unfortunate enough to possess it were to be deeply mistrusted.
As his mother was one of seven children and his father one of five, Stephen naturally had legions of first cousins and a whole army of second cousins. My parents, on the other hand, were both
only children, so I had no first cousins: all I possessed were a few second cousins, one in Australia and the rest in rural Norfolk. It therefore came as quite a shock to meet so many people who
not only were closely related, but who also bore remarkable facial similarities to each other. On Stephen’s mother’s side, they characteristically had high cheekbones, close-set blue
eyes and wavy, chestnut hair, while the faces of his father’s relations were all long and heavily jowled. Only my brother bore any slight resemblance to me, yet here were allof thirty-three
cousins who looked like each other, depending on which side of the family they belonged to, and who were all closely connected to Stephen.
Although quite a number lived abroad and divorce had been rather fashionable among them, I met many of them, their friends, husbands, wives and even their former spouses, during the course of
that winter’s succession of family parties. They treated me in an open and friendly manner, and I began to realize what an advantage a large family network could be: the loss of individuality
in appearance was more than compensated by the sense of security which such a network could create. The novelty of this sense of extended family was exhilarating. By comparison my own immediate
family circle of parents, brother and one grandmother and two great-aunts seemed a bit limited.
There was however one Hawking who notably lacked the self-assurance of the rest of the family. On hearing of our engagement, Stephen’s Aunt Muriel announced that, as she put it, she
“just had to come down from Yorkshire to see what sort of girl Stephen was marrying”. Muriel was Frank Hawking’s only sister. The most timid member of the family, she had stayed
at home to look after her ageing parents despite being a gifted musician. Now in her sixties, she wore the marks of frustration in her sad, drooping face and large, soft brown eyes. She was devoted
to her brother, Frank, and to his eldest son, and dutifully admired the family’s intellectual qualities, although she herself did not share them. Her homely way of speech was often ignored by
the other members of the family, though Stephen, who was her Methodist equivalent of a godson, always treated her with a good-natured tolerance. Frequently I would sit and chat to Auntie Muriel,
just as I would sometimes escape to Granny Walker’s attic, to get away from the competitive intellectual atmosphere of the dining room.
Stephen could be highly critical of people other than his closest relatives. His self-confidence restored, he delighted in bringing his Oxford ways into any conversation, deliberately setting
out to shock with his provocative statements. His comment that Norwich cathedral was a very ordinary building profoundly upset my mild-mannered Grandma when I took him to stay with her for a
weekend. He considered my friends to be easy victims and had no compunction in monopolizing the conversation at parties with his controversial opinions, often dominating the social scene with
vociferous and tenacious arguments.
With me he would argue that artificial flowers were in every way preferable to the real thing and that Brahms, my favourite composer, was second-rate because he was such a poor orchestrator.
Rachmaninov was good only for the musical dustbin and Tchaikovsky was primarily a composer of ballet music. So far, my knowledge of composers was embryonic: all I knew about Rachmaninov and
Tchaikovsky was that their music had the power to move me profoundly and I knew nothing about Brahms’s orchestration. It was only later that I found out, to my silent amusement, that although
Wagner had despised Brahms, the feeling was
As his mother was one of seven children and his father one of five, Stephen naturally had legions of first cousins and a whole army of second cousins. My parents, on the other hand, were both
only children, so I had no first cousins: all I possessed were a few second cousins, one in Australia and the rest in rural Norfolk. It therefore came as quite a shock to meet so many people who
not only were closely related, but who also bore remarkable facial similarities to each other. On Stephen’s mother’s side, they characteristically had high cheekbones, close-set blue
eyes and wavy, chestnut hair, while the faces of his father’s relations were all long and heavily jowled. Only my brother bore any slight resemblance to me, yet here were allof thirty-three
cousins who looked like each other, depending on which side of the family they belonged to, and who were all closely connected to Stephen.
Although quite a number lived abroad and divorce had been rather fashionable among them, I met many of them, their friends, husbands, wives and even their former spouses, during the course of
that winter’s succession of family parties. They treated me in an open and friendly manner, and I began to realize what an advantage a large family network could be: the loss of individuality
in appearance was more than compensated by the sense of security which such a network could create. The novelty of this sense of extended family was exhilarating. By comparison my own immediate
family circle of parents, brother and one grandmother and two great-aunts seemed a bit limited.
There was however one Hawking who notably lacked the self-assurance of the rest of the family. On hearing of our engagement, Stephen’s Aunt Muriel announced that, as she put it, she
“just had to come down from Yorkshire to see what sort of girl Stephen was marrying”. Muriel was Frank Hawking’s only sister. The most timid member of the family, she had stayed
at home to look after her ageing parents despite being a gifted musician. Now in her sixties, she wore the marks of frustration in her sad, drooping face and large, soft brown eyes. She was devoted
to her brother, Frank, and to his eldest son, and dutifully admired the family’s intellectual qualities, although she herself did not share them. Her homely way of speech was often ignored by
the other members of the family, though Stephen, who was her Methodist equivalent of a godson, always treated her with a good-natured tolerance. Frequently I would sit and chat to Auntie Muriel,
just as I would sometimes escape to Granny Walker’s attic, to get away from the competitive intellectual atmosphere of the dining room.
Stephen could be highly critical of people other than his closest relatives. His self-confidence restored, he delighted in bringing his Oxford ways into any conversation, deliberately setting
out to shock with his provocative statements. His comment that Norwich cathedral was a very ordinary building profoundly upset my mild-mannered Grandma when I took him to stay with her for a
weekend. He considered my friends to be easy victims and had no compunction in monopolizing the conversation at parties with his controversial opinions, often dominating the social scene with
vociferous and tenacious arguments.
With me he would argue that artificial flowers were in every way preferable to the real thing and that Brahms, my favourite composer, was second-rate because he was such a poor orchestrator.
Rachmaninov was good only for the musical dustbin and Tchaikovsky was primarily a composer of ballet music. So far, my knowledge of composers was embryonic: all I knew about Rachmaninov and
Tchaikovsky was that their music had the power to move me profoundly and I knew nothing about Brahms’s orchestration. It was only later that I found out, to my silent amusement, that although
Wagner had despised Brahms, the feeling was
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