my wife, thinking that I was defending myself against a murderous assault.
The same kind of fear caused me, for many years, to avoid all deep emotion,
and live, as nearly as I could, a life of intellect tempered by ?ippancy. Happy
marriage gradually gave me mental stability, and when, at a later date, I
experienced new emotional storms, I found that I was able to remain sane.
This banished the conscious fear of insanity, but the unconscious fear has
persisted.
Whatever indecision I had felt as to what we ought to do was ended when
Alys and I found another doctor, who assured me breezily that he had used
contraceptives himself for many years, that no bad e?ects whatever were to
be feared, and that we should be fools not to marry. So we went ahead, in
spite of the shocked feelings of two generations. As a matter of fact, after we
had been married two years we came to the conclusion that the medical
authorities whom we had consulted had been talking nonsense, as indeed
they obviously were, and we decided to have children if possible. But Alys
proved to be barren, so the fuss had been all about nothing.
At the conclusion of this fracas I went to live at Friday’s Hill with Alys’s
people, and there I settled down to work at a Fellowship dissertation, taking
non-Euclidean Geometry as my subject. My people wrote almost daily letters
to me about ‘the life you are leading’, but it was clear to me that they would
drive me into insanity if I let them, and that I was getting mental health from
Alys. We grew increasingly intimate.
My people, however, were not at the end of their attempts. In August they
induced Lord Du?erin, who was then our Ambassador in Paris, to o?er me
the post of honorary attaché. I had no wish to take it, but my grandmother
the autobiography of bertrand russell 74said that she was not much longer for this world, and that I owed it to her to
see whether separation would lessen my infatuation. I did not wish to feel
remorse whenever she came to die, so I agreed to go to Paris for a minimum
of three months, on the understanding that if that produced no e?ect upon
my feelings, my people would no longer actively oppose my marriage. My
career in diplomacy, however, was brief and inglorious. I loathed the work,
and the people, and the atmosphere of cynicism, and the separation from
Alys. My brother came over to visit me, and although I did not know it at the
time, he had been asked to come by my people, in order to form a judgement
on the situation. He came down strongly on my side, and when the three
months were up, which was on November 17th, I shook the dust of Paris o?
my feet, and returned to Alys. I had, however, ?rst to make my peace with
her, as she had grown jealous of her sister, of whom I saw a good deal during
the latter part of my time in Paris. It must be said that making my peace only
took about ten minutes.
The only thing of any permanent value that I derived from my time in Paris
was the friendship of Jonathan Sturges, a man for whom I had a very great
a?ection. Many years after his death, I went to see Henry James’s house at
Rye, which was kept at that time as a sort of museum. There I suddenly came
upon Sturges’s portrait hanging on the wall. It gave me so great a shock that I
remember nothing else whatever about the place. He was a cripple, intensely
sensitive, very literary, and belonging to what one must call the American
aristocracy (he was a nephew of J. P. Morgan). He was a very witty man. I
took him once into the Fellows’ Garden at Trinity, and he said: ‘Oh yes! This
is where George Eliot told F. W. H. Myers that there is no God, and yet we
must be good; and Myers decided that there is a God, and yet we need not
be good.’ I saw a great deal of him during my time in Paris, which laid
the foundations of a friendship that ended only with his death.
LETTERS
15 rue du Sommerard
Paris
Oct. 25 ’91
My dear Bertie
I have been meaning to write to you before, to tell you how much I
enjoyed my visit to Cambridge, but I have been through such a season of woe
in settling myself here! It is all due to that bothersome new order, for it is very
hard to get rooms within the ?xed margin, and I am much too proud to
confess an excess so soon. So I have at last settled myself in the Latin Quarter,
up seven ?ights of stairs, and I ?nd that the spiritual pride that ?lls my breast
more than amply compensates for all the bother. It is nice to feel better than
engagement 75one’s neighbours! I met a friend yesterday who is living in cushioned ease
across the river, and I felt so very superior, I am rather afraid that when I write
to my adviser, I shall receive a hair shirt by return of post. Have you tried
to observe the discipline? I do not speak evil, for I have no one to speak it to,
though I think it of my landlady. And the other day, I was so reduced by the
state of my things when I moved here that I could do nothing but eat a bun
and read Tid-bits.
I have begun to write a novel, but be assured, it is not religious, and is
not to be rejected by the publishers for a year or two yet.
My journey here after I left you was most amusing. On the steamer we sat
in rows and glared at each other, after the pleasant English manner. There was
a young married couple who stood out as a warning and a lesson to youth.
He was a puzzled looking, beardless young man, and she was a limp ?gure
of a woman, and there was a baby. The husband poured his wife into an
armchair, and then walked up and down with the baby. Then he stood for a
long while, looking at the watery horizon as if he were asking some question
of it. But the dismal unwellness of his wife and baby soon put an end to his
meditations. What a warning to youth! And I might have been in his place!
I hope you went to the debate to prove that the upper classes are
uneducated – those broad generalisations are so stimulating – there is so
much that one can say.
I hope you mean to join our order, and if you do, make me your adviser. I
will set you nice penances, and then I shall be sure to hear from you – for
there must be some rules that you will break – some rift in your integrity.
Give my regards to Sheldon Amos if you see him.
Yours ever,
Logan Pearsall Smith
15 Rue du Sommerard
Paris
Nov. 1891
Dear Bertie
I enclose the rules – the general outlines – we must have a meeting of the
Order before long to settle them de?nitely. As for rule one, you had better ?x
a sum, and then keep to that. By the account you enclosed to me, you appear
to be living on eggs and groceries – I should advise you to dine occasionally.
Then at College one ought to entertain more or less – and that ought not to
count as board and lodging. As to rule 4 – I should say at College it is perhaps
better not to do too much at social work.
What you say about changing one’s self denial is only too true and
terrible – it went to my heart – one does form a habit, and then it is no
bother. I will write to the Arch Prig about it.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 76Of course you must consider yourself a member, and you must confess to
me, and I will write you back some excellent ghostly advice. And you must
get other members. We shall expect to enroll half of Trinity.
I am living as quietly as an oyster, and I ?nd it pleasant to untangle oneself
for a while from all social ties, and look round a bit. And there is so much to
look at here!
Yours ever,
Logan Pearsall Smith
Here are the rules of The Order of Prigs as Logan Pearsall Smith drew them up.
Maxims: Don’t let anyone know you are a prig.
1. Deny yourself in inconspicuous ways and don’t speak of your
economies.
2. Avoid all vain and unkind criticism of others.
4
3. Always keep your company manners on – keep your coat brushed and
your shoe-laces tied.
4. Avoid the company of the rich and the tables of the luxurious – all those
who do not regard their property as a trust.
5. Don’t be a Philistine! Don’t let any opportunities of hearing good music,
seeing good pictures or acting escape you.
6. Always let others pro?t as much as possible by your skill in these things.
7. Do what you can to spread the order.
Speci?c Rules:
1. Don’t let your board and lodging exceed two pounds a week.
2. Keep a strict account of monies spent on clothes and pleasure.
3. If your income provides more than the necessities of Life, give at least a
tenth of it in Charity.
4. Devote an evening a week, or an equivalent amount of time, to social
work with the labouring Classes, or visiting the sick.
5. Set apart a certain time every day for examination of conscience.
6. Abstain entirely from all intoxicating liquors, except for the purposes
of health.
7. Practise some slight self-denial every day, for instance – Getting up
when called. No cake at tea, No butter at breakfast, No co?ee after
dinner.
8. Observe strictly the rules of diet and exercise prescribed by one’s
doctor, or approved by one’s better reason.
9. Read some standard poetry or spiritual book every day, for at least half
an hour.
engagement 7710. Devote ? hour every other day, or 1? hours weekly, to the keeping
fresh of learning already acquired – going over one’s scienti?c or
classical work.
11. Keep all your appointments punctually, and don’t make any engage-
ments or promises you are not likely to ful?l.
The Arch Prig5
or the associate Prig is empowered to give temporary
or permanent release from any of these rules, if he deem it expedient.
All neglect of the rules and maxims shall be avowed to the Arch Prig, or
one’s associate, who shall set a penance, if he think it expedient.
Suggested penances:
Pay a duty call.
Write a duty letter.
Learn some poetry or prose.
Translate English into another language.
Tidy up your room.
Extend your hospitality to a bore.
(Hair shirts can be had of the Arch Prig on application.)
15 Rue du Sommerard
Paris
Dec. 3 1891
My dear Bertie
I think you make an excellent Prig, and you have lapses enough to make it
interesting. I was shocked however by the price, 12/6 you paid for a stick.
There seems an odour of sin about that. 2/6 I should think ought to be the
limit, and if the morality of Cambridge is not much above that of Oxford, I
should think that your 12/6 stick would not keep in your possession long.
I know nothing about tobacco and meerschaums, so I cannot follow you
into these regions of luxury. I must ask some one who smokes pipes about it.
Well, I think you’d better impose one of the penances out of the list on
yourself and then if you continue in sin I shall become more severe.
I ?nd Priggishness, like all forms of excellence, much more di?cult than I
had imagined – by-the-by – let me tell you that if one simply thinks one has
read one’s half hour, one has probably read only a quarter of an hour. Human
nature, at least my nature, is invariably optimistic in regard to itself.
No, the rule as to 1? hrs. a week need not apply to you – but you ought to
go to concerts, unless you are too busy. As to charities – there are an in?nite
number that are good – but why not save what money you have for such
purposes for the Prig fund? And then when we have a meeting we can decide
what to do with it. It will be most interesting when we all meet, to compare
the autobiography of bertrand russell 78experiences. I am afraid it may lead however to re?exions of a pessimistic
tinge.
My adviser the Arch Prig, has failed me – if it were not speaking evil I
should insinuate the suspicion that he had got into di?culties with the rules
himself, which would be very terrible.
I live alone here with the greatest contentment. One inherits, when one
comes here, such a wealth of tradition and civilisation! The achievements of
three or four centuries of intelligence and taste – that is what one has at Paris.
I was bewildered at ?rst, and shivered on the brink, and was homesick for
England, but now I have come to love Paris perfectly.
Do write again when you have collected more sins, and tell me whether
the fear of penance acts on you in the cause of virtue. It does on a cowardly
nature like mine.
Yours ever,
Logan Pearsall Smith
15 Rue du Sommerard
Paris
Jan. 11th 1892
My dear Bertie
I have just read through your letter again to see if I could not ?nd some
excuse for imposing a penance on you, for having hurt my foot this
afternoon, I feel in a ?erce mood. But I am not one of those who see sin in a
frock coat – if it be well ?tting. But wait a bit – are you sure you told me what
you had read in order, as you say, to confound my scepticism – was there not
a slight infringement of maxim 1 lurking in your mind? If upon severe
self-examination you ?nd there was, I think you had better ?nish learning
the ‘Ode to the West Wind’ which you partly knew last summer.
So far I have written in my o?cial capacity as your adviser. But as your
friend I was shocked and startled by your calm statement that you indulge in
‘all the vices not prohibited by the rules’. These I need not point out are
numerous, extending from Baccarat to biting one’s ?nger nails – I hesitate to
believe that you have abandoned yourself to them all. I think you must have
meant that you read a great deal of Browning.
I am living in great quiet and contentment. A certain portion of the day I
devote to enriching the English language with tales and moralities, the rest of
the time I contemplate the mind of man as expressed in art and literature. I
am thirsting of course for that moment – and without doubt the moment
will come – when I shall hear my name sounded by all Fame’s tongues and
trumpets, and see it misspelled in all the newspapers. But I content myself
in the meantime, by posing as a poet in the drawing rooms of credulous
American ladies.
engagement 79As a novelist or ‘?ctionist’ to use the Star expression, I make it my aim to
show up in my tales, in which truth is artistically mingled with morality,
‘Cupid and all his wanton snares’. I also wish to illustrate some of the
incidents of the eternal war between the sexes. What will the whited
sepulchres of America say? Je m’en ?che.
Well, it is pleasant thus to expatiate upon my own precious identity.
I suppose you are ‘on the threshold’ – as one says, when one wishes to
write high style – the threshold of another term – and so resuming
my character of moral adviser I will salt this letter with some sententious
phrase, if I can ?nd one that is both true and fresh – but I cannot think
of any – the truth is always so banal – that is why the paradox has such a
pull over it.
Yours ever,
Logan Pearsall Smith
14 Rue de la Grande
Chaumière, Paris
March 19 ’92
Dear Bertie
I think members ought to be admitted to the Order, who are moderate
drinkers, if they are satisfactory in other ways. Good people are so rare. But on
all these points we must debate when we meet. We are going to Haslemere
sometime in Easter Week, I think, and I hope you will keep a few days free to
pay us a visit then. But I will write to you again when I get to England. As you
see by my address, I have moved again, and I am at last settled in a little
apartment furnished by myself. I am in Bohemia, a most charming country,
inhabited entirely by French Watchmen and American and English art
students, young men and women, who live in simple elegance and
deshabille. My ￡2.0.0 a week seems almost gross extravagance here, and one’s
eyes are never wounded by the sight of clean linen and new coats. Really
you can’t imagine how charming it is here – everybody young, poor and
intelligent and hard at work.
When I came here ?rst, I knew some ‘society’ people on the other side of
the river, and used to go and take tea and talk platitudes with them, but now
their lives seem so empty, their minds so waste and void of sense, that I
cannot approach them without a headache of boredom. How dull and
unintelligent people can make themselves if they but try.
Yours ever,
L. P. Smith
the autobiography of bertrand russell 80Friday’s Hill
Haslemere
Nov. 24 ’92
?a va bien à Cambridge, Bertie? I wish I could look in on you – only you
would be startled at my aspect, as I have shaved my head till it is as bald as an
egg, and dressed myself in rags, and retired to the solitude of Fernhurst,
where I am living alone, in the Costelloe Cottage.
6
Stevens wrote to me,
asking me to send something to the Cambridge Observer
7
and, prompted by Satan
(as I believe) I promised I would. So I hurried up and wrote an article on
Henry James, and when I had posted it last night, it suddenly came over me
how stupid and bad it was. Well, I hope the good man won’t print it.
There are good things in the Observer he sent me. I was quite surprised – it
certainly should be encouraged. Only I don’t go with it in its enthusiasm for
impurity – its jeers at what Milton calls ‘The sage and serious doctrine of
virginity’. It is dangerous for Englishmen to try to be French, they never catch
the note – the accent. A Frenchman if he errs, does it ‘dans un moment
d’oubli’, as they say – out of absentmindedness, as it were – while the
Englishman is much too serious and conscious. No, a civilisation must in
the main develop on the lines and in the ways of feeling already laid down for
it by those who founded and fostered it. I was struck with this at the ‘New
English Art Club’ I went up to see. There are some nice things, but in the mass
it bore the same relation to real art – French art – as A Church Congress does
to real social movements.
So do show Sickert and his friends that a gospel of impurity, preached with
an Exeter Hall zeal and denunciation, will do much to thicken the sombre
fogs in which we live already.
I shall stay in England for a while longer – when does your vac. begin
and where do you go?
Yrs.
L. P. Smith
14 rue de la Grande
Chaumière, Paris
Feb. 14th ’93
My dear Bertie
I was sorry that Musgrave and I could not get to Richmond, but I was only
a short time in London. I shall hope to go at Easter, if I am back. Paris
welcomed me as all her own, when I got here and I have been living in the
charm of this delightful and terrible place. For it is pretty terrible in many
ways, at least the part of Paris I live in. Perhaps it is the wickedness of Paris
itself, perhaps the fact that people live in this quarter without conventions or
disguises or perhaps – which I am inclined to believe – the life of artists is
engagement 81almost always tragical – or not wanting at least in elements of Tragedy – that
gives me the sense of the wretchedness and the ?neness of life here. Just think
this very morning I discovered that a girl here I know had gone mad. She
came in to see me, begged me to help her write a book to attack French
immorality and now I am waiting to see the doctor I sent for, to see if we
must shut her up.
As for ‘morality’, well – one ?nds plenty of the other thing, both in
women and men. I met the other day one of the Young Davies’ at Studd’s
studio – and my heart sank a little at the sight of another nice young
Englishman come to live in Paris. But he I suppose can take care of himself.
But I must not abuse Paris too much, for after all this, and perhaps on
account of it, Paris is beyond measure interesting. There are big stakes to be
won or lost and everybody is playing for them.
Yours,
L. Pearsall Smith
44 Grosvenor Road
Westminster
Oct. 29 ’93
My dear Bertie
You I suppose are watching the yellowing of the year at Cambridge, and
indulging in the sentiments proper to the season. I am still kept unwill-
ingly in London, and see no present prospect of getting away. I have tried
to like London, for its grimy charms have never yet been adequately
commended; – and charms it certainly has – but I have decided that if ever I
‘do’ London hatred and not love must be my inspiration, and for literary
purposes hatred is an excellent theme. All French realism is rooted in
hatred of life as it is, and according to Harold Joachim’s rude but true
remark, such pessimism must be based somehow on optimism. ‘No
shadow without light’, and the bright dream of what London might be,
and Paris already, to a small extent is – makes the present London seem
ignoble and dark. Then I have been going a little into literary society – not
the best literary society, but the London Bohemia of minor novelists, poets
and journalists – and it does not win one to enthusiasm. No; the London
Bohemia is wanting in just that quality which would redeem Bohemia –
disinterestedness – it is a sordid, money-seeking Bohemia, conscious of its
own meanness and determined to see nothing but meanness in the world
at large. They sit about restaurant tables, these pale-faced little young men,
and try to show that all the world is as mean and sordid as they themselves
are – and indeed they do succeed for the moment in making the universe
seem base.
How do you like your philosophy work? Don’t turn Hegelian and lose
the autobiography of bertrand russell 82yourself in perfumed dreams – the world will never get on unless a few
people at least will limit themselves to believing what has been proved, and
keep clear the distinction between what we really know and what we don’t.
Yours ever,
Logan Pearsall Smith
Queen’s Hotel
Barnsley
Nov. 16 1893
Dear Bertie
Thanks so much for your generous cheque8
– the need here is very great,
but thanks to the money coming in, there is enough to keep the people going
in some sort of way. They are splendid people certainly – and it is hard to
believe they will ever give in. It seems pretty certain to me that the Masters
brought on the strike very largely for the purpose of smashing the Federation.
Of course the Federation is often annoying – and I daresay the owners have
respectable grievances, but their pro?ts are very great and no one seems to
think that they could not a?ord the ‘living wage’. Within the last year a good
deal of money has been invested in collieries here, and several new pits
started, showing that the business is pro?table. Well, it does one good to
see these people, and the way they stick by each other, men and women,
notwithstanding their really dreadful privations.
Yrs.
Logan Pearsall Smith
44 Grosvenor Road
Westminster Embankment
S.W.
Nov. 1893
Dear Bertie
You forgot to endorse this – write your name on the back, and send it to
J. T. Drake, 41 She?eld Road. It will be weeks before many of the Barnsley
people will be able to get to work, and this money will come in most
usefully. Every 10/- gives a meal to 240 children! I am very glad that I went
to Barnsley, though I went with groans, but it does one good to see such a
?ne democracy. I wish you could have seen a meeting of miners I went to; a
certain smart young Tory ?? came with some courage, but very little sense
to prove to the miners that they were wrong. They treated him with
good-natured contempt and when he told them that their wages were quite
su?cient they replied ‘Try it lad yourself ’ – ‘It wouldn’t pay for your bloody
starched clothes’. ‘Lad, your belly’s fool’ and other playful remarks. ‘Noo
redooction’ a woman shouted and everyone cheered. Then a miner spoke
engagement 83with a good deal of sense and sarcasm, and the young ?? was in about as silly
a position as one could be in – well-fed, well-dressed and rosy. The contrast
between him and the man to whom he preached contentment was what you
call striking. But he had to smile and look gracious, as only Tories can, and
pretend he was enjoying it immensely.
Yrs.
L. Pearsall Smith
44 Grosvenor Road
Westminster Embankment
