The Link Back

If you live long enough, are born late enough in your mother's life, and are British, then there is a good chance your mother was born when Queen Victoria was on the throne and ruled your country, and we're going to read about your passing in the 21st century. And that is exactly how far back the lineage goes for Harry Stopes-Roe, 90, whose mother, Dr. Marie Stopes (1880-1958) was famous, notorious, and came to be regarded as one of the 20th century’s great feminist heroines, a crusader for birth control and enlightened sex education, and the author of the first modern sex manual, 'Married Love.'

Her book was an early contradiction to what the comedian Alan King would always later declare: "If you want to read about love and marriage, you need to read two books."

Mr. Stopes-Roe is lauded for himself becoming a noted philosopher and for surviving the upbringing his mother inflicted on him. Reading of his life in the obituary that now appears in The Telegraph you can only imagine that there might be a two or three part mini-series in here that someone at the BBC is going to push on an American public that eats that type of thing up. That Mr. Stopes-Roe became a functioning adult is a credit to something, perhaps cricket, or crew.

Mr. Stopes-Roe so infuriated his mother at his choice for marriage that his mother essentially wrote him out of her will. She believed that because his wife-to-be wore glasses that they would hatch a gaggle of ugly children who would have to wear glasses.

On the mother's demise, Harry got the 13-volume Greater Oxford English dictionary. We can safely assume it wasn't a large print version, so wearing glasses in the family might have been a good thing for looking things up in the bequeathed dictionary.

And a dictionary doesn't need watering, or sulphur dust, or plant food. If anyone remembers the Tom Cruise character in the movie 'Rain Man', Charlie Babbitt got the roses that lined the driveway from his father. His institutionalized savant brother got the fortune.

By most standards, Mr. Stopes-Roe's inheritance has him coming out ahead of Charlie Babbitt. A set of books is more permanent than a driveway lined with roses in Cleveland.

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