able. Seeing Grace just before her departure, the other day, seemed to bring
America nearer. Usually, when I write to you or Helen, I feel almost as if
I were writing to dead people whom I have read about in books – the whole
place seems so remote, so plunged in memories of an utterly di?erent person
who occupied my body seven years ago, that I can hardly believe it to be real
or inhabited by real people. But when you come over in the autumn, I shall
doubt whether you have really been in America all this time.
The last four months, I have been working like a horse, and have achieved
almost nothing. I discovered in succession seven brand-new di?culties, of
which I solved the ?rst six. When the seventh turned up, I became discour-
aged, and decided to take a holiday before going on. Each in turn required a
reconstruction of my whole edi?ce. Now I am staying with Dickinson; in
a few days I shall go to town and plunge into the Free Trade question (as a
student only). We are all wildly excited about Free Trade; it is to me the last
piece of sane internationalism left, and if it went I should feel inclined
to cut my throat. But there seems no chance whatever of Chamberlain’s
succeeding – all the brains are against him, in every class of society....
Yours very sincerely
B. Russell
14 Cheyne Walk
Chelsea, S.W.
February 28, 1904
My dear Lucy
. . . Really the feeling of the worthlessness of one’s work, where it is not
justi?ed, is the last refuge of self-love. It comes partly of too high an ideal of
what one might hope to achieve, which is a form of pride; and partly of
rebellion against one’s private su?erings, which, one feels, can only be
outweighed by some immense public good. But I know it is intolerably hard
to drive self-love from this entrenchment, and I certainly have not yet
succeeded. I do wish I could be with you, not only for the beauty of Sicily,
but because it would be a great pleasure to see you, and because it would be
so much easier to say just the things to build up in you the self-respect you
the autobiography of bertrand russell 162deserve to have. You are really too modest altogether; but your friends’ a?ec-
tion ought to persuade you that you have things to give which people value. I
have not found myself, though, any way of banishing self except work; and
while you are unable to work, it is very di?cult for you.
I am glad Helen writes you nice letters. But I gather from what you say that
her happiness is not great enough to exclude pains. That is a pity; yet perhaps
it is a safeguard against greater pains in the future. This sounds a common-
place re?ection, and I confess I think it better to have both pain and pleasure
in an extreme degree than to have both soberly. But consolations are not to be
rejected, even if they are commonplace...
There is not much news here. I have been very busy, but now my labours
are practically ended. We go to Cambridge for two days this week, and Alys
goes to visit Logan and look for sites at Oxford. I have been reading novels:
Diana, and Beauchamp’s Career, are the two I have read last. Meredith’s psych-
ology seems to me very good as a rule, though I didn’t think Diana’s betrayal
was made credible. I fell in love with her at the Ball, and remained so through
all her vagaries.
Last night I went to a remote part of London, to lecture to the local Branch
of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. They meet in a Public House, but
permit no drinks during their meeting. They seemed excellent people, very
respectable – indeed I shouldn’t have guessed they were working men. They
were of all shades of opinion, from Tory to Socialist. The Chairman, when I
had ?nished, begged them not to follow their usual practice of ?attering the
lecturer; but even so I got not much criticism. The Secretary explained this to
me on the way home by saying my arguments had ‘bottled them up’. I liked
them all, and felt an increased respect for the skilled workman, who seems
usually an admirable person.
In a fortnight I shall have done with ?scal things, and then I shall go a
walking-tour in Devonshire and Cornwall, before settling down to Phil-
osophy. MacCarthy will go with me.
Write again as soon as you can. I feel there is much more to be said in
answer to your letter, but Politics has rather scattered my thoughts. Try to
keep up your spirits; and please don’t imagine your life a useless one.
Yours a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
St Catherine’s House
First Class Private Hotel
Fowey, Cornwall
March 29, 1904
My dear Lucy
. . . As for work, I have not thought at all, either with satisfaction or the
‘principia mathematica’ 163reverse, about my ?scal career, now happily closed – that whole episode
seems to have just faded away. Also I have not thought much about phil-
osophy; though when I do think of it, the thought is rather pleasant.
MacCarthy, who was an ideal companion, left me about 5 days ago. Since
then I have been alone, and have found the time most valuable. A great sense
of peace comes over me as I walk over green hills by the sea, with nobody to
consult, and nobody to be careful of. In a quiet instinctive way (very
uncommon with me) I think through practical di?culties that had seemed
insoluble, and lay up a store of peace of mind to last through the agitations
and fatigues of ordinary life. When I am not thinking of the way, or the
scenery, I am mostly thinking about people’s a?airs; trying to get the facts
straight, and to decide how much I can do to better the facts. It takes a good
deal of time and thought to imagine oneself in a certain situation, and decide
whether one could be su?ciently impressive to e?ect a great result. My Self
comes in in being ?attered by my knowledge of people’s a?airs, and anxious
to have their con?dence; but I try hard to make Self in this form subservient
to good ends.
Then, when I reach an Inn, the people are all interesting owing to the
solitude of my walks; I observe their little ways, compare landladies, and
listen to the local gossip and the trials of innkeepers’ lives. I could write at
length on this subject, but it would be rather Pickwickian. In this Hotel, we
are a happy family party, and all dine together. As I came downstairs, a
middle-aged woman was giving herself some ?nal touches before the Hall
looking-glass; she looked round quickly, and when she saw I was not the
man for whom she was doing it, she went on as before. Another middle-aged
woman, with an earnest manner and a very small waist, was in great form,
because the young man had given her a bunch of white violets, which she was
wearing. Then there was the inevitable old lady who dined at a table apart,
and only joined the conversation occasionally, throwing in a remark about
how sweet the spring ?owers are; and there was the pompous man, who was
saying, ‘Well, my opinion is that the directors have just thrown away ￡12,000
of the shareholders’ money’. Then there was myself, much ashamed of hav-
ing no change of clothes among all these respectable people, and much
despised by them for the same reason; and like the man at the helm in the
Snark, I spoke to no one and no one spoke to me; but I was well amused.
Yesterday I stayed at a place called Mevagissey, where there was a Parish
Council Election going on. The landlady’s daughter was laying my dinner
when I asked her if it was a contest of Liberal and Tory.
‘Oh no, Sir, it’s only some of them wanted to put up a Doctor, and others
said he wasn’t a Mevagissey man, and had only lived 6 or 7 years in the place.’
‘Disgraceful,’ I said.
‘Yes it is, Sir, ain’t it? And they had a show of hands and he got the worst
the autobiography of bertrand russell 164of it, but he demanded a poll and now the ?shermen hope he’ll be
turned out.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘he doesn’t seem to have much chance.’
‘You see, Sir, the people who are backing him are powerful people, they’re
?sh-buyers, and some of the ?shermen get their nets from them. Then he’s
backed up by what they call the Christians, the people who are against us
poor innkeepers.’
Oho, I thought, now I’m getting it. ‘Is he a Nonconformist?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, Sir, he’s not a churchman’ – in a tone of great contempt.
Then I found his backers were also Nonconformists, that they had made
their own money, were very kind to sober men, but very hard on drunkards;
and that several pubs had been annoyed by them. I was interested to ?nd that,
in the common parlance of church-people ‘Christian’ is the antithesis to
‘Churchman’. I found further from the Landlady that these monsters in
human shape actually proposed a new drainage scheme and a new water
supply, although the rates were already dreadfully high.
‘How high?’ I asked.
‘I couldn’t say, Sir, but I know they’re dreadfully high.’
The Doctor was not elected; but I was consoled to learn that the parson had
also been turned out. – These little distractions keep me from having a
moment’s boredom....
Yours a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
Castle Howard
York
August 15, 1904
My dear Lucy
. . . This place is a large 18th century house, embodying family pride and
the worship of reason in equal measure. It is a family party – the Murrays,
whom you know; Cecilia and Roberts – she, devoted to all her family, espe-
cially her mother, placid usually, but capable of violent sudden rage, in which
she utters magni?cent invective, though at all other times she is a fat good-
humoured saint and (oddly enough) a Christian; Roberts (her husband) tall,
thin, nervous, quivering like a poplar in the wind, an idealist disillusioned
and turned opportunist; Oliver Howard, lately back from Nigeria, where he
administered brilliantly a lately-conquered district, containing a town of
500,000 inhabitants, in which he was almost the only white man. He is
smart, thin, delicate, conventional, with a soft manner concealing an oriental
cruelty and power of fury, of which his mother is the occasion and his wife
the victim – at least probably in the future. He is very beautiful and his wife is
very pretty: both are Christians; she too is very smart and very conventional,
‘principia mathematica’ 165but she has real good nature, and is on the whole likeable. They are very
openly a?ectionate; in him, one dimly feels in the background the kind of
jealousy that would lead to murder if it saw cause. Being very like his mother
in character, he di?ers from her in every opinion, and relations are painfully
strained. – Then there is Dorothy, who seems to me just like my grandmother
Stanley – crude, sometimes cruel, plucky, very honourable, and full of
instinctive vitality and healthy animalism, oddly overlaid with her mother’s
principles. Last there is Leif Jones,
4
Lady Carlisle’s private secretary, an in?n-
itely lovable man: he does everything for everybody, has sunk his own career,
his own desires, the hope of a private life of any personal kind: and all the
family take him as a matter of course, and no more expect him to make
demands than they expect the stones to call out for food.
Lady Carlisle conducts conversation in a way which makes it a game of skill
played for high stakes. It is always argument, in which, with consummate art,
she ignores relevancy and changes the issue until she has the advantage, and
then she charges down and scatters the enemy like cha? before the wind. A
large proportion of her remarks are designed to cause pain to someone who
has shown independence or given ground for one of the thousand forms of
jealousy. She has the faults of Napoleonic women, with less mendacity and
more deliberate cruelty than in the case you know best, but with a desire to
cause quarrels and part friends which is really terrible. On the other hand, she
has really great public spirit, and devotes time and money to really important
objects. She has a just sense of values, and a kind of high-mindedness – a
most mixed and interesting character...
Yours a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
Audierne, Finistère
October 3, 1904
My dear Lucy
This is not a real letter, but only a counter-irritant to my last. As soon as
I got away I began to see things in their true proportions, and to be no longer
oppressed by the complication of things. But on the whole, I think I shall have
to avoid growing intimate with people I don’t respect, or trying to help them:
it seems to be a job for which I am not ?tted.
Brittany is quite wonderful – it has a great deal of purely rural beauty,
woods and streams and endless orchards of big red apples, scenting all the air;
and besides all this, it has a combination of the beauties of Devonshire and
Cornwall. We have been walking lately round the S.W. coast, places where the
Atlantic rules as God. Every tiny village has a huge Gothic church, usually
very beautiful; many churches stand quite by themselves, facing the sea as
relics of ancient courage. At ?rst I wondered how anyone could believe in
the autobiography of bertrand russell 166God in the presence of something so much greater and more powerful as the
sea; but very soon, the inhumanity and cruelty of the sea became so oppres-
sive that I saw how God belongs to the human world, and is, in their minds,
the Captain of an army in which they are the soldiers: God is the most
vigorous assertion that the world is not all omnipotent Matter. And so the
?shermen became and have remained the most religious population in the
world. It is a strange, desolate, wind-swept region, where long ago great
towns ?ourished, where Iseult of Brittany lived in a castle over the sea, and
where ancient legends seem far more real than anything in the life of the
present. The very children are old: they do not play or shout, like other
children: they sit still, with folded hands and faces of weary resignation,
waiting for the sorrows that time is sure to bring. The men are ?lled with
melancholy; but they escape from it by drink. I have never imagined a popula-
tion so utterly drunken; in every village we have seen men reeling into the
gutter. Ordinary days here are as bad as Bank Holiday with us – except that
I don’t think the women drink much.
A very curious contrast to the Bretons was the proprietor of the last Inn we
stayed at, at a place called St Guénolé, near the Pointe de Penmarc’h. He was
tall and very erect, with a magni?cent black beard, and quick, vigorous
dramatic movements. We were wet, so we sat in the kitchen, where he was
cooking the dinner with an energy and delight in his work which I have
never seen surpassed. We soon found that he was a Parisian, that he had a
sister married to a hotel-keeper in Lancaster, & another in the service of Lord
Gerard (!) in Egypt; that he had been cook on a Far-Eastern liner, & that he
had now at last saved up enough capital to start on a venture of his own. He
told us that he was really a sculptor, not a cook, & that in winter, when no
guests come, he devotes his time to statuary. He had a voice that would easily
have ?lled the Albert Hall, & he used it as a dinner-gong. Indeed, at all sorts
of times, from sheer good spirits, he would bellow some joke or some
command through the Hotel, so that all the walls resounded. His cooking,
needless to say, was perfect. We saw a poor ?sherman come in & sell sardines
to him for our dinner; a vast number were purchased for threepence, which,
as far as I could discover, the miserable wretch immediately spent in the bar.
Yours a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
4 Ralston Street
Tite Street, S.W.
February 8, 1905
My dear Lucy
...Now that we are back in Chelsea, I often wish you too were here again,
and when I walk the Battersea Park round, I miss you very much. There is
‘principia mathematica’ 167much too much of the Atlantic. This year, when I go walks, it is usually with
MacCarthy, whom I ?nd wonderfully soothing and restful, full of kindly
humour, which makes the world seem gay. George Trevelyan also I walk with;
but he, though he maintains that the world is better than I think, maintains it
with an air of settled gloom, by comparison with which my jokes against
optimism seem full of the joy of life! His wife, by the way, is one of the most
simply lovable people I have ever met. She has not much to say, and I often
?nd the talk ?agging when I am with her; but she is ?lled full of generous
loves and friendships, and honest and sincere in a very rare degree. She is
ignorant of the world, as everyone is who has met with nothing but kindness
and good fortune: she instinctively expects that everybody she meets will be
nice. This gives her the pathos of very young people, and makes one long to
keep sorrows away from her, well as one may know that that is impossible. I
have liked and respected other people more, with almost no desire to shield
them from pain; but towards her I feel as one does towards a child.
We see a great many people now that we are in town. Last night we dined
at the Sidney Webbs, to meet
Lion Phillimore
Mackinder, whom you doubtless remember – the head Beast of the School
of Economics
Granville Barker, the young and beautiful actor, who has been producing
Shaw’s and Murray’s plays
Sir Oliver Lodge, Scientist and Spiritualist
Arthur Balfour; and, greatest of all,
Werner, of Werner Beit and Co, the chief of all the South African million-
aires; a fat, good-natured, eupeptic German with an equally fat gold watch-
chain and a strong German accent (characteristic of all the ?nest types of
British Imperialists), bearing very lightly the load of blood, of nations des-
troyed and hatreds generated, of Chinese slavery and English corruption,
which, by all the old rules, ought to weigh upon him like a cope of lead.
It was an amusing occasion. When everyone had come except Balfour and
Werner, Mrs Webb observed that we should see which of them thought
himself the bigger swell, by which came last. Sure enough, Werner came last;
for though Balfour governs the Empire, Werner governs Balfour. Balfour was
most agreeable, absolutely free from the slightest sign of feeling himself a
personage, sympathetic, anxious to listen rather than to talk. He puts his
?nger in his mouth, with the air of a small child deep in thought. He is quite
obviously weak, obviously without strong feelings, apparently kindly, and
not apparently able; at least I saw nothing I should have recognised as show-
ing ability, except his tact, which probably is the main cause of his success.
He professed not to know whether the Government would last another
fortnight; said he could not arrange to see Shaw’s play, for fear of a General
the autobiography of bertrand russell 168Election intervening. All this I took to be blarney. He drew me out about
Moore’s philosophy, and then listened to a lecture from Mrs Webb on ‘the
?rst principles of Government, for beginners’; at least that would have been
an appropriate title for her dinner-table discourse.
Sir Oliver Lodge, though I had a prejudice against him on account of
theological di?erences, struck me as delightful: calm, philosophic, and dis-
interested. Poor Mackinder made a bee-line for Balfour, but got landed with
me, much to my amusement. It was a sore trial to his politeness, from which
he extricated himself indi?erently.
5
I am not working now, but merely seeing people and enjoying myself.
I have ?ts of depression at times, but they don’t last long. I have had a fair
share of other people’s tragedies lately; some in which intimate friends have
behaved badly, which is always painful. Others, which vex me almost more,
I only suspect and have to watch their disastrous e?ects in total impotence.
Who was the heartless fool who said that loving other people made one
happy? Still, with all its pains, it does help to make life tolerable....
Yours a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
Lower Copse
Bagley Wood, Oxford
June 13, 1905
My dear Lucy
...I did not remember (if I ever knew) that the Spectator had spoken of my
writing; your allusion makes me curious to know what it said. I have not
done any more of that sort of writing, but I have been getting on very well
with my work. For a long time I have been at intervals debating this conun-
drum: if two names or descriptions apply to the same object, whatever is true
of the one is true of the other. Now George the Fourth wished to know
whether Scott was the author of Waverley; and Scott was as a matter of fact the
same person as the author of Waverley. Hence, putting ‘Scott’ in the place of
‘the author of Waverley’, we ?nd that George the Fourth wished to know
whether Scott was Scott, which implies more interest in the Laws of Thought
than was possible for the First Gentleman of Europe. This little puzzle was
quite hard to solve; the solution, which I have now found, throws a ?ood of
light on the foundations of mathematics and on the whole problem of the
relation of thought to things. It is a great thing to ?nd a puzzle; because, so
long as it is puzzling one knows one has not got to the bottom of things. I
have hopes that I shall never again as long as I live have such di?cult work as I
had last year, and the year before; certainly this year, so far, my work has not
been nearly so hard, and I have been reaping the harvest of previous work.
This place is a very great success. The house is pretty and comfortable, my
‘principia mathematica’ 169study is so palatial that I am almost ashamed of it, and the country round has
the typical English charm of ?elds and meadows and broad open views, with
Oxford and the river besides. Alys seems to like the place thoroughly, and has
been on the whole much better than in town. I ?nd it a great advantage being
in touch with Oxford people – it is easier to keep alive my interest in work
when I can bring it into some relation with human interests. I have had to
take myself in hand rather severely, and being here has made it much more
feasible....
Do write to me again as soon as you can, and tell me about yourself and
also about Helen. Your letters are always a great pleasure to me. Just now
I am in the middle of a ?t of work; but though I shall do my best, it is likely to
stop soon. Life would be delightfully simple if one could enjoy all one’s
duties, as some people do; it would be simpler than it is if one always did the
duties one doesn’t enjoy. Failing both, it is complicated to a frightful extent.
But I live in hopes of becoming middle-aged, which, they tell me, makes
everything easy.
Yours a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
14 Barton Street
Westminster
August 3, 1905
My dear Lucy
You will probably have heard, by the time this reaches you, of the disaster
which has befallen us all. Theodore Davies, bathing alone in a pool near
Kirkby Lonsdale, was drowned; presumably by hitting his head against a rock
in diving, and so getting stunned. It is a loss, to very many, which we shall
feel as long as we live; and the loss to the public is beyond anything one can
possibly estimate. But all other losses seem as nothing compared to Cromp-
ton’s. They had been always together, they shared everything, and Theodore
was as careful of Crompton and as tender with him as any mother could have
been. Crompton bears it with wonderful courage; his mind endures it, but
I doubt whether his body will. I am here to do what I can for him – there is
little enough except to sit in silence with him and su?er as he su?ers. As soon
as he can get away, I am going abroad with him. This is Miss Sheepshanks’s
house; she and the other inmates are all away, and she has kindly lent it to me.
Alys was very much upset by the news. When we got it, we were just starting
for Ireland, to stay with the Monteagles. It seemed best for her not to be
alone, so I went over with her, and then came back here. She will be there
another 10 days or more. They are kind good people, who will take care of
her. Crompton’s sorrow is crushing, and I hardly know how to bear it. But it
is a comfort to feel able to be of some help to him. Theodore had very many
the autobiography of bertrand russell 170devoted friends, and all have done everything they could; their sympathy has
pulled Crompton through the ?rst shock, but there is a long anxious time
to come.
...I have written an article6
on George IV for ‘Mind’, which will appear in
due course; there you will ?nd the ‘answer’ ...
I am too tired to write more now. I wanted to write to you about
Theodore, but I have no thoughts for other things.
Yours a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
Rozeldene, Grayshott
Haslemere, Surrey
September 3, 1905
My dear Lucy
Thank you very much for your kind letter. Crompton and I went to France
for a fortnight, which was all the holiday he could get. I think it did him
good. We stayed ?rst with the Frys and then with the Whiteheads. I have not
seen him since we got home 10 days ago. But I feel good hopes that he will
avoid a complete collapse.
It has been, in a less degree, a rather terrible time for me too. It made
everything seem uncertain and subject to chance, so that it was hard to keep
any calm about all the goods whose loss one fears. And it brought up, as
misfortunes do, all the memories of buried griefs which one had resolved to
be done with. One after another, they burst their tombs, and wailed in the
desert spaces of one’s mind. And the case was one which admitted of no
philosophy at all – I could not see that there was anything to be said in
mitigation of the disaster. But I have got myself in hand now, and tomorrow
I go back to work, after a week’s tour by myself. This Sunday I am with my
Aunt Agatha. We talk of long-ago things, of people who are dead and old-
world memories – it is very soothing. It is odd how family feeling is stirred
by anything that makes one feel the universe one’s enemy....
Yours a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
Lower Copse
Bagley Wood, Oxford
