incalculable worry
+and waste of time, did not hinder the birth
+control movement; on the contrary it gave
+it a great advertisement and educated
+large numbers of people into becoming
+sympathizers who had previously held
+aloof not realizing the issue at stake.
+All over the country, meetings continued
+to be held on the whole question of
+contraception, social economics, and sex
+life. Among the larger meetings addressed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">159</span>by Mr. H. V. Roe and Dr. Marie
+Stopes was one at Stockport, organized by
+the Labour Party, which was attended by a
+packed audience of 3,000. A couple of
+thousand squeezed into the Central Hall in
+Edinburgh; a meeting of 1,000 was held in
+the Battersea Town Hall; a meeting of over
+1,000 in Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p>Previously, in 1922, a meeting had been
+held at the Town Hall at Deptford, when the
+mayor in office officially countenanced the
+meeting by taking the chair. Delicate health
+alone has prevented Dr. Marie Stopes from
+“stumping the country”; for a few years
+ago she had to undergo a serious operation,
+and has never regained sufficient
+strength to travel as she did previously.
+From the point of view of the movement this
+is unfortunate, for undoubtedly the time is
+ripe, and Dr. Marie Stopes, going from town
+to town, would set fire to the great mass of
+public opinion now smouldering red hot in
+its demand that birth control shall be made
+available at the Welfare Centres, or in small
+clinics all over the country, and that the
+self-respecting, thrifty, and healthy, members
+of the community shall no longer be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">160</span>burdened with the upkeep of large families
+of C3’s and wastrels who are on the rates,
+and, still more important, that the enslavement
+of mother shall no longer exist among
+us.</p>
+
+<p>Unable herself to speak night after night,
+she devised the idea of making others speak
+for her, and wrote a play. Nothing has so
+far been said here of Dr. Stopes’s interest in
+the drama. That also is, perhaps, inherited
+from her mother’s passionate interest in
+Shakespeare. But I know that if she had
+not so many other calls on her time, she
+would have devoted herself to the drama.
+As it is she has published an interesting
+volume on the <i>No</i> plays of Japan (see p. 110
+and Appendix A), one of which was produced
+at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, besides
+being set to music by Boughton and
+performed several times by the Glastonbury
+Festival Company. She has also published
+two or three modern plays besides “Our
+Ostriches.” One of them, “Conquest,” is
+symptomatic of the tendencies which led up
+to the inception of the League of Nations.</p>
+
+<p>The birth control play, “Our Ostriches,”
+ran at the Royal Court Theatre, London,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">161</span>for three months, and contained an amusing
+scene in which a Commission (a replica
+of many official Commissions) sat on
+the stage, the heroine of the play eliciting
+ardent applause every night from the audience.
+“Our Ostriches” afforded Dr. Marie
+Stopes the experience of a riotously successful
+first night, when, in reply to calls for
+“Author,” she gave a short speech in which
+she mentioned that this birth control play
+had been permitted, but another play of
+hers, a pro-baby one, had been blocked by
+the Lord Chamberlain.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</a> <i>Queen’s Hall Meeting on Constructive Birth Control.</i>
+Putnam’s Sons, Ltd. 1921. 1s. net.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">162</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+    <br>
+    <span class="smcap">Opponents.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>No one of so dynamic a temperament
+could pass through life without
+making some enemies and rousing
+opposition, but until recent years the number
+of Dr. Stopes’s opponents or enemies
+was remarkably few. Before she published
+“Married Love” she once said to me: “I
+believe the only people who do not like me,
+and try to minimize what I do, are the men
+who have made love to me—and, of course,
+to whom I have not been able to respond.”
+There were also a few small-minded wives
+of the professional men with whom she
+came in contact, whose instinct was to feel
+that any woman who could enter into the
+intellectual fields pursued by their husbands
+must be dangerous, but beyond these trifling
+and sporadic difficulties she might be said
+to have had no enemies until she encountered
+the Roman Catholics. That she encountered
+them, purely by accident, was due
+to the publication of her book of poems,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">163</span><i>Man, Other Poems and a Preface</i>. Up to
+that date she had not realized that such a
+thing as organized Roman Catholic hostility
+to any person existed, nor, consequently,
+that it was possible to arouse it, and she was
+much surprised to find she had aroused the
+rabid hostility of a botanist on the staff of
+the British Museum, Mr. James Britten. He
+was a Roman Catholic and an exceedingly
+active worker for the Catholic Truth Society.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Stopes tried, but failed, to make him
+understand she had had no intention of
+offending Roman Catholics, and could not
+imagine that they would apply to themselves
+the words of her poem, as she had
+no antagonistic thought when they were
+penned. The hostility of this Roman
+Catholic botanical editor was unappeasable
+however.</p>
+
+<p>Warned by this previous encounter, when
+she published <i>Married Love</i>, she thought
+she would secure herself by obtaining a commendation
+from a Roman Catholic, and, as
+previously mentioned (see p. 155), she obtained
+a most cordial foreword of approval
+of the book from a member of the Society of
+Jesus. Undoubtedly this safeguarded the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">164</span>first appearance of the work, which was
+hailed by many Roman Catholics and was
+pushed actively by them in many directions
+until her more practical work in the foundation
+of a birth control clinic aroused the
+hostility of the Church of Rome. Thereafter
+her books were taboo, the cordial treatment
+she had received from many experienced
+Catholics who well knew the value of her
+work was quenched, and organized hostility
+against her was instituted which, to those
+who have not themselves suffered from such
+organized hostility, may appear incredible
+in England in the twentieth century. What
+Dr. Stopes has to tell of underground opposition
+would fill a volume, and includes
+whispered slander of the most personal kind,
+definite tales and stories circulated in London
+clubs, some of which sound very
+plausible, for almost correct anecdotes about
+her are subtly twisted to convey a false
+meaning. Almost every newspaper has been
+bombarded by her enemies.</p>
+
+<p>In illustration, let me note what happened
+in <i>The Times</i>. Up to the date of this hostility,
+and after the publication of <i>Married Love</i>,
+Dr. Marie Stopes had always had very kindly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">165</span>treatment from <i>The Times</i> newspaper. She
+was, for instance, one of the few people of a
+literary tendency who had never had a letter
+refused for publication, nor an article rejected.
+Indeed, one day she took down an
+article of a column length and said: “This
+simply <i>must</i> go in to-morrow, and I hope
+you will put it in,” and it appeared. Other
+papers would often telegraph to her to send
+articles by return, but since the Roman
+Catholic campaign against her began
+changes in the attitude of the newspaper
+press became so remarkable that some details
+of them should be mentioned. One
+may say, in general, that editors and advertisement
+managers are very busy people
+whose chief contact with their public is
+through correspondence, and that if they
+receive two or three dozen letters expressing
+more or less similar opinions, they are apt to
+imagine that these letters represent a general
+feeling, and to allow themselves to be guided
+by them.</p>
+
+<p>A skilfully organized campaign of anonymous
+and also of signed letters, against Dr.
+Stopes and the work that she stands for, is a
+part of the Roman Catholic campaign. Evidence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">166</span>of this appeared in the course of the
+trial in the High Court between herself and
+Dr. Sutherland, a Roman Catholic, when,
+before giving judgment, Lord Justice
+Scrutton made the following statement:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Since we reserved judgment in this case
+I, in common with other members of the
+Court, have been pestered by anonymous
+communications all proceeding from and
+advocating the side of the defendant. Of
+course, I acquit the legal representatives of
+the defendant absolutely of having anything
+to do with these communications. I have
+also no reason to believe that the defendant
+himself had anything to do with these communications,
+but I think it is right to say
+that such communications are absolutely
+improper and are punishable as contempt of
+Court.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Judges in the High Court are not, of
+course, swayed by correspondents, but
+letters fictitiously signed, or signed by persons
+paid to write them, in addition to those
+written by individuals who really feel what
+they write, are handy weapons to use
+against an opponent whose natural outlet
+through the press certain people wish to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">167</span>stop. The result of such influences is seen
+in <i>The Times’</i> refusal of advertisements of
+her books for the last year or two, though
+they were previously advertised in its
+columns, as indeed in those of almost every
+other reputable paper in the country. <i>The
+Times</i> also began to refuse the lecture announcements
+of the C.B.C. Society when
+they contained Dr. Stopes’ name as taking
+the chair, and it was necessary to see one of
+the Directors to get this ban lifted, as it has
+recently been, since when the Society’s announcements
+have regularly appeared. Still
+more incredible seems the fact that a double
+advertisement of the birth of her son was
+refused by <i>The Times</i>, although the announcement
+was worded in the simplest
+and quite usual form,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> first, under the surname
+“Roe”; second, under the surname
+“Stopes” (as the baby will have both surnames,
+Stopes-Roe), and in the exact wording
+of the announcement which appeared in
+the <i>Morning Post</i>, the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">168</span>other first-class papers. Moreover this
+refusal was not made to an employee, but
+personally to Mr. Roe, who took the advertisement
+himself to all the offices that there
+should be no mistake. After the birth of her
+son Dr. Marie Stopes was seriously ill for a
+long time.—As a consequence of her world-wide
+travels she has many friends in various
+parts of the world who are anxious to have
+news of her. <i>The Times</i> is the principal
+paper to penetrate Embassies and outlying
+British homes, and was therefore practically
+the only convenient medium of communication
+with those friends, but a short paragraph
+for the Social Column, announcing
+that she was out of danger, was also refused,
+and friends consequently remained in
+ignorance of the state of her health, although
+a little later on an advertisement was
+accepted by a different department for the
+personal column. Neither Dr. Stopes nor
+her friends attribute such disheartening incidents
+to any definite policy on the part of
+the press, but to the sporadic successes her
+enemies achieve through individuals who
+come directly or indirectly under their
+influence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">169</span></p>
+
+<p><i>The Times</i> report of the Sutherland case
+had been quite fair, yet in its legal columns
+reporting her application against two Roman
+Catholic editors, the words of her own Counsel,
+as also of the Judge, were altered so as
+to degrade her from being “Dr. Stopes” to
+“Mrs. Stopes.” On the day that this
+appeared, her solicitor wrote to <i>The Times</i>
+drawing the editor’s attention to this mistake.
+Nevertheless a few days later in
+the Judgment of Mr. Justice Roche <i>The
+Times</i> report again altered his words so as
+to alter her description, and this in a case
+in which the title to which, as a learned
+Doctor of Science, she is by Act of Parliament
+entitled, was of material importance
+to her. This is amazing, considering the
+reputation <i>The Times</i> has long enjoyed for
+accuracy, and the fact that it is frequently
+referred to in Court as evidence of what has
+occurred.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to calculate what Dr. Stopes’s
+movement has lost by the absence of the
+normal press publicity and support to which
+her work is entitled, and which it would no
+doubt have continued to receive from the
+press had it not been for the machinations
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">170</span>of the Roman Catholics, for the public forms
+its opinions of persons and movements very
+largely by what it reads of them in the press.</p>
+
+<p>Those who wish to minimize her work
+sometimes say of Dr. Stopes: “But she is
+not a <i>proper</i> doctor, and is therefore not
+qualified to deal with these matters.” But,
+in the first place, under the laws of the land,
+only the learned doctors of the various
+Faculties, that is to say, Doctors of Science,
+Doctors of Laws, Doctors of Medicine,
+Doctors of Music, Doctors of Divinity, and
+so on, are legally entitled to be called
+“Doctor,” though the practising medical
+profession very frequently and impudently
+appropriates that title, and many who are
+only Bachelors of Medicine, or even less, call
+themselves “Doctors,” and are so called by
+the public.</p>
+
+<p>An M.B. (<i>bachelor</i> of medicine) is, of
+course, fully qualified to practise in this
+country as a physician, but this does not
+legally, and should not in any way, confuse
+him with the learned <i>doctors</i>. If a short
+name is wanted, he should be called a
+“Medico.” Dr. Marie Stopes, as a learned
+Doctor of Science, has more right to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">171</span>title than the majority of the medical
+profession.</p>
+
+<p>It should also be pointed out that what
+the ordinary medico practises, he or she has
+learned from the Doctors of Biological and
+Medical Science. Pasteur was not a practising
+medical, but nearly the whole science
+of medicine now bases itself upon his scientific
+foundations. It is fully within the province
+of a learned Doctor of Biology to instruct
+practising medicals on the scientific
+bases of any advances in any branch of their
+science, and to contribute new knowledge to
+it. To give a more recent example, the late
+lamented Sir William Bayliss, the greatest
+physiologist in the world, was not a practising
+medical, but medical practitioners all
+over the world are proud to learn from him.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Stopes has even lectured to medical
+students at more than one medical school.
+As a fully trained biologist she has published
+the first medical and scientific manual
+in any language on contraception. This
+book is entitled “Contraception: Its Theory,
+History and Practice, A Manual for the
+Medical and Legal Professions.” It is published
+by a Medical Publisher, and has been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">172</span>cordially received by the medical press, the
+<i>Lancet</i> saying:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Much of the evidence contained in the
+book is quite unobtainable elsewhere.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Dr. Christopher Rolleston, a Medical
+Officer of Health, said of this publication:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“I predict a great success for the work,
+and I wish to record my thanks to the author
+for her pioneer work in preventive medicine.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>It is also warmly endorsed by Sir James
+Barr, M.D., a former president of the Medical
+Association, and many doctors from all over
+the world use it as the source of their
+practice.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is that the medical profession had
+in the past seriously neglected this subject,
+which greatly affects the health of the present
+and future generations. No instruction
+in the use of contraceptives was included in
+the training of doctors at any of our hospitals
+before Dr. Stopes’s work appeared,
+and practising doctors are generally too busy
+to investigate matters not included in their
+training, and even if they had the time,
+most of them lack the kind of training
+needed for original research in sex-problems
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">173</span>and especially in the relation of those problems
+to women. Yet when a qualified
+woman scientist specializes in the matter
+and supplies what the doctors had failed to
+provide—the objection is raised that she does
+not belong to their trade union, and that
+matters should continue to be neglected till
+one of them some day finds time to deal with
+the matter.</p>
+
+<p>But while the doctors neglected the subject,
+another class of people were actively
+harmful in disseminating erroneous information.
+These were the Roman Catholic
+priests, whose celibacy, one would suppose,
+deprives them of sexual experience and
+renders them ill-qualified to deal with the
+problems of married life, even apart from
+the fact that a theological training is a poor
+substitute for the scientific training needed
+for the investigation of such questions.</p>
+
+<p>I have no feeling of ill-will towards the
+Roman Catholics, whose Church at various
+times has rendered great service to
+humanity, but I feel sure that many Catholics
+who value intellectual integrity must
+blush to read the pitiful futilities that are
+put forward as the Catholic case against
+birth control.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">174</span></p>
+
+<p>Beyond the bald assertion that it is
+“wrong”—which, being the very question
+at issue, cannot be decided by mere assertion—they
+rely on an obvious misrepresentation
+of the plain meaning of the 38th
+chapter of Genesis, and on other statements
+and arguments that are so childish as to be
+ridiculous. For instance, they habitually
+confuse abortion—that is, the killing of the
+embryo after conception—which is a dangerous
+and harmful practice, and a criminal
+offence in English law, with the prevention
+of conception, which is neither dangerous,
+nor harmful, nor a legal offence. Those who
+confuse these two different matters are either
+so ignorant that they have no business to
+offer guidance on the subject, or they seek
+with deliberate mendacity to darken counsel
+by their words.</p>
+
+<p>Besides this, we have statements that a
+rational control of births, to ensure a moderate
+birth rate with a high survival rate
+among those who are born, and a healthy
+posterity, is “race suicide,” leading to the
+depopulation of the world, the spread of
+immorality, and various other evils. These
+assertions are backed by references to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">175</span>state of France (a Roman Catholic country,
+in which birth control information and the
+sale of contraceptives is illegal), where, in
+spite of a terrible amount of abortion, the
+birth rate, as shown by recent statistics, is
+higher than in England, but the death-rate
+among children is so great that the survival
+rate is very low.</p>
+
+<p>It is natural that people who obstinately
+opposed the dissemination of knowledge on
+these subjects, and have no better arguments
+than these to adduce in support of their
+views, are tempted to betake themselves
+to methods such as those referred to above
+in what has been said about the pressure
+exerted on the press to stifle news of the
+birth control movement, and the falsehoods
+disseminated about Dr. Stopes herself.</p>
+
+<p>Before long it may occur to the more intelligent
+among Dr. Stopes’s opponents, that
+when a great public question fundamentally
+affects the vigour of the race, the health of
+mothers and children, and the happiness of
+the whole people, a thin black line of priests
+and their dupes cannot permanently block
+the way to the free and open discussion of
+the subject.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">176</span></p>
+
+<p>The public is naturally asking for an
+authoritative statement from the medical
+profession on the matter, and it should be
+more generally known that there is now a
+Medical Research Committee dealing with
+the technique of contraception. When it
+issued a statement to the medical and
+general press early this year after sitting
+two years its composition was as follows:
+Sir James Barr, C.B.E., M.D., LL.D.,
+F.R.C.P., F.R.S.E.; Professor Sir William
+Bayliss, F.R.S., M.A., D.Sc.; Harold
+Chapple, Esq., M.C., F.R.C.S.; Dr. Jane L.
+Hawthorne; Geo. Jones, Esq., M.A., M.B.,
+D.P.H., Barrister-at-Law; Dr. Maude Kerslake;
+Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane, Bart., C.B.,
+M.B., M.S.; Sir John MacAlister, F.S.A.,
+F.R.G.S.; Sir Archdall Reid, M.B., F.R.S.
+Ed.; Christopher Rolleston, Esq., M.D.,
+M.R.C.P., D.P.H.; D. Sommerville, Esq.,
+B.A., M.Sc., M.D., M.R.C.P.; Marie C.
+Stopes, D.Sc., Ph.D., F.L.S., F.G.S.; H. M.
+Telling, Esq., M.D., F.R.C.P.; Dr. Mather
+Thomson; E. B. Turner, Esq., F.R.C.S.</p>
+
+<p>It will be noted that the majority of the
+Committee are medicals, and biological
+science was represented by Sir William
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">177</span>Bayliss, Dr. Sommerville, and the President
+of the Society, Dr. Marie Stopes. In addition
+to the medical members of the Committee,
+other distinguished practitioners are
+in helpful association with it.</p>
+
+<p>In accordance with the objects of its foundation,
+the Committee considers a variety of
+current affairs concerning Contraception, but
+its proceedings and minutes are strictly confidential
+and none of its deliberations are
+published, except about points which are
+specially passed for publication. The Committee,
+feeling the importance of the questions
+concerned, is in no hurry to draw up
+reports or make public statements, but
+desires to observe and investigate carefully.
+A number of new, or supposedly new
+methods have been brought before it from
+various quarters. Due consideration confirms
+the view that no one method is
+applicable, but that several of the simple
+and well-known methods which have had a
+long trial still are the best to meet ordinary
+requirements.</p>
+
+<p>At a Committee meeting last spring the
+following resolution was passed for publication
+in suitable quarters:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“The Medical
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">178</span>Research Committee of the Society for Constructive
+Birth Control and Racial Progress
+wishes to place on record its joint and several
+opinion that the methods now used at the
+<i>Mothers’ Clinic</i> are the best known at the
+present time.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The Mothers’ Clinic, it will be remembered,
+is the Birth Control Clinic founded by
+Dr. Stopes and her husband which has been
+the subject of so much ignorant attack.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp51" id="i_p178a" style="max-width: 32.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p178a.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <span class="smcap">Dr. Marie Stopes.</span>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Her Roman Catholic opponents scored a
+great coup in connection with Dr. Marie
+Stopes’s film <i>Married Love</i>, or <i>Maisie’s
+Marriage</i>, which was beautifully produced
+by Messrs. Samuelsons. The producers,
+Captain Walter Summers who collaborated
+and Dr. Stopes, all agreed that it should <i>not</i>
+be pre-eminently a birth control play, but a
+melodramatic story of general interest. Dr.
+Stopes had been a member of the Cinema
+Commission, and always desired to produce
+a film to which no exception could be taken.
+This she thought she had done, and the producers
+did not believe it possible that any
+objection could be made to a film which had
+been so cautiously produced. The trade
+show was very successful, but the Censor,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">179</span>instead of giving the certificate necessary for
+universal exhibition in a few hours or a day
+or two as is usually done, <i>held up the matter
+for four weeks</i>, a delay which caused great
+loss to the producers, for in the cinema
+world everything must come like hot cakes
+after the first announcements. It is an unfortunate
+coincidence in this case that the
+Chief Censor, Mr. T. P. O’Connor, is a
+Roman Catholic. In a personal interview
+all the facts presented to him failed to influence
+him, and he insisted on alterations
+so harassing that the author could not consent
+to them. For instance, though no exception
+was taken to a cabaret scene that
+occurs in the picture, he considered a beautiful
+rose which faded into a baby’s face to
+be improper, and demanded its excision! The
+play however in its <i>complete</i> form, exactly
+as written by the author, was shown to the
+trade, was rapturously received, and obtained
+excellent reviews in many solid papers
+such as the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>, and has been
+shown in its original form in many of the
+large towns in England with the approval
+of the local Watch Committees; for instance,
+the very strict Manchester Watch Committee
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">180</span>approved of it, and the film was shown to
+packed houses in Manchester. Sometimes
+efforts were made locally to block it, but
+generally the committees came out in its
+favour; for as Colonel Giles, of the Folkestone
+Watch Committee, reported in the
+<i>Morning Post</i>, said: “One could safely take
+one’s grandmother to see it, there being
+nothing obnoxious in it.” Scotland too
+welcomed it in its original form. Mr. T. P.
+O’Connor wanted to enforce his alterations,
+though he had no real <i>power</i> to do so if local
+Watch Committees approve of a film he bans.
+The L.C.C., misinformed about details,
+backed the Censor, and at one time even
+endeavoured to stop the use of the words
+“Married Love” in association with the
+film. Dr. Marie Stopes received a letter from
+the L.C.C., however, as a result of her personal
+interview with the Theatres and
+Music Halls Committee, in which they
+stated: “The Council has not raised, and
+will not raise, objection to the use, in posters
+and descriptive pamphlets issued in connection
+with the film, of the description
+‘Maisie’s Marriage,’ a story by Dr. Marie
+Stopes, the author of ‘Married Love,’ provided
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">181</span>that the words ‘the author of
+“Married Love”’ are printed in type which
+is appropriate to the description of that
+nature, and relatively small compared
+with the type used for the title ‘Maisie’s
+Marriage.’”</p>
+
+<p>One wonders under what statutory right
+they dictated to the advertising world of the
+cinema the size of type they may use!</p>
+
+<p>Mr. O’Connor’s intervention with the
+Home Office led to a circular letter being
+sent out from the Home Office to every Chief
+Constable in England. Such communications
+from the Home Office led to local trouble
+here and there, notably in Portsmouth,
+where the booking was cancelled. Dr.
+Stopes was personally in Portsmouth the
+same week and saw the Chief Constable,
+and the Town Clerk under whose orders he
+acted, and they assured her that there was a
+misapprehension and mistake in the matter,
+and if it came up again no exception would
+be taken to the display and exhibition of the
+film under the above title. Fortunately
+those authorities did not take a tape measure
+to the lettering.</p>
+
+<p>It was a curious coincidence that the week
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">182</span>she was banned in the cinema, Dr. Stopes
+spoke from the pulpit in Portsmouth. At
+the Sunday evening service at which she
+spoke, the crowds down the aisle, and standing
+even on the gravestones outside to hear
+through the windows, were so great that
+people asked if some member of the Royal
+Family was there, as they could think of no
+other attraction likely to draw such crowds.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. T. P. O’Connor’s interference seemed
+likely to become the subject of a public
+inquiry. In the printed order of the day for
+the House of Lords, “Bills appointed and
+Notices” for Wednesday, November 13,
+1923, the following appeared:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“The Earl Russell.—To call attention to a
+communication from the Home Office,
+of June 30 last, addressed to the
+Chief Constables and Watch Committees
+and marked ‘Confidential,’
+attempting to interfere with the production
+of a film entitled ‘Married
+Love,’ by Dr. Marie Stopes, and to
+ask His Majesty’s’ Government what
+official status, if any, the Board of
+Film Censors has; whether the censorship
+is in fact administered by Mr.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">183</span>T. P. O’Connor; and whether it is the
+practice of the Home Office to act as
+Mr. T. P. O’Connor’s representative
+in endeavouring to interfere with the
+production of particular films without
+any independent inquiry on their
+part.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Unfortunately it was a few hours too late,
+for the Baldwin Ministry resigned, and
+under the rules of the House the subject
+could not again be raised in the succeeding
+Administration, despite the injury done to
+private individuals, who, one would think,
+should have some means of obtaining redress
+from those who succeeded to office. It is a
+pity that Mr. Baldwin did not hold the reins
+a little longer, for in a debate in the Lords
+many things of considerable general interest
+would have come to light.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> Exact wording of the advertisement was—“Roe—On the
+27th March to Dr. Marie Stopes, wife of H. V. Roe, of Givons
+Grove, Leatherhead, Surrey—a son”; and “Stopes—On the 27th
+March, to Marie Carmichael Stopes and her husband, Humphrey
+Verdon Roe, of Givons Grove, Leatherhead, Surrey—a son.”</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">184</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">
+    CHAPTER IX.
+    <br>
+    <span class="smcap">Inner Life.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In any life that is worth writing at all the
+outward events have but a superficial
+interest in comparison with the landmarks
+in the development of consciousness
+and the soul. This was pre-eminently so in
+the life of Tolstoy, whose biography I wrote
+chiefly because it was in so marked a degree
+a spiritual adventure.</p>
+
+<p>My many years’ acquaintance with Dr.
+Marie Stopes have made me in some small
+degree acquainted with the landmarks in the
+development of her inner life, but as in the
+case of Tolstoy the data carrying conviction
+are those afforded by autobiographical
+evidence. So I feel in the present instance
+that we must await an autobiography fully
+to understand the character whose life it has
+here been my task to sketch in outline.</p>
+
+<p>A certain amount of autobiographical
+detail is to be found in the volume of travels
+already referred to, the <i>Journal from
+Japan</i>, as also in the preface to <i>Man,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">185</span>Other Poems, and a Preface</i>; on these I
+have drawn, but for the main outline of her
+spiritual growth I depend upon personal
+notes which I asked Dr. Stopes to write.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“From my earliest childhood religion, not
+in its narrowest sense of outward performance
+but in the inner sense of absolute
+reality, has been a matter of the very
+greatest concern to me. My mother was
+Scottish of almost Calvinistic tendencies,
+and my father a Quaker, but one who felt
+that the religious education of a little girl
+should be left absolutely to the mother. I
+was brought up in the rigours of the stern
+Scottish old-fashioned Presbyterianism, in
+which hell was presented to me as an absolute
+reality which I stood in imminent
+danger of inheriting; special books were kept
+for Sunday reading; no toys were allowed on
+Sundays, when Bible chapters and texts had
+to be learnt as well as church attendances
+fulfilled. All this I took with childlike
+literalness, which was rendered all the more
+intense by a feeling of guilt at being unable
+to <i>see</i> Christ and the angels, which I felt,
+somehow, was my own fault. In spite of
+my father’s lack of interference I used, even
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">186</span>in the very earliest days, to feel that he was
+wiser than mother, and that his aloofness
+from our religious observances was not
+hostile, but something superior; that in
+fact he dwelt in more direct communion
+with God than we, who had to make an outward
+office of it. This, I think, shows how
+through all the early years of my childhood
+he must have exercised the greatest care not
+to interfere in any way with my mother’s
+more specific instructions.</p>
+
+<p>“One of the earliest religious landmarks
+that I remember was when, at the age of six
+or seven, my manifold sins had been made
+very evident to me, and I felt that if only I
+were a better girl I would <i>feel</i> the actual
+floods of the Blood of Jesus which would
+purify me. I felt I must try to be converted
+in such a way that I really could see and feel
+these things. I remember placing myself at
+the foot of a long flight of stairs at the bottom
+of which was a sheepskin mat, dyed crimson,
+and I rubbed myself in the crimson
+wool of the mat and shut my eyes and tried
+to picture the stream of the Blood of the
+Lamb cascading down the stairs and over
+me, purifying me and taking away my manifold
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">187</span>sins. I was discovered by nurse before
+this process had completed itself, and was
+led away, but I remember to this day the
+feeling that the only barrier between me and
+an actual sensation of the Blood of the Lamb
+was my manifold crimes of omission and
+commission, and that I stood in imminent
+danger of hell-fire if I did not succeed in
+persuading my senses really to feel the Blood
+of Jesus.</p>
+
+<p>“Childhood’s memory fades concerning
+the resolution of that problem; and next I
+remember clearly, at the age of about eight,
+getting into very profound religious difficulties
+over the conflict between the existence
+of hell-fire, in which human beings, and
+even children, were burnt eternally, and an
+all-loving and all-kind God. These difficulties
+worried me to the extent of keeping
+me awake at night. The problem was not
+one that I could take to my mother, because
+when I was seven years old I had one day
+observed her sewing in her bedroom on a
+Sunday, and had hence come to the conclusion
+that she was ‘not truly religious.’
+My grandmother, however, who read the
+Bible every day and was always spoken of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">188</span>as a very saintly woman, seemed to me to be
+in immediate communication with God and
+to be the person to whom I should take this
+very profound difficulty. I well remember
+going into her room with her breakfast tray,
+finding her reading her Bible as usual in bed.
+Sitting down near her, I began to ask her
+about the problem of hell and a loving God.
+She laughed; I suppose I must have sounded
+absurd, but it shut me up so completely
+within myself that I do not think I ever
+spoke of the difficulty to anyone for years.
+But I remember, most clearly, thinking it
+out for myself, and in the course of a few
+months evolving in elaborate detail, something
+that resembled the Roman Catholic
+faith, with the exception that I omitted, of
+course, any idea of the Pope. No Roman
+Catholic was in contact with me, and my
+home, as I have explained, was a Calvinistic
+and Quaker establishment, and yet I
+came to the conclusion that the only possible
+God, that was the true God, must be one
+who did not entirely burn people up in hell,
+but only allowed them to burn so far as to
+burn the badness out of them, and that the
+goodness was then allowed to go into Heaven
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">189</span>as a very tiny baby and grow there big
+enough to be a grown-up soul in Heaven; in
+short, the theory of purgatory. I evolved
+also, in my inner consciousness, the theory
+of saints, and I remember most clearly,
+night after night through the winter, lying
+on my side, taking up the least possible
+room at the edge of my bed, and spreading
+the bed-clothes comfortably across the part
+of the bed that I did not inhabit, so as to
+allow the saints, whom I fancied were there
+guarding me and talking to me, to be comfortable
+and warm while they were there. I
+was convinced that they were there, and felt
+that it was my own wickedness which prevented
+my feeling their presence.</p>
+
+<p>“This phase, of course, also passed,
+although I do not remember when. Then I
+remember clearly, from the age of about
+eight to ten, or nine to ten, reading the whole
+of the Bible through, including all the enormously
+long and dreary chapters in the Old
+Testament. I was still ignorant of the
+Roman numerals, and could not understand
+them, and I remember going through the
+Bible with a pencil and counting up on my
+fingers the numbers of the chapters as I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">190</span>read them and writing them in ordinary
+numerals, so that I should know how far I
+had got. The thin pages adhering here and
+there, naturally the sequence of the Roman
+numerals was transcribed quite wrongly, a
+thing I only discovered a good many years
+after, when I came to look through the same
+Bible again. At the time I felt that perhaps,
+if I were good enough to read the
+whole Bible without skipping a word, I
+might understand the religious puzzles
+which still haunted me. At the age of
+eleven I was still so much a believer in the
+literal understanding of the Bible that when
+I was asked by one of my aunts what I
+wanted for a birthday present, I asked for a
+New Testament small enough to put in my
+little pocket, so that I could continue to
+study it and try to learn the whole of the
+New Testament by heart.</p>
+
+<p>“At the age of eleven I remember most
+vividly another experience which was perhaps
+rather remarkable for a young child.
+My grandmother was then apparently in
+good health, living in Edinburgh, and my
+mother and we children were staying a night
+or two in Edinburgh. No anxiety had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">191</span>warned us of my grandmother’s condition,
+but one evening, after being put to bed, I
+could not sleep for a terrible feeling of icy
+coldness and death. I had never thought of
+death before, and my sister and I were sharing
+a large bed, and all night through I kept
+putting my hand across, quietly, to see if
+she were cold, or if it was only I who was
+cold, and wondering who was dead and what
+death meant, feeling that it was very, very
+near. The next day my grandmother was
+found, quietly sleeping after her afternoon
+nap, dead in her bed. I may say that quite
+a number of times during my life similar
+premonitions of events before they have
+happened have come to me, but not with a
+sufficient regularity to allow me to plan my
+life on the assurance that they will come.
+Such foreknowledge is always scrappy and
+incompletely conveyed.</p>
+
+<p>“A few days before I was twelve I was
+sent to school in Edinburgh, living with a
+family and attending St. George’s School.
+The family with whom I stayed were also
+old-fashioned, extremely Protestant, Scottish
+people, and I remember being shown, with
+such strong expressions of disapproval that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">192</span>I looked upon the whole surrounding atmosphere
+as contaminated by it, an Anglican
+Church near Alva Street in which the
+people were wicked enough to have an organ
+to sing with. I remember my young indignation
+at such ‘Popery,’ a word that by
+that time I had learnt, although I still did
+not realize its meaning. At that age, too,
+the sense of responsibility, which I felt very
+early became intensely oppressive. I think
+it was due to the fact that my parents had
+admonished me so very much to take care
+of my younger sister, but it was deeper in
+origin and seemed to embrace the whole
+world. It developed about that age into a
+feeling that I was so terribly guilty that I
+corresponded to a ‘Jonah,’ like the one
+whose presence risked the lives of all his
+fellow-travellers in the ship, and that my
+guilty presence in the world was responsible
+for disasters to others. I remember clearly
+one day the lady with whom we stayed reading
+some paragraph from a paper about a
+great calamity abroad—I think an earthquake—when
+I burst out crying, and said:
+‘Oh, but I can’t help it; I can’t help it. It
+is really not my fault.’ I have never
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">193</span>entirely lost this sense of <i>burden</i>, and I still
+do my birth control work because I feel that
+the responsibility for the unborn whom I
+had not helped would be unbearable if I
+were not to carry it on.</p>
+
+<p>“Life in the more mellowed atmosphere of
+Kent, where the only church possible for us
+to attend at Swanscombe was the English
+Parish church, removed some of the childish
+supersensitive feeling of guilt, and life became
+a little easier, more normal, and less
+narrow. I remember, however, always feeling
+on my guard against the errors of the
+Anglican Church, and although I became a
+communicant, there were certain words and
+phrases in the creeds and hymns that would
+cause me to close my mouth firmly, and that
+nothing could induce me to say. My father
+still held aloof from religious discussion, but
+I had a feeling that when I grew up to him,
+there within him was wisdom that would
+understand me and that I could meet. Looking
+back on the extraordinary intimacy and
+quite exceptionally profound affection between
+my father and myself, I feel it very
+curious that I did not go to him with my
+religious puzzles. I think possibly I may
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">194</span>have done so, and that he may have said
+that I must do what my mother told me in
+these things till I was older. Certainly
+about the age of fifteen or sixteen I began to
+realize the difference between a Friend, that
+is, a member of the Quaker Society of
+Friends, and members of other religions, and
+to feel all my sympathies with the Friends.</p>
+
+<p>“When at the age of sixteen I was away
+at the seaside, somewhere near Folkestone,
+in a little village (I do not know what was
+its name), I used to take long rambles by
+myself, and I remember one Sunday attending
+a Quaker meeting on an explorative expedition
+of my own. At that Quakers’ meeting
+a very remarkable incident occurred
+which made the profoundest impression
+upon me, and which I have narrated literally
+in a poem called ‘The Brother’ in
+<i>Man, Other Poems, and a Preface</i>. This
+incident coloured my life for many years,
+and inhibited all further desire openly to
+become a Quaker. So deep was my affection
+for my father and our mutual understanding,
+that I always felt that if I could find the
+proper, old-fashioned type of Quaker community,
+there would be my spiritual home.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">195</span></p>
+
+<p>“About this time we gave up the Swanscombe
+home and moved to Hampstead. In
+this house I had a little study in which I prepared
+my ordinary school work and, in addition,
+read unobserved and without even the
+companionship of my sister. This was a
+great pleasure, for by this time I had
+developed a characteristic which has remained
+with me, that is, intensely to desire
+as much solitude as is possible, and to feel
+certain powers and the capacity to understand
+what I am reading very much reduced
+by the presence of any other person in the
+room. From the age of sixteen to eighteen
+I read voraciously. The Hampstead Lending
+Library was an exceptionally good one,
+and I tapped its uttermost resources. I also
+had access to a number of other supplies of
+books. I read all sorts of things, but particularly
+comparative theology, and a number
+of works seldom read even by adults
+to-day; for instance, in these years I read
+pretty nearly everything that I could get in
+English by Swedenborg, all Kant’s voluminous
+philosophy, and a number of old-fashioned
+and curiously abstruse books,
+such as the early histories of the Rosicrucians,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">196</span>translations of the Vedas, books
+of Buddhistic philosophy, Confucius’s writings,
+and many theological works. Walter
+Pater and George Meredith were my
+favourite authors of a lighter kind. I also
+read all Darwin’s published books, and can
+well remember one Sunday, when about sixteen
+or seventeen, my mother’s sister, a very
+religious Scottish woman, being shocked by
+some chance phrase of my father, who was
+speaking of his collection of flint implements.
+This aunt was shocked to learn that
+my father read Darwin and took his work
+seriously, and still more shocked that mention
+of such a man should be made in the
+presence of an innocent young girl. I,
+naturally enough, championed the cause for
+which my father stood, and proudly boasted
+that I also had read Darwin. I remember
+my aunt said no more, but followed me up
+to my little study to demand my repentance
+and recantation. When she could not obtain
+these, she solemnly committed me to hell. I
+was still young enough, and the childish
+memories of hell were still sufficiently easily
+revived, for this to make a great impression
+upon me, but, of course, not in the least to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">197</span>alter my loyalty to my father or to affect the
+scientific attitude of mind which was growing
+in me. I remember not very long after
+that, I think when I was sixteen and a half,
+being taken for our spring vacation to
+Jersey, and there delighting in the stretches
+of rock and solitude into which it was possible
+to escape owing to the fact that my
+sister had caught a cold on the voyage and
+was laid up, and, my mother taking care of
+her, I was sent out for walks by myself.
+Here then I found sunny corners and
+enjoyed what had already become, and has
+remained through life, one of my deepest
+enjoyments as well as my greatest restorative—lying
+flat on my back without moving
+for hours. In Jersey a spiritual renaissance,
+one might call it, took place after a succession
+of such happy days, and that experience
+is also published in <i>Man</i>, in a form
+written at the time, ‘Revelation.’</p>
+
+<p>“I was always very sensitive to the marital
+relations of those with whom I came in
+contact, and I remember, as a very young
+girl, being shocked and hurt by matrimonial
+bickering. We met Mr. and Mrs. James
+Huddart (the Huddart who originally
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">198</span>planned, many years before, the All Red
+Route <i>via</i> Canada and Australia), and I was
+enchanted by something exceptionally feminine
+and sweet in Mrs. Huddart, and also
+by the beautiful devotion of her husband and
+sons. She reciprocated to some extent the
+feeling I had for her and became one of my
+warmest friends, and as a girl I was often
+invited to stay at her house, and there learnt
+many things that only an older woman of
+sweet disposition could teach a girl, and
+which I should never have learnt but for her.
+Certainly chief among the lessons she taught
+me was the recognition of the vital importance
+of the relationship between the two
+who are the centre of any home life, and how
+far-reaching may be the influence of any
+home. I think I may say that here was laid
+the first seeds of a desire to do the work
+which ultimately resulted in <i>Married Love</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“The religious phases of my early childhood
+having been lived through, I naturally
+enough entered into a phase of scientific
+materialism, but had already grown out of
+it by the time I was commencing my college
+studies, and I remember the keen sense of
+appreciation and delight with which I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">199</span>listened to Professor Sir William Ramsay,
+whose classes I attended, once speaking to
+his large chemistry class, when dealing with
+the waves of light in vacuum tubes, of the
+mysticism which is compatible with a profound
+knowledge of science. I cannot remember
+his exact words, but they were to
+the effect that atheism and hostility to religion
+was no longer in keeping with a really
+profound knowledge of the wonders of
+natural science, and that whenever one
+knew more deeply the details of any subject,
+it led always to an ultimate mystery in
+which one might well maintain that the
+truths of religion could reside. So far as I
+can remember that was the only reference of
+any sort at all that I heard to either religion
+or the deeper philosophy of life in the whole
+of my time as a student at the University,
+and his few words, passed over so swiftly in
+his physical chemistry lecture, left me with
+a sense of tremendous respect for Sir William
+Ramsay.</p>
+
+<p>“Before my first term at college I had
+reached the phase in my inner development
+that included a great deal of reading on
+psychological and psychic themes, and so,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">200</span>naturally enough, I wanted to see if I had
+any psychic powers. At first I spoke to no
+one about these subjects. No one at all,
+neither my teacher, nor my college friends;
+only my school friend, Olga Kapteyn, was in
+the least degree in my confidence, and she
+not very completely, as by this time she was
+staying once more in Amsterdam. I tested
+in one or two ways at the University whether
+I had power to hypnotize and perform some
+of the various semi-psychic tricks made much
+of in some of the books I was then reading.
+Under the influence of a member of the
+Theosophical Society I found I had undoubtedly
+such powers, but I very sanely
+came to the conclusion that their use was
+mean—not quite playing the game—and also
+that I should undoubtedly be in danger of
+becoming nervous and ‘queer,’ as I observed
+the people who claimed such powers generally
+were. Hence I, to myself, formally,
+definitely and specifically renounced their
+use, and decided for the next few years, at
+any rate, to lead my life in accordance with
+the revelation in Jersey. I have never again
+attempted to use these powers.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp52" id="i_p200a" style="max-width: 30.1875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p200a.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <span class="smcap">Dr. Marie Stopes.</span>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Now, many years later, I still think it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">201</span>most important not to hasten the human
+acquisition of what we call supernatural or
+supernormal powers. I feel that having
+taken so long a time to become human, and
+being now in the present imperfect link
+between the past and the future, we serve
+the race and whatever cosmic design there
+may be behind our existence best by being
+the best kind of human beings we can; by
+starving neither our bodies nor our minds,
+nor wearing out one aspect of ourselves at
+the expense of normality. The neurotic,
+half-starved, highly-abnormal ascetic, the
+psychic, the ‘spiritual’ healer, and other
+cranks generally fill me with a slight feeling
+of repugnance and a profound feeling of
+regret that they took on a job for which they
+are so obviously unfitted. Even as a young
+girl I did not wish to become like that. My
+ambition is to be as normal, healthy, and
+wholesome a human being as I can be while
+I am a human being; it will not be very
+long in any event, even if one outlives the
+Biblical three-score years and ten.</p>
+
+<p>“I have always had a peculiar sympathy
+with stones, undoubtedly inherited, for my
+father’s delight in fossils and flint implements
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">202</span>is traceable to his earliest childhood,
+and I have a sympathy with them which,
+curiously enough, often includes a knowledge
+of where they are, almost as if I were
+a stone-diviner, like water-diviners. Their
+smell delights me. Of course not all stones
+have a very noticeable smell, but to me, in
+quarries, almost every freshly chipped stone
+has a peculiar, and most have a pleasing,
+smell. The consciousness of fossils, even at
+a distance from them, has often manifested
+itself most usefully in my expeditions, and
+I may give just one example of this. I remember
+Dr. D. H. Scott, the leading English
+palæobotanist, in a discussion at the Linnean
+Society, speaking of a classical find of a well-preserved
+fossil in the Isle of Wight, saying
+that in this deposit, which he had himself
+examined, there remained no more petrifactions.
+Like a sudden flash of light a
+queer, intense feeling came to me that there
+were lots of petrifactions there calling to me
+and waiting to be found. Within a few
+weeks I was able to take my vacation in that
+locality, at Luccomb Chine in the Isle of
+Wight, and spent the first day lying comfortably
+on the shore in hot sunshine gazing up
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">203</span>at the cliffs. By the afternoon I had come
+to the conclusion that at a certain point up
+the cliffs I should find these specimens, and
+the next day I went there and found enough
+to enable me to bring away nearly a bushel,
+many of which were new to science, and
+some of which are described and illustrated
+in my volume on the Palæontology of this
+horizon, published by the Trustees of the
+British Museum (Appendix B, p. 217).</p>
+
+<p>“Useful in another way is this sympathy
+with stones, and I remember on one occasion
+my sister and I had spent a whole holiday
+together camping in a cave on the coast of
+Devonshire. She and I had played at
+Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday for five or
+six weeks, sleeping in this cave by the sea
+with a sense of perfect security and peace,
+when one night I suddenly felt that I must
+not allow her to stop there, for it would be
+most dangerous for us to sleep there, and we
+must go into the open. We shifted our sleeping
+bags along the pebbles of the beach, right
+into the open and away from the cave, leaving
+however all our little cooking utensils
+and other camp equipment in the cave.
+When I went back next morning I found
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">204</span>part of the roof had fallen in, with a large
+slab of stone just where my head would have
+been. The next night we were quite calmly
+and happily sleeping in the cave again, probably
+most foolishly, but nothing happened.</p>
+
+<p>“Possibly correlated with this feeling for
+stones is the consciousness I have had since
+early childhood in my spine of the direction
+of the north. It is as though I were a
+magnet, and I shall never forget my delight,
+when I was a girl, at discovering Du
+Maurier’s book, ‘Peter Ibbetson,’ in which
+one of the characters is conscious of the position
+of the north, for I thought I alone was
+peculiar in this, and was greatly pleased to
+find that someone else shared that sensitiveness.
+In childhood it took the curious form
+of making me twist round and wake with a
+dazed feeling in bed if my bed was placed
+wrongly. And still, unless I sleep either
+north and south, or south and north, I tend
+to twist round in the night and lie in the
+direction of the magnetic field, sometimes
+waking up to find myself lying right across
+the bed if I am staying in a house where the
+bed cannot be placed correctly before I go to
+sleep. A long illness, or a number of nights
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">205</span>in London or a big city, tend to reduce this
+sensitiveness, but when I have been long
+alone or in the country it becomes intensely
+strong, and I remember being tested once in
+a thick fog—a fog so blanket-like that one
+could not see a yard before one’s face, when
+I was being trained by Mr. W. H. Dalton,
+F.G.S., a member of the Geological Survey.
+At first he laughed at my saying that I could
+feel the north, and led me zigzags and twists
+and turns, and then tested me with his compass.
+Every time I was dead right. Since
+I have had an operation however this capacity
+is much reduced, and I only feel it
+intermittently, depending, I fancy, on some
+electrical condition of the atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>“My passion for solitude resulted in a very
+curious initiation for me at the beginning of
+the war. I had, when staying earlier as a
+guest of Lord and Lady Grey at Howick
+Castle, been greatly attracted by the long
+stretches of sandy bays and quiet rocks in
+the neighbourhood, absolutely out of reach
+of the tripper, and longed to pitch my tent
+there, which I did, through their kindness,
+in the summer of 1914. This time I had not
+even my sister with me, desiring to be absolutely
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">206</span>alone, because I felt within me ripe for
+birth a very long poem which, at the time,
+seemed important. Life in my tiny tent,
+weighing only two pounds, had for years
+been one of my principal enjoyments, and I
+fixed my tent on psamma grass at the corner
+of a rocky bay with wide stretches of sand
+between me and the sunsets. There I deliberately
+cut myself off from everyone, only
+going into a neighbouring farmhouse now
+and then to get fresh scones and bread, and
+having milk brought to me by one of the
+farmer’s bonny children. I deliberately
+refused to read newspapers, and the result
+was that I had no conception that even a
+cloud or rumour of war had settled on
+Europe. I had not heard of the murders at
+Serajevo. One evening, however, I suddenly
+felt that the long poem I had come to
+write had died within me. In the dusk I
+felt, literally, that I suddenly saw, green
+and horrible, the corpse of a young man and
+another standing over him smiting at his
+dead body. The impression was most vivid,
+and for two days afterwards I was restless,
+and could not concentrate in the least on the
+work I had intended to do. The third night
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">207</span>after this I, still unconscious as an unborn
+babe that anything in the way of war was
+affecting Europe, tucked myself into my
+sleeping bag, lying with my head and
+shoulders outside my tent, as I generally
+slept, and went off into a sound sleep, to be
+awakened most startlingly by a young man
+with a bayonet shouting to me ‘Halt! Who
+goes there?’ Wakened out of sleep, I replied
+rather absurdly, ‘Halt yourself; I am lying
+down.’ I had not succeeded in explaining
+my existence to the young man before
+another young man with a fixed bayonet
+rushed up to him and the bayonets clashed.
+I thought the two were going to fight each
+other, both contending that I was their
+prisoner. I, thinking it was some absurd
+joke and that an appeal to Lord Grey would
+straighten matters out, explained that I was
+there, although not in the house, in a sense
+as the guest and under the protection of the
+Greys, and they might leave me in peace
+until the morning and then decide whose
+prisoner I really was. Their story that a
+war was on I took as nonsense. They
+allowed me to sleep, and by six o’clock in the
+morning, after some hours of cold, wet mists,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">208</span>both of them were very thankful, rancour
+ended, to creep to my tent for a cup of hot
+cocoa. One, a young fellow from Manchester,
+had not weathered a night on a
+solitary coast before, and his teeth were
+literally chattering. I got out my maps and
+directed them to the nearest place where
+they could get a square meal, and that was
+the last I heard of being anybody’s prisoner.
+I went however into the village to buy newspapers
+and, running across Viscount Howick
+(now Lord Grey), was reassured by his telling
+me that his uncle, Sir Edward, was at
+the helm and doing everything possible to
+maintain peace. He asked me to hop into
+his car, and went round villages and outlying
+districts reassuring and calming the
+people. Soon, warships were stationed
+directly opposite us and rushed up and
+down, because a landing was actually expected
+within a mile or two of where I was
+camping, and the Greys were hurriedly
+turning Howick Castle into a potential hospital.
+I think no one who was plunged into
+the horror of the war thus with no preparation,
+can ever get over the shock of the first
+few days and of the news of what was done
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">209</span>in Belgium. Perhaps the next generation
+may again feel the ease and security that
+we all felt before this war, but shall never
+feel again. Since that poem was slain on
+Howick shore, I have never really been able
+to do the things that I have personally
+wanted most to do, always being impelled to
+expend what power I had only on things
+that seem urgently necessary, either in connection
+with scientific research on coal and
+fuel, or in connection with the sex and birth
+control work. Since the publication of
+<i>Married Love</i> early in 1918, nearly the
+whole of my time has been spent in a very
+inadequate response to the anguished cries
+of poor mothers and their potential babies
+for that knowledge and help which is available
+if it can but be brought to them.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p208a" style="max-width: 53.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p208a.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    Inner home life: Dr. Stopes as gardener, and her husband with the car.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“1918 was an important year; I published
+<i>Married Love</i>, <i>Wise Parenthood</i>, and, in
+conjunction with Dr. R. V. Wheeler, <i>The
+Constitution of Coal</i>, and I met and married
+my husband, Humphrey Verdon Roe.</p>
+
+<p>“In 1920 I was impelled, against my
+worldly judgment, to publish a brief piece
+of writing called <i>The New Gospel to All
+Peoples</i>. In its preface I explained how
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">210</span>and why it was written, and sent to each of
+the Bishops in Conference at Lambeth in
+that year. About sending it to the Bishops
+I had no hesitation, my orders were so explicit,
+but my mundane intelligence was
+perfectly aware that from a purely worldly
+point of view I was doing a foolish thing in
+<i>publishing</i> it. The matter was simply taken
+out of my hands however, and my inner life
+rendered unlivable until I decided to do
+what was necessary to get it published.
+When I say that I was unwilling to publish
+it, I do not mean to imply that I in any way
+shirk what is said therein; but knowing the
+materialistic spirit which rules the greater
+part of the intellectual world at present, I
+knew very well that I was, to some extent,
+jeopardizing the approval of those whose
+opinion I valued. Beyond a little chaff
+however and the antagonism of a few materialists,
+I have suffered nothing to weigh in
+the balance against the wonderful adherence
+of other souls and the joy of seeing my message
+spreading in the whole Empire, now
+often from the lips of others. For instance,
+that great heroine, Lady Constance Lytton,
+wrote to me: ‘I cannot say how much I
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">211</span>thank you for sending me your beautiful <i>A
+New Gospel</i>. It is so reverently given forth,
+so beautiful in the way it is given. I have
+promised to write a little article on Constructive
+Birth Control. I hope you will
+approve of it, for all I know of constructive
+birth control is through you.’</p>
+
+<p>“The work for birth control and a reformation
+in the sex life of the people has for
+years been a consciously performed task—but
+all the time I realize that the need for it
+is a phase in human progress, and my immortal
+soul has other interests—and a desire
+‘to paint the things as I see them for the God
+of things as they are.’ And among the
+things I have always desired to do is to write
+a volume of fairy tales. In my opinion,
+fairy tales rank among the very highest form
+of literature. I remember Professor Alexander,
+the Professor of Philosophy, once saying
+that all our scientific discoveries were
+ephemeral and bound to be swept away,
+and that the only really lasting thing anyone
+could do is to write a poem. I incline now
+to agree with him, although then I hotly
+disputed his conclusion. A good fairy tale,
+being essentially a poem though in prose,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">212</span>might have well-nigh as long a life as a
+poem. But in the press of work of recent
+years I have not had time to write the
+volume of tales I so much desire, and only
+one or two have been completed and published.
+Certainly one of my proudest
+achievements is the fact that I have had a
+fairy tale in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, the
+only fairy tale, I think, that periodical ever
+published. I have also had two or three
+fairy tales in the <i>English Review</i>; but the
+rest have either been slaughtered unborn, or
+await the leisure I am always longing once
+more to have, to do the things that <i>I want
+to do</i> instead of those I am impelled to do
+by the present crisis in human affairs.</p>
+
+<p>“What am I? An immortal soul, having
+lived previously to this particular life on
+earth, and destined to live again after my
+body wears out; of that I am as certain as
+that I am in the world at present. <i>Nothing</i>
+can remove me from the universe; one plays
+at being human for a while, and it is great
+fun. <i>Why</i> one is given such hard jobs and
+has to encounter such difficulties on one’s
+own behalf and on behalf of others I don’t
+know, but I still feel as I felt at the age of sixteen
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">213</span>and a half when I wrote the poem ‘Revelation’
+(later on published in <i>Man, Other
+Poems, and a Preface</i>), that one should ‘be
+tranquil, at the same time that you strive
+... for <i>joyous</i> life alone is perfected.’”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The sketch of her inner life given in the
+above autobiographical notes may well conclude
+this short life of one who is still in
+mid-career.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Stopes is an example of the truth of
+John Stuart Mill’s forecast that, as soon as
+the obstacles that hampered the exercise of
+women’s powers were removed, they would
+prove themselves the equals of the best men
+in fields where they had heretofore always
+been regarded as inferior. Though she is a
+very modern woman, Dr. Stopes, in another
+aspect, reminds one by the variety of her
+achievements of those artist-scientists of the
+Renaissance who, before specialization had
+become so customary as it is to-day, claimed
+all science and all art as their province.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">214</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_A">
+    APPENDIX A.
+    <br>
+    List of Books and Pamphlets by Dr. Marie Stopes.
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center">SEXOLOGY.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="hang15">
+<p>“<b>Contraception.</b>” Published by Bale and Danielsson,
+1923, pp. xxiii, 1-418, plates iv.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Married Love.</b>” First published by Fifield, 1918; now
+in Fourteenth Edition, published by Putnams, pp.
+xxi, 1-169.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Wise Parenthood.</b>” First published by Fifield, 1918;
+now in Eleventh Edition, published by Putnams, 1918,
+pp. xii, 1-62.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Radiant Motherhood.</b>” Published by Putnams, 1920,
+pp. ix, 1-236.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Truth about Venereal Disease.</b>” Published by Putnams,
+1921, pp. vii, 1-52.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>A New Gospel.</b>” Published by A. L. Humphreys, 1922,
+pp. 1-27.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>A Letter to Working Mothers.</b>” Published by the
+Author, 1919; now by the Clinic; pp. 1-16.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Early Days of Birth Control.</b>” Published by Putnams,
+1922, pp. 1-32.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Mother, how was I Born?</b>” Published by Putnams,
+1923, pp. 1-25.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Control of Parenthood.</b>” By the Bishop of
+Birmingham and others. Edited by Rev. Sir James
+Marchant. (One Chapter in this published by Putnams.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">215</span></p>
+
+<p>“<b>Queen’s Hall Meeting on C.B.C.</b>” Published by
+Putnams, 1921, pp. 1-48. (Contains report of Dr.
+Stopes’s speech.)</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Verbatim Report of the Town Hall Meeting.</b>” Published
+by the Voluntary Parenthood League, New York
+City, 1921, pp. 1-23. (Contains report of Dr. Stopes’s
+speech.)</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center">BOTANY.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="hang15">
+<p>“<b>Ancient Plants.</b>” Published by Blackie and Son, 1910.
+Pp. viii, 1-199.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Study of Plant Life.</b>” Published by Blackie, 1906.
+Pp. xii, 1-202.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Exploitation of Plants.</b>” Edited by Prof. Oliver. Published
+by Dent. (One Chapter in this.)</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Sportophyte: ‘The Botanical Punch.</b>’” Founded
+and Edited for the years 1911-1914.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center">TRAVEL.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="hang15">
+<p>“<b>A Journal from Japan.</b>” Pp. 1-250, illustrated. Published
+by Blackie.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="center">LITERARY.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="hang15">
+<p>“<b>Man, Other Poems and a Preface.</b>” Pp. 1-76. Published
+by Heinemann.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Conquest</b>,” a Three-Act Play. Published by French.
+Pp. 1-94.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Gold in the Wood</b>” and “<b>The Race</b>.” Two Plays.
+Published by Fifield. Pp. 1-101.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">216</span></p>
+
+<p>“<b>Our Ostriches.</b>” Produced at the Court Theatre. Published
+by Putnams, 1923, pp. 1-105.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Plays of Old Japan: The Nõ.</b>” (With Prof. J. Sakurai.)
+Published by Heinemann. Pp. 1-102, illustrated.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>A Japanese Mediæval Drama.</b>” <i>Transactions of the
+Royal Society of Literature</i>, vol. 29; (separate) pp. 1-26.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Also fairy stories in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, <i>English
+Review</i>; articles in <i>The Times</i>, <i>Manchester Guardian</i>,
+<i>Science Progress</i>, Reviews in the <i>Athenæum</i>, etc.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">217</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_B">
+    APPENDIX B.
+    <br>
+    List of Dr. Stopes’s Scientific Memoirs, etc.,
+    Embodying her New Discoveries.
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<blockquote class="hang15">
+<p>“<b>Contribution Paléobotanique à la Connaissance du
+Charbon.</b>” Résumé of Communication to the Congress
+in Paris. Published in <i>Chaleur et Industrie</i>,
+Paris, 1923.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Spontaneous Combustion of Coal.</b>” (With Prof.
+R. V. Wheeler.) Bulletin No. 1 of “Fuel.” Published
+<i>Colliery Guardian</i>, London, 1923, pp. 1-125, 2 plates
+and text figs.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Terminology in Coal Research.</b>” (With Prof. R. V.
+Wheeler.) In “Fuel,” London, 1923, pp. 5-9, 1 plate.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Constitution of Coal, Palæobotanical Aspects.</b>”
+Lecture published (with those of others in pamphlet
+called “Coal”), Colliery Guardian Company, London,
+1922, pp. 1-8, and text figs.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Missing Link in <i>Osmundites</i>.</b>” <i>Annals of Botany</i>,
+vol. 35, 1921, pp. 56-61, text fig. and plate.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Bennettites Scottii</i>, Sp. Nov., <b>A European Petrifaction
+with Foliage</b>.” Extr. <i>Linnean Society’s Journal</i>,
+1920, vol. 44, pp. 483-496, plates xix and xx.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Four Visible Ingredients in Banded Bituminous
+Coal: Studies in the Composition of Coal</b>,” No. 1.
+<i>Proceedings Royal Society B</i>, vol. 90, 1919, pp. 470-487,
+plates xi and xii.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">218</span></p>
+
+<p>“<b>New Bennettitean Cones from the British Cretaceous.</b>”
+<i>Phil. Transactions Royal Society B</i>, vol. 208,
+1918, pp. 389-440, plates xix-xxiv.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Constitution of Coal.</b>” (With Dr. R. V. Wheeler.)
+Monograph, published by H.M. Stationery Office for
+the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research,
+1918, pp. 1-58, plates i-iii.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Roots in <i>Bennettites</i>.</b>” <i>Annals of Botany</i>, vol. 31, 1917,
+No. 122, pp. 257-259, plate xiv.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Plants as a Source of National Power in the Exploitation
+of Plants.</b>” Edited by Prof. F. W. Oliver.
+Published Dent, 1917, pp. 155-170.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>An Early Type of the Abietineæ (?) from the Cretaceous
+of New Zealand.</b>” <i>Annals of Botany</i>, vol. 30,
+1916, pp. 111-125, text figs. 1-7, plates iv.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Cretaceous Flora in the British Museum (Natural
+History), Part II: Lower Greensand (Aptian)
+Plants of Britain.</b>” Published by the Trustees of
+the British Museum, 1915, pp. i-xxxvi, 1-360, plates
+i-xxxii, 112 text figs.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The ‘Fern Ledges’ Carboniferous Flora of St. John,
+New Brunswick.</b>” Published by the Geological
+Survey of Canada: Memoir 41, Ottawa 1914, pp. i-vi,
+1-142, plates i-xxv, 21 text figs.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Cretaceous Flora in the British Museum (Natural
+History), Part I: Bibliography, Algæ and Fungi.</b>”
+Published by the Trustees of the British Museum,
+1913, pp. i-xxiii, 1-285, plates i-xi, 25 text figs.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>A New Cretaceous Plant from Nigeria.</b>” <i>Geological
+Magazine</i>, Dec. 5, 1914, vol. 1, No. 604, pp. 433-435,
+plate xxxiii, text fig.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">219</span></p>
+
+<p>“<b>A New <i>Araucarioxylon</i> from New Zealand.</b>” (Published
+by permission of the Director of the Geological
+Survey of New Zealand.) <i>Annals of Botany</i>, vol. 28,
+1914, pp. 341-350, plates xx, text figs. 1-3.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Palæobotany: Its Past and Its Future.</b>” <i>Knowledge</i>,
+vol. 37, 1914, pp. 15-24, figs. 24-30.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Palæobotany versus Stratigraphy in New Brunswick.</b>”
+<i>British Association Report</i>, 1912, Dundee.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Red Crag Portrait.</b>” <i>Geological Magazine</i>, vol. 9,
+Dec. 5, 1912, pp. 285-6, text fig. 1.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Petrifactions of the Earliest European Angiosperms.</b>”
+<i>Proceedings Royal Society B</i>, vol. 85, 1912
+(Abstract).</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Petrifactions of the Earliest European Angiosperms.</b>”
+<i>Transactions Royal Society B</i>, vol. 203,
+1912, pp. 75-100, plates vi-viii.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Correct Name for the Dragon Tree of the
+Kentish Rag.</b>” <i>Geological Magazine</i>, vol. 8, 1911,
+No. 568, pp. 467-9.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Dragon Tree of the Kentish Rag.</b>” <i>Geological
+Magazine</i>, vol. 8, Dec. 5, 1911, pp. 55-59, text fig.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>On the True Nature of the Cretaceous Plant <i>Ophioglossum
+granulatum</i>, Heer.</b>” <i>Annals of Botany</i>, vol.
+25, 1911, pp. 903-907, text figs. 1-2.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>A Reply to Prof. Jeffrey’s Article on <i>Yezonia</i> and
+<i>Cryptomeriopsis</i>.</b>” <i>Annals of Botany</i>, vol. 25, 1911,
+pp. 269-270.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Value and Interest of Japanese Fossils.</b>” <i>Transactions
+Japan Society</i>, vol. 9, 1910, pp. 1-12, plates i-iii.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Further Observations on the Fossil Flower, <i>Cretovarium</i>.</b>”
+<i>Annals of Botany</i>, vol. 24, 1910, pp. 679-681,
+plates lvi-lvii.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">220</span></p>
+
+<p>“<b>Adventitious Budding and Branching in Cycas.</b>” <i>New
+Phytologist</i>, vol. 9, 1910, pp. 235-241, text figs. 8-14.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Anatomy of Cretaceous Pine Leaves.</b>” (With
+Miss Kershaw.) <i>Annals of Botany</i>, vol. 24, 1910,
+pp. 395-402, plates xxvii-xxviii.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Internal Anatomy of <i>Nilssonia Orientalis</i>.</b>” <i>Annals
+of Botany</i>, vol. 24, 1910, pp. 389-393, plate xxvi.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Studies on the Structure and Affinities of Cretaceous
+Plants.</b>” (With Prof. Fujii.) <i>Phil. Transactions Royal
+Society B</i>, vol. 201, 1910, pp. 1-90, plates i-ix.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>Plant containing Nodules from Japan.</b>” <i>Quarterly
+Journal Geological Society</i>, vol. 65, 1909, pp. 195-205,
+plate ix.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>On the Tent-building Habits of the Ant <i>Lasius
+niger</i> Linn. in Japan.</b>” (With Dr. Gordon Hewitt.)
+“Memoirs” and <i>Proceedings Manchester Literary Philo.
+Society</i>, vol. 53, 1909, pt. 3, pp. 1-6, plate 1.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>On the Present Distribution and Origin of the Calcareous
+Concretions in Coal Seams, known as
+‘Coal Balls.’</b>” (With D. M. S. Watson.) <i>Phil.
+Transactions Royal Society B</i>, vol. 200, 1908, pp. 167-218,
+plates xvii-xix.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Flora of the Inferior Oolite of Brora.</b>” <i>Quarterly
+Journal Geological Society</i>, vol. 63, 1907, pp. 375-382,
+plate xxvii.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Relation of the Concretionary Nodules of the
+Yarra to the Calcareous Nodules known as ‘Coal
+Balls.’</b>” <i>Geological Magazine</i>, Dec. 5, 1907, vol. 4,
+pp. 106-108.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Xerophytic Character of the Gymnosperms.</b>”
+<i>New Phytologist</i>, vol. 6, 1907, pp. 46-50.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">221</span></p>
+
+<p>“<b>A Note on a Wounded Calamite.</b>” <i>Annals Botany</i>,
+vol. 21, 1907, pp. 277-280, plate xxiii, text figs. 1-4.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>The Nutritive Relations of the Surrounding Tissues
+to the Archegonia in Gymnosperms.</b>” (With
+Prof. Fujii.) <i>Beihefte zum Botan. Centralblatt</i>, vol. 20,
+1906, pp. 1-24, plate 1.</p>
+
+<p>“<b>A New Fern from the Coal Measures: <i>Tubicaulis
+Sutcliffii</i></b>, Sp. Nov.” “Memoirs” and <i>Proceedings
+Manchester Literary Philo. Society</i>, vol. 50, 1906,
+pp. 1-34, plates i-iii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">222</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX_C">
+    APPENDIX C.
+    <br>
+    <span class="allsmcap">THE TENETS OF THE C.B.C.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><b>The objects for which the C.B.C. was founded
+are as follows:—</b></p>
+
+<p>The objects of the Society are (<i>a</i>) to bring home to all the
+fundamental nature of the reforms involved in conscious and
+constructive control of conception and the illumination of
+sex life as a basis of racial progress; (<i>b</i>) to consider the
+individual, national, international, racial, political, economic,
+scientific, spiritual and other aspects of the theme, for which
+purpose meetings will be held, publications issued, Research
+Committees, Commissions of Enquiry and other activities
+will be organized from time to time as circumstances require
+and facilities offer; (<i>c</i>) to supply all who still need it with
+the full knowledge of sound physiological methods of control.</p>
+
+<p>As these objects indicate, <b>the scope of the Society is
+very wide, its interests far-reaching, and its possibilities
+of future development very elastic</b>. Even to-day the
+tenets which appear fundamental to different members of
+the Society will naturally vary, hence <b>no one of the following
+is binding on an individual member. General agreement
+with the objects of the Society suffices for membership.</b></p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, it has been felt that it would be useful
+explicitly to state in concise form what may be described as
+the bedrock of general agreement in the Society. This is
+as follows:—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">223</span></p>
+
+<p>1.—The hygiene of sex is as suitable and proper a subject
+for scientific and serious study as the hygiene of nutrition,
+locomotion, or any other human function.</p>
+
+<p>2.—Owing to the shamefaced attitude which has until
+recently characterized our dealings with the subject, all the
+manifold data involved in the different aspects of sex life
+have not had the direct, scientific and physiological handling
+they deserve and require. We deplore this and shall
+endeavour to remedy it.</p>
+
+<p>3.—We maintain that the highest spiritual development,
+the noblest intellectual illumination, and the sweetest
+romantic possibilities of individual sex experience, are not
+damaged by sound scientific knowledge, but contrariwise,
+are enhanced and elevated.</p>
+
+<p>4.—We consider that in relation to the procreation of
+additional members of the community, the best possible
+knowledge of scientific and technical details should be
+available to those undertaking this important social duty.</p>
+
+<p>5.—We believe that the haphazard production of children
+by ignorant, coerced, or diseased mothers is profoundly
+detrimental to the race. We believe, therefore, that parenthood
+should no longer be the result of ignorance or accident,
+but should be a power used voluntarily and with knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>6.—We maintain that to achieve this result a knowledge
+of the simple hygiene of contraception is essential.</p>
+
+<p>7.—We advocate no individual contraceptive measure as
+final or fundamental, but maintain that the <b>best</b> measures
+<b>available</b> at any time should be taught and known by the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>8.—We desire to keep constantly in touch with all
+advances in science which may have a bearing on the
+practical details of contraceptive measures, and for this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">224</span>purpose we have organized a Medical Research Committee
+to keep our Society informed as to the current scientific
+position of the hygiene of contraception.</p>
+
+<p>9.—AS REGARDS THE POPULATION AT PRESENT.
+We say that there are unfortunately many men and women
+who should be prevented from procreating children at all,
+because of their individual ill-health, or the diseased and
+degenerate nature of the offspring that they may be expected
+to produce. These considerations would not apply to a
+better and healthier world.</p>
+
+<p>10.—There are many women unfortunately so constructed—suffering
+from weakness of certain organs—that they
+would risk death if they were to attempt to bear children,
+and who, therefore, should not bear them.</p>
+
+<p>11.—There are unfortunately many couples so ill-provided
+with this world’s goods, or with means to acquire
+them, that they cannot support further children, and therefore
+should not bear them. Women, owing to their own or their
+husband’s incapacity to be self-supporting, may be permanently
+or temporarily in such a position owing to disaster or
+unemployment. The following Resolution was passed by
+our Society:</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Resolution passed at General Meeting November 22nd, 1921.</i></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“Both to spare your own personal distress and to
+avoid bringing a weakly child into the world, it
+is important that all should realize that no one
+should conceive in times of individual misery or
+ill-health. Of course wherever a child is already
+on the way, the best must be made of it. But
+sound and wholesome methods of Birth Control
+(Control of Conception) are known, and advice
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">225</span>will be given free by a qualified nurse to all
+unemployed married persons who present this
+slip at the Mother’s Clinic, 61, Marlborough Road,
+Holloway, London, N. 19.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>12.—The Society approves and welcomes the work
+done by the first British Birth Control Clinic (The Mother’s
+Clinic, 61, Marlborough Road, Holloway, N.19), where the
+very poor and ignorant receive personal instruction; but
+we consider that this public service should not be left to
+private enterprise to maintain, and hence that the Ministry
+of Health should supply suitable help and contraceptive
+instruction to working-class women at the many Ante-natal
+Clinics, Welfare Centres, etc., already in existence all over the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>13.—We maintain that science has already made available
+contraceptive measures as safe and as simple to use as any
+other hygienic measures widely known and practised, such
+as brushing one’s teeth, or the removal daily of a dental plate
+by one who has artificial teeth. We, therefore, maintain
+that knowledge and instruction in these matters for the
+normal and healthy is an <b>hygienic</b> and not a medical
+matter. The problem of controlling conception on the part
+of those who are diseased, abnormal and unhealthy is on the
+other hand a purely medical matter and may involve
+measures which this Society would not advocate for general
+use.</p>
+
+<p>14.—We as a Society are at present working for the
+dissemination of the best possible hygienic knowledge to all
+who are intelligent enough to be capable of using it, but we
+recognize the grave National problem raised by the fertility
+of those too degenerate or too careless to be capable of
+using any form of contraceptive.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">226</span></p>
+
+<p>15.—We are convinced that children spaced by voluntary
+means have a less mortality, and that the mother of such
+children has time to recover her health and attend to the
+young child in a better way, than if the pregnancies follow
+rapidly one after the other, and we are therefore in favour of
+voluntarily spacing all the desired children of even the
+healthiest woman.</p>
+
+<p>16.—In short, we are profoundly and fundamentally a
+pro-baby organisation, in favour of producing the largest
+possible number of healthy, happy children without detriment
+to the mother, and with the minimum wastage of infants by
+premature death. We, therefore, as a Society, regret the
+relatively small families of those best fitted to care for
+children. In this connection our motto has been “Babies
+in the right place,” and it is just as much the aim of Constructive
+Birth Control to secure conception to those married
+people who are healthy, childless, and desire children, as it is
+to furnish security from conception to those who are racially
+diseased, already overburdened with children, or in any
+specific way unfitted for parenthood.</p>
+
+<p>17.—We hold no fixed opinions concerning the total
+numbers either of individual families or of populations,
+desiring only that the <b>optimum</b> shall be attained.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  Passed by the Executive Committee, C.B.C.
+</p>
+<p>
+March, 1923.
+</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Everyone who is interested in securing the best future for our
+Race should join the Society for Constructive Birth Control and
+Racial Progress.</i> <i>Apply for Membership forms to the Hon.
+Secretary</i>, <b>C.B.C., 4-5, Adam St., Adelphi, London,
+W.C.2. Gerrard 4431.</b></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter transnote">
+<p class="center"> Transcriber’s Notes.</p>
+
+<p>
+Evident typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected silently.  Inconsistent spelling/hyphenation has been normalised.
+</p>
+
+<p>Half-titles and reiterations of chapter titles have been discarded.</p>
+
+<p>
+End of page footnotes have been sequentially numbered and relocated to the end of the relevant chapter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Illustrations have been relocated between paragraphs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A Table of Contents and List of Illustrations have been compiled by the transcriber.
+</p>
+
+<p>New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78278 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #78278
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