the hidden fears of eminent men.
The writing of these stories was a great release of my hitherto unexpressed
feelings and of thoughts which could not be stated without mention of fears
that had no rational basis. Gradually their scope widened. I found it possible
to express in this ?ctional form dangers that would have been deemed silly
while only a few men recognised them. I could state in ?ction ideas which
I half believed in but had no good solid grounds for believing. In this way
it was possible to warn of dangers which might or might not occur in the
near future.
My ?rst book of stories was Satan in the Suburbs. The title story was in part
suggested to me by a stranger whom I met in Mortlake and who, when he
saw me, crossed the road and made the sign of the Cross as he went. It was
partly, also, suggested by a poor mad lady who I used to meet on my walks. In
this story there was a wicked scientist who by subtle means caused people,
after one lapse from virtue, to plunge into irretrievable ruin. One of these
people was a photographer who made photography an opportunity for
blackmail. I modelled him upon a fashionable photographer who had come
to make a picture of me. He died shortly afterwards, and I then learnt that he
practised all the sins of which I had accused him in the story. In one of the
other stories, the hero proclaims a curse in which he mentions Zoroaster and
the Beard of The Prophet. I got an indignant letter from a Zoroastrian saying
how dare I make fun of Zoroaster. This story I had written, as a warning of
what might befall her, for my secretary (a completely innocent young
woman) who was about to go to Corsica on a holiday. It was published
anonymously in a magazine with a prize o?ered for guessing the authorship.
Nobody guessed right. One of the characters in the story is General Prz to
whose name there is a footnote saying, ‘pronounced Pish’, and the prize was
given to a man who wrote to the magazine: ‘This is Trz (pronounced Tosh).’
Another story portrayed a ?ght to the death between human beings and
Martians. In this there is an eloquent appeal in the style of Churchill, calling
upon all human beings to forget their di?erences and rise in defence of ???.
I had great fun proclaiming this speech, as nearly as possible in Churchill’s
manner, for a gramophone record.
A year later, I wrote another series of stories which I called Nightmares of
the autobiography of bertrand russell 506Eminent Persons. These were intended to illustrate the secret fears that beset the
Great while they sleep. A long short story that I published with Nightmares is
called ‘Zahatopolk’ and concerns the hardening of what begins as a career of
freedom of thought in to a hard persecuting orthodoxy. This has hitherto
been the fate of all the great religions; and how it is to be avoided in the
future I do not know. When my secretary was typing the story she reached
the point where the semi-divine king makes a sacri?cial breakfast of a lovely
lady. I went in to see how she was getting on and found her gibbering in
terror. Various people have dramatised this story both for ?lm and theatre
production, as they have others that occur in my writings, but, when it has
come to the point, no one has been willing to produce them or I have been
unwilling to have them produced because of the particular dramatisation,
sometimes o?ensively frivolous. I regret this and regret especially that none
of the Nightmares have been made into ballets. Various of the stories pose, and
occasionally answer, various questions that I should like to call to people’s
attention.
I had an amusing experience with one of the Nightmares while I was com-
posing it. The hero was a Frenchman who lamented his sad fate in French
verse. One evening at dinner in the Ecu de France I started to declaim his last
words in what I hoped was the best French classical style. The restaurant,
being French, had a clientele mainly composed of Frenchmen. Most of them
turned round and gazed at me in astonishment, then whispered together,
wondering whether I was an unknown French poet whom they had hit upon
by accident. I do not know how long they went on wondering.
Another Nightmare was inspired by a psycho-analytic doctor in America
who was somewhat dissatis?ed by the use commonly made of psycho-
analysis. He felt that everyone might be brought to humdrum normality, so
I tried portraying Shakespeare’s more interesting heroes after they had
undergone a course of psycho-analysis. In the dream, a head of Shakespeare
speaks, ending with the words, ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be.’ I had an
approving letter from the American doctor.
I found a reluctance on the part of both editors and readers to accept me in
the role of a writer of ?ction. They seemed, just on the face of it, to resent the
fact that I was trying my hand at something they had not grown used to my
doing. Everybody wanted me to continue as a writer of doom, prophesying
dreadful things. I was reminded of what the learned men of China said when
I asked what I should lecture on and they replied: ‘Oh, just what you say in
your last book.’ Authors are not allowed by their public to change their style
or to part widely from their previous subjects.
My defence for writing stories, if defence were needed, is that I have often
found fables the best way of making a point. When I returned from America
in 1944, I found British philosophy in a very odd state, and, it seemed to me,
return to england 507occupied solely with trivialities. Everybody in the philosophical world was
babbling about ‘common usage’. I did not like this philosophy. Every section
of learning has its own vocabulary and I did not see why philosophy should
be deprived of this pleasure. I therefore wrote a short piece containing vari-
ous fables making fun of this cult of ‘common usage’, remarking that what
the philosophers really meant by the term was ‘common-room usage’. I
received a letter when this was published from the arch o?ender saying that
he approved, but that he could not think against whom it was directed as he
knew of no such cult. However, I noticed that from that time on very little
was said about ‘common usage’.
Most of my books, I ?nd on looking back over them, have myths to enforce
the points. For instance, I turned up the following paragraph recently in The
Impact of Science on Society: ‘What I do want to stress is that the kind of lethargic
despair which is now not uncommon is irrational. Mankind is in the position
of a man climbing a di?cult and dangerous precipice, at the summit of
which there is a plateau of delicious mountain meadows. With every step
that he climbs, his fall, if he does fall, becomes more terrible; with every step
his weariness increases and the ascent grows more di?cult. At last, there is
only one more step to be taken, but the climber does not know this, because
he cannot see beyond the jutting rocks at his head. His exhaustion is so
complete that he wants nothing but rest. If he lets go, he will ?nd rest in
death. Hope calls: “one more e?ort – perhaps it will be the last e?ort
needed.” Irony retorts: “Silly fellow! Haven’t you been listening to hope all
this time, and see where it has landed you.” Optimism says: “While there is
life, there is hope.” Pessimism growls: “While there is life, there is pain.”
Does the exhausted climber make one more e?ort, or does he let himself
sink into the abyss? In a few years, those of us who are still alive will know
the answer.’
Others of my stories, nightmares and dreams and so forth, later formed the
?ction part of my book Fact and Fiction. I had expected reviewers to make
witticisms at my expense in regard to the title and contents of this book, but
this did not occur. My ‘Maxims of La Rochefoucauld’ contained in it a?orded
me considerable amusement and I have added to them periodically. The
making of my Good Citizens’ Alphabet entertained me greatly. It was published at
their Gabberbochus (which, I am told, is Polish for Jabberwocky) Press by my
friends the Themersons with exceedingly clever and beautifully executed
illustrations by Franciszka Themerson which heighten all the points that I
most wanted made. They also published my jeu d’esprit on the end of the
world, a short History of the World, for my ninetieth birthday in a little gold
volume. My only venture into verse was published by the Humanists of
America and is called – with apologies of Lewis Carroll – ‘The Prelate and The
Commissar’.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 508LETTERS
To and from Lucy Donnelly
212 Loring Avenue
Los Angeles, Cal.
Dec. 22, 1939
My dear Lucy
Ever since I got your nice letter I have been meaning to write to you, but
have been terribly busy. It is the custom of this country to keep all intelligent
people so harassed & hustled that they cease to be intelligent, and I have been
su?ering from this custom. The summer at Santa Barbara, it is true, was
peaceful, but unluckily I injured my back & was laid up for a long time,
which caused me to get behind hand with my lectures. – John & Kate, who
came for the summer holidays, stayed when war broke out; it is a comfort to
have them here, but John does not ?nd the university of California a satisfac-
tory substitute for Cambridge. I think of sending them both East to some less
recent university, but last September there was no time for that. Apart from
home sickness & war misery, we all ?ourish.
I am, when I can ?nd time, writing a book on ‘Words & Facts’, or ‘seman-
tics’ as it is vulgarly called. The only thing to be done in these times, it
seems to me, is to salvage what one can of civilisation, personally as well as
politically. But I feel rather like a strayed ghost from a dead world.
The visit to you was delightful. As time goes on, one values old friends
more & more.
Remember me to Miss Finch. With love to yourself,
yours a?
Bertrand Russell
New Place
Bryn Mawr
Pennsylvania
29 April 1940
My dear Bertie
Week by week I have sympathised with you & regretted bitterly that
you have not been allowed to live and work in peace in America. Then,
after all the muddlement & disgusting publicity, came your admirable
letter in the New York Times – so wise, so right in feeling & so to the point
at the close. Something was needed from you personally in reply to the
Editorial distributing blame judiciously all round & very suspiciously avoid-
ing the issue. Too bad of the Times: Your article in the American Mercury I also
rejoiced in as just right & very useful. But this cause célèbre which scores
for academic freedom for our country, I fear will have cost you yourself dear
return to england 509in many ways & have seriously upset your plans for the next year. I am very
sorry.
I think of you always & hope to see you when you come to the East again –
and perhaps your family with you. They look one & all of them delightful in
their pictures. In these bad times your children must be a joy & hope. Your
letter at Christmas was a happiness to me, when I remember all the people
in the world to whom you have given happiness & enlightenment I marvel
the more over this last confusion.
Ever yours with love
Lucy Donnelly
P.S. The cutting I enclose from the College News, our student paper, is Bryn
Mawr’s modest testimony to the cause in your name.
Fallen Leaf Lodge
Lake Tahoe, Cal.
August 25, 1940
My dear Lucy
Peter is terribly busy, & I have ?nished my book, so I am answering your
very nice letter to her.
We are leaving here in about a fortnight, & expect to get to Philadelphia
about the 12th of September, except John & Kate, who go back to Los Angeles.
I expect to be in Philadelphia only a few days, & then to go to Harvard, but
Peter, with Conrad & the governess (Miss Campbell), means to stay somewhere
near Philadelphia & hunt for a house. I have accepted the Barnes Institute;
there was no other prospect of any post, however humble. No university dare
contemplate employing me.
You once o?ered to put us up if we were in Philadelphia, & it would be
very pleasant for us if you could have us for a few days from about the 12th,
but I don’t know if you have two spare rooms, one for Peter & me & one for
Conrad and Miss Campbell. Still less do I know whether you would want a
boy of three, whose behaviour might not always be impeccable. Please be quite
frank about this.
Yes, I know Newman of John’s. I have found him, on occasion, a very
valuable critic.
I am sorry you will have to put up with us as a feeble substitute for the
Renoirs. Perhaps in time I shall be able to soften Barnes’s heart.
With Peter’s thanks & my love,
Yours a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
the autobiography of bertrand russell 510April 15, 1941
My dear Lucy
I blush with shame in the middle of the night every time I think of my
outrageous behaviour at your dinner, when I deafened you by shouting at
your ear. Please forgive me. Since the New York row I have been prickly,
especially when I encounter the facile optimism which won’t realise that, but
for Barnes, it would have meant literal starvation for us all – But that is no
excuse for abominable behaviour. I used, when excited, to calm myself by
reciting the three factors of a3
+ b3
+ c3
– 3abc; I must revert to this practice.
I ?nd it more e?ective than thoughts of the Ice Age or the goodness of God.
Yours a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
Peacock Inn
Twenty Bayard Lane
Princeton, N.J.
May 14, 1944
My dear Lucy
This is a goodbye letter, with great regret that I can’t bid you goodbye
in person. After months of waiting, we are being suddenly shipped o? at a
moment’s notice – Peter and Conrad are already gone & I go in 2 or 3 days.
It was nice being your neighbours, & your house seemed almost a bit of
England. Please tell Helen3
I am very sorry not to write to her too – & give my
love (or whatever she would like better) to Edith.
Ever yours a?
B.R.
Trinity College
Cambridge
Oct. 7, 1944
My dear Lucy
It was nice to get your letter written in August. Coming to your house
always seemed almost like coming home; it & its contents, animate &
inanimate, were so much more English than one could ?nd elsewhere in ???.
D. S. Robertson is a man I know only slightly, but he has a considerable
reputation. How Keynes has expanded since he used to come & stay at
Tilford! Last time I saw him he had an enormous paunch – but this was not
the sort of expansion I had in mind!
John is still in London, learning Japanese forms of politeness. One would
have thought forms of rudeness more useful. He will go to the East before the
end of this year, & probably be there a long time. Kate has been home about
a month. She ended in a blaze of glory, with a $250 prize, an o?er from
return to england 511Radcli?e to go on their sta?, & from a Southern University to become a
Professor, though not yet of age. Now the British Government pays her to
read Goebbels.
The Robot bombs have been trying, & have not quite ceased, but they are
no longer very serious. We all ?ourish. Love to Edith. Much love and friend-
ship to yourself.
Ever yours
Bertrand Russell
New Place
Bryn Mawr, Penna.
February 20th 45
My dear Bertie
Edith’s great pleasure in your two letters I have shared. I am especially glad
that you thought well of her book – whatever of M.C.T. [M. Carey Thomas]
herself. After living under the two presidents who have succeeded at the
College, I confess that my opinion of her has risen a good deal. The new ways
on the Campus make it strange and unheimlich to me. O, for ‘the Culture’ of
the ’90’s!...
The world all round now is a very grim one, as you say, and bitter to those
of us who once lived in a happier time. Here in America of course we are
among the fortunate ones, well fed, well housed & all the rest, but we do not
grow wiser, more gruesome minded I fear. Everywhere it seems we can
depend only on old a?ections and tried loyalties.
I turn to you, who have for so long added to my life so much interest and
pleasure, & to my happiness in hearing that you are planning to write your
autobiography. You will make a great and important book. I hope from my
very heart that I may live to read it. Your letters of course I will look up and
send along for any help they can give you. Notes & reminders are useful...
I have long wanted to write and to hear from you again but seem away here
to have nothing worth saying. Edith and I and other friends of course often talk
of you and wish you back. Our neighborhood fell into dullness when you left.
We drove out, Edith & I, one day in the autumn in a pietas to Little Datchett,
now alas painted up in all colours and newly named ‘Stone Walls’ on a sign at
the gate. But the wide Je?ersonian view was the same and very delightful. Are
either of your elder children still in America? Conrad of course will have
grown beyond my recognition. Will you not send me some word of them
and of Peter. I hope that she is better in health and able to get proper food.
Even the London where you are living is almost unknown to me, though
I remember once walking up and down Gloucester Place, looking out the
house where Lady Louisa Stuart lived in old age: and you must be near
Portman Square and Mrs Montagu’s grand mansion there. The late eighteenth
the autobiography of bertrand russell 512Century in England is a safe retreat in these days for one lost in the America of
Bob Taft and Henry Wallace and the rest of all you know from the papers.
Alas, that Edith and I are too poor to go to England this summer to breathe
its air again and to see our friends. How I wish it were not so.
A?ectionately yours
Lucy Donnelly
P.S. Barnes has been as quiet as a mouse these last years.
Hotel Bellerive au Lac
Zurich
June 23, 1946
My dear Lucy
Thank you for your letter. I had not heard of Simon Flexner’s death, which
is sad. I don’t know Helen’s address; if I did, I would write to her. Will you
please give her my very sincere sympathy, & tell her how greatly I admired
& respected Simon.
What you say about my History of Philosophy is very pleasant reading.
I am glad you like my Chap. on Plotinus, as I rather fancied it myself!
I am at the moment doing a short lecture tour in Switzerland; I return to
Peter & Conrad in N. Wales in a week for the long vacation, after which I shall
be back in Trinity, where I have been inhabiting Newton’s rooms. I go about
with the feeling that within 20 years England will have ceased to exist. It
makes everything hectic, like the approach of closing time at a party in a
hotel – ‘We are for the night.’ A few bombs will destroy all our cities, & the
rest will slowly die of hunger.
In America, large sections of the rural middle west & the desert south-west
will probably survive. But not much of your America. Three cheers for
Patagonia, the future centre of world culture.
Meanwhile Rabbis & Muftis, Jinnah & Nehru, Tito & the Italians, etc., play
their silly games. I am ashamed of belonging to the species Homo Sapiens.
The Swiss are passionately Anglophile, & very glad to be liberated from
Nazi encirclement. I try not to depress them.
You & I may be thankful to have lived in happier times – you more than
I, because you have no children.
Ever yours a?ectionately
Bertrand Russell
return to england 513Penralltgoch
Llan Ffestiniog
Merioneth
March 17, 1948
My dear Lucy
Thank you for your good letter. It was a great pleasure to get it.
I enclose a letter to Helen, as I am not sure whether I have deciphered
correctly the address you gave me. If not, will you please alter it as may be
necessary. I have started on my autobiography, & ?nd it an immense task. I
shall be in?nitely grateful for your batch of letters. It doesn’t matter whether
you send them to above address or to London.
My daughter Kate has just married an American named Charles Tait. She still
lives in Cambridge Mass. I don’t know him, but all I hear of him sounds nice.
I am terribly busy with international a?airs, & have not time to write
proper letters. Give nice messages to Edith. With love,
Yours a?
B.R.
New Place
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr
Pennsylvania
May 8, 1948
My dear Bertie
I am sorry to have been so long in complying with any request of yours.
This has been a bad and busy year here in Bryn Mawr and though I keep very
well for my age, I am so easily tired and do everything so slowly, I accomplish
little in a day.
In a word, I have only been able in the last fortnight to go through the
papers & letters stored in the attic. The task was formidable and painful as
well as happy. Many letters from you I found, dating from 1902 on, and have
put aside to send you if you still want them. From your letter some time ago,
I was uncertain whether you ask for all letters, or particularly for the one
written to Helen on the last day of the Nineteenth Century.
All that you wrote to me I seem to have treasured down to the merest
notes. They are wonderfully friendly, wise, kind letters, sympathetic almost
beyond belief with my personal concerns and small Bryn Mawr a?airs, while
bringing in an invigorating breath from a larger freer world. I well remember
the vivid pleasure of their coming, one after another, and the strength &
interest they were to me. – A lifetime of gratitude I send back to you for
them. – Whether they would be useful to you I cannot tell, possibly for dates,
plans places & whatnot, and as a record of your own friendliness. Your
the autobiography of bertrand russell 514memory is extraordinarily good & you have written so much that is wise &
witty & important. Will you say whether you want the packet, & they really
shall go o? to you at once. In that case I should like to have them back when
you are done with the letters. They are a precious record of a long friendship
to me, though as I understand, your property...
All is well I hope with you, as well as may be with the world in desperate
confusion. Here we are in the midst of strikes, Presidential primaries, indeci-
sions about Palestine, [indecipherable] bills & all that you can guess.
Edith asks me to give you her love with mine & all good wishes for the
Summer. We plan to go to Canada,
4
the nearest we are able to get to the
British ?ag.
A?ectionately yours
Lucy
From the 12th Duke of Bedford
Frox?eld House
Woburn
Bletchley
April 16th. 1945
Dear Lord Russell
Many thanks for your kind letter. I should have been very pleased for
you to see Woburn but unluckily the abbey is infested by a government War
Department of a very ‘hush-hush’ description and I am not allowed to enter
the sacred precincts myself without a permit & suitable escort! Most of the
pictures etc. are stored away, so I am afraid you will have to postpone your
visit until the brief interlude between this war & world-war no. 3. – if there
is an interlude!! I am so sorry.
Yours sincerely
Bedford
From H. G. Wells
13, Hanover Terrace
Regent’s Park, N.W.1
May. 20th ’45
My dear Russell
I was delighted to get your friendly letter. In these days of revolutionary
crisis it is incumbent upon all of us who are in any measure in?uential in left
thought to dispel the tendency to waste energy in minor dissentions & par-
ticularly to counter the systematic & ingenious work that is being done to sabotage
left thought under the cloak of critical reasonableness. I get a vast amount of
that sort of propaganda in my letter box. I get more & more anarchistic &
return to england 515ultra left as I grow older. I enclose a little article ‘Orders is Orders’ that the
New Leader has had the guts, rather squeamish guts, to print at last. What do
