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.

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.

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.

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.

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.