S.W.
Dec. 2nd (1893)
My dear Bertie
Of course I know how matters stand, and naturally being as fond of my
sister as I am, I do not regard your way of feeling as folly. And if you remain
of the same mind after several years, I can assure you that I don’t know of
anyone who I should like better as a brother-in-law – nor indeed do I think
there is anyone who would make a better husband for Alys. But sincerely I
think you would make a mistake by engaging yourself too soon – but I dare
say you don’t intend to do that. One never knows what one will develop into,
and anyhow the ?rst few years after 21 should be given to self education,
and the search for one’s work, and marriage, or even a settled engagement,
interferes sadly with all that.
Yes I do believe in you, Bertie, though the faculty for belief is not one of
those most developed in me – only I shall believe more in your decision
when I see that after a few years of good work and experience of the world
you still remain the same. Win your spurs, mon cher – let us see that you are
good and sensible – as indeed we believe you are – your friends all have
the highest ideas of your ability and promise, only keep yourself free and
interested in your work. Love should be the servant, and not the master of life.
Yours a?y.
L. P. S.
The following letters were written to Alys during our three-months’ separation.
Pembroke Lodge
Richmond, Surrey
July 31st 1894
My darling Alys
As was to be expected there is nothing particular to be told, as nothing has
happened. So far, however, it has not been particularly odious. When I arrived
I found my Grandmother on a sofa in her sitting-room, looking very pale and
sad; still, I was relieved to ?nd her out of bed. Our meeting was very a?ectionate,
the autobiography of bertrand russell 84though silent. We have talked only of indi?erent subjects; she obviously
realises that it is bad for her health to talk of anything agitating. The Doctor
does not allow her to have any correspondence but what my Aunt thinks
good for her (though she herself doesn’t know this), however she was
given my letter this morning and seems to have been pleased with it. My
false conscience has been rather subdued by thee and the atmosphere of
Friday’s Hill, so that I ?nd it far more endurable than last time in spite of my
grandmother’s illness; perhaps because of it too, in a way, because it sets
everything in a kindlier and more natural key.
My aunt has been cross-questioning me about all my plans, but her com-
ments, though most eloquent, have been silent. I told her about America, and
she seemed to think it odd we should go unmarried: I said ‘Well we thought it
would be better than marrying before going out there’, but to that she made
no answer. All she said was ‘I shan’t tell Granny about that just yet’. She will
probably have to go away for her health in September and she ?shed for me to
o?er to stay here with my grandmother; but I said I should be at Friday’s Hill. I
said I might in the following months come here every now and then, but
should mainly live at Friday’s Hill. She looked thunder, but said nothing.
She has realised the uselessness of advice or criticism. She spoke about my
grandmother seeing thee, but I said it would be better not without me.
My grandmother unfortunately is not so well this evening; she has to take
sleeping-draughts and medicines for her digestion constantly and they are
afraid both of stopping them and of her becoming dependent on them. She is
very a?ecting in her illness, but having steeled my conscience I don’t mind so
much. She has been writing verses about Arthur to try and distract her mind
from this one topic; she has also been reading a good deal with the same end
in view; but apparently she has not succeeded very well.
But really it isn’t half so bad here as it might be, so thee needn’t make
thyself unhappy about me or imagine I shall come back in the state of mind I
was in yesterday fortnight. However I don’t want – if I can help it, to make
any promises as to when I shall come back. Goodnight Dearest. I am really
happy but for being unutterably bored and I hope thee is enjoying the
country even without me to force thee to do so.
Thine devotedly
Bertie
Ramsbury Manor
Wiltshire
Aug. 30th 1894
My Darling
I am very much perplexed by this o?er of a post in Paris. If I were sure it
wouldn’t last beyond Xmas, and then would not tie me down to the same
engagement 85sort of post in future, I should feel inclined to accept it: it would pass the time
of our separation very enjoyably (for I should certainly enjoy being at the
Paris Embassy immensely); it would give me about as much of the world as
could well be crammed into the time; it would give me some knowledge of
the inside of diplomacy, and would certainly be a valuable experience, if it
could remain an isolated episode. I don’t know whether it would necessarily
postpone our meeting and marriage; I fear it would; and that would be an
argument against it. Also I am afraid of the world and its tone, as they are very
bad for me, especially when I enjoy them, and I am very much afraid that
such a career, once entered on, would be very hard to leave. Besides it would
mean a number of aristocratic ties, which would hamper our future activity.
And hardly any home appointment could induce me to give up the year of
travel we propose, as I am sure that would not only be far the pleasantest way
of spending our ?rst year of marriage, but would also have great educational
value. I wish my grandmother had given me more particulars: all that is clear
from her letter is that it would give her great satisfaction if I accepted it. I
should probably o?end Lord Du?erin if I refused it, though perhaps that
could be avoided. I do wish we could meet to discuss it; and I should like to
have Logan’s opinion.
2 p.m. The more I think of it, the more it seems to me that it would be the
?rst step in a career I wish to avoid; but I cannot be sure till I hear more. And
if I refuse, it would of course de?nitely cut me o? from Secretaryships etc.,
as people wouldn’t want to o?er things to so fastidious and apparently
capricious a young man. That is an advantage or the reverse according as you
look at it. My brain is in a whirl and it is too hot to think.
Pembroke Lodge
Richmond, Surrey
Sep. 1, 9 p.m. ’94
My darling Alys
Now that I am home again I have time to write a really long letter, and I
feel tonight as if I could write for ever: I am made sentimental and full of
thoughts by the place. I am reminded so vividly of last September that it
seems as if I had all my work still before me. I went out today and sat by
the fountain and thought of the long solitary days I used to spend there,
meditating, wishing, scarcely daring to hope; trying to read the minutest
indications in the bare, dry little letters thee used to write me, and in the
number of days thee waited before answering mine; miserable in a way, mad
with impatience, and yet full of a new life and vigour, so that I used to start
with surprise at ?nding I no longer wished to die, as I had done for 5 years,
and had supposed I always should do. How I counted the hours till Dunrozel
came to visit here, and I was free to leave my Grandmother! Being here alone
the autobiography of bertrand russell 86again I feel as if the intervening year had been a dream; as if thee still were to
me a distant, scarcely possible heaven; indi?erent, as heaven must be, to mere
earthly strugglers. But there is a strange weariness, like that of a troublesome
dream, which forms an undercurrent to all my thoughts and makes the
dream-feelings di?erent in tone from those of last September; a weariness
compounded of all the struggles and anxieties and pains of the past year, of
all the strain and all the weary discussions and quarrels which winning thee
has cost me. I am not unhappy, however, far from it; but for the moment it
seems as if I had lived my life, and it had been good; it reached a climax, a
supreme moment, and now there seems no more need to care about it: it can
have nothing better in store, and therefore there would be no bitterness in
death.
I suppose thee will think these feelings morbid, but I don’t know that they
are particularly so. I got into a dreamy mood from reading Pater: I was
immensely impressed by it, indeed it seemed to me almost as beautiful as
anything I had ever read (except here and there, where his want of humour
allowed him to fall into a discordant note, as with the valetudinarian cat);
especially I was struck by the poplars and another passage I can’t ?nd again. It
recalled no de?nite childish memories, because since the age of de?nite
memories I have not lived in a world of sensuous impressions like that of
Florian; but rather in the manner of Wordsworth’s Ode, I dimly feel again
the very early time before my intellect had killed my senses. I have a vague
confused picture of the warm patches of red ground where the setting
summer sun shone on it, and of the rustling of the poplars in front of the
house when I used to go to bed by daylight after hot days, and the shadow of
the house crept slowly up them. I have a vague feeling of perpetual warm
sunny weather, when I used to be taken driving and notice the speckled
shadows moving across the carriage, before it occurred to me that they were
caused by the leaves overhead. (As soon as I discovered this, the scienti?c
interest killed the impression, and I began speculating as to why the patches
of light were always circular and so on.) But very early indeed I lost the
power of attending to impressions per se, and always abstracted from them and
sought the scienti?c and intellectual and abstract that lay behind them, so that
it wouldn’t have occurred to me, as to Florian, to need a philosophy for them;
they went bodily into my mental waste-paper basket. (That is why the book
made me so dreamy, because it carried me back to my earliest childhood,
where nothing seems really real.) I didn’t begin to need such a philosophy till
the age of puberty, when the sensuous and emotional reasserted itself more
strongly than before or since, so that I felt carried back for a time to my infancy;
then I made a sort of religion of beauty, such as Florian might have had; I had a
passionate desire to ?nd some link between the true and the beautiful, so
strong that beauty gave me intense pain (tho’ also a tingling sensuous thrill of
engagement 87tremendous strength), for the constant sense of this unful?lled requirement of
harmony between it and fact. I read Alastor after I had lived some time in this
state, and there I found the exact mood I had experienced, vividly described. It
was only gradually, as I came to care less and less for beauty, as I got through
the natural period of morbidness (for in me so intense a passion for the
beautiful was necessarily abnormal), only as I became more purely intellectual
again, that I ceased to su?er from this con?ict. Of course my taste of real life in
the Fitz episode got me out of such mere sentimentality, and since then it has
been only by moments I have su?ered from it. If I could believe in Bradley, as I
do most days, I should never su?er from it again....
Sunday morning Sep. 2
I sent thee a wire from Reading early yesterday morning to say ‘Shan’t
come since Nov. 17 is unchanged’, but I suppose thee was already gone from
Chichester before it arrived. Thee says thee will come to Paris if I can’t come
to England, but I rather gather from my Grandmother that I shall be able to
chuck this post when I like. Will thee send my hat in my hat-box, as I need
both? And please write by the 1st post tomorrow, otherwise I may be gone. I
shall probably go the day after hearing from Lord Kimberley. But I can’t go
and see Edith and Bryson, as they surely are staying in Britanny till Nov? Shall
I send the Pater to Mariechen, or straight to Carey Thomas? All these details
are tiresome, and I am sorry not to have remembered all the things I want
sent in one batch, but my memory works that way unavoidably.
I like the Tragic Muse immensely, it is such fun; besides it is singularly
appropriate to my present situation. – My Aunt Georgy yesterday was very
kind, but too inquisitive (as indeed most women are); she said even in old
times at the slightest thought of a marriage my Grandmother used to get into
a sort of fever and be fussy and worried about it....
...I am grown quite glad of the Paris plan, and shall make a great e?ort
not to hate my companions too much. At any rate I ought to be able to write
amusing letters from there. Give me literary criticisms of my descriptions, so
that I may make them as vivid as possible. – It is sad thee should have grown
bored with thy friend’s talk, but it is di?cult to throw oneself into other
people’s petty concerns when one’s own are very absorbing and interesting. I
am not sorry thee has come to understand why I minded thy going right away
to America more than a separation with thee still in London. Thee thought it
very silly then, and so no doubt it is, but it is natural.
I hope this letter is long enough to satisfy thee: it has been a great satisfac-
tion to write it, and I shall expect a very long one in return. If thee hears from
Edith Thomas, thee will send me her letter, won’t thee? I will wire as soon as I
know when I’m going to Paris.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 88Goodbye my Darling. It was much better not to meet again and have the
pain of a real parting.
Thine devotedly
Bertie
Pembroke Lodge
Richmond, Surrey
Sep. 3 ’94, 10 a.m.
Dearest Alys
I got three letters from thee by the 1st post this morning, which was
delightful; one of them forwarded from Ramsbury, a particularly charming
one. I am returning the documents it contained, which amused me much.
I have quite settled to accept the Paris o?er (owing to thy urging me to do
so), and I fancy Lord Kimberley’s con?rmation of it is purely formal. I am
only waiting here for another letter from Lord Du?erin, and then I shall be
o? immediately. But I am rather sorry thee makes so very light of the dangers
and drawbacks of aristocracy; I begin to fear thee will never understand why I
dread them, and that it is not a mere superstition. Thee and Logan could mix
with aristocrats to any extent (before thy engagement at any rate) without
ever coming across the stumbling-blocks they put in the way of one of their
own class who wishes to ‘escape’. Americans are liked in society just because
they are for the most part queer specimens, and don’t do the things other
people do or abstain from the things other people abstain from; people
expect a sort of spectacular amusement from them, and therefore tolerate
anything, though all but a very small minority make up for it by bitterly
abusing them behind their backs. It thus comes about that you would
never see aristocrats as they are with one of themselves; rigid and sti? and
conventional, and horri?ed at the minutest divergence from family tradition.
Besides they are mostly my relations and my Grandmother’s friends: unless I
make a fool of myself in Paris, this o?er will lead to others, at home; any
refusal will give great pain to my Grandmother (whose death is by no means
to be counted on) and will o?end and annoy the whole set of them. Also
being my relations they all feel they have a right to advise; when I am trying
to work quietly and unobtrusively, in a way which seems to me honest, but is
very unlikely to bring me the slightest fame or success till I’m 50 at least, they
will come and badger me to go in for immediate success; from my many
connections and the good will most of them unfortunately bear me, it will
probably be easily within my reach, and I shall be pestered and worried
almost out of my life by their insistence. And (I must confess it) horrible as
such a thought is, I do not entirely trust thee to back me up. I have a passion for
experience, but if I am to make anything of the talents I have, I must eschew a
vast deal of possible experience, shut myself up in my study, and live a quiet
engagement 89life in which I see only people who approve of such a life (as far as possible); I
know myself well enough to be sure (though it is a confession of weakness)
that if thee insists on my having a lot of experience, on my seeing a hetero-
geneous society and going out into the world, and perhaps having episodes of
an utterly di?erent, worldly sort of life, my nervous force will be unequal to
the strain; I shall either have to give up the work my conscience approves of, or
I shall be worn out and broken down by the time I’m 30. In short, [I] know my
own needs, much better than thee does; and it is very important to me that thee
should back me up in insisting on them. Casual experience of life is of very
little use to a specialist, such as I aspire to be; good manners are absolutely
useless. Thee has a sort of illogical kindness (not to call it weakness), which
prevents thy seeing the application of a general rule to a particular case, if
anybody is to derive a little pleasure from its infraction, so that thee is quite
capable, while protesting that in general thee wishes me to lead a quiet stu-
dent’s life, of urging me in every particular case to accept o?ers, and go in for
practical a?airs, which really are hindrances to me. Both of us, too, are in
danger of getting intoxicated by cheap success, which is the most damning
thing on earth; if I waste these years, which ought to be given almost entirely to
theoretic work and the acquisition of ideas by thought (since that is scarcely
possible except when one is young), my conscience will reproach me
throughout the rest of my life. Once for all, G. A. [God Almighty] has made
me a theorist, not a practical man; a knowledge of the world is therefore of
very little value to me. One hour spent in reading Wagner’s statistics is
probably of more value than 3 months in casual contact with society. Do be
stern and consistent in accepting this view of myself, as otherwise (if I have
to ?ght thee as well as my relations and the world) I shall certainly miss what
I hope it lies in me to do. Thee may read what thee likes of this to Logan and
see if he doesn’t agree with me. The needs of a theorist are so utterly
di?erent from thine that it seems impossible for thee to realise how things of
the greatest importance to thee may be utterly worthless to me. Beatrice
Webb’s case is very di?erent, for she married a man whom all her smart
relations hated, while thee with thy damnably friendly manner cannot help
ingratiating thyself with them all! Besides I should imagine she was a person
who feels it less than I do when she has to go against the wishes of those
who are fond of her. And besides, all the early years of her life were wasted,
so that she never can become ?rst-rate,
9
or more than a shadow of her
husband. – Excuse the tone of this letter: the fact is I have had the fear a long
time that thee would ruin my career by wishing me to be too practical, and it
has now at last come to a head....
the autobiography of bertrand russell 90Pembroke Lodge
Richmond, Surrey
Sep. 3 1894
Dearest Alys
. . . It was hardly in early boyhood I wished to harmonise the true and the
beautiful, but rather when I was 16 and 17. I was peculiar chie?y because I
was so constantly alone – when I had a spell of the society of other boys I
soon became much more like them. I think when I was quite a child I was
more thoughtful than rather later. I remember vividly a particular spot on the
gravel walk outside the dining-room here, where a great uncle of mine told
me one ?ne summer’s afternoon at tea time that I should never enjoy future
?ne afternoons quite so much again. He was half in joke half in earnest, and
went on to explain that one’s enjoyments grow less and less intense and
unmixed as one grows older. I was only 5 years old at the time, but, being a
pessimistic theory about life, it impressed me profoundly; I remember argu-
ing against it then, and almost weeping because I felt he probably knew better
and was likely to be right; however I know now that he certainly wasn’t,
which is a consolation. Then as now, I hugged my enjoyments with a sort of
personal a?ection, as tho’ they were something outside of me. Little did he
think what a profound impression his chance careless words had made!...
Pembroke Lodge
Richmond, Surrey
Sunday morning
September 9th 1894
Dearest Alys
. . . It is strange, but I’m really in some ways happier than during the
month at Friday’s Hill; I realise that thee and I together were trying to stamp
out my a?ection for my Grandmother, and that the attempt was a failure. My
conscience was bad, so that I dreamt about her every night, and always had an
uneasy consciousness of her in the background of even the happiest
moments. Now, if she dies, I shall have a good conscience towards her:
otherwise I should have had, I believe for life, that worse sort of remorse, the
remorse for cruelty to a person whom death has removed from one’s longing
to make up for past de?ciencies. My love for her is altogether too real to be
ignored with impunity....
Victoria, 9 a.m.
September 10th
Dearest Alys
I have got o? after all today! I got thy two letters at breakfast: they will
sustain me during the voyage. I feel too journey?ed to be sentimental or to
engagement 91have anything at all to say. I am very glad to be o?, of course. But I was a little
put o? by my visit to the d’Estournelles yesterday. All the people were French
except the Spanish Ambassador and the Italian Ambassadress, and I was not
much impressed by their charms or even their manners: except the Spaniard,
they were all oppressively and too restlessly polite for English taste: there was
none of the repose and unobtrusiveness which constitutes good breeding to
the British mind. I am to see three of them again in Paris, worse luck. It is very
hard to live up to their incessant compliments and always have one ready to
?re o? in return....
British Embassy
Paris
Friday, October 12th, 1894
9.45 a.m.
My dearest Alys
...I had a perfectly delightful evening with Miss Belloc10
last night – from
7 till 12 – as she stayed so late I suppose she enjoyed it too. I believe she was
really very nice but to me she was surrounded by the halo of Friday’s Hill and
I should have thought her charming if she’d been the devil incarnate, or
anything short of human perfection. We met at 7 at Neal’s Library, Rue Rivoli
– then we walked some time in the Tuilleries Gardens and elsewhere, and
then dined at a queer quiet place in the Palais Royal. Then we walked about
again for a long time, and both smoked an enormous number of cigarettes,
and ?nally I left her at the door of her hotel at midnight, with hopes of
another meeting today or tomorrow. We talked of thee and all the family, of
French and English people, of Grant Allen, Stead and Mrs Amos, of the
Embassy and its dreariness – of the various French poets who’d been in love
with her and whom she’d been in love with – of her way of getting on with
her French conventional relations and of their moral ideas (always
incomprehensible and therefore interesting to me) – of Lady Henry and
Pollen (whom we agreed to loathe) and Miss Willard – of vice in general and
the di?erence between Parisian and London vice in particular and of her
experiences in the way of being spoken to – and many other things. I found
her talk very interesting and I think she enjoyed herself too – though not of
course as much as I did, because she was the ?rst congenial person I’d seen
since I was at Vétheuil,
11
and the ?rst to whom I could talk about thee. Her
French sentiments come in very oddly – it is di?cult to ?t them in with her
love of Stead – altogether being of two nations has made her not so much of a
piece as she ought to be. But I did enjoy my evening – far more than anything
since I left Friday’s Hill – for the ?rst time I was able to admire the Seine at
night (which is perfectly lovely) without growing maudlin....
the autobiography of bertrand russell 92Monday, October 15th, 1894
12.30 a.m.
My Beloved
Don’t say thee thinks of me from my letters as ‘brains in the abstract’, it
does sound so cold and dry and lifeless. Letters are bad, but they ought to have
more reality than that. To me too tonight ?ve weeks seems a long time – that
is because my brother is with me. I shall be glad when he goes. I hate him and
half fear him – he dominates me when he is with me because I dread his
comments if he should know me as I am. Thee hasn’t made me less sensitive
but more so – because I have had to embody one result of my real self in a
form in which all the world can see it, which gives every one a hold for
attacking me – I dread the moment when the Embassy people will discover it.
Even the joy of getting away from all the people who annoy me would be
enough by itself to be an intense source of joy....
British Embassy, Paris
Wednesday, October 17th
1894
10 a.m.
My darling Alys
...I don’t at all wish to alarm people – but my brother, of his own accord
yesterday, while we were dining at La Perouse, said he could well imagine it,
that he was afraid of me, though of hardly anyone else, because I never let
myself go, and one felt me coldly critical inside. – Of course that is what I feel
with my brother, but I’m sorry if I’m that way with people like Miss Belloc.
He thinks himself a person of universal Whitmaniac sympathy; but if you
sympathise with everybody it comes to much the same as sympathising with
none, or at any rate not with those who are hated!...
My brother won’t want to come to Germany – I don’t think he likes thee,
which is a mercy – he thinks thee has the American hardness, by which
he means not submitting completely to the husband and not being sensual.
He says American women only love from the waist upwards. Thee can
imagine I don’t open my soul to him! It seems hard on thee to give thee a
second objectionable brother-in-law called Frank....
British Embassy
October 20th 1894
3 p.m.
My darling Alys
I think the real use of our separation is to give me a good conscience and to
hasten our marriage. Thee doesn’t think my good conscience will last, but I
think it will if I don’t see too much of my Grandmother. I feel no duties
