seemed a little curious to those not accustomed to them. I remember mymother-in-law explaining that she was taught to consider the Lord’s Prayer‘gay’. At ?rst this remark caused bewilderment, but she explained that every-thing done by non-Quakers but not by Quakers was called ‘gay’, and thisincluded the use of all ?xed formulas, since prayer ought to be inspired bythe Holy Spirit. The Lord’s Prayer, being a ?xed formula, was therefore ‘gay’.On another occasion she informed the dinner-table that she had beenbrought up to have no respect for the Ten Commandments. They also were‘gay’. I do not know whether any Quakers remain who take the doctrineof the guidance of the Spirit so seriously as to have no respect for the TenCommandments. Certainly I have not met any in recent years. It must not, ofcourse, be supposed that the virtuous people who had this attitude ever, infact, infringed any of the Commandments; the Holy Spirit saw to it that thisshould not occur. Outside the ranks of the Quakers, similar doctrines some-times have more questionable consequences. I remember an account writtenby my mother-in-law of various cranks that she had known, in which therewas one chapter entitled ‘Divine Guidance’. On reading the chapter onediscovered that this was a synonym for fornication.My impression of the old families of Philadelphia Quakers was that theyhad all the e?eteness of a small aristocracy. Old misers of ninety would sitbrooding over their hoard while their children of sixty or seventy waited fortheir death with what patience they could command. Various forms of men-tal disorder appeared common. Those who must be accounted sane wereapt to be very stupid. Alys had a maiden aunt in Philadelphia, a sister of herfather, who was very rich and very absurd. She liked me well enough, buthad a dark suspicion that I thought it was not literally the blood of Jesus thatbrought salvation. I do not know how she got this notion, as I never saidanything to encourage it. We dined with her on Thanksgiving Day. She was avery greedy old lady, and had supplied a feast which required a gargantuanstomach. Just as we were about to eat the ?rst mouthful, she said: ‘Let uspause and think of the poor.’ Apparently she found this thought an appetiser.She had two nephews who lived in her neighbourhood and came to see herevery evening. They felt it would be unfair if the nephew and nieces in Europegot an equal share at her death. She, however, liked to boast about them, andfirst marriage 123respected them more than those whom she could bully as she chose.Consequently they lost nothing by their absence.America in those days was a curiously innocent country. Numbers of menasked me to explain what it was that Oscar Wilde had done. In Boston westayed in a boarding-house kept by two old Quaker ladies, and one of them atbreakfast said to me in a loud voice across the table: ‘Oscar Wilde has notbeen much before the public lately. What has he been doing?’ ‘He is inprison’, I replied. Fortunately on this occasion I was not asked what he haddone. I viewed America in those days with the conceited superiority of theinsular Briton. Nevertheless, contact with academic Americans, especiallymathematicians, led me to realise the superiority of Germany to England inalmost all academic matters. Against my will, in the course of my travels, thebelief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge graduallywore o?. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.Of the year 1897 I remember very little except that my Foundations of Geometrywas published in that year. I remember also very great pleasure in receivinga letter of praise of this book from Louis Couturat, whom at that time I hadnever met, though I had reviewed his book The Mathematical In?nite. I haddreamed of receiving letters of praise from unknown foreigners, but thiswas the ?rst time it had happened to me. He related how he had worked hisway through my book ‘armé d’un dictionnaire’, for he knew no English. Ata slightly later date I went to Caen to visit him, as he was at that time aprofessor there. He was surprised to ?nd me so young, but in spite of thata friendship began which lasted until he was killed by a lorry during themobilisation of 1914. In the last years I had lost contact with him, because hebecame absorbed in the question of an international language. He advocatedIdo rather than Esperanto. According to his conversation, no human beings inthe whole previous history of the human race had ever been quite sodepraved as the Esperantists. He lamented that the word Ido did not lend itselfto the formation of a word similar to Esperantist. I suggested ‘idiot’, but hewas not quite pleased. I remember lunching with him in Paris in July 1900,when the heat was very oppressive. Mrs Whitehead, who had a weak heart,fainted, and while he was gone to fetch the sal volatile somebody opened thewindow. When he returned, he ?rmly shut it again, saying: ‘De l’air, oui, maispas de courant d’air.’ I remember too his coming to see me in a hotel in Parisin 1905, while Mr Davies and his daughter Margaret (the father and sister ofCrompton and Theodore) listened to his conversation. He talked without amoment’s intermission for half an hour, and then remarked that ‘the wise arethose who hold their tongues’. At this point, Mr Davies, in spite of his eightyyears, rushed from the room, and I could just hear the sound of his laughteras he disappeared. Couturat was for a time a very ardent advocate of my ideason mathematical logic, but he was not always very prudent, and in my longthe autobiography of bertrand russell 124duel with Poincaré I found it sometimes something of a burden to have todefend Couturat as well as myself. His most valuable work was on Leibniz’slogic. Leibniz wished to be thought well of, so he published only his second-rate work. All his best work remained in manuscript. Subsequent editors,publishing only what they thought best, continued to leave his best workunprinted. Couturat was the ?rst man who unearthed it. I was naturallypleased, as it a?orded documentary evidence for the interpretation of Leibnizwhich I had adopted in my book about him on grounds that, withoutCouturat’s work, would have remained inadequate. The ?rst time I metCouturat he explained to me that he did not practise any branch of ‘le sport’.When shortly afterwards I asked him if he rode a bicycle, he replied: ‘Butno, since I am not a sportsman.’ I corresponded with him for many years,and during the early stages of the Boer War wrote him imperialistic letterswhich I now consider very regrettable.In the year 1898 Alys and I began a practice, which we continued till1902, of spending part of each year at Cambridge. I was at this time begin-ning to emerge from the bath of German idealism in which I had beenplunged by McTaggart and Stout. I was very much assisted in this process byMoore, of whom at that time I saw a great deal. It was an intense excitement,after having supposed the sensible world unreal, to be able to believe againthat there really were such things as tables and chairs. But the most interestingaspect of the matter to me was the logical aspect. I was glad to think thatrelations are real, and I was interested to discover the dire e?ect upon meta-physics of the belief that all propositions are of the subject-predicate form.Accident led me to read Leibniz, because he had to be lectured upon, andMcTaggart wanted to go to New Zealand, so that the College asked me to takehis place so far as this one course was concerned. In the study and criticismof Leibniz I found occasion to exemplify the new views on logic to which,largely under Moore’s guidance, I had been led.We spent two successive autumns in Venice, and I got to know almostevery stone in the place. From the date of my ?rst marriage down to theoutbreak of the ?rst war, I do not think any year passed without my going toItaly. Sometimes I went on foot, sometimes on a bicycle; once in a trampsteamer calling at every little port from Venice to Genoa. I loved especially thesmaller and more out-of-the-way towns, and the mountain landscapes in theApennines. After the outbreak of the war, I did not go back to Italy till 1949. Ihad the intention of going there to a Congress in the year 1922, but Mussolini,who had not yet accomplished his coup d’état, sent word to the organisers ofthe Congress that, while no harm should be done to me, any Italian whospoke to me should be assassinated. Having no wish to leave a trail of bloodbehind me, I avoided the country which he de?led, dearly as I loved it.I remember the summer of 1899 as the last time that I saw Sally Fairchildfirst marriage 125until one afternoon in 1940, when we met as old people and wondered whatwe had seen in each other. She was an aristocratic Bostonian of somewhatdiminished fortunes, whom I had ?rst come to know in 1896 when we werestaying in Boston. In the face she was not strikingly beautiful, but her move-ments were the most graceful that I have ever seen. Innumerable people fell inlove with her. She used to say that you could always tell when an Englishmanwas going to propose, because he began: ‘The governor’s a rum sort of chap,but I think you’d get on with him.’ The next time that I met her, she wasstaying with her mother at Rushmore, the country house of my Uncle, GeneralPitt-Rivers. With the exception of the General, most of the family were moreor less mad. Mrs Pitt-Rivers, who was a Stanley, had become a miser, and ifvisitors left any of their bacon and egg she would put it back in the dish. Theeldest son was a Guardsman, very smart and very correct. He always camedown late for breakfast and rang the bell for fresh food. When he ordered it,my Aunt would scream at the footman, saying that there was no need of it asthere was plenty left from the scrapings from the visitors’ plates. The foot-man, however, paid no attention to her, but quietly obeyed the Guardsman.Then there was another son, who was a painter, mad and bad, but not sad.There was a third son who was a nice fellow, but incompetent. He had thegood luck to marry Elspeth Phelps, the dressmaker, and thus escaped destitu-tion. Then there was St George, the most interesting of the family. He was oneof the ?rst inventors of electric light, but he threw up all such things foresoteric Buddhism and spent his time travelling in Tibet to visit Mahatmas.When he returned, he found that Edison and Swan were making electriclights which he considered an infringement of his patent. He thereforeentered upon a long series of lawsuits, which he always lost and which ?nallyleft him bankrupt. This con?rmed him in the Buddhist faith that one shouldovercome mundane desires. My grandmother Stanley used to make him playwhist, and when it came to his turn to deal, she used to say: ‘I am glad it isyour turn to deal, as it will take away your air of saintliness.’ He combinedsaintliness and Company promoting in about equal proportions. He was inlove with Sally Fairchild and had on that account invited her mother and herto Rushmore. There was as usual not enough food, and on one occasion atlunch there was a tug-of-war between Sally and the artist for the last plate ofrice pudding, which I regret to say the artist won. On the day of her departureshe wished to catch a certain train but Mrs Pitt-Rivers insisted that she shouldvisit a certain ruin on the way to the station, and therefore catch a later train.She appealed to St George to support her, and at ?rst he said he would, butwhen it came to the crisis, he preached instead the vanity of human wishes.This caused her to reject his proposal. (His subsequent marriage was annulledon the ground of his impotence.2) In the summer of 1899 she paid a longvisit to Friday’s Hill, and I became very fond of her. I did not consider myselfthe autobiography of bertrand russell 126in love with her, and I never so much as kissed her hand, but as years wentby I realised that she had made a deep impression on me, and I rememberas if it were yesterday our evening walks in the summer twilight while wewere restrained by the strict code of those days from giving any expressionwhatever to our feelings.In the autumn of 1899 the Boer War broke out. I was at that time a LiberalImperialist, and at ?rst by no means a pro-Boer. British defeats caused memuch anxiety, and I could think of nothing else but the war news. We wereliving at The Millhanger, and I used most afternoons to walk the four milesto the station in order to get an evening paper. Alys, being American, didnot have the same feelings in the matter, and was rather annoyed by myabsorption in it. When the Boers began to be defeated, my interest grew less,and early in 1901 I became a pro-Boer.In the year 1900, my book on the Philosophy of Leibniz was published. In Julyof that year I went to Paris, where a new chapter of my life began.LETTERSPembroke LodgeRichmond, SurreyMay 30, ’95Dearest BertieI hope yr Cambridge days had been useful though I don’t exactly know inwhat way – I have asked you before, but forget yr answer, what yr dissertationis called – how do you think you are succeeding with it? How vividly Iremember the ?rst tidings of yr ?rst success, before you went to Cambridge –when you rushed upstairs to tell Auntie and me – the dear dear Bertie ofthat day – and then the last – oh the happy tears that start to eyes, at suchmoments in the old withered life to wch the young fresh life is bringingjoy – Yet how I always felt ‘these things wd not give me one moment’shappiness if he were not loving and good and true’.I came upon something of that kind yesty in a chance book I was reading –and am always coming upon passages in all kinds of books which seemwritten on purpose to answer to some experiences of my life – I suppose thisis natural when life has been long. By the bye you have not yet said a word toAuntie about her little birthday letter – she has not said so, and she told me itwas only a few lines, but such as they were she made an e?ort over illness towrite them – the fact is that you take only the fag-end of the fragment of theshred of a minute or two for yr letters to us – and though it is pleasant nowand then to look back to the full and talky ones you wrote in past days, theyare not exactly substitutes for what those of the present might be! However aslong as you have no wish for talkings on paper, wch at best is a poor a?air, gofirst marriage 127on with yr scraps – I don’t forget how very busy you are, but the very busypeople are those who ?nd most time for everything somehow – don’t youthink so? (What an ugly smudge!) As for talking o? paper, you didn’t intendas far as I cd make out when you went away, ever, within measurable distanceto make that possible – Oh dear how many things I meant to say and have notsaid – about Quakers, of whose peculiar creed of rules we have been hearingthings true or false – and about much besides. But it must all wait. Whatlovely skies and earth! and how glad you must have been to get back. Loveand thanks to Alys.Yr ever lovingGrannyI hope you found my untidy pencilled glossaries wch were loose inside thebook – I thought they wd help to more pleasure in the book when you readit. How I wish we cd have read it together!Pembroke LodgeRichmond, Surrey(1896)Dearest BertieYou say you have ‘settled’ yr plans – please mention them in case P.L.[Pembroke Lodge] comes into them – Gertrude3and bairns are to be hereSept. 1 to 16, I’m happy to say. U.R. in Scotland and elsewhere – so, thattime wd not do – I can imagine the ‘deeper Philosophy’ and even ‘L’In?niMathematique’ to be most interesting. It is rather painful dear Bertie, thatknowing our love for Miss Walker, you still leave the death unmentioned. Nordo you say a word of dear Lady Tennyson’s although so near you – Sir HenryTaylor called her ‘very woman of very women’ – no length of words couldadd to the praise of those ?ve. I have sent for Green for Alys – a delightfulhistory but not quite what I shd have liked as a gift to her.Yr lovingGrannyAuntie has a beautiful note from poor Hallam.Pembroke LodgeRichmond, SurreyAug. 11, 1896Dearest AlysWe are delighted with the Bertie photo – It is perfect, such a natural, notphotographic smile. As for you, we don’t like you, and I hope Bertie doesn’t,neither pose, nor dusky face, nor white humpy tippet – this is perhapsungrateful of Agatha but she can’t help it, nor can I. When is or was yourbirthday? I forget and only remember that I said I would give you a book. Iwill try to think of one and then ask you if you have it, but not Green I think –the autobiography of bertrand russell 128something less solid and instructive – have you Henriette Renan’s letters?Agatha has just read them and says they are beautiful. Of course, my dearchild I should never think of giving my health or want of it as an objection toyour going to America. I felt it was for yourselves alone to decide whether ‘togo or not to go’. I trust it may turn out for Bertie’s good. It is sad that the lastof the eminent group of authors, Holmes and Lowell, are gone – but nodoubt there must be men well worth his knowing, whether authors or not. Itis quite true that I have earnestly wished him to be thrown into a wider andmore various set of men and women than has been the case – but this is mostto be desired in his own country. Harold and Vita4came down – did I tellyou? last week, such a nice natural pleasant girl. Thanks for your nice note.What a pity about your cold! Is it any fault in the cottage? What a horribleseason for crossing and returning! Will sea air be good for your indigestion?Your always a?ectionateGrannyPembroke LodgeRichmond, SurreyMay 17, ’98My dearest BertieI shall think of you very much tomorrow and of happy birthdays long agowhen she was with us5to guide, counsel and inspire to all good and whenyou were still the child brightening our home and ?lling us with hope ofwhat you might some day become. Dear dear Bertie has it been an upwardgrowth since those days? Have the joys of life which are now yours helpedyou to be not less but more loving, more helpful, more thoughtful, for thosewhose lives may be full of sorrow illness pain and loneliness. All of us whohave known what it was to have Granny’s love and prayers and wishes – andwho have the blessed memory of her wonderful example must feel, at timesalmost despairingly, how terribly terribly far away we are from her ideal andher standard of life – but we must strive on and hope for more of her spirit.You cannot think how very lovely everything is here just now and though theaching longing for her is awful, yet I love to look upon it all and rememberhow she loved it.Uncle Rollo is very unwell and has been for a long time. I was very anxiouslong ago about him when he was doing far too much, now he is orderedcomplete rest; – Perhaps you have been to Dunrozel. There has been animmense deal to do here and I have been quite overdone several times.Gwennie [Gwendoline Villiers] has saved me from a breakdown by workingincessantly and helping in every possible way – It has been most painful tosee the beautiful pictures go away and the house more and more dismantledand I shall be thankful when it is over. I am most glad that Uncle Rollo hasfirst marriage 129several of the good pictures. They ought to be his and also I am grateful toHerbrand6for giving the Grant picture of your grandfather to the NationalPortrait Gallery. I am sorry I have no present for you just yet but it has beensimply impossible during this unceasing business. Give Alys very best love.God bless you dearest Bertie.Your very lovingAuntieTo Graham WallasThe DeaneryBryn Mawr, Pa.Nov. 13, 1896Dear WallasI have been meaning to write to you ever since the Presidential election, onaccount of a specimen ballot paper wh. I am sending you by book post. Thisdocument, I am told, is more complicated than in any other state: certainly it isa triumph. It seems to me to contain within it the whole 18th century theoryof the free and intelligent demos, and the whole 19th century practice ofbossism. Imagine using such a phrase as ‘straight ticket’ on a ballot-paper,and imagine the stupendous intellect of a man who votes anything else onsuch a ballot-paper. I have never seen a document more replete with theory ofpolitics, or illustrating more neatly the short road from bad metaphysics topolitical corruption. The whole interest, in Philadelphia, centred aboutthe election of the sheri? – Crow, the independent Republican, was makinga stand against bossism, and strange to say, he got in, tho’ by a verynarrow majority.I am sending you also some rather transparent boss’s devices for allowing?ctitious voters to vote. You will see that the vouchers I enclose enable aman to vote without being on the register. I was taken to a polling-boothin Philadelphia, and there stood, just outside, a sub-deputy boss, namedFlanagan, instructing the ignorant how to vote, illegally watching them marktheir ballot-paper, and when necessary vouching for the right to vote. ARepublican and a Democrat sat inside to see that all was fair, it being sup-posed they would counteract each other; as a matter of fact, they make a deal,and agree to keep up their common friends the bosses, even if they have toadmit fraudulent votes for the opposite party. Americans seem too fatalisticand pessimistic to do much against them: I was taken by a man appointed aso?cial watcher by the Prohibitionists, but tho’ he observed and pointedout the irregularities, he merely shrugged his shoulders when I asked whyhe did not interfere and make a row. The fact is, Americans are unspeakablylazy about everything but their business: to cover their laziness, they inventa pessimism, and say things can’t be improved: tho’ when I confront them,and ask for any single reform movement wh. has not succeeded, they arestumped, except one who mentioned the Consular service – naturally not athe autobiography of bertrand russell 130very soulstirring cry. One of them, who prides himself on his virtue, franklytold me he found he could make more money in business than he could savein rates by ?ghting corruption – it never seemed to enter his head that onemight think that a rather lame excuse. However, everything seems to beimproving very fast, tho’ nothing makes the lazy hypocritical Puritans sofurious as to say so. They take a sort of pride in being the most corrupt placein the Union: everywhere you go they brag of the peculiar hopelessness oftheir own locality. The fall of Altgeld and the defeat of Tammany seem toirritate them: it might so easily have been otherwise, they say, and will beotherwise next election. Altogether I don’t see that they deserve any betterthan they get. The Quakers and Puritans, so far as I have come across them,are the greatest liars and hypocrites I have ever seen and are as a rule totallydestitute of vigour. Here’s a Philadelphia story. Wanamaker is the localWhiteley, enormously rich and religious. The protective tari? is dear to hissoul. In the election of 1888, when New York was the critical State, it wastelegraphed to the Phila. Republican Committee that 80,000 dollars wouldwin the election. Wanamaker planked down the sum, New York State waswon by a majority of 500, and Wanamaker became Postmaster General. Hereis a New York tale. Jay Gould, in 1884, o?ered a huge sum to the Republicans.This became known to the Democrats, who next day had a procession ofseveral hours past his house shouting as they marched: ‘Blood! Blood! JayGould’s Blood!’ He turned pale, and telegraphed any sum desired to theDemocrats. Cleveland was elected. – However, individual Americans aredelightful: but whether from lack of courage or from decentralisation, theydo not form a society of frank people, and all in turn complain that theywould be universally cut if they ever spoke their minds. I think this is largelydue to the absence of a capital. A similar cause I think accounts for thereligiosity and timidity of their Universities. Professor Ely was dismissedfrom the Johns Hopkins for being a Xtian Socialist! There are possibilitiestho’: everybody is far more anxious to be educated than in England, the levelof intelligence is high, and thoughtful people admit – though only within thelast few years, I am told, apparently since Bryce – that their form of govern-ment is not perfect. I think you will have, as we have, a very good time here.We probably sail December 30th, and strongly urge you to arrive before then.We shall be in New York, and want very much to see you, as also to introduceyou to several nice people who will be there. If you have not yet writtenabout the date of your arrival, please write soon. – This College is a ?ne place,immeasurably superior to Girton and Newnham; the Professor of Pol. Econ.oddly enough is a Socialist and a Free Silver man and has carried all his classwith him tho’ many of them are rich New Yorkers. Those I have met areintelligent and generous in their views of social questions.YoursBertrand Russellfirst marriage 131Maurice Sheldon Amos (afterwards Sir) was my only link between Cambridge and Friday’s Hill.His father, who died in the 80s, was a theoretical lawyer of some eminence, and was the principalauthor of the Egyptian Constitution imposed by the English after their occupation of Egypt in1881. His mother, as a widow, was devoted to Good Works, especially Purity. She was popularlysupposed to have said: ‘Since my dear husband’s death I have devoted my life to prostitution.’ Itwas also said that her husband, though a very hairy man, became as bald as an egg within sixweeks of his marriage: but I cannot vouch for these stories. Mrs Amos, through her work, became afriend of Mrs Pearsall Smith. Accordingly Logan, when visiting me at Cambridge, took me to callon Maurice, then a freshman just beginning the study of moral science. He was an attractiveyouth, tall, enthusiastic, and awkward. He used to say: ‘The world is an odd place: whenever Imove about in it I bump into something.’He became a barrister and went to Egypt, where his father was remembered. There heprospered, and after being a Judge for a long time retired, and stood for Cambridge as a Liberal.He was the only man I ever knew who read mathematics for pleasure, as other people readdetective stories.He had a sister named Bonté, with whom Alys and I were equally friends. Bonté su?eredgreatly from her mother’s fanatical religiosity. She became a doctor, but a few weeks before her?nal examination her mother developed the habit of waking her up in the night to pray forher, so we had to send her money to enable her to live away from home. Alys and I took her withus to America in 1896.Bonté also went to Egypt, where she was at one time quarantine medical o?cer at Suez, whoseduty (inter alia) it was to catch rats on ships declared by their captains to be free from suchanimals. She ?nally married an army o?cer who was at the head of the police force of Egypt. Hehad endured shipwrecks and mutinies and all kinds of ‘hair-breadth ’scapes’, but when I remarkedto him, ‘You seem to have had a very adventurous life’, he replied, ‘Oh no, of course I never missed