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.

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.