remember the big glass roof of the London terminus, presumably Paddington,
at which I arrived on my way and which I thought inconceivably beautiful.
What I remember of my ?rst day at Pembroke Lodge is tea in the servants’ hall.
It was a large, bare room with a long massive table with chairs and a high stool.
All the servants had their tea in this room except the house-keeper, the cook,
the lady’s maid, and the butler, who formed an aristocracy in the house-
keeper’s room. I was placed upon the high stool for tea, and what I remember
most vividly is wondering why the servants took so much interest in me. I
did not, at that time, know that I had already been the subject of serious
deliberation by the Lord Chancellor, various eminent Queen’s Counsel, and
other notable persons, nor was it until I was grown-up that I learned to know
of the strange events which had preceded my coming to Pembroke Lodge.
My father, Lord Amberley, had recently died after a long period of
gradually increasing debility. My mother and my sister had died of diphtheria
about a year and a half sooner. My mother, as I came to know her later from
her diary and her letters, was vigorous, lively, witty, serious, original, and
fearless. Judging by her pictures she must also have been beautiful. My father
was philosophical, studious, unworldly, morose, and priggish. Both were
ardent theorists of reform and prepared to put into practice whatever theory
they believed in. My father was a disciple and friend of John Stuart Mill,
from whom both learned to believe in birth-control and votes for women.
My father lost his seat in Parliament through advocacy of birth-control.
My mother sometimes got into hot water for her radical opinions. At a
garden-party given by the parents of Queen Mary, the Duchess of Cambridgeremarked in a loud voice: ‘Yes, I know who you are, you are the daughter-in-
law. But now I hear you only like dirty Radicals and dirty Americans. All
London is full of it; all the clubs are talking of it. I must look at your petticoats
to see if they are dirty.’
The following letter from the British Consul in Florence speaks for itself:
Sept. 22, 1870
Dear Lady Amberley
I am not an admirer of M. Mazzini, but have an utter detestation and
abhorrence of his character and principles. The public position which I hold,
moreover, precludes me from being the channel for his correspondence. Not
however wishing to disoblige you in this instance, I have taken the only
course which was open to me with the view to his receiving your letter, viz.
to put it in the Post to the care of the Procuratore del Re, Gaeta.
I remain,
Yours very faithfully,
A. Paget
Mazzini gave my mother his watch-case, which is now in my possession.
My mother used to address meetings in favour of votes for women, and
I found one passage in her diary where she speaks of the Potter Sisterhood,
which included Mrs Sidney Webb and Lady Courtenay, as social butter?ies.
Having in later years come to know Mrs Sidney Webb well, I conceived a
considerable respect for my mother’s seriousness when I remembered that
to her Mrs Webb seemed frivolous. From my mother’s letters, however, for
example to Henry Crompton, the Positivist, I ?nd that she was on occasion
sprightly and coquettish, so that perhaps the face she turned to the world was
less alarming than that which she presented to her diary.
My father was a free-thinker, and wrote a large book, posthumously pub-
lished, called An Analysis of Religious Belief. He had a large library containing the
Fathers, works on Buddhism, accounts of Confucianism, and so on. He spent
a great deal of time in the country in the preparation of his book. He and my
mother, however, in the earlier years of their marriage, spent some months of
each year in London, where they had a house in Dean’s Yard. My mother and
her sister, Mrs George Howard (afterwards Lady Carlisle), had rival salons. At
Mrs Howard’s salon were to be seen all the Pre-Raphaelite painters, and at my
mother’s all the British philosophers from Mill downwards.
In 1867 my parents went to America, where they made friends with all the
Radicals of Boston. They could not foresee that the men and women whose
democratic ardour they applauded and whose triumphant opposition to
slavery they admired were the grandfathers and grandmothers of those who
murdered Sacco and Vanzetti. My parents married in 1864, when they were
the autobiography of bertrand russell 6both only twenty-two. My brother, as he boasts in his autobiography, was
born nine months and four days after the wedding. Shortly before I was
born, they went to live in a very lonely house called Ravenscroft (now called
Cleiddon Hall) in a wood just above the steep banks of the Wye. From the
house, three days after I was born, my mother wrote a description of me to
her mother: ‘The baby weighed 8? lb. is 21 inches long and very fat and very
ugly very like Frank everyone thinks, blue eyes far apart and not much chin.
He is just like Frank was about nursing. I have lots of milk now, but if he does
not get it at once or has wind or anything he gets into such a rage and
screams and kicks and trembles till he is soothed o?. . . . He lifts his head up
and looks about in a very energetic way.’
They obtained for my brother a tutor, D. A. Spalding, of considerable
scienti?c ability – so at least I judge from a reference to his work in William
James’s Psychology.
1
He was a Darwinian, and was engaged in studying the
instincts of chickens, which, to facilitate his studies, were allowed to work
havoc in every room in the house, including the drawing-room. He himself
was in an advanced stage of consumption and died not very long after my
father. Apparently upon grounds of pure theory, my father and mother
decided that although he ought to remain childless on account of his tubercu-
losis, it was unfair to expect him to be celibate. My mother therefore, allowed
him to live with her, though I know of no evidence that she derived any
pleasure from doing so. This arrangement subsisted for a very short time, as it
began after my birth and I was only two years old when my mother died. My
father, however, kept on the tutor after my mother’s death, and when my
father died it was found that he had left the tutor and Cobden-Sanderson,
both atheists, to be guardians of his two sons, whom he wished to protect
from the evils of a religious upbringing. My grandparents, however, dis-
covered from his papers what had taken place in relation to my mother. This
discovery caused them the utmost Victorian horror. They decided that if
necessary they would put the law in motion to rescue innocent children from
the clutches of intriguing in?dels. The intriguing in?dels consulted Sir
Horace Davey (afterwards Lord Davey) who assured them that they would
have no case, relying, apparently, upon the Shelley precedent. My brother and
I were therefore made wards in Chancery, and Cobden-Sanderson delivered
me up to my grandparents on the day of which I have already spoken. No
doubt this history contributed to the interest which the servants took in me.
Of my mother I remember nothing whatever, though I remember falling
out of a pony carriage on an occasion when she must have been present.
I know that this recollection is genuine, because I veri?ed it at a much later
time, after having kept it to myself for a number of years. Of my father
I remember only two things: I remember his giving me a page of red print,
the colour of which delighted me, and I remember once seeing him in his
childhood 7bath. My parents had themselves buried in the garden at Ravenscroft, but
were dug up and transferred to the family vault at Chenies. A few days before
his death my father wrote the following letter to his mother.
Ravenscroft,
Wednesday at night
My dear Mama
You will be glad to hear that I mean to see Radcli?e as soon as I am able –
sorry to hear the cause. This is that I have a nasty attack of bronchitis which is
likely to keep me in bed some time. Your pencil letter came to-day, and I was
sorry to see that you too were knocked up. Exhausted as I am I may as well
write, since I cannot sleep. It would be needless to say that this attack is not
dangerous and I do not anticipate danger. But I have had too bitter experience
of the rapidity with which illnesses may go to believe in absolute safety, or
cry Peace when there is no peace. Both my lungs are in?amed and may grow
worse. I beseech you not to telegraph or take any hasty action. We have a nice
young Doctor in place of Audland, and for his own sake as just beginning to
practise here, he will do all he can for me. I repeat that I expect to recover, but
in case of a bad turn I wish to say that I look forward to dying as calmly and
unmovedly as ‘One who wraps the drapery of his couch About him and lies
down to pleasant dreams’.
For myself, no anxiety nor even shrinking; but I do feel much pain for
a few others whom I should leave, especially you. Writing in pain and weak-
ness I can o?er you only this most inadequate expression of my deep sense of
your constant and immoveable love and goodness to me, even when I may
appear not to have deserved it. It is a great matter of regret to me that I was
sometimes compelled to appear harsh; I did not wish to show anything but
a?ection. I have done very little of all I should like to have done, but I hope
that little has not been of a bad kind. I should die with the sense that one great
work of my life was accomplished. For my two darling boys I hope you
would see them much, if possible, and that they might look on you as a
mother. The burial you know would be here in my beloved wood and at
the beautiful spot already prepared for me. I can hardly hope you would be
there, but I wish it were possible to think of it.
Perhaps it is very sel?sh of me to give the pain of this letter; only I fear
another day I might be too weak to write. If I can I shall let you know daily.
I also have met with nothing but kindness and gentleness from my dear Papa
all my life, for which I am deeply grateful. I do earnestly hope that at the end
of his long and noble life he may be spared the pain of losing a son. I can only
send my best love to Agatha and Rollo and poor Willy if possible.
Your loving son,
A.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 8Pembroke Lodge, where my grandfather and grandmother lived, is a ram-
bling house of only two storeys in Richmond Park. It was in the gift of the
Sovereign, and derives its name from the Lady Pembroke to whom George III
was devoted in the days of his lunacy. The Queen had given it to my grand-
parents for their life-time in the forties, and they had lived there ever since.
The famous Cabinet meeting described in Kinglake’s Invasion of the Crimea, at
which several Cabinet Ministers slept while the Crimean War was decided
upon, took place at Pembroke Lodge. Kinglake, in later years, lived at
Richmond, and I remember him well. I once asked Sir Spencer Walpole why
Kinglake was so bitter against Napoleon III. Sir Spencer replied that they
quarrelled about a woman. ‘Will you tell me the story?’ I naturally asked. ‘No,
sir,’ he replied, ‘I shall not tell you the story.’ And shortly afterwards he died.
Pembroke Lodge had eleven acres of garden, mostly allowed to run wild.
This garden played a very large part in my life up to the age of eighteen. To
the west there was an enormous view extending from the Epsom Downs
(which I believed to be the ‘Ups and Downs’) to Windsor Castle, with
Hindhead and Leith Hill between. I grew accustomed to wide horizons and
to an unimpeded view of the sunset. And I have never since been able to live
happily without both. There were many ?ne trees, oaks, beeches, horse- and
Spanish chestnuts, and lime trees, a very beautiful cedar tree, cryptomerias
and deodaras presented by Indian princes. There were summer-houses, sweet
briar hedges, thickets of laurel, and all kinds of secret places in which it was
possible to hide from grown-up people so successfully that there was not
the slightest fear of discovery. There were several ?ower-gardens with
box-hedges. Throughout the years during which I lived at Pembroke Lodge,
the garden was growing gradually more and more neglected. Big trees fell,
shrubs grew over the paths, the grass on the lawns became long and rank, and
the box-hedges grew almost into trees. The garden seemed to remember the
days of its former splendour, when foreign ambassadors paced its lawns, and
princes admired its trim beds of ?owers. It lived in the past, and I lived in the
past with it. I wove fantasies about my parents and my sister. I imagined
the days of my grandfather’s vigour. The grown-up conversation to which
I listened was mostly of things that had happened long ago; how my grand-
father had visited Napoleon in Elba, how my grandmother’s great-uncle had
defended Gibraltar during the American War of Independence, and how her
grandfather had been cut by the County for saying that the world must have
been created before 4004 ?? because there is so much lava on the slopes of
Etna. Sometimes the conversation descended to more recent times, and
I should be told how Carlyle had called Herbert Spencer a ‘perfect vacuum’,
or how Darwin had felt it a great honour to be visited by Mr Gladstone.
My father and mother were dead, and I used to wonder what sort of people
they had been. In solitude I used to wander about the garden, alternately
childhood 9collecting birds’ eggs and meditating on the ?ight of time. If I may judge by
my own recollections, the important and formative impressions of childhood
rise to consciousness only in fugitive moments in the midst of childish
occupations, and are never mentioned to adults. I think periods of browsing
during which no occupation is imposed from without are important in
youth because they give time for the formation of these apparently fugitive
but really vital impressions.
My grandfather as I remember him was a man well past eighty, being
wheeled round the garden in a bath chair, or sitting in his room reading
Hansard. I was just six years old when he died. I remember that when on the
day of his death I saw my brother (who was at school) drive up in a cab
although it was in the middle of term, I shouted ‘Hurrah!’, and my nurse
said: ‘Hush! You must not say “Hurrah” today!’ It may be inferred from this
incident that my grandfather had no great importance to me.
My grandmother, on the contrary, who was twenty-three years younger
than he was, was the most important person to me throughout my child-
hood. She was a Scotch Presbyterian, Liberal in politics and religion (she
became a Unitarian at the age of seventy), but extremely strict in all matters
of morality. When she married my grandfather she was young and very shy.
My grandfather was a widower with two children and four step-children, and
a few years after their marriage he became Prime Minister. For her this must
have been a severe ordeal. She related how she went once as a girl to one of
the famous breakfasts given by the poet Rogers, and how, after observing her
shyness, he said: ‘Have a little tongue. You need it, my dear!’ It was obvious
from her conversation that she never came anywhere near to knowing what it
feels like to be in love. She told me once how relieved she was on her
honeymoon when her mother joined her. On another occasion she lamented
that so much poetry should be concerned with so trivial a subject as love. But
she made my grandfather a devoted wife, and never, so far as I have been able
to discover, failed to perform what her very exacting standards represented as
her duty.
As a mother and a grandmother she was deeply, but not always wisely,
solicitous. I do not think that she ever understood the claims of animal spirits
and exuberant vitality. She demanded that everything should be viewed
through a mist of Victorian sentiment. I remember trying to make her see
that it was inconsistent to demand at one and the same time that everybody
should be well housed, and yet that no new houses should be built because
they were an eye-sore. To her each sentiment had its separate rights, and must
not be asked to give place to another sentiment on account of anything so
cold as mere logic. She was cultivated according to the standards of her time;
she could speak French, German and Italian faultlessly, without the slightest
trace of accent. She knew Shakespeare, Milton, and the eighteenth-century
the autobiography of bertrand russell 10poets intimately. She could repeat the signs of the Zodiac and the names of
the Nine Muses. She had a minute knowledge of English history according to
the Whig tradition. French, German, and Italian classics were familiar to her.
Of politics since 1830 she had a close personal knowledge. But everything
that involved reasoning had been totally omitted from her education, and was
absent from her mental life. She never could understand how locks on rivers
worked, although I heard any number of people try to explain it to her. Her
morality was that of a Victorian Puritan, and nothing would have persuaded
her that a man who swore on occasion might nevertheless have some good
qualities. To this, however, there were exceptions. She knew the Miss Berrys
who were Horace Walpole’s friends, and she told me once without any
censure that ‘they were old-fashioned, they used to swear a little’. Like many
of her type she made an inconsistent exception of Byron, whom she regarded
as an unfortunate victim of an unrequited youthful love. She extended no
such tolerance to Shelley, whose life she considered wicked and whose
poetry she considered mawkish. Of Keats I do not think she had ever heard.
While she was well read in Continental classics down to Goethe and Schiller,
she knew nothing of the Continental writers of her own time. Turgeniev once
gave her one of his novels, but she never read it, or regarded him as anything
but the cousin of some friends of hers. She was aware that he wrote books,
but so did almost everybody else.
Of psychology in the modern sense, she had, of course, no vestige. Certain
motives were known to exist: love of country, public spirit, love of one’s
children, were laudable motives; love of money, love of power, vanity, were
bad motives. Good men acted from good motives always; bad men, however,
even the worst, had moments when they were not wholly bad. Marriage was
a puzzling institution. It was clearly the duty of husbands and wives to love
one another, but it was a duty they ought not to perform too easily, for if sex
attraction drew them together there must be something not quite nice about
them. Not, of course, that she would have phrased the matter in these terms.
What she would have said, and in fact did say, was: ‘You know, I never think
that the a?ection of husbands and wives is quite such a good thing as the
a?ection of parents for their children, because there is sometimes something
a little sel?sh about it.’ That was as near as her thoughts could come to such a
topic as sex. Perhaps once I heard her approach a little nearer to the forbidden
topic: that was when she said that Lord Palmerston had been peculiar among
men through the fact that he was not quite a good man. She disliked wine,
abhorred tobacco, and was always on the verge of becoming a vegetarian. Her
life was austere. She ate only the plainest food, breakfasted at eight, and until
she reached the age of eighty never sat in a comfortable chair until after tea.
She was completely unworldly, and despised those who thought anything of
worldly honours. I regret to say that her attitude to Queen Victoria was far
childhood 11from respectful. She used to relate with much amusement how one time
when she was at Windsor and feeling rather ill, the Queen had been graciously
pleased to say: ‘Lady Russell may sit down. Lady So-and-So shall stand in front
of her.’
After I reached the age of fourteen, my grandmother’s intellectual limita-
tions became trying to me, and her Puritan morality began to seem to me to
be excessive; but while I was a child her great a?ection for me, and her
intense care for my welfare, made me love her and gave me that feeling of
safety that children need. I remember when I was about four or ?ve years old
lying awake thinking how dreadful it would be when my grandmother was
dead. When she did in fact die, which was after I was married, I did not mind
at all. But in retrospect, as I have grown older, I have realised more and more
the importance she had in moulding my outlook on life. Her fearlessness,
her public spirit, her contempt for convention, and her indi?erence to the
opinion of the majority have always seemed good to me and have impressed
themselves upon me as worthy of imitation. She gave me a Bible with her
favourite texts written on the ?y-leaf. Among these was ‘Thou shalt not
follow a multitude to do evil’. Her emphasis upon this text led me in later life
to be not afraid of belonging to small minorities.
My grandmother, when I was a boy, had four surviving brothers and two
surviving sisters, all of whom used to come to Pembroke Lodge from time to
time. The oldest of the brothers was Lord Minto, whom I knew as Uncle
William. The second was Sir Henry Elliot, who had had a respectable diplo-
matic career, but of whom I remember little. The third, my Uncle Charlie,
I remember chie?y because of the length of his name on an envelope: he was
Admiral the Hon. Sir Charles Elliot, ???, and he lived at Devonport. I was told
that he was Rear Admiral and that there is a grander sort of admiral called
Admiral of the Fleet. This rather pained me and I felt he should have done
something about it. The youngest, who was a bachelor, was George Elliot, but
was known to me as Uncle Doddy. The chief thing that I was asked to notice
about him was his close resemblance to his and my grandmother’s grand-
father, Mr Brydon, who had been led into regrettable heresy by the lava on
Etna. Otherwise, Uncle Doddy was undistinguished. Of Uncle William I have
a very painful recollection: he came to Pembroke Lodge one June evening at
the end of a day of continual sunshine, every moment of which I had
enjoyed. When it became time for me to say good-night, he gravely informed
me that the human capacity for enjoyment decreases with the years and that
I should never again enjoy a summer’s day as much as the one that was now
ending. I burst into ?oods of tears and continued to weep long after I was in
bed. Subsequent experience has shown me that his remark was as untrue as it
was cruel.
The grown-ups with whom I came in contact had a remarkable incapacity
the autobiography of bertrand russell 12for understanding the intensity of childish emotions. When, at the age of
four, I was taken to be photographed in Richmond, the photographer had
di?culty in getting me to sit still, and at last promised me a sponge cake if
I would remain motionless. I had, until that moment, only had one sponge
cake in all my life and it had remained as a high point of ecstasy. I therefore
stayed as quiet as a mouse and the photograph was wholly successful. But
I never got the sponge cake.
On another occasion I heard one of the grown-ups saying to another
‘When is that young Lyon coming?’ I pricked up my ears and said ‘Is there a
lion coming?’ ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘he’s coming on Sunday. He’ll be quite tame
and you shall see him in the drawing-room.’ I counted the days till Sunday
and the hours through Sunday morning. At last I was told the young lion was
in the drawing-room and I could come and see him. I came. And he was
an ordinary young man named Lyon. I was utterly overwhelmed by the
disenchantment and still remember with anguish the depths of my despair.
To return to my grandmother’s family, I remember little of her sister Lady
Elizabeth Romilly except that she was the ?rst person from whom I heard of
Rudyard Kipling, whose Plain Tales from the Hills she greatly admired. The other
sister, Lady Charlotte Portal, whom I knew as Aunt Lottie, was more colourful.
It was said of her that as a child she had tumbled out of bed and without
waking up had murmured, ‘My head is laid low, my pride has had a fall.’ It
was also said that having heard the grown-ups talking about somnambulism
she had got up during the following night and walked about in what she
hoped was a sleep-walking manner. The grown-ups, who saw that she was
wide awake, decided to say nothing about it. Their silence next morning so
disappointed her that at last she said, ‘Did no one see me walking in my sleep
last night?’ In later life she was apt to express herself unfortunately. On one
occasion when she had to order a cab for three people, she thought a hansom
would be too small and a four-wheeler too large, so she told the footman to
fetch a three-wheeled cab. On another occasion, the footman, whose name
was George, was seeing her o? at the station when she was on her way to the
Continent. Thinking that she might have to write to him about some house-
hold matter she suddenly remembered that she did not know his surname.
Just after the train had started she put her head out of the window and called
out, ‘George, George, what’s your name?’ ‘George, My Lady’, came the answer.
By that time he was out of earshot.
Besides my grandmother there were in the house my Uncle Rollo and my
Aunt Agatha, both unmarried. My Uncle Rollo had some importance in my
early development, as he frequently talked to me about scienti?c matters, of
which he had considerable knowledge. He su?ered all his life from a morbid
shyness so intense as to prevent him from achieving anything that involved
contact with other human beings. But with me, so long as I was a child, he
childhood 13was not shy, and he used to display a vein of droll humour of which adults
would not have suspected him. I remember asking him once why they had
coloured glass in church windows. He informed me very gravely that in
former times this had not been so, but that once, just after the clergyman had
gone up into the pulpit, he saw a man walking along with a pail of white-
wash on his head and the bottom of the pail fell out and the man was covered
with whitewash. This caused in the poor clergyman such an uncontrollable
?t of laughter that he was unable to proceed with the sermon, and ever since
this they had had coloured glass in church windows. He had been in the
Foreign O?ce, but he had trouble with his eyes, and when I ?rst knew him
he was unable to read or write. His eyes improved later, but he never again
attempted any kind of routine work. He was a meteorologist, and did valu-
able investigations of the e?ects of the Krakatoa eruption of 1883, which
produced in England strange sunsets and even a blue moon. He used to talk
to me about the evidence that Krakatoa had caused the sunsets, and I listened to
him with profound attention. His conversation did a great deal to stimulate
my scienti?c interests.
My Aunt Agatha was the youngest of the grown-up people at Pembroke
Lodge. She was, in fact, only nineteen years older than I was, so when I came
there she was twenty-two. During my ?rst years at Pembroke Lodge, she
made various attempts to educate me, but without much success. She had
three brightly coloured balls, one red, one yellow, and one blue. She would
hold up the red ball and say: ‘What colour is that?’ and I would say, ‘Yellow’.
She would then hold it against her canary and say: ‘Do you think that it is
the same colour as the canary?’ I would say, ‘No’, but as I did not know the
canary was yellow it did not help much. I suppose I must have learned the
colours in time, but I can only remember not knowing them. Then she tried
to teach me to read, but that was quite beyond me. There was only one word
that I ever succeeded in reading so long as she taught me, and that was the
word ‘or’. The other words, though equally short, I could never remember.
She must have become discouraged, since shortly before I was ?ve years old
I was handed over to a kindergarten, which ?nally succeeded in teaching me
the di?cult art of reading. When I was six or seven she took me in hand again
and taught me English Constitutional history. This interested me very much
indeed, and I remember to this day much of what she taught me.
I still possess the little book in which I wrote down her questions and
answers, both dictated. A few samples will illustrate the point of view.
Q. What did Henry II and Thomas Becket quarrel about?
A. Henry wished to put a stop to the evils which had arisen in consequence
of the Bishops having courts of their own, so that the church law was
separated from the common law of the land. Becket refused to lessen the
the autobiography of bertrand russell 14power of the Bishops’ Courts, but at last he was persuaded to agree to the
