ceased to wonder. The great Victorian sage, Lord Macaulay, was also reported to be a slow developer, remaining obstinately silent until an aristocratic friend, enquiring after the infant’s recent cold, was surprised to hear a little voice pipe up: “Thank you, madam, the agony is abated.”
Such correlations are probabilistic at best. For instance, being left-handed, like Douglas, is also a factor that is associated with a greater number of writers, musicians, mathematicians and sporting prodigies than population distribution would predict.* 32 Sinistrality also touches upon the issue of the extent to which we humans are bio-robots, with gross characteristics determined by genetic inheritance, or free agents capable of rational choice. This immensely complicated question fascinated Douglas in later life.
Back in the early 1950s in Ridley College, it became obvious both to the teaching staff and to Christopher that he was not suited for the clerical life. They parted company without rancour, and Christopher took up teaching locally. But this was a calling for which his energy, sarcasm and impatience disqualified him temperamentally, and eventually he found a better role as a probation officer. Some of his family have speculated that it gave a degree of authority over his errant clients that appealed to his appetite for control, but whatever the motivation of this complex man he seems to have done the job effectively. Both Heather, Christopher’s daughter by his second marriage, and Sue recall that he communicated well with Borstal kids. Though he failed to apply the same skill to his own life, he brought to their problems a professional clarity. Towards the end of his life—for like all the Adams men he could speak well in public—he also gave lectures on probation work, and on that basis described himself as a management consultant. As Douglas himself remarked, “Dad and management [were] concepts that do not belong together.”
In July 1960, Christopher Adams remarried. Mary Judith Stewart, born Judith Robertson, was a widow. Her first husband, William Alistair McLean Beardmore Stewart, known as “B,” was unusually also her stepbrother. In 1944, as a Royal Air Force Officer, he had been killed on a disastrous mission to Norway. One of Judith’s brothers was killed shortly afterwards. Her mother had died when she was seven; her father had remarried, but had then died in tragic circumstances when Judith was eighteen. In contrast to a society in which many of us reach our fifties without any experience of mortality, Judith had been stalked by death since childhood.
Christopher’s new wife was also wealthy. Through family connections her money came from shipbuilding on the Clyde from the days when Britain was once a major shipbuilding power, and the Clyde was lined for miles with cranes and gantries, shipyards and slipways. Under Christopher’s influence, Judith came to have less and less to do with her own side of the family. It was as if she had to start her life over again with a new set of family relationships put in place for her. From the photographs Judith was a good-looking woman of the Scottish variety—slim, pale, handsome rather than pretty—with a look in her eyes suggesting vulnerability. She lived to be eighty, dying in 2000 only six months before Douglas.
By her first husband Judith had two daughters, Rosemary and Karena. Rosemary, the older, is now a trained therapist practising in Edinburgh. (By chance she also married a Stewart—Quentin, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property.) Rosemary was in her teens when her mother remarried, and she recalls being quite taken by surprise.
The way it happened was that my mother arrived at my boarding school a week before I was due to leave, which was unheard of because days out were strictly rationed. She was suddenly there, and she took me and my sister down to the cottage . . . We must have been in the car—and this chap was there, and
Such correlations are probabilistic at best. For instance, being left-handed, like Douglas, is also a factor that is associated with a greater number of writers, musicians, mathematicians and sporting prodigies than population distribution would predict.* 32 Sinistrality also touches upon the issue of the extent to which we humans are bio-robots, with gross characteristics determined by genetic inheritance, or free agents capable of rational choice. This immensely complicated question fascinated Douglas in later life.
Back in the early 1950s in Ridley College, it became obvious both to the teaching staff and to Christopher that he was not suited for the clerical life. They parted company without rancour, and Christopher took up teaching locally. But this was a calling for which his energy, sarcasm and impatience disqualified him temperamentally, and eventually he found a better role as a probation officer. Some of his family have speculated that it gave a degree of authority over his errant clients that appealed to his appetite for control, but whatever the motivation of this complex man he seems to have done the job effectively. Both Heather, Christopher’s daughter by his second marriage, and Sue recall that he communicated well with Borstal kids. Though he failed to apply the same skill to his own life, he brought to their problems a professional clarity. Towards the end of his life—for like all the Adams men he could speak well in public—he also gave lectures on probation work, and on that basis described himself as a management consultant. As Douglas himself remarked, “Dad and management [were] concepts that do not belong together.”
In July 1960, Christopher Adams remarried. Mary Judith Stewart, born Judith Robertson, was a widow. Her first husband, William Alistair McLean Beardmore Stewart, known as “B,” was unusually also her stepbrother. In 1944, as a Royal Air Force Officer, he had been killed on a disastrous mission to Norway. One of Judith’s brothers was killed shortly afterwards. Her mother had died when she was seven; her father had remarried, but had then died in tragic circumstances when Judith was eighteen. In contrast to a society in which many of us reach our fifties without any experience of mortality, Judith had been stalked by death since childhood.
Christopher’s new wife was also wealthy. Through family connections her money came from shipbuilding on the Clyde from the days when Britain was once a major shipbuilding power, and the Clyde was lined for miles with cranes and gantries, shipyards and slipways. Under Christopher’s influence, Judith came to have less and less to do with her own side of the family. It was as if she had to start her life over again with a new set of family relationships put in place for her. From the photographs Judith was a good-looking woman of the Scottish variety—slim, pale, handsome rather than pretty—with a look in her eyes suggesting vulnerability. She lived to be eighty, dying in 2000 only six months before Douglas.
By her first husband Judith had two daughters, Rosemary and Karena. Rosemary, the older, is now a trained therapist practising in Edinburgh. (By chance she also married a Stewart—Quentin, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property.) Rosemary was in her teens when her mother remarried, and she recalls being quite taken by surprise.
The way it happened was that my mother arrived at my boarding school a week before I was due to leave, which was unheard of because days out were strictly rationed. She was suddenly there, and she took me and my sister down to the cottage . . . We must have been in the car—and this chap was there, and
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