Why this obsession?. What is the first thing people say when they see a new baby? “Oh he looks just like you”, or “She’s got her Daddy’s eyes”, or whatever.
I have always been obsessed with spotting family likenesses. I feel quite weepy even now if I see a father and son, a mother and daughter, or brothers or sisters, walking along in the street, looking just like each other. Same walk, same laugh, same gestures.
This is a photo of my mother, c. 1935 This is me, as I was in about 1958
I used to breed dogs, and I noticed that same thing there: experienced breeders could often tell which dog had sired a pup. No doubt it’s the same with horses, sheep, tortoises, ring-tailed lemurs.
Heredity matters. Our inheritance laws reflect this very obvious fact. If Prince Charles had been adopted or illegitimate, he could never be King.
During the course of my family history research on the internet I made contact with some Australian relatives, one of whom visited me two or three times when she was working in England. She is the first, and to date, the only blood relative I have ever actually met. We hit it off well right from the start.
Here we are together in the doorway of my cottage.
We are very distantly related, and yet I think we look alike, especially in this photo. My ancestor was Thomas, christened in 1798, and Kylie’s ancestor was his brother Charles, christened in 1813.
Kylie and I were queuing up at the vegetable stall in the local farmers’ market one Saturday, chatting to each other animatedly while we waited. Me in my early sixties and a Londoner, and she half my age with an Australian accent. When we reached the head of the queue, the stallholder looked at us and said, out of the blue, “Are you two related?”
We were dumbfounded.....
Here is an extract from a poem by Thomas Hardy:
From "Heredity" 1917