Procession which I attended because of Alys. We quarrelled about the Missionto Deep Sea Fishermen, concerning which I made some disparaging remark.Shortly afterwards she followed the example of Bernard Shaw by standing forthe St Pancras Vestry (which corresponded to what is now the BoroughCouncil). She lived up a back staircase in a slum, and as I had my Cambridgefurniture to dispose of, I gave some of it to her.Meanwhile, through Alys, she came to know a young man named BobbyPhillimore, who had proposed to Alys but been refused. He was atChristchurch, and was the son of Lord Phillimore, a very rich Liberal LawLord and a close friend of Mr Gladstone. Bobby, I think under Logan’sin?uence, became Socialist and a poet. He was the original of the poet inShaw’s Candida. He decided that he wanted to marry Lion, but he was notgoing to repeat the mistake of precipitancy which he had committed withAlys. So he got himself elected to the St Pancras Vestry and carefully preparedhis approaches. Shortly after Alys and I were married, when we were living inBerlin, I got a letter from Lion asking my advice as to whether she shouldaccept him. I wrote back at once giving twelve reasons against. By return ofpost I got a letter from her saying that she had accepted him.In the following spring, when Alys and I were staying with her sister atFiesole, Lion and Bobby came to see us on their return from their honey-moon in North Africa. I then for the ?rst time learned why she had acceptedlater years of telegraph house 433him. After she had resolutely refused him for some time, he developed hearttrouble, and eminent medical men gave it as their opinion that if she per-sisted he would die. His father pleaded with her, but in vain. Finally, inresponse to impassioned requests from Lord Phillimore, Mr Gladstone, thougheighty and nearly blind, climbed her slummy staircase in person to urge herto abandon the role of Barbara Allen. This was too much for her, and sheaccepted her love-sick swain.So far, so good – a pleasant King Cophetua story. But in Fiesole, after herhoneymoon, she told a surprising sequel. Alys and I noticed at once that shehad become profoundly cynical, and amazingly obscene in her conversation,so we naturally pressed her as to what produced such a change. She told usthat, as soon as she and Bobby were married, he told her he had deceived thedoctors, and had nothing the matter with his heart;3further that, though hehad been determined to marry her, he did not love her and never had lovedher. I believe the marriage was never consummated.Bobby’s father owned Radlett, at that time a picturesque country village; heowned also a rather beautiful country house between Radlett and Elstree. Hegave Bobby the house and a free hand in managing the estate. The poetand the Socialist receded into the background, and were replaced by a veryhard-headed business man, who proceeded to develop Radlett by putting upvast numbers of cheap, ugly, sordid suburban villas, which brought in anenormous pro?t. Years later he really did become ill. His wife nursed himdevotedly for about three years, at the end of which he died. After his deathshe told me she would marry any man who would promise to be always ill,because she had grown so used to nursing that she did not know how to ?llher days without it.She did not, however, marry again. She published anonymously a bookwhich had a considerable success, called By an unknown disciple. She had anabortive a?air with Massingham. She took a great interest in psychicalresearch. Being left a rich widow, she devoted a large part of her income tosupport of the Labour Party. I saw little of her in her last years, because shedemanded that one should treat seriously things that I regard as nonsense –sentimental religiosity, second sight, the superior intuitions of the Irish, andso on. But I regretted these obstacles, and tried to see her without eitherquarrels or insincerity.To W. V. Quine, the Harvard logicianTelegraph HouseHarting, Peters?eld6-6-35Dear Dr QuineYour book [System of Logistic] arrived at a moment when I was over-workedthe autobiography of bertrand russell 434and obliged to take a long holiday. The result is that I have only just ?nishedreading it.I think you have done a beautiful piece of work; it is a long time since Ihave had as much intellectual pleasure as in reading you.Two questions occurred to me, as to which I should be glad to haveanswers when you have time. I have put them on a separate sheet.In reading you I was struck by the fact that, in my work, I was always beingin?uenced by extraneous philosophical considerations. Take e.g. descriptions.I was interested in ‘Scott is the author of Waverley’, and not only in thedescriptive functions of PM.4If you look up Meinong’s work, you will see thesort of fallacies I wanted to avoid; the same applies to the ontologicalargument.Take again notation (mainly Whitehead’s): we had to provide for thecorrelators in Parts III and IV. Your αβ for our R|S would not do for three ormore relations, or for various forms (such as R||S) we needed.I am worried – though as yet I cannot put my worry into words – asto whether you really have avoided the troubles for which the axiom ofreducibility was introduced as completely as you think. I should like to seeInduction and Dedekindian continuity explicitly treated by your methods.I am a little puzzled as to the status of classes in your system. They appearas a primitive idea, but the connection of α with x ?(φx) seems somewhatvague. Do you maintain that, if α = x ?(φx), the prop. xα, is identical with φx?You must, if you are to say that all props are sequences. Yet it seems obviousthat ‘I gave sixpence to my son’ is not the same as ‘my son is one of the peopleto whom I gave sixpence’.And do you maintain that an in?nite class can be de?ned otherwise thanby a de?ning function? The need of including in?nite classes was one of myreasons for emphasising functions as opposed to classes in PM.I expect you have good answers to these questions.In any case, I have the highest admiration for what you have done, whichhas reformed many matters as to which I had always been uncomfortable.Yours very trulyBertrand RussellTo G. E. MooreTelegraph HouseHarting, Peters?eldFeb. 8, 1937Dear MooreI have become very desirous of returning to purely philosophic work;in particular, I want to develop the ideas in my paper on ‘The Limits ofEmpiricism’, & to investigate the relation of language to fact, as to whichlater years of telegraph house 435Carnap’s ideas seem to me very inadequate. But I am in the unfortunateposition of being legally bound to pay between ￡800 & ￡900 a year to otherpeople, & having only ￡300 a year of unearned income. I cannot thereforework at philosophy unless I can get some academic job. I suppose there is nopossibility at Cambridge? I should be very glad if there were, as my desire toget back to philosophy is very strong.YoursBertrand RussellTelegraph HouseHarting, Peters?eldFeb. 18, 1937Dear MooreThank you for your letter, which shows the position to be much as Isupposed. I think perhaps, at the moment, it is hardly worth proceedingin the matter, as the chance of success seems small, & there are otherpossibilities elsewhere. I am very grateful to you for being willing to recom-mend me, & if other things fail I will write to you again. In the meantime,I think it will be best to do nothing.The Leverhulme Fellowships are settled in June; till then, I shall not know.In any case they only last two years.YoursBertrand RussellFrom Desmond MacCarthy25 Wellington SquareS.W.3March 16. 37Dear BertieI am relieved that you thought my review likely to whet the public appetite:that is what I tried to do. I did not write it well: I wrote it too quickly andonly had time to make perfunctory corrections, but I think it will persuadepeople that The Amberley Papers are very interesting. I went to Trinity Commem:and dined in Hall on Sunday night. I found the review was working there.What I am pleased about is that I got G. M. Young to write about it inthe Observer. He wanted to write about it in the S. T. & I got him, by grabbingthe book from him, to o?er his comments to Garvin.I don’t expect that you hope for a large sale, but I think it may have a veryrespectable one & go on selling.I am interested to hear that you have sold Telegraph House, & long to hearparticulars. I am afraid the price was not not [sic] good or you would havewritten with more elation. It does not mean – does it that your worst moneythe autobiography of bertrand russell 436worries are at an end? Do you remember what a fuss Schopenhauer madeabout having to pension the woman he pushed down stairs for the term ofher natural life? And he had only a brown poodle dependent on him, (Itsname was Butz) and you have never pushed a woman down stairs. Do youremember his triumphant entry in his diary after many years, Obit anus, abitonus? I look forward to getting two postcards from you, soon, with these wordson them.It is of the utmost importance that you should have leisure to write yourbook clearing up the relation of grammar and philosophy and many thingsbeside. Is it true that you could manage on ￡500 a year till you can writethose post-cards? Your admirers ought to be able to raise that. Would youobject to being pensioned? I shouldn’t if my prospects were as good as yoursof writing something valuable.Time is getting short now. I don’t mean that death is necessarily near eitherof us, but the slow death is near; the softening and relaxing of the faculty ofattention which in its approach feels so like wisdom to the victim.I met Shaw not long ago & he talked about his latest works, which exhibitall his astonishing aptitudes – except grip. I had an impulse to say (but Ithought it too unkind) ‘Aren’t you afraid though of letting out the deadlysecret – that you can no longer care?’ I guessed the nature of that secret fromhaving observed what was threatening me. But with you & me it is still only athreat – You, especially, can still care, for your power of feeling has alwaysbeen stronger than mine. Still, time is short. We are all (and I mean alsopeople neither of us know) [anxious] that you should philosophise, andwrite your book before the power to write it begins to be insensibly suckedaway in the fat folds of that hydra, old age.I stayed with Moore and we were happy – grey-beards at play, most of thetime. He made me read a paper by Wisdom on De?nition but I didn’t getthe hang of it. It was Wittgensteinian. I wanted to talk about myself and makeMoore talk about himself, but we didn’t care enough to get over thediscomfort of leaving the pleasant shore of memories. But damn it I’ll do itnext time (This isn’t the ?rst time though, I’ve said that). Do please send meword when you are next in London & come to lunch or in the morning or inthe afternoon, or to dinner – any time. We cd put you up. Dermod is a shipsdoctor, his room is empty. And I will come to you for a visit in May after myLeslie Stephen lecture. Give my a?ectionate & best wishes to ‘Peter’ for ahappy delivery –Yours always,Desmondlater years of telegraph house 43713AMERICA. 1938–1944In August 1938, we sold our house at Kidlington. The purchasers wouldonly buy it if we evacuated it at once, which left us a fortnight in August to?ll in somehow. We hired a caravan, and spent the time on the coast ofPembrokeshire. There were Peter and me, John and Kate and Conrad, and ourbig dog Sherry. It poured with rain practically the whole time and we were allsquashed up together. It was about as uncomfortable a time as I can remem-ber. Peter had to prepare the meals, which she hated doing. Finally, John andKate went back to Dartington, and Peter and Conrad and I sailed for America.In Chicago I had a large Seminar, where I continued to lecture on the samesubject as at Oxford, namely, ‘Words and Facts’. But I was told that Americanswould not respect my lectures if I used monosyllables, so I altered the titleto something like ‘The Correlation between Oral and Somatic Motor Habits’.Under this title, or something of the sort, the Seminar was approved. It wasan extraordinarily delightful Seminar. Carnap and Charles Morris used tocome to it, and I had three pupils of quite outstanding ability – Dalkey,Kaplan, and Copilowish. We used to have close arguments back and forth,and succeeded in genuinely clarifying points to our mutual satisfaction,which is rare in philosophical argument. Apart from this Seminar, the timein Chicago was disagreeable. The town is beastly and the weather was vile.President Hutchins, who was occupied with the Hundred Best Books, andwith the attempt to force neo-Thomism on the philosophical faculty, natur-ally did not much like me, and when the year for which I had been engagedcame to an end was, I think, glad to see me go.I became a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. Afterthe bleak hideousness of Chicago, which was still in the grip of winter, it wasdelightful to arrive in the Californian spring. We arrived in California at theend of March, and my duties did not begin until September. The ?rst part ofthe intervening time I spent in a lecture tour, of which I remember only twothings with any vividness. One is that the professors at the Louisiana StateUniversity, where I lectured, all thought well of Huey Long, on the groundthat he had raised their salaries. The other recollection is more pleasant: ina purely rural region, I was taken to the top of the dykes that enclose theMississippi. I was very tired with lecturing, long journeys, and heat, I lay inthe grass, and watched the majestic river, and gazed, half hypnotised, at waterand sky. For some ten minutes I experienced peace, a thing which very rarelyhappened to me, and I think only in the presence of moving water.In the summer of 1939, John and Kate came to visit us for the period ofthe school holidays. A few days after they arrived the War broke out, and itbecame impossible to send them back to England. I had to provide for theirfurther education at a moment’s notice. John was seventeen, and I enteredhim at the University of California, but Kate was only ?fteen, and thisseemed young for the University. I made enquiries among friends as towhich school in Los Angeles had the highest academic standard, and therewas one that they all concurred in recommending, so I sent her there. But Ifound that there was only one subject taught that she did not already know,and that was the virtues of the capitalist system. I was therefore compelled,in spite of her youth, to send her to the University. Throughout the year1939–40 John and Kate lived with us.In the summer months of 1939 we rented a house at Santa Barbara, whichis an altogether delightful place. Unfortunately, I injured my back, and hadto lie ?at on my back for a month, tortured by almost unendurable sciatica.The result of this was that I got behind hand with the preparations formy lectures, and that throughout the coming academic year I was alwaysoverworked and always conscious that my lectures were inadequate.The academic atmosphere was much less agreeable than in Chicago; thepeople were not so able, and the President was a man for whom I conceived,I think justly, a profound aversion. If a lecturer said anything that was tooliberal, it was discovered that the lecturer in question did his work badly, andhe was dismissed. When there were meetings of the Faculty, the President ofthe University used to march in as if he were wearing jack-boots, and ruleany motion out of order if he did not happen to like it. Everybody trembledat his frown, and I was reminded of a meeting of the Reichstag under Hitler.Towards the end of the academic year 1939–40, I was invited to become aprofessor at the College of the City of New York. The matter appeared to besettled, and I wrote to the President of the University of California to resignmy post there. Half an hour after he received my letter, I learned that theappointment in New York was not de?nitive and I called upon the Presidentto withdraw my resignation, but he told me it was too late. Earnest Christianamerica. 1938–1944 439taxpayers had been protesting against having to contribute to the salary ofan in?del, and the President was glad to be quit of me.The College of the City of New York was an institution run by the CityGovernment. Those who attended it were practially all Catholics or Jews;but to the indignation of the former, practically all the scholarships went tothe latter. The Government of New York City was virtually a satellite of theVatican, but the professors at the City College strove ardently to keep up somesemblance of academic freedom. It was no doubt in pursuit of this aim thatthey had recommended me. An Anglican bishop was incited to protestagainst me, and priests lectured the police, who were practically all IrishCatholics, on my responsibility for the local criminals. A lady, whose daugh-ter attended some section of the City College with which I should never bebrought in contact, was induced to bring a suit, saying that my presence inthat institution would be dangerous to her daughter’s virtue. This was not asuit against me, but against the Municipality of New York.1I endeavoured tobe made a party to the suit, but was told that I was not concerned. Althoughthe Municipality was nominally the defendant, it was as anxious to lose thesuit as the good lady was to win it. The lawyer for the prosecution pro-nounced my works ‘lecherous, libidinous, lustful, venerous, erotomaniac,aphrodisiac, irreverent, narrow-minded, untruthful, and bereft of moral?ber’. The suit came before an Irishman who decided against me at lengthand with vituperation. I wished for an appeal, but the Municipality of NewYork refused to appeal. Some of the things said against me were quitefantastic. For example, I was thought wicked for saying that very younginfants should not be punished for masturbation.A typical American witch-hunt was instituted against me,2and I becametaboo throughout the whole of the United States. I was to have been engagedin a lecture tour, but I had only one engagement, made before the witch-hunthad developed. The Rabbi who had made this engagement broke hiscontract, but I cannot blame him. Owners of halls refused to let them if Iwas to lecture, and if I had appeared anywhere in public, I should probablyhave been lynched by a Catholic mob, with the full approval of the police.No newspaper or magazine would publish anything that I wrote, and Iwas suddenly deprived of all means of earning a living. As it was legallyimpossible to get money out of England, this produced a very di?cult situ-ation, especially as I had my three children dependent upon me. Manyliberal-minded professors protested, but they all supposed that as I was anearl I must have ancestral estates and be very well o?. Only one man didanything practical, and that was Dr Barnes, the inventor of Argyrol, and thecreator of the Barnes Foundation near Philadelphia. He gave me a ?ve-yearappointment to lecture on philosophy at his Foundation. This relieved me ofa very great anxiety. Until he gave me this appointment, I had seen no waythe autobiography of bertrand russell 440out of my troubles. I could not get money out of England; it was impossibleto return to England; I certainly did not wish my three children to go backinto the blitz, even if I could have got a passage for them which wouldcertainly have been impossible for a long time to come. It seemed as if itwould be necessary to take John and Kate away from the University, and tolive as cheaply as possible on the charity of kind friends. From this bleakprospect I was saved by Dr Barnes.The summer of 1940 o?ered for me an extraordinary contrast betweenpublic horror and private delight. We spent the summer in the Sierras, atFallen Leaf Lake near Lake Tahoe, one of the loveliest places that it has everbeen my good fortune to know. The lake is more than 6000 feet above sea-level, and during the greater part of the year deep snow makes the wholeregion uninhabitable. But there is a three-months’ season in the summerduring which the sun shines continually, the weather is warm, but as a rulenot unbearably hot, the mountain meadows are ?lled with the most exquisitewild ?owers, and the smell of the pine trees ?lls the air. We had a log cabinin the middle of pine trees, close to the lake. Conrad and his nursery gover-ness slept indoors, but there was no room for the rest of us in the house, andwe all slept on various porches. There were endless walks through desertedcountry to waterfalls, lakes and mountain tops, and one could dive o? snowinto deep water that was not unduly cold. I had a tiny study which was hardlymore than a shed, and there I ?nished my Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. Oftenit was so hot that I did my writing stark naked. But heat suits me, and I neverfound it too hot for work.Amid all these delights we waited day by day to know whether Englandhad been invaded, and whether London still existed. The postman, a jocularfellow with a somewhat sadistic sense of humour, arrived one morningsaying in a loud voice, ‘Heard the news? All London destroyed, not a houseleft standing!’ And we could not know whether to believe him. Long walksand frequent bathes in many lakes helped to make the time endurable, and,by September, it had begun to seem that England would not be invaded.I found in the Sierras the only classless society that I have ever known.Practically all the houses were inhabited by university professors, and thenecessary work was done by university students. The young man, forinstance, who brought our groceries was a young man to whom I had beenlecturing throughout the winter. There were also many students who hadcome merely for a holiday, which could be enjoyed very cheaply as every-thing was primitive and simple. Americans understand the management oftourists much better than Europeans do. Although there were many housesclose to the lake, hardly one could be seen from a boat, since all were care-fully concealed in pine trees; and the houses themselves were built of pinelogs, and were quite ino?ensive. One angle of the house in which we livedamerica. 1938–1944 441was made of a live and growing tree; I cannot imagine what will happento the house when the tree grows too big.In the autumn of 1940 I gave the William James lectures at Harvard. Thisengagement had been made before the trouble in New York. Perhaps Harvardregretted having made it, but, if so, the regret was politely concealed from me.My duties with Dr Barnes began at the New Year of 1941. We rented afarmhouse about thirty miles from Philadelphia, a very charming house,about two hundred years old, in rolling country, not unlike inland Dorsetshire.There was an orchard, a ?ne old barn, and three peach trees, which boreenormous quantities of the most delicious peaches I have ever tasted. Therewere ?elds sloping down to a river, and pleasant woodlands. We were tenmiles from Paoli (called after the Corsican patriot), which was the limit of thePhiladelphia suburban trains. From there I used to go by train to the BarnesFoundation, where I lectured in a gallery of modern French paintings, mostlyof nudes, which seemed somewhat incongruous for academic philosophy.Dr Barnes was a strange character. He had a dog to whom he was passion-ately devoted and a wife who was passionately devoted to him. He liked topatronise coloured people and treated them as equals, because he was quitesure that they were not. He had made an enormous fortune by inventingArgyrol; when it was at its height, he sold out, and invested all his money inGovernment securities. He then became an art connoisseur. He had a very?ne gallery of modern French paintings and in connection with the galleryhe taught the principles of aesthetics. He demanded constant ?attery and hada passion for quarrelling. I was warned before accepting his o?er that healways tired of people before long, so I exacted a ?ve-year contract from him.On December 28th, 1942, I got a letter from him informing me that myappointment was terminated as from January 1st. I was thus reduced onceagain from a?uence to destitution. True, I had my contract, and the lawyerwhom I consulted assured me that there was no doubt whatever of mygetting full redress from the courts. But obtaining legal redress takes time,especially in America, and I had to live through the intervening period some-how. Corbusier, in a book on America, tells a typical story about Barnes’sbehaviour. Corbusier was on a lecture tour, and wished to see Dr Barnes’sgallery. He wrote for permission, which Dr Barnes always accorded verygrudgingly. Dr Barnes replied that he could see it at nine o’clock on a certainSaturday morning, but at no other time. Corbusier wrote again saying that hislecture engagements made that time impossible and would not some othertime be suitable. Dr Barnes wrote an exceedingly rude letter, saying it wasthen or never. To this Corbusier sent a long answer, which is printed in hisbook saying that he was not averse from quarrels, but he preferred to quarrelwith people who were on the other side in matters of art, whereas he andDr Barnes were both in favour of what is modern, and it seemed a pity thatthe autobiography of bertrand russell 442they should not agree. Dr Barnes never opened this letter, but returned it,with the word ‘merde’ written large on the envelope.When my case came into court, Dr Barnes complained that I had doneinsu?cient work for my lectures, and that they were super?cial and perfunc-tory. So far as they had gone, they consisted of the ?rst two-thirds of myHistory of Western Philosophy, of which I submitted the manuscript to the judge,though I scarcely suppose he read it. Dr Barnes complained of my treatmentof the men whom he called Pither-gawras and Empi-Dokkles. I observed thejudge taking notice, and I won my case. Dr Barnes, of course, appealed asoften as he could, and it was not until I was back in England that I actuallygot the money. Meanwhile he had sent a printed document concerning mysins to the Master and each of the Fellows of Trinity College, to warn themof their folly in inviting me back. I never read this document, but I have nodoubt it was good reading.In the early months of 1943 I su?ered some ?nancial stringency, but not