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ful, as appears from the following extract from the Bulletin, Glasgow, May 10,1921: ‘I remember meeting Mrs Bertrand Russell at a civic receptionor something of the kind (was it a reception to temperance delegates?) inEdinburgh twenty odd years ago. She was at that time one of the mostbeautiful women it is possible to imagine, and gifted with a sort of imperialstateliness, for all her Quaker stock. We who were present admired her somuch that in a collected and digni?ed Edinburgh way we made her theheroine of the evening.’ She was more emancipated than any young woman Ihad known, since she was at college and crossed the Atlantic alone, and was,as I soon discovered, an intimate friend of Walt Whitman. She askedme whether I had ever read a certain German book called Ekkehard, and ithappened that I had ?nished it that morning. I felt this was a stroke of luck.She was kind, and made me feel not shy. I fell in love with her at ?rst sight. Idid not see any of the family again that summer, but in subsequent years,during the three months that I spent annually with my Uncle Rollo, I used towalk the four miles to their house every Sunday, arriving to lunch and stayingto supper. After supper they would make a camp ?re in the woods, andsit round singing Negro spirituals, which were in those days unknown inEngland. To me, as to Goethe, America seemed a romantic land of freedom,and I found among them an absence of many prejudices which hampered meat home. Above all, I enjoyed their emancipation from good taste. It was attheir house that I ?rst met Sidney Webb, then still unmarried.Sidney and Beatrice Webb, whom I knew intimately for a number of years,at times even sharing a house with them, were the most completely marriedcouple that I have ever known. They were, however, very averse from anyromantic view of love or marriage. Marriage was a social institution designedto ?t instinct into a legal framework. During the ?rst ten years of theirmarriage, Mrs Webb would remark at intervals, ‘As Sidney always says, mar-riage is the waste-paper basket of the emotions’. In later years there was aslight change. They would generally have a couple to stay with them for theweek-end, and on Sunday afternoon they would go for a brisk walk, Sidneywith the lady and Beatrice with the gentleman. At a certain point, Sidneywould remark, ‘I know just what Beatrice is saying at this moment. Sheis saying, “As Sidney always says, marriage is the waste-paper basket of theemotions”.’ Whether Sidney ever really did say this is not known.I knew Sidney before his marriage. But he was then much less than halfof what the two of them afterwards became. Their collaboration was quitedove-tailed. I used to think, though, this was perhaps an undue simpli?ca-tion, that she had the ideas and he did the work. He was perhaps the mostindustrious man that I have ever known. When they were writing a book onlocal government, they would send circulars to all local government o?cialsthroughout the country asking questions and pointing out that the o?cial inquestion could legally purchase their forthcoming book out of the rates.When I let my house to them, the postman, who was an ardent socialist, didnot know whether to be more honoured by serving them or annoyed athaving to deliver a thousand answers a day to their circulars. Webb wasengagement 65originally a second division clerk in the civil service, but by immenseindustry succeeded in rising into the ?rst division. He was somewhat earnestand did not like jokes on sacred subjects such as political theory. On oneoccasion I remarked to him that democracy has at least one merit, namely,that a Member of Parliament cannot be stupider than his constituents, forthe more stupid he is, the more stupid they were to elect him. Webb wasseriously annoyed and said bitingly, ‘That is the sort of argument I don’t like’.Mrs Webb had a wider range of interests than her husband. She tookconsiderable interest in individual human beings, not only when they couldbe useful. She was deeply religious without belonging to any recognisedbrand of orthodoxy, though as a socialist she preferred the Church ofEngland because it was a State institution. She was one of nine sisters, thedaughters of a self-made man named Potter who acquired most of his for-tune by building huts for the armies in the Crimea. He was a discipleof Herbert Spencer, and Mrs Webb was the most notable product of thatphilosopher’s theories of education. I am sorry to say that my mother, whowas her neighbour in the country, described her as a ‘social butter?y’, butone may hope that she would have modi?ed this judgement if she hadknown Mrs Webb in later life. When she became interested in socialismshe decided to sample the Fabians, especially the three most distinguished,who were Webb, Shaw and Graham Wallas. There was something like theJudgment of Paris with the sexes reversed, and it was Sidney who emerged asthe counterpart of Aphrodite.Webb had been entirely dependent upon his earnings, whereas Beatricehad inherited a competence from her father. Beatrice had the mentality ofthe governing class, which Sidney had not. Seeing that they had enough tolive on without earning, they decided to devote their lives to research and tothe higher branches of propaganda. In both they were amazingly successful.Their books are a tribute to their industry, and the School of Economics is atribute to Sidney’s skill. I do not think that Sidney’s abilities would have beennearly as fruitful as they were if they had not been backed by Beatrice’sself-con?dence. I asked her once whether in her youth she had ever had anyfeeling of shyness. ‘O no,’ she said, ‘if I ever felt inclined to be timid as I wasgoing into a room full of people, I would say to myself, “You’re the cleverestmember of one of the cleverest families in the cleverest class of the cleverestnation in the world, why should you be frightened?”.’I both liked and admired Mrs Webb, although I disagreed with her aboutmany very important matters. I admired ?rst and foremost her ability, whichwas very great. I admired next her integrity: she lived for public objects andwas never de?ected by personal ambition, although she was not devoid of it.I liked her because she was a warm and kind friend to those for whom shehad a personal a?ection, but I disagreed with her about religion, aboutthe autobiography of bertrand russell 66imperialism, and about the worship of the State. This last was of the essenceof Fabianism. It led both the Webbs and also Shaw into what I thought anundue tolerance of Mussolini and Hitler, and ultimately into a rather absurdadulation of the Soviet Government.But nobody is all of a piece, not even the Webbs. I once remarked to Shawthat Webb seemed to me somewhat de?cient in kindly feeling. ‘No,’ Shawreplied, ‘you are quite mistaken. Webb and I were once in a tram-car inHolland eating biscuits out of a bag. A handcu?ed criminal was brought intothe tram by policemen. All the other passengers shrank away in horror,but Webb went up to the prisoner and o?ered him biscuits.’ I rememberthis story whenever I ?nd myself becoming unduly critical of either Webbor Shaw.There were people whom the Webbs hated. They hated Wells, bothbecause he o?ended Mrs Webb’s rigid Victorian morality and because hetried to dethrone Webb from his reign over the Fabian Society. They hatedRamsay MacDonald from very early days. The least hostile thing that I everheard either of them say about him was at the time of the formation of the?rst Labour Government, when Mrs Webb said he was a very good substitutefor a leader.Their political history was rather curious. At ?rst they co-operated withthe Conservatives because Mrs Webb was pleased with Arthur Balfour forbeing willing to give more public money to Church Schools. When theConservatives fell in 1906, the Webbs made some slight and ine?ectuale?orts to collaborate with the Liberals. But at last it occurred to them that associalists they might feel more at home in the Labour Party, of which in theirlater years they were loyal members.For a number of years Mrs Webb was addicted to fasting, from motivespartly hygienic and partly religious. She would have no breakfast and a verymeagre dinner. Her only solid meal was lunch. She almost always had anumber of distinguished people to lunch, but she would get so hungry thatthe moment it was announced she marched in ahead of all her guests andstarted to eat. She nevertheless believed that starvation made her more spirit-ual, and once told me that it gave her exquisite visions. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘if youeat too little, you see visions; and if you drink too much, you see snakes.’ I amafraid she thought this remark inexcusably ?ippant. Webb did not share thereligious side of her nature, but was in no degree hostile to it, in spite of thefact that it was sometimes inconvenient to him. When they and I were stayingat a hotel in Normandy, she used to stay upstairs in the mornings since shecould not bear the painful spectacle of us breakfasting. Sidney, however,would come down for rolls and co?ee. The ?rst morning Mrs Webb sent amessage by the maid, ‘We do not have butter for Sidney’s breakfast’. Her useof ‘we’ was one of the delights of their friends.engagement 67Both of them were fundamentally undemocratic, and regarded it as thefunction of a statesman to bamboozle or terrorise the populace. I realisedthe origins of Mrs Webb’s conceptions of government when she repeated tome her father’s description of shareholders’ meetings. It is the recognisedfunction of directors to keep shareholders in their place, and she had a similarview about the relation of the Government to the electorate.Her father’s stories of his career had not given her any undue respect forthe great. After he had built huts for the winter quarters of the French armiesin the Crimea, he went to Paris to get paid. He had spent almost all his capitalin putting up the huts, and payment became important to him. But, althougheverybody in Paris admitted the debt, the cheque did not come. At last he metLord Brassey who had come on a similar errand. When Mr Potter explainedhis di?culties, Lord Brassey laughed at him and said, ‘My dear fellow, youdon’t know the ropes. You must give ?fty pounds to the Minister and ?vepounds to each of his underlings.’ Mr Potter did so, and the cheque camenext day.Sidney had no hesitation in using wiles which some would thinkunscrupulous. He told me, for example, that when he wished to carry somepoint through a committee where the majority thought otherwise, he woulddraw up a resolution in which the contentious point occurred twice. Hewould have a long debate about its ?rst occurrence and at last give waygraciously. Nine times out of ten, so he concluded, no one would notice thatthe same point occurred later in the same resolution.The Webbs did a great work in giving intellectual backbone to Britishsocialism. They performed more or less the same function that theBenthamites at an earlier time had performed for the Radicals. The Webbs andthe Benthamites shared a certain dryness and a certain coldness and a beliefthat the waste-paper basket is the place for the emotions. But the Benthamitesand the Webbs alike taught their doctrines to enthusiasts. Bentham andRobert Owen could produce a well-balanced intellectual progeny and socould the Webbs and Keir Hardie. One should not demand of anybody all thethings that add value to a human being. To have some of them is as much asshould be demanded. The Webbs pass this test, and indubitably the BritishLabour Party would have been much more wild and woolly if they had neverexisted. Their mantle descended upon Mrs Webb’s nephew, Sir Sta?ordCripps, and but for them I doubt whether the British democracy would haveendured with the same patience the arduous years through which we havebeen passing.When I mentioned at home that I had met Sidney Webb, my grandmotherreplied that she had heard him lecture once in Richmond, and that he was‘not quite....’ ‘Not quite what?’ I persisted. ‘Not quite a gentleman in mindor manners,’ she ?nally said.the autobiography of bertrand russell 68Among the Pearsall Smiths I escaped from this sort of thing. Among them Iwas happy and talkative and free from timidity. They would draw me out insuch a way as to make me feel quite intelligent. I met interesting people attheir house, for instance William James. Logan Pearsall Smith indoctrinatedme with the culture of the nineties – Flaubert, Walter Pater, and the rest. Hegave me rules for good writing, such as ‘Put a comma every four words;never use “and” except at the beginning of a sentence’. I learned to makesentences full of parentheses in the style of Walter Pater. I learned the rightthing to say about Manet, and Monet, and Degas, who were in those dayswhat Matisse and Picasso were at a later date.Logan Pearsall Smith was seven years older than I was, and gave me muchmoral advice. He was in a state of transition between the ethical outlook ofPhiladelphia Quakerism and that of Quartier-Latin Bohemia. Politically hewas a socialist, having been converted by Graham Wallas, one of the foundersof the Fabian Society (who, however, at a later date reverted to Liberalism).Logan tried to adapt the philanthropic practice of the Quakers to the socialistcreed. In sexual morality he was at that time very ascetic, in fact almostManichaean, but in religion he was agnostic. He wished to persuade free-thinking young people to preserve a high standard of personal discipline andself-denial. With this object, he created what he called humorously ‘TheOrder of Prigs’, which I joined, and whose rules I obeyed for several years.1With each year that passed I became more devoted to Alys, the unmarrieddaughter. She was less ?ippant than her brother Logan, and less irresponsiblethan her sister, Mrs Costelloe. She seemed to me to possess all the simplekindness which I still cherished in spite of Pembroke Lodge, but to be devoidof priggery and prejudice. I wondered whether she would remain unmarrieduntil I grew up, for she was ?ve years older than I was. It seemed unlikely but,I became increasingly determined that, if she did, I would ask her to marryme. Once, I remember, I drove with her and her brother to Leith Hill to visitJudge Vaughan Williams, whose wife wore an Elizabethan ru? and wasotherwise surprising. On the way they elicited from me that I believed in loveat ?rst sight, and cha?ed me for being so sentimental. I felt deeply wounded,as the time had not yet come to say why I believed in it. I was aware that shewas not what my grandmother would call a lady, but I considered that sheresembled Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett. I think I was conscious of a certainpleasurable broadmindedness in this attitude.I came of age in May 1893, and from this moment my relations with Alysbegan to be something more than distant admiration. In the following monthI was Seventh Wrangler in the mathematical Tripos, and acquired legal and?nancial independence. Alys came to Cambridge with a cousin of hers, and Ihad more opportunities of talking with her than I had ever had before.During the Long Vacation, she came again with the same cousin, but Iengagement 69persuaded her to stay for the inside of a day after the cousin was gone. Wewent on the river, and discussed divorce, to which she was more favourablethan I was. She was in theory an advocate of free-love, which I consideredadmirable on her part, in spite of the fact that my own views were somewhatmore strict. I was, however, a little puzzled to ?nd that she was deeplyashamed of the fact that her sister had abandoned her husband for Berenson,the art critic. Indeed, it was not till after we were married that she consentedto know Berenson. I was very much excited by her second visit to Cambridge,and began to correspond regularly with her. I was no longer spending thesummers at Haslemere, because my grandmother and my Aunt Agatha didnot get on with my Uncle Rollo’s second wife. But on the 13th of September,I went to Friday’s Hill for a two days’ visit. The weather was warm andgolden. There was not a breath of wind, and in the early morning there weremists in the valleys. I remember that Logan made fun of Shelley for speakingof ‘golden mists’, and I in turn made fun of Logan, saying there had been agolden mist that very morning, but before he was awake. For my part Iwas up and about early, having arranged with Alys to go for a walk beforebreakfast. We went and sat in a certain beech-wood on a hill, a place ofextraordinary beauty looking like an early Gothic cathedral, and witha glimpse of distant views through the tree trunks in all directions. Themorning was fresh and dewy, and I began to think that perhaps there mightbe happiness in human life. Shyness, however, prevented me from gettingbeyond feeling my way while we sat in the wood. It was only afterbreakfast, and then with in?nite hesitation and alarm, that I arrived at ade?nite proposal, which was in those days the custom. I was neitheraccepted nor rejected. It did not occur to me to attempt to kiss her, or eventake her hand. We agreed to go on seeing each other and corresponding, andto let time decide one way or the other. All this happened out-of-doors, butwhen we ?nally came in to lunch, she found a letter from Lady HenrySomerset, inviting her to the Chicago World’s Fair to help in preachingtemperance, a virtue of which in those days America was supposed not tohave enough. Alys had inherited from her mother an ardent belief in totalabstinence, and was much elated to get this invitation. She read it outtriumphantly, and accepted it enthusiastically, which made me feel rathersmall, as it meant several months of absence, and possibly the beginning of aninteresting career.When I came home, I told my people what had occurred, and they reactedaccording to the stereotyped convention. They said she was no lady, a baby-snatcher, a low-class adventuress, a designing female taking advantage of myinexperience, a person incapable of all the ?ner feelings, a woman whosevulgarity would perpetually put me to shame. But I had a fortune of some￡20,000 inherited from my father, and I paid no attention to what mythe autobiography of bertrand russell 70people said. Relations became very strained, and remained so until after I wasmarried.At this time I kept a locked diary, which I very carefully concealed fromeveryone. In this diary I recorded my conversations with my grandmotherabout Alys and my feelings in regard to them. Not long afterwards a diaryof my father’s, written partly in shorthand (obviously for purposes of con-cealment), came into my hands. I found that he had proposed to my motherat just the same age at which I had proposed to Alys, that my grandmotherhad said almost exactly the same things to him as she had to me, and thathe had recorded exactly the same re?ections in his diary as I had recordedin mine. This gave me an uncanny feeling that I was not living my ownlife but my father’s over again, and tended to produce a superstitious beliefin heredity.2Although I was deeply in love, I felt no conscious desire for any physicalrelations. Indeed, I felt that my love had been desecrated when one nightI had a sexual dream, in which it took a less ethereal form. Gradually,however, nature took charge of this matter.The next occasion of importance was on January 4, 1894, when I came upfrom Richmond for the day to visit Alys at her parents’ house, 44 GrosvenorRoad. It was a day on which there was a heavy snow-storm. All London wasburied under about six inches of snow, and I had to wade through it onfoot from Vauxhall. The snow brought a strange e?ect of isolation, makingLondon almost as noiseless as a lonely hill top. It was on this occasion that I?rst kissed Alys. My only previous experience in this direction was with thehousemaid mentioned in an earlier chapter, and I had not foreseen how greatwould be the ecstasy of kissing a woman whom I loved. Although she stillsaid that she had not made up her mind whether to marry me or not, wespent the whole day, with the exception of meal-times, in kissing, withhardly a word spoken from morning till night, except for an interlude duringwhich I read Epipsychidion aloud. I arrived home quite late, having walked themile and a half from the station through a blizzard, tired but exultant.Throughout my next term at Cambridge, there were alternations in herfeelings. At some moments she seemed eager to marry me, and at othermoments determined to retain her freedom. I had to work very hard duringthis time, as I was taking the second part of the Moral Sciences Tripos in oneyear, but I never found that love, either when it prospered or when it did not,interfered in the slightest with my intellectual concentration. When the EasterVacation came, I went ?rst with my Aunt Maude to Rome to stay with myuncle the Monsignor. And from there I went to Paris, where Logan had anapartment, and his mother and Alys were staying close by. It was my ?rstexperience of the life of American art students in Paris, and it all seemed tome very free and delightful. I remember a dance at which Alys appeared in aengagement 71dress designed by Roger Fry. I remember, also, some rather unsuccessfulattempts to instil culture into me by taking me to see Impressionist picturesin the Luxembourg. And I remember ?oating on the Seine at night nearFontainebleau with Alys beside me, while Logan ?lled the night withunbending cleverness. When I got back to Cambridge, James Ward spoke tome gravely about wasting my last vacation on the Continent when I ought tohave been working. However, I did not take him seriously, and I got a Firstwith distinction.About the time that I ?nished with Triposes, Alys consented to becomede?nitely engaged to me. At this, my people, who had never ceased fromopposition, began to feel that something drastic must be done. They hadno power to control my actions, and their strictures on her character hadnaturally remained without e?ect. Nevertheless, they found a weapon whichvery nearly gave them the victory. The old family doctor, a serious Scotsmanwith mutton-chop whiskers, began to tell me all the things that I had dimlysuspected about my family history: how my Uncle William was mad, howmy Aunt Agatha’s engagement had had to be broken o? because of her insanedelusions, and how my father had su?ered from epilepsy (from what medicalauthorities have told me since, I doubt whether this was a correct diagnosis).In those days, people who considered themselves scienti?c tended to have asomewhat superstitious attitude towards heredity, and of course it was notknown how many mental disorders are the result of bad environment andunwise moral instruction. I began to feel as if I was doomed to a dark destiny.I read Ibsen’s Ghosts and Bj?rnson’s Heritage of the Kurts. Alys had an uncle whowas rather queer. By emphasising these facts until they rendered me nearlyinsane, my people persuaded us to take the best medical opinion as towhether, if we were married, our children were likely to be mad. The bestmedical opinion, primed by the family doctor, who was primed by thefamily, duly pronounced that from the point of view of heredity we oughtnot to have children. After receiving this verdict in the house of the familydoctor at Richmond, Alys and I walked up and down Richmond Greendiscussing it. I was for breaking o? the engagement, as I believed what thedoctors said and greatly desired children. Alys said she had no great wish forchildren, and would prefer to marry, while avoiding a family. After about halfan hour’s discussion, I came round to her point of view. We thereforeannounced that we intended to marry, but to have no children. Birth controlwas viewed in those days with the sort of horror which it now inspires onlyin Roman Catholics. My people and the family doctor tore their hair. Thefamily doctor solemnly assured me that, as a result of his medical experience,he knew the use of contraceptives to be almost invariably gravely injurious tohealth. My people hinted that it was the use of contraceptives which hadmade my father epileptic. A thick atmosphere of sighs, tears, groans, andthe autobiography of bertrand russell 72morbid horror was produced, in which it was scarcely possible to breathe.The discovery that my father had been epileptic, my aunt subject to delusions,and my uncle insane, caused me terror, for in those days everybody viewedthe inheritance of mental disorders superstitiously. I had sensed something ofthe kind, though without de?nite knowledge. On July 21, 1893 (which Isubsequently learnt to be Alys’s birthday), I dreamed that I discovered mymother to be mad, not dead, and that, on this ground, I felt it my duty not tomarry. After the facts had been told to me, I had great di?culty in shaking o?fear, as appears from the following re?ections, which I showed to nobody,not even Alys, until a much later date.July 20–21 (1894). Midnight. This night is the anniversary of my dreamabout Alys, and also of her birth. Strange coincidence, which, combined withthe fact that most of my dream has come true, very strongly impresses myimagination. I was always superstitious, and happiness has made me more so;it is terrifying to be so utterly absorbed in one person. Nothing has any worthto me except in reference to her. Even my own career, my e?orts after virtue,my intellect (such as it is), everything I have or hope for, I value only as giftsto her, as means of shewing how unspeakably I value her love. And I amhappy, divinely happy. Above all, I can still say, thank God, lust has absolutelyno share in my passion. But just when I am happiest, when joy is purest, itseems to transcend itself and fall suddenly to haunting terrors of loss – itwould be so easy to lose what rests on so slender and unstable a foundation!My dream on her birthday; my subsequent discovery that my people haddeceived me as in that dream; their solemn and reiterated warnings; thegradual discovery, one by one, of the tragedies, hopeless and unalleviated,which have made up the lives of most of my family; above all, the perpetualgloom which hangs like a fate over ??,3and which, struggle as I will, invadesmy inmost soul whenever I go there, taking all joy even out of Alys’s love; allthese, combined with the fear of heredity, cannot but oppress my mind. Theymake me feel as though a doom lay on the family and I were vainly battlingagainst it to escape into the freedom which seems the natural birthright ofothers. Worst of all, this dread, of necessity, involves Alys too. I feel as tho’darkness were my native element, and a cruel destiny had compelled me,instead of myself attaining to the light, to drag her back with me into the gulffrom which I have partially emerged. I cannot tell whether destiny will takethe form of a sudden blow or of a long-drawn torture, sapping our energiesand ruining our love; but I am haunted by the fear of the family ghost, whichseems to seize on me with clammy invisible hands to avenge my desertion ofits tradition of gloom.All these feelings of course are folly, solely due to chocolate cake andsitting up late; but they are none the less real, and on the slightest pretenceengagement 73they assail me with tremendous force. Painful as it will necessarily be tothem, I must for some time avoid seeing more than a very little of my peopleof ??, otherwise I really shall begin to fear for my sanity. ?? is to me like afamily vault haunted by the ghosts of maniacs – especially in view of all that Ihave recently learnt from Dr Anderson. Here, thank heaven, all is bright andhealthy, my Alys especially; and as long as I can forget ?? and the ghastlyheritage it bequeaths to me I have no forebodings, but only the pure joy ofmutual love, a joy so great, so divine, that I have not yet ceased to wonderhow such a thing can exist in this world which people abuse. But oh I wish Icould know it would bring joy to her in the end, and not teach her further,what alas it has already begun to teach her, how terrible a thing life may beand what depths of misery it can contain.The fears generated at that time have never ceased to trouble me sub-consciously. Ever since, but not before, I have been subject to violentnightmares in which I dream that I am being murdered, usually by a lunatic.I scream out loud, and on one occasion, before waking, I nearly strangled