He was, as anyone may see from his books, a very rigid moralist and by no
means politically sympathetic with revolutionaries. He and I were in most of
our opinions by no means in agreement, but in something very fundamental
we were extraordinarily at one.
My relation to Joseph Conrad was unlike any other that I have ever had. I
saw him seldom, and not over a long period of years. In the out-works of our
lives, we were almost strangers, but we shared a certain outlook on human
life and human destiny, which, from the very ?rst, made a bond of extreme
strength. I may perhaps be pardoned for quoting a sentence from a letter that
he wrote to me very soon after we had become acquainted. I should feel that
modesty forbids the quotation except for the fact that it expresses so exactly
what I felt about him. What he expressed and I equally felt was, in his words,
‘A deep admiring a?ection which, if you were never to see me again and
forgot my existence tomorrow, would be unalterably yours usque ad ?nem’.
Of all that he had written I admired most the terrible story called The Heart
of Darkness, in which a rather weak idealist is driven mad by horror of the
tropical forest and loneliness among savages. This story expresses, I think,
most completely his philosophy of life. I felt, though I do not know whether
he would have accepted such an image, that he thought of civilised and
morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely
cooled lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into
?ery depths. He was very conscious of the various forms of passionate mad-
ness to which men are prone, and it was this that gave him such a profound
belief in the importance of discipline. His point of view, one might perhaps
say, was the antithesis of Rousseau’s: ‘Man is born in chains, but he can
become free.’ He becomes free, so I believe Conrad would have said, not by
cambridge again 201letting loose his impulses, not by being casual and uncontrolled, but by
subduing wayward impulse to a dominant purpose.
He was not much interested in political systems, though he had some
strong political feelings. The strongest of these were love of England and
hatred of Russia, of which both are expressed in The Secret Agent; and the hatred
of Russia, both Czarist and revolutionary, is set forth with great power in
Under Western Eyes. His dislike of Russia was that which was traditional in
Poland. It went so far that he would not allow merit to either Tolstoy or
Dostoievsky. Turgeniev, he told me once, was the only Russian novelist whom
he admired.
Except for love of England and hatred of Russia, politics did not much
concern him. What interested him was the individual human soul faced with
the indi?erence of nature, and often with the hostility of man, and subject
to inner struggles with passions both good and bad that led towards destruc-
tion. Tragedies of loneliness occupied a great part of his thought and feeling.
One of his most typical stories is Typhoon. In this story the Captain, who is a
simple soul, pulls his ship through by unshakeable courage and grim
determination. When the storm is over, he writes a long letter to his wife,
telling about it. In his account his own part is, to him, perfectly simple. He
has merely performed his Captain’s duty as, of course, anyone would expect.
But the reader, through his narrative, becomes aware of all that he has done
and dared and endured. The letter, before he sends it o?, is read surrepti-
tiously by his steward, but is never read by anyone else at all because his wife
?nds it boring and throws it away unread.
The two things that seem most to occupy Conrad’s imagination are
loneliness and fear of what is strange. An Outcast of the Islands like The Heart of
Darkness is concerned with fear of what is strange. Both come together in the
extraordinarily moving story called Amy Foster. In this story a South-Slav peas-
ant, on his way to America, is the sole survivor of the wreck of his ship, and is
cast away in a Kentish village. All the village fears and ill-treats him, except
Amy Foster, a dull, plain girl who brings him bread when he is starving and
?nally marries him. But she, too, when, in fever, he reverts to his native
language, is seized with a fear of his strangeness, snatches up their child and
abandons him. He dies alone and hopeless. I have wondered at times how
much of this man’s loneliness Conrad had felt among the English and had
suppressed by a stern e?ort of will.
Conrad’s point of view was far from modern. In the modern world there are
two philosophies: the one which stems from Rousseau, and sweeps aside
discipline as unnecessary, the other, which ?nds its fullest expression in totali-
tarianism, which thinks of discipline as essentially imposed from without.
Conrad adhered to the older tradition, that discipline should come from
within. He despised indiscipline and hated discipline that was merely external.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 202In all this I found myself closely in agreement with him. At our very ?rst
meeting, we talked with continually increasing intimacy. We seemed to sink
through layer after layer of what was super?cial, till gradually both reached
the central ?re. It was an experience unlike any other that I have known. We
looked into each other’s eyes, half appalled and half intoxicated to ?nd our-
selves together in such a region. The emotion was as intense as passionate
love, and at the same time all-embracing. I came away bewildered, and hardly
able to ?nd my way among ordinary a?airs.
I saw nothing of Conrad during the war or after it until my return from
China in 1921. When my ?rst son was born in that year I wished Conrad to
be as nearly his godfather as was possible without a formal ceremony. I wrote
to Conrad saying: ‘I wish, with your permission, to call my son John Conrad.
My father was called John, my grandfather was called John, and my great
grandfather was called John; and Conrad is a name in which I see merits.’ He
accepted the position and duly presented my son with the cup which is usual
on such occasions.
I did not see much of him, as I lived most of the year in Cornwall, and his
health was failing. But I had some charming letters from him, especially one
about my book on China. He wrote: ‘I have always liked the Chinese, even
those that tried to kill me (and some other people) in the yard of a private
house in Chantabun, even (but not so much) the fellow who stole all my
money one night in Bangkok, but brushed and folded my clothes neatly for me
to dress in the morning, before vanishing into the depths of Siam. I also
received many kindnesses at the hands of various Chinese. This with the
addition of an evening’s conversation with the secretary of His Excellency
Tseng on the verandah of an hotel and a perfunctory study of a poem, “The
Heathen Chinee”, is all I know about the Chinese. But after reading your
extremely interesting view of the Chinese Problem I take a gloomy view of
the future of their country.’ He went on to say that my views of the future of
China ‘strike a chill into one’s soul’, the more so, he said, as I pinned my
hopes on international socialism – ‘The sort of thing’, he commented, ‘to
which I cannot attach any sort of de?nite meaning. I have never been able
to ?nd in any man’s book or any man’s talk anything convincing enough to
stand up for a moment against my deep-seated sense of fatality governing this
man-inhabited world.’ He went on to say that although man has taken to
?ying, ‘he doesn’t ?y like an eagle, he ?ies like a beetle. And you must have
noticed how ugly, ridiculous and fatuous is the ?ight of a beetle.’ In these
pessimistic remarks, I felt that he was showing a deeper wisdom than I had
shown in my somewhat arti?cial hopes for a happy issue in China. It must be
said that so far events have proved him right.
This letter was my last contact with him. I never again saw him to speak to.
Once I saw him across the street, in earnest conversation with a man I did not
cambridge again 203know, standing outside the door of what had been my grandmother’s house,
but after her death had become the Arts Club. I did not like to interrupt
what seemed a serious conversation, and I went away. When he died,
shortly afterwards, I was sorry I had not been bolder. The house is gone,
demolished by Hitler. Conrad, I suppose, is in process of being forgotten, but
his intense and passionate nobility shines in my memory like a star seen from
the bottom of a well. I wish I could make his light shine for others as it
shone for me.
I was invited to give the Lowell lectures in Boston during the spring of
1914, and concurrently to act as temporary professor of philosophy at
Harvard. I announced the subject of my Lowell lectures, but could not think
of anything to say. I used to sit in the parlour of ‘The Beetle and Wedge’ at
Moulsford, wondering what there was to say about our knowledge of the
external world, on which before long I had to deliver a course of lectures. I
got back to Cambridge from Rome on New Year’s Day 1914, and, thinking
that the time had come when I really must get my lectures prepared, I
arranged for a shorthand typist to come next day, though I had not the
vaguest idea what I should say to her when she came. As she entered the
room, my ideas fell into place, and I dictated in a completely orderly
sequence from that moment until the work was ?nished. What I dictated to
her was subsequently published as a book with the title Our Knowledge of the
External World as a Field for Scienti?c Method in Philosophy.
I sailed on the Mauretania on March 7th. Sir Hugh Bell was on the ship. His
wife spent the whole voyage looking for him, or ?nding him with a pretty
girl. Whenever I met him after the sinking of the Lusitania, I found him
asserting that it was on the Lusitania he had sailed.
I travelled straight from New York to Boston, and was made to feel at home
in the train by the fact that my two neighbours were talking to each other
about George Trevelyan. At Harvard I met all the professors. I am proud to say
that I took a violent dislike to Professor Lowell, who subsequently assisted in
the murder of Sacco and Vanzetti. I had at that time no reason to dislike him,
but the feeling was just as strong as it was in later years, when his qualities as
a saviour of society had been manifested. Every professor to whom I was
introduced in Harvard made me the following speech: ‘Our philosophical
faculty, Dr Russell, as doubtless you are aware, has lately su?ered three great
losses. We have lost our esteemed colleague, Professor William James,
through his lamented death; Professor Santayana, for reasons which doubtless
appear to him to be su?cient, has taken up his residence in Europe; last, but
not least, Professor Royce, who, I am happy to say, is still with us, has had a
stroke.’ This speech was delivered slowly, seriously, and pompously. The
time came when I felt that I must do something about it. So the next time
that I was introduced to a professor, I rattled o? the speech myself at
the autobiography of bertrand russell 204top speed. This device, however, proved worthless. ‘Yes, Dr Russell,’ the
professor replied: ‘As you very justly observe, our philosophical faculty. . . .’
and so the speech went on to its inexorable conclusion. I do not know
whether this is a fact about professors or a fact about Americans. I think,
however, that it is the former. I noticed another fact about Harvard professors:
that when I dined with them, they would always tell me the way home,
although I had had to ?nd their house without this assistance. There were
limitations to Harvard culture. Scho?eld, the professor of Fine Arts, considered
Alfred Noyes a very good poet.
On the other hand, the students, especially the post-graduates, made a
great impression upon me. The Harvard school of philosophy, until the three
great losses mentioned above, had been the best in the world. I had stayed
with William James at Harvard in 1896, and I had admired Royce’s
determination to introduce mathematical logic into the philosophical curric-
ulum. Santayana, who had a great friendship for my brother, had been known
to me since 1893, and I admired him as much as I disagreed with him. The
tradition of these men was still strong. Ralph Barton Perry was doing his best
to take their place, and was inspired with the full vigour of what was called
‘the new realism’. He had married Berenson’s sister. He already displayed,
however, something of that New England moralism which caused him to be
intellectually ruined by the ?rst War. On one occasion he met, in my rooms,
Rupert Brooke, of whom he had not then heard. Rupert was on his way back
from the South Sea Islands, and discoursed at length about the decay of
manhood in these regions produced by the cessation of cannibalism.
Professor Perry was pained, for is not cannibalism a sin? I have no doubt that
when Rupert died, Professor Perry joined in his apotheosis, and I do not
suppose he ever realised that the ?ippant young man he had met in my rooms
was identical with the golden-haired god who had given his life for his
country.
The students, however, as I said before, were admirable. I had a post-
graduate class of twelve, who used to come to tea with me once a week. One
of them was T. S. Eliot, who subsequently wrote a poem about it, called
‘Mr Apollinax’. I did not know at the time that Eliot wrote poetry. He had, I
think, already written ‘A Portrait of a Lady’, and ‘Prufrock’, but he did not see
?t to mention the fact. He was extraordinarily silent, and only once made a
remark which struck me. I was praising Heraclitus, and he observed: ‘Yes, he
always reminds me of Villon.’ I thought this remark so good that I always
wished he would make another. Another pupil who interested me was a man
called Demos. He was a Greek whose father, having been converted by the
missionaries, was an evangelical minister. Demos had been brought up in
Asia Minor, and has risen to be librarian of some small library there, but
when he had read all the books in that library he felt that Asia Minor had
cambridge again 205nothing further to o?er him. He therefore saved up until he could a?ord a
passage, steerage, to Boston. Having arrived there, he ?rst got a job as a waiter
in a restaurant, and then entered Harvard. He worked hard, and had consider-
able ability. In the course of nature he ultimately became a professor.
His intellect was not free from the usual limitations. He explained to me in
1917 that while he could see through the case made by the other belligerents
for their participation in the war, and perceived clearly that their arguments
were humbug, the matter was quite di?erent in the case of Greece, which
was coming in on a genuine moral issue.
When the Harvard term came to an end, I gave single lectures in a few
other universities. Among others I went to Ann Arbor, where the president
showed me all the new buildings, more especially the library, of which he
was very proud. It appeared that the library had the most scienti?c card-index
in the world, and that its method of central heating was extraordinarily up-
to-date. While he was explaining all this, we were standing in the middle of a
large room with admirable desks. ‘And does anybody ever read the books?’ I
asked. He seemed surprised, but answered: ‘Why yes, there is a man over
there now reading.’ We went to look, and found that he was reading a novel.
From Ann Arbor I went to Chicago, where I stayed with an eminent
gynaecologist and his family. This gynaecologist had written a book on
the diseases of women containing a coloured frontispiece of the uterus. He
presented this book to me, but I found it somewhat embarrassing, and
ultimately gave it to a medical friend. In theology he was a free-thinker, but
in morals a frigid Puritan. He was obviously a man of very strong sexual
passions, and his face was ravaged by the e?ort of self-control. His wife was a
charming old lady, rather shrewd within her limitations, but something of a
trial to the younger generation. They had four daughters and a son, but the
son, who died shortly after the war, I never met. One of their daughters came
to Oxford to work at Greek under Gilbert Murray, while I was living at Bagley
Wood, and brought an introduction to Alys and me from her teacher of
English literature at Bryn Mawr. I only saw the girl a few times at Oxford, but I
found her very interesting, and wished to know her better. When I was
coming to Chicago, she wrote and invited me to stay at her parents’ house.
She met me at the station, and I at once felt more at home with her than I had
with anybody else that I had met in America. I found that she wrote rather
good poetry, and that her feeling for literature was remarkable and unusual. I
spent two nights under her parents’ roof, and the second I spent with her. Her
three sisters mounted guard to give warning if either of the parents
approached. She was very delightful, not beautiful in the conventional sense,
but passionate, poetic, and strange. Her youth had been lonely and unhappy,
and it seemed that I could give her what she wanted. We agreed that she
should come to England as soon as possible and that we would live together
the autobiography of bertrand russell 206openly, perhaps marrying later on if a divorce could be obtained. Immedi-
ately after this I returned to England. On the boat I wrote to Ottoline telling
her what had occurred. My letter crossed one from her, saying that she
wished our relations henceforth to be platonic. My news and the fact that in
America I had been cured of pyorrhoea caused her to change her mind.
Ottoline could still, when she chose, be a lover so delightful that to leave her
seemed impossible, but for a long time past she had seldom been at her best
with me. I returned to England in June, and found her in London. We took to
going to Burnham Beeches every Tuesday for the day. The last of these
expeditions was on the day on which Austria declared war on Serbia.
Ottoline was at her best. Meanwhile, the girl in Chicago had induced her
father, who remained in ignorance, to take her to Europe. They sailed on
August 3rd. When she arrived I could think of nothing but the war, and as I
had determined to come out publicly against it, I did not wish to complicate
my position with a private scandal, which would have made anything that I
might say of no account. I felt it therefore impossible to carry out what we
had planned. She stayed in England and I had relations with her from time to
time, but the shock of the war killed my passion for her, and I broke her
heart. Ultimately she fell a victim to a rare disease, which ?rst paralysed her,
and then made her insane. In her insanity she told her father all that had
happened. The last time I saw her was in 1924. At that time paralysis made
her incapable of walking, but she was enjoying a lucid interval. When I
talked with her, however, I could feel dark, insane thoughts lurking in the
background. I understand that since then she had no lucid intervals. Before
insanity attacked her, she had a rare and remarkable mind, and a disposition
as lovable as it was unusual. If the war had not intervened, the plan which we
formed in Chicago might have brought great happiness to us both. I feel still
the sorrow of this tragedy.
LETTERS
Jan. 15, 1911
Colonial Club
Cambridge, Mass.
Dear Russell
It is rather late to thank you for your Philosophical Essays, but you may
soon see unmistakable evidence of the great interest I have taken in them, as I
am writing an elaborate review – in three articles – for the Whited Sepulchre –
which is what we call the Columbia Journal of Philosophy, etc. You will not expect
me to agree with you in everything, but, whatever you may think of my ideas,
I always feel that yours, and Moore’s too, make for the sort of reconstruction
in philosophy which I should welcome. It is a great bond to dislike the same
cambridge again 207things, and dislike is perhaps a deeper indication of our real nature than
explicit a?ections, since the latter may be e?ects of circumstances, while
dislike is a reaction against them.
I had hoped to go to Cambridge in June, but now it is arranged that I shall
go instead to California, where I have never been. I am both glad and sorry
for this, but it seemed as well to see the Far West once in one’s life, especially
as I hope soon to turn my face resolutely in the opposite direction.
Thank you again very much for sending me the book.
Yours sincerely
G. Santayana
(June 1911)
Newnham College
Cambridge
Dear Bertie
I have heard from Alys. I cannot help saying how sad I am for you as well as
her – you have been thro’ hell I know – that is written in your face.
May I say just this? You have always stood to me for goodness and asceti-
cism – I shall always think of you – till you tell me not – as doing the straight
hard thing.
Yours always
Jane E. Harrison
This needs no answer, forgive my writing it. You have been thro’ too
much these last days to want to see people, but I am always glad when
you come.
Telegraph House
Chichester
6 June, 1911
My dear Bertie
Mollie and I have both received your news with much regret. We had as
you say an idea, but only an idea, that the original devotion had rather passed
away, and that you found each other trying, but we hoped nothing so de?nite
as a separation would result. People of good manners can often manage to get
on in the same house, once they have agreed to di?er, and I hope for the
comfort of both of you, and your friends, that this may still be the case. But of
that of course you are the only possible judges.
In the meantime we can only regret the annoyance any such rearrange-
ment causes, and the break up of a union which seemed to promise well at
the beginning. A broken marriage is always a tragedy.
Yours a?ectionately
Russell
the autobiography of bertrand russell 208Trinity College
Cambridge
June 11th, 1911
My dear Gilbert
Thank you very much indeed for your kind letter. The decision3
as you
know, is not sudden or hasty; and though the present is painful, I feel no
doubt that both will in the long run be happier.
It is true that I have seen less of you than formerly – I wish it were not. But
business and work seem to overwhelm one more and more. During the time I
lived at Oxford I never could shake o? work except by going away. I suppose
that is the essence of middle age. But I do not ?nd, on that account, that my
a?ections grow less – it is only the outward show that su?ers.
Please give my love to Mary.
Yours ever
Bertrand Russell
June 17, 1911
I Tatti
Settignano (Florence)
My dear Bertie
I have just received a telegram, telling me of Karin’s success in her Tripos,
and I cannot help writing to express my gratitude to you for your over-
whelming share in bringing this about. I feel most sincerely grateful. I
cannot but hope further work of the same nature may be temptingly put in
her way, for she seems to have a capacity to do it well, and it might ‘make a
man of her’, so to speak. So I beg of you to continue to bear the child in
mind, and suggest her doing any work that you may think it worth while
for her to do.
I won’t say anything about the decision you and Alys have come to, except
to send you my love and sympathy in all you have certainly su?ered over it,
and to assure you of B. B.’s and my continued friendliness and good wishes.
Yours always a?ectionately
Mary Berenson
(From Gilbert Murray, on The Home University Library
Problems of Philosophy) 14 Henrietta Street
Covent Garden, W.C.
August 10, 1911
Messrs Williams and Norgate4
will be glad to meet Mr Russell’s wishes as
far as practicable, but have some di?culty in understanding his point of view.
About the earwig, for instance, they are ready, if Mr Russell is inconvenienced
cambridge again 209by his suspicions of its presence in his room, to pay a rat-catcher (who is also
accustomed to earwigs) two-shillings an hour to look for it and make sure,
provided the total payment does not exceed Ten Shillings. (10s.) The animal,
if caught, shall be regarded as Mr Russell’s property, but in no case shall its
capture, or the failure to capture it, be held as exonerating Mr Russell from
his contract with Messrs W & N. Mr Russell’s further complaint that he has
not the acquaintance of the Emperor of China cannot be regarded by Messrs
W & N as due in any way to any oversight or neglect of theirs. Mr R should
have stipulated for an introduction before signing his contract. As to Mr
Russell’s memory of his breakfast and his constantly returning alarm lest his
next meal should poison him, Messrs W & N express their fullest sympathy
with Mr R in his trying situation, but would point out that remonstrances
should be addressed not to them but to the Head Cook at Trinity College. In
the meantime they trust that they do not exceed their duty in reminding Mr
Russell that, in his own words, a philosopher should not always have his
mind centred upon such subjects. They would observe further that their
senior editor is much grati?ed by Mr Russell’s frank admission that a bald
man is, nevertheless, a man, while his next sentence has caused some little
trouble among the sta?. All three editors have rather good ?gures; at least
there is no one among them who could be called conspicuously ‘plain’ in
that respect. Perhaps Mr Russell referred to Mr Perris?
5
If so, however, we do
not quite understand who is meant by the poet. We would almost venture
to suggest the omission of all these personalities. When gratifying to one
individual, they nearly always give pain to others.
The Mischief Inn,
Madingley Road
26. VIII. 11
Dear Russell
I send you all I can ?nd of the notes Frege sent me on my account of his
work.
Hardy told me of your translation into symbolism of the Deceased Wife’s
Sister Bill. If you have time would you send it to me to include in the
‘Philosophy of Mr B — R —’.
6
Also Hardy told me of your proof of the
existence of God by an in?nite complex of false propositions.
7
May I have
this too?
Yrs. ever
Philip Jourdain
