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.