Then I told them that I wanted a Frenchman but that any blinking Frenchie
wouldn’t do . . . that mine was a psychological school and any teacher had to
be not only an expert in his subject but also in handling neurotic kids.
Apart from this display of what you call Bumbledom I guess that there will
the autobiography of bertrand russell 402be some battle when Trevelyan’s Committee on Private Schools issues its
report. You and I will have to ?ght like hell against having a few stupid
inspectors mucking about demanding why Tommy can’t read. Any inspector
coming to me now would certainly be greeted by Colin (aged 6) with the
friendly words, ‘Who the fucking hell are you?’ So that we must ?ght to keep
Whitehall out of our schools.
I’ll let you know what happens.
Many thanks,
Yours
A. S. Neill
About time that you and I met again and compared notes.
Leiston. 31.12.30
Dear Russell
You have done the deed. The letter [from the Ministry of Labour] is a nasty
one but I guess that the bloke as wrote it was in a nasty position. Sounds to
me like a good prose Hymn of Hate.
I have agreed to his conditions . . . feeling like slapping the blighter in the
eye at the same time. It is my ?rst experience with the bureaucracy and I am
apt to forget that I am dealing with a machine.
Many thanks for your ready help. My next approach to you may be when
the Committee on Private Schools gets busy. They will call in all the respect-
able old deadheads of education as expert witnesses (Badley and Co) and
unless men of moment like you make a ?ght for it we (the out and outer
Bolshies of education) will be ignored. Then we’ll have to put up with the
nice rules advocated by the diehards. Can’t we get up a league of heretical
dominies called the ‘Anal’-ists?
Yours with much gratitude
A. S. Neill
5th Jan. 31
Dear Neill
Thank you for your letter and for the information about your French
teacher. I am sorry you accepted the Ministry of Labour’s terms, as they were
on the run and could, I think, have been induced to grant unconditional
permission.
I suppose you do not mind if I express to Miss Bond?eld my low opinion
of her o?cials, and to Trevelyan my ditto of Miss Bond?eld? It is quite
possible that the Ministry may still decide to let you keep your present master
inde?nitely. I am going away for a short holiday, and I am therefore dictating
these letters now to my secretary who will not send them until she hears
second marriage 403from you that you are willing they should go. Will you therefore be so kind
as to send a line to her (Mrs O. Harrington), and not to me, as to whether you
are willing the letters should go.
Yours ever
Bertrand Russell
Neill agreed to my sending the following letters:
To Miss Bond?eld
12th Jan. 31
Dear Miss Bond?eld
I am much obliged to you for looking into the matter of Mr A. S. Neill’s
French teacher. I doubt whether you are aware that in granting him permission
to retain his present teacher for one year your o?ce made it a condition that he
should not even ask to retain his present teacher after the end of that year.
I do not believe that you have at any time been in charge of a school, but if
you had, you would know that to change one’s teachers once a year is to
increase enormously the di?culty of achieving any kind of success. What
would the headmaster of one of our great public schools say to your o?ce if it
were to insist that he should change his teachers once a year? Mr Neill is
attempting an experiment which everybody interested in modern education
considers very important, and it seems a pity that the activities of the Govern-
ment in regard to him should be con?ned to making a fair trial of the experi-
ment impossible. I have no doubt whatever that you will agree with me in this,
and that some subordinate has failed to carry out your wishes in this matter.
With apologies for troubling you,
I remain
Yours sincerely
Bertrand Russell
To Charles Trevelyan
12th Jan. 31
Dear Charles
Thank you very much for the trouble you have taken in regard to the
French teacher at A. S. Neill’s school. The Ministry of Labour have granted
him permission to stay for one year, but on condition that Neill does not ask
to have his leave extended beyond that time. You will, I think, agree with me
that this is an extraordinary condition to have made. Neill has accepted it, as
he has to yield to force majeure, but there cannot be any conceivable justi?cation
for it. Anybody who has ever run a school knows that perpetual change of
masters is intolerable. What would the Headmaster of Harrow think if the
Ministry of Labour obliged him to change his masters once a year?
the autobiography of bertrand russell 404Neill is trying an experiment which everybody interested in education
considers most important, and Whitehall is doing what it can to make
it a failure. I do not myself feel bound by Neill’s undertaking, and I see no
reason why intelligent people who are doing important work should submit
tamely to the dictation of ignorant busybodies, such as the o?cials in the
Ministry of Labour appear to be. I am quite sure that you agree with me
in this.
Thanking you again,
Yours very sincerely
Bertrand Russell
To and from A. S. Neill
27th Jan. 31
Dear Neill
As you will see from the enclosed, there is nothing to be got out of the
Ministry of Labour.
I have written a reply which I enclose, but I have not sent it. If you think
it will further your case, you are at liberty to send it; but remember Miss
Bond?eld is celibate.
Yours ever
Bertrand Russell
The enclosed reply to the Ministry of Labour:
27th Jan. 31
Dear Sir
Thank you very much for your letter of January 26th. I quite understand
the principle of con?ning employment as far as possible to the British with-
out regard for e?ciency. I think, however, that the Ministry is not applying
the principle su?ciently widely. I know many Englishmen who have married
foreigners, and many English potential wives who are out of a job. Would not
a year be long enough to train an English wife to replace the existing foreign
one in such cases?
Yours faithfully
Bertrand Russell
Summerhill School
Leiston, Su?olk
28.1.31
Dear Russell
No, there is no point in replying to the people. Very likely the chief aim in
govt o?ces is to save the face of the o?cials. If my man wants to stay on later
second marriage 405I may wangle it by getting him to invest some cash in the school and teach on
?? ?? ???????? of labour. Anyway you accomplished a lot as it is. Many
thanks. I think I’ll vote Tory next time!
Today I have a letter from the widow of Norman MacMunn. She seems to
be penniless and asks me for a job as matron. I can’t give her one and don’t
suppose you can either. I have advised her to apply to our millionaire friends
in Dartington Hall. I am always sending on the needy to them . . . hating
them all the time for their a?uence. When Elmhirst needs a new wing he
writes out a cheque to Heals . . . Heals! And here am I absolutely gravelled to
raise cash for a pottery shed. Pioneering is a wash out, man. I am getting
weary of cleaning up the mess that parents make. At present I have a lad of six
who shits his pants six times daily . . . his dear mamma ‘cured’ him by
making him eat the shit. I get no gratitude at all . . . when after years of labour
I cure this lad the mother will send him to a ‘nice’ school. It ain’t good
enough . . . o?cial indi?erence or potential enmity, parental jealousy . . . the
only joy is in the kids themselves. One day I’ll chuck it all and start a nice
hotel round about Salzburg.
You’ll gather that I am rather fed up this morning. I’d like to meet you again
and have a yarn. Today my Stimmung is partly due to news of another debt . . .
￡150 this last year all told. All parents whose problems I bettered.
Yours
A. S. Neill
I wonder what Margaret Bond?eld’s views would be on my views on
Onanie!
31st Jan. 31
Dear Neill
I am sorry you are feeling so fed up. It is a normal mood with me so far as
the school is concerned. Parents owe me altogether about ￡500 which I shall
certainly never see. I have my doubts as to whether you would ?nd hotel
keeping much better. You would ?nd penniless pregnant unmarried women
left on your hands, and would undertake the care of them and their children
for the rest of their natural lives. You might ?nd this scarcely more lucrative
than a modern school. Nobody can make a living, except by dishonesty or
cruelty, at no matter what trade.
It is all very sad about Elmhirst. However, I always think that a man who
marries money has to work for his living. I have no room for a Matron at the
moment, having at last obtained one who is completely satisfactory.
I have sometimes attempted in a mild way to get a little ?nancial support
from people who think they believe in modern education, but I have found
the thing that stood most in my way was the fact which leaked out, that I do
the autobiography of bertrand russell 406not absolutely insist upon strict sexual virtue on the part of the sta?. I found
that even people who think themselves quite advanced believe that only the
sexually starved can exert a wholesome moral in?uence.
Your story about the boy who shits in his pants is horrible. I have not had
any cases as bad as that to deal with.
I should very much like to see you again. Perhaps we could meet in
London at some time or other...
Yours
Bertrand Russell
From Mrs Bernard Shaw Ayot St Lawrence
Welwyn, Herts.
28 Oct. 1928
Dear Bertrand Russell
I was grateful and honoured by your splendidness in sending me your MS.
of your lecture and saying I may keep it. It’s wonderful of you. I have read it
once, and shall keep it as you permit until I have time for another good, quiet
go at it.
You know you have a humble, but convinced admirer in me. I have a very
strong mystical turn in me, which does not appear in public, and I ?nd your
stu? the best corrective and steadier I ever came across!
My best remembrances to you both. I hope the school is ?ourishing.
Yours gratefully
C. F. Shaw
To C. P. Sanger Telegraph House
Harting, Peters?eld
23 Dec. 1929
My dear Charlie
I am very sorry indeed to hear that you are so ill. I do hope you will soon
be better. Whenever the Doctors will let me I will come and see you. It is a
year today since Kate’s operation, when you were so kind – I remember how
Kate loved your visits. Dear Charlie, I don’t think I have ever expressed the
deep a?ection I have for you, but I suppose you have known of it.
I got home three days ago and found everything here satisfactory. The
children are ?ourishing, and it is delicious to be at home. One feels very far
o? in California and such places. I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons
tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought
it was no religion for me.
My warmest good wishes for a speedy recovery,
Yours very a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
second marriage 407From Lord Rutherford
Newnham Cottage
Queen’s Road
Cambridge
March 9, 1931
Dear Bertrand Russell
I have just been reading with much interest and pro?t your book The
Conquest of Happiness & I would like to thank you for a most stimulating
and I think valuable analysis of the factors concerned. The chief point where
I could not altogether agree was in your treatment of the factors of envy
& jealousy. Even in the simple – and I agree with you – fundamentally happy
life of the scienti?c man, one has naturally sometimes encountered examples
of this failing but either I have been unusually fortunate or it may be too
obtuse to notice it in the great majority of my friends. I have known a
number of men leading simple lives whether on the land or in the laboratory
who seemed to me singularly free from this failing. I quite agree with you
that it is most obtrusive in those who are unduly class-conscious. These
remarks are not in criticism but a mere personal statement of my own
observations in these directions.
I was very sorry to hear of the sudden death of your brother whom I knew
only slightly, and I sympathise with you in your loss. I hope, however, you
will be interested enough to take some part in debates in the House of Lords
in the future.
Yours sincerely
Rutherford
the autobiography of bertrand russell 40812
LATER YEARS OF
TELEGRAPH HOUSE
When I left Dora, she continued the school until after the beginning of the
Second War, though after 1934 it was no longer at Telegraph House. John and
Kate were made wards in Chancery and were sent to Dartington school where
they were very happy.
I spent a summer at Hendaye and for part of another summer took the
Gerald Brenans’ house near Malaga. I had not known either of the Brenans
before this and I found them interesting and delightful. Gamel Brenan
surprised me by turning out to be a scholar of great erudition and wide
interests, full of all sorts of scraps of out-of-the-way knowledge and a poet
of haunting and learned rhythms. We have kept up our friendship and
she visits us sometimes – a lovely autumnal person.
I spent the summer of 1932 at Carn Voel, which I later gave to Dora. While
there, I wrote Education and the Social Order. After this, having no longer the
?nancial burden of the school, I gave up writing pot-boilers. And having
failed as a parent, I found that my ambition to write books that might be
important revived.
During my lecture tour in America in 1931, I had contracted with
W. W. Norton, the publisher, to write the book which was published in 1934
under the title Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914. I worked at this book in
collaboration with Patricia Spence, commonly known as Peter Spence, ?rst at
a ?at in Emperor’s Gate (where John and Kate were disappointed to ?nd
neither an Emperor nor a gate), and then at Deudraeth Castle in North Wales,
which was at that time an annex of Portmeirion Hotel. I very much enjoyed
this work, and I found the life at Portmeirion pleasant. The hotel was ownedby my friends Clough Williams-Ellis, the architect, and his wife, Amabel, the
writer, whose company was delightful.
When the writing of Freedom and Organization was ?nished, I decided to return
to Telegraph House and tell Dora she must live elsewhere. My reasons were
?nancial. I was under a legal obligation to pay a rent of ￡400 a year for
Telegraph House, the proceeds being due to my brother’s second wife as
alimony. I was also obliged to pay alimony to Dora, as well as all the expenses
of John and Kate. Meanwhile my income had diminished catastrophically.
This was due partly to the depression, which caused people to buy much
fewer books, partly to the fact that I was no longer writing popular books,
and partly to my having refused to stay with Hearst in 1931 at his castle in
California. My weekly articles in the Hearst newspapers had brought me
￡1000 a year, but after my refusal the pay was halved, and very soon I was
told the articles were no longer required. Telegraph House was large, and was
only approachable by two private drives, each about a mile long. I wished to
sell it, but could not put it on the market while the school was there. The only
hope was to live there, and try to make it attractive to possible purchasers.
After settling again at Telegraph House, without the school, I went for a
holiday to the Canary Islands. On returning, I found myself, though sane,
quite devoid of creative impulse, and at a loss to know what work to do. For
about two months, purely to a?ord myself distraction, I worked on the
problem of the twenty-seven straight lines on a cubic surface. But this would
never do, as it was totally useless and I was living on capital saved during
the successful years that ended in 1932. I decided to write a book on the daily
increasing menace of war. I called this book Which Way to Peace? and main-
tained in it the paci?st position that I had taken up during the First War. I did,
it is true, make an exception: I held that, if ever a world government were
established, it would be desirable to support it by force against rebels. But as
regards the war to be feared in the immediate future, I urged conscientious
objection.
This attitude, however, had become unconsciously insincere. I had been able
to view with reluctant acquiescence the possibility of the supremacy of the
Kaiser’s Germany; I thought that, although this would be an evil, it would not
be so great an evil as a world war and its aftermath. But Hitler’s Germany was a
di?erent matter. I found the Nazis utterly revolting – cruel, bigoted, and
stupid. Morally and intellectually they were alike odious to me. Although I
clung to my paci?st convictions, I did so with increasing di?culty. When, in
1940, England was threatened with invasion, I realised that, throughout the
First War, I had never seriously envisaged the possibility of utter defeat. I found
this possibility unbearable, and at last consciously and de?nitely decided that I
must support what was necessary for victory in the Second War, however
di?cult victory might be to achieve, and however painful in its consequences.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 410This was the last stage in the slow abandonment of many of the beliefs that
had come to me in the moment of ‘conversion’ in 1901. I had never been a
complete adherent of the doctrine of non-resistance; I had always recognised
the necessity of the police and the criminal law, and even during the First War
I had maintained publicly that some wars are justi?able. But I had allowed
a larger sphere to the method of non-resistance – or, rather, non-violent
resistance – than later experience seemed to warrant. It certainly has an
important sphere; as against the British in India, Gandhi led it to triumph. But
it depends upon the existence of certain virtues in those against whom it is
employed. When Indians lay down on railways, and challenged the author-
ities to crush them under trains, the British found such cruelty intolerable.
But the Nazis had no scruples in analogous situations. The doctrine which
Tolstoy preached with great persuasive force, that the holders of power could
be morally regenerated if met by non-resistance, was obviously untrue in
Germany after 1933. Clearly Tolstoy was right only when the holders of
power were not ruthless beyond a point, and clearly the Nazis went beyond
this point.
But private experience had almost as much to do with changing my beliefs
as had the state of the world. In the school, I found a very de?nite and
forceful exercise of authority necessary if the weak were not to be oppressed.
Such instances as the hatpin in the soup could not be left to the slow oper-
ation of a good environment, since the need for action was immediate and
imperative. In my second marriage, I had tried to preserve that respect for my
wife’s liberty which I thought that my creed enjoined. I found, however, that
my capacity for forgiveness and what may be called Christian love was not
equal to the demands that I was making on it, and that persistence in a
hopeless endeavour would do much harm to me, while not achieving the
intended good to others. Anybody else could have told me this in advance,
but I was blinded by theory.
I do not wish to exaggerate. The gradual change in my views, from 1932
to 1940, was not a revolution; it was only a quantitative change and a shift of
emphasis. I had never held the non-resistance creed absolutely, and I did not
now reject it absolutely. But the practical di?erence, between opposing the
First War and supporting the Second, was so great as to mask the considerable
degree of theoretical consistency that in fact existed.
Although my reason was wholly convinced, my emotions followed with
reluctance. My whole nature had been involved in my opposition to the First
War, whereas it was a divided self that favoured the Second. I have never since
1940 recovered the same degree of unity between opinion and emotion as I
had possessed from 1914 to 1918. I think that, in permitting myself that
unity, I had allowed myself more of a creed than scienti?c intelligence can
justify. To follow scienti?c intelligence wherever it may lead me had always
later years of telegraph house 411seemed to me the most imperative of moral precepts for me, and I have
followed this precept even when it has involved a loss of what I myself had
taken for deep spiritual insight.
About a year and a half was spent by Peter Spence, with whom for some
time I had been in love, and me on The Amberley Papers, a record of the brief life
of my parents. There was something of the ivory tower in this work. My
parents had not been faced with our modern problems; their radicalism was
con?dent, and throughout their lives the world was moving in directions that
to them seemed good. And although they opposed aristocratic privilege, it
survived intact, and they, however involuntarily, pro?ted by it. They lived in a
comfortable, spacious, hopeful world, yet in spite of this I could wholly
approve of them. This was restful, and in raising a monument to them my
feelings of ?lial piety were assuaged. But I could not pretend that the work
was really important. I had had a period of uncreative barrenness, but it had
ended, and it was time to turn to something less remote.
My next piece of work was Power, a new social analysis. In this book I
maintained that a sphere of freedom is still desirable even in a socialist state,
but this sphere has to be de?ned afresh and not in liberal terms. This doctrine
I still hold. The thesis of this book seems to me important, and I hoped that
it would attract more attention than it has done. It was intended as a refuta-
tion both of Marx and of the classical economists, not on a point of detail, but
on the fundamental assumptions that they shared. I argued that power, rather
than wealth, should be the basic concept in social theory, and that social
justice should consist in equalisation of power to the greatest practicable
degree. It followed that State ownership of land and capital was no advance
unless the State was democratic, and even then only if methods were devised
for curbing the power of o?cials. A part of my thesis was taken up and
popularised in Burnham’s Managerial Revolution, but otherwise the book fell
rather ?at. I still hold, however, that what it has to say is of very great
importance if the evils of totalitarianism are to be avoided, particularly under
a Socialist régime.
In 1936, I married Peter Spence and my youngest child, Conrad, was born
in 1937. This was a great happiness. A few months after his birth, I at last
succeeded in selling Telegraph House. For years I had had no o?ers, but
suddenly I had two: one from a Polish Prince, the other from an English
business man. In twenty-four hours, owing to their competition, I succeeded
in increasing the price they o?ered by ￡1000. At last the business man won,
and I was rid of the incubus, which had been threatening me with ruin since
I had to spend capital so long as it was not disposed of, and very little capital
remained.
Although, for ?nancial reasons, I had to be glad to be rid of Telegraph
House, the parting was painful. I loved the downs and the woods and my
the autobiography of bertrand russell 412tower room with its views in all four directions. I had known the place
for forty years or more, and had watched it grow in my brother’s day. It
represented continuity, of which, apart from work, my life has had far less
than I could have wished. When I sold it, I could say, like the apothecary, ‘my
poverty but not my will consents’. For a long time after this I did not have a
?xed abode, and thought it not likely that I should ever have one. I regretted
this profoundly.
After I had ?nished Power, I found my thoughts turning again to theoretical
philosophy. During my time in prison in 1918, I had become interested in
the problems connected with meaning, which in earlier days I had com-
pletely ignored. I wrote something on these problems in The Analysis of Mind
and in various articles written at about the same time. But there was a great
deal more to say. The logical positivists, with whose general outlook I had a
large measure of agreement, seemed to me on some points to be falling into
errors which would lead away from empiricism into a new scholasticism.
They seemed inclined to treat the realm of language as if it were self-
subsistent, and not in need of any relation to non-linguistic occurrences.
Being invited to give a course of lectures at Oxford, I chose as my subject
‘Words and Facts’. The lectures were the ?rst draft of the book published in
1940 under the title An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth.
We bought a house at Kidlington, near Oxford, and lived there for about a
year, but only one Oxford lady called. We were not respectable. We had later a
similar experience in Cambridge. In this respect I have found these ancient
