[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.