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pleasant visit to Dover Street.Yours a?ectly.Agatha RussellPembroke LodgeRichmond, SurreyDec. 10, 1894My dearest ChildAs my voice fails me whenever I try to speak of what is coming, although itis an event so full of happiness to you, it is natural that I should write you afew farewell words. More especially on this anniversary of a day once amongthe gladdest and most beloved of the year25– now as sad as it is sacred for me.For the memories it brings me of my dear, my gentle, my noble and deeplyloving and hardly tried Johnny, naturally turn my thoughts to you, in whomwe have always felt that something was still left to us of him – My memoriesof him are memories of unutterable joy, mingled with sorrow and anguishhard to bear even now, when he is past all sorrows.When he and your mother, in the bloom of youth and health, asked me tolook upon you as my own child in case of their death, I little thought thatI should be called upon to ful?l the promise I gave them. But ere long the daycame and your home was left empty. You came to us as an innocent,unconscious little comforter in our darkened home, and have been to usall three as our very own child. You were intertwined with our very being,our life was shaped and ordered with a view to your good; and as you grewin heart and mind you became our companion as well as our child. Howthankfully I remember that all through your childhood and boyhood youwould always cheerfully give up your own wishes for those of others, neverattempt an excuse when you had done wrong, and never fail to receivewarning or reproof as gratefully as praise. We trusted you, and you justi?edour trust, and all was happiness and a?ection.Manhood came and brought with it fresh cause for thankfulness in yourblameless and honourable University career. But manhood brings also sever-ance and change. You are leaving us now for a new life, a new home, new tiesengagement 113and new a?ections. But your happiness and welfare must still be ours and ourGod will still be yours. May you take with you only that which has been best,and ask His forgiveness for what has been wrong, in the irrevocable past. MayHe inspire you to cherish holy thoughts and noble aims. May you rememberthat humble, loving hearts alone are dear to Him. May such a heart ever beyours, and hers who is to travel life’s journey by your side.God bless you both, and grant you light to ?nd and to follow theheavenward path.Ever, my dear, dear ChildYour most lovingGrannyThe following letter was my last contact with Edward Fitzgerald. He distinguished himself as aclimber in New Zealand and the Andes, after escaping in this way from a period of despair broughtabout by his wife’s death after only a few months of marriage. In the end he ran o? with amarried lady and made no attempt to keep up with old friends.Colombo, CeylonNov. 18th, ’94My dear RussellDrop me a line occasionally to tell me how you are getting on and alsowhen your marriage is coming o?.I have stopped here for a little while to look around. I went up country theother day to Anuradhapura and to Vauakarayankulam (don’t try to pronouncethat name, I ?nd it worse than snakes) and got some big game shootingwhich I enjoyed. The country was however all under water and they said veryfeverish, but I did not feel that although I slept out several nights in the mistsand got drenched through. I am o? on a regular spree so to speak and am notcoming home for three years at least. I have planned Japan and some climbingin South America before I return.Drop me a line when you feel so inclined that I may know of your wander-ing. I will write occasionally when I feel so inclined, which you will say is notoften. I suppose you have seen Austin’s new apartment in the AvenueHochell?I will now draw this (letter?!) to a close.Ever yoursEdw. A. Fitzgeraldthe autobiography of bertrand russell 1145FIRST MARRIAGEAlys and I were married on December 13, 1894. Her family had beenPhiladelphia Quakers for over two hundred years, and she was still a believingmember of the Society of Friends. So we were married in Quaker Meeting inSt Martin’s Lane. I seem to remember that one of the Quakers present wasmoved by the Spirit to preach about the miracle of Cana, which hurt Alys’steetotal feelings. During our engagement we had frequently had argumentsabout Christianity, but I did not succeed in changing her opinions until afew months after we were married.There were other matters upon which her opinions changed after marriage.She had been brought up, as American women always were in those days, tothink that sex was beastly, that all women hated it, and that men’s brutal lustswere the chief obstacle to happiness in marriage. She therefore thought thatintercourse should only take place when children were desired. As we haddecided to have no children, she had to modify her position on this point,but she still supposed that she would desire intercourse to be very rare. Idid not argue the matter, and I did not ?nd it necessary to do so.Neither she nor I had any previous experience of sexual intercourse whenwe married. We found, as such couples apparently usually do, a certainamount of di?culty at the start. I have heard many people say that this causedtheir honeymoon to be a di?cult time, but we had no such experience. Thedi?culties appeared to us merely comic, and were soon overcome. I remem-ber, however, a day after three weeks of marriage, when, under the in?uence ofsexual fatigue, I hated her and could not imagine why I had wished to marryher. This state of mind lasted just as long as the journey from Amsterdamto Berlin, after which I never again experienced a similar mood.We had decided that during the early years of our married life, we wouldsee a good deal of foreign countries, and accordingly we spent the ?rst threemonths of 1895 in Berlin. I went to the university, where I chie?y studiedeconomics. I continued to work at my Fellowship dissertation. We went toconcerts three times a week, and we began to know the Social Democrats,who were at that time considered very wicked. Lady Ermyntrude Malet, thewife of the Ambassador, was my cousin, so we were asked to dinner at theEmbassy. Everybody was friendly, and the attachés all said they would call.However, none of them came, and when we called at the Embassy, nobodywas at home. For a long time we hardly noticed all this, but at last wediscovered that it was due to Alys having mentioned to the Ambassador thatwe had been to a socialist meeting. We learned this from a letter of LadyErmyntrude’s to my grandmother. In spite of my grandmother’s prejudiceagainst Alys, she completely sided with her on this matter. The issue was apublic one, and on all public political issues, both she and my Aunt Agathacould always be relied upon not to be liberal.During this time my intellectual ambitions were taking shape. I resolvednot to adopt a profession, but to devote myself to writing. I remember a cold,bright day in early spring when I walked by myself in the Tiergarten, andmade projects of future work. I thought that I would write one series of bookson the philosophy of the sciences from pure mathematics to physiology, andanother series of books on social questions. I hoped that the two series mightultimately meet in a synthesis at once scienti?c and practical. My schemewas largely inspired by Hegelian ideas. Nevertheless, I have to some extentfollowed it in later years, as much at any rate as could have been expected.The moment was an important and formative one as regards my purposes.When the spring came, we went to Fiesole and stayed with Alys’s sister,who lived in a small villa, while Berenson lived next door in another smallvilla. After leaving her, we travelled down the Adriatic coast, staying at Pesaro,Urbino, Ravenna, Rimini, Ancona, and various other places. This remains inmy memory as one of the happiest times of my life. Italy and the springand ?rst love all together should su?ce to make the gloomiest person happy.We used to bathe naked in the sea, and lie on the sand to dry, but this was asomewhat perilous sport, as sooner or later a policeman would come alongto see that no one got salt out of the sea in de?ance of the salt tax. Fortunatelywe were never quite caught.By this time, it was becoming necessary to think in earnest about myFellowship dissertation, which had to be ?nished by August, so we settleddown at Fernhurst, and I had my ?rst experience of serious original work.There were days of hope alternating with days of despair, but at last, when mydissertation was ?nished, I fully believed that I had solved all philosophicalquestions connected with the foundations of geometry. I did not yet knowthat the hopes and despairs connected with original work are alike fallacious,the autobiography of bertrand russell 116that one’s work is never so bad as it appears on bad days, nor so good as itappears on good days. My dissertation was read by Whitehead and JamesWard, since it was in part mathematical and in part philosophical. Before theresult was announced, Whitehead criticised it rather severely, though quitejustly, and I came to the conclusion that it was worthless and that I would notwait for the result to be announced. However, as a matter of politeness I wentto see James Ward, who said exactly the opposite, and praised it to the skies.Next day I learned that I had been elected a Fellow, and Whitehead informedme with a smile that he had thought it was the last chance anyone wouldget of ?nding serious fault with my work.With my ?rst marriage, I entered upon a period of great happiness andfruitful work. Having no emotional troubles, all my energy went in intel-lectual directions. Throughout the ?rst years of my marriage, I read widely,both in mathematics and in philosophy. I achieved a certain amount oforiginal work, and laid the foundations for other work later. I travelled abroad,and in my spare time I did a great deal of solid reading, chie?y history. Afterdinner, my wife and I used to read aloud in turns, and in this way weploughed through large numbers of standard histories in many volumes. Ithink the last book that we read in this way was the History of the City of Rome byGregorovius. This was intellectually the most fruitful period of my life, and Iowe a debt of gratitude to my ?rst wife for having made it possible. At ?rstshe disliked the idea of living quietly in the country, but I was determined todo so for the sake of my work. I derived su?cient happiness from her and mywork to have no need of anything more, though as a matter of fact it was, as arule, only about half the year that we spent quietly in the country. Evenduring that period, she would often be away making speeches on votes forwomen or total abstinence. I had become a pledged teetotaller in order toplease her, and from habit I remained so after the original motive had ceasedto move me. I did not take to drink until the King took the pledge during the?rst war. His motive was to facilitate the killing of Germans, and it thereforeseemed as if there must be some connection between paci?sm and alcohol.In the autumn of 1895, after the Fellowship election, we went back toBerlin to study German Social Democracy. On this visit, we associated almostexclusively with socialists. We got to know Bebel and the elder Liebknecht.The younger Liebknecht, who was killed just after the ?rst war, was at thistime a boy. We must have met him when we dined at his father’s house,although I have no recollection of him. In those days Social Democrats were?ery revolutionaries, and I was too young to realise what they would be likewhen they acquired power. At the beginning of 1896 I gave a course oflectures on them at the London School of Economics, which was at that timein John Adam Street, Adelphi. I was, I believe, their ?rst lecturer. There I gotto know W. A. S. Hewins, who considerably in?uenced me from that timefirst marriage 117until 1901. He came of a Catholic family, and had substituted the BritishEmpire for the Church as an object of veneration.I was, in those days, much more high-strung than I became later on. WhileI was lecturing at the School of Economics, my wife and I lived in a ?at at90 Ashley Gardens, but I could not work there because the noise of the liftdisturbed me, so I used to walk every day to her parents’ house in GrosvenorRoad, where I spent the time reading Georg Cantor, and copying out the gistof him into a notebook. At that time I falsely supposed all his arguments tobe fallacious, but I nevertheless went through them all in the minutest detail.This stood me in good stead when later on I discovered that all the fallacieswere mine.When the spring came, we took a small labourer’s cottage at Fernhurst,called ‘The Millhanger’, to which we added a fair-sized sittingroom andtwo bedrooms. In this cottage many of the happiest times of my life werepassed. I acquired a great deal of knowledge that interested me, and myoriginal work was praised by experts more highly than I expected. While Iwas an undergraduate I did not think my abilities so good as they afterwardsturned out to be. I remember wondering, as an almost unattainable ideal,whether I should ever do work as good as McTaggart’s. During the early yearsof my ?rst marriage Whitehead passed gradually from a teacher into a friend.In 1890 as a Freshman at Cambridge, I had attended his lectures on statics.He told the class to study article 35 in the text-book. Then he turned to meand said, ‘You needn’t study it, because you know it already’. I had quotedit by number in the scholarship examination ten months earlier. He won myheart by remembering this fact.In England, Whitehead was regarded only as a mathematician, and it wasleft to America to discover him as a philosopher. He and I disagreed inphilosophy, so that collaboration was no longer possible, and after he wentto America I naturally saw much less of him. We began to drift apart duringthe ?rst world war when he completely disagreed with my paci?st position.In our di?erences on this subject he was more tolerant than I was, and itwas much more my fault than his that these di?erences caused a diminutionin the closeness of our friendship.In the last months of the war his younger son, who was only just eighteen,was killed. This was an appalling grief to him, and it was only by an immensee?ort of moral discipline that he was able to go on with his work. The pain ofthis loss had a great deal to do with turning his thoughts to philosophy andwith causing him to seek ways of escaping from belief in a merely mech-anistic universe. His philosophy was very obscure, and there was much in itthat I never succeeded in understanding. He had always had a leaning towardsKant, of whom I thought ill, and when he began to develop his own phil-osophy he was considerably in?uenced by Bergson. He was impressed by thethe autobiography of bertrand russell 118aspect of unity in the universe, and considered that it is only through thisaspect that scienti?c inferences can be justi?ed. My temperament led mein the opposite direction, but I doubt whether pure reason could havedecided which of us was more nearly in the right. Those who prefer hisoutlook might say that while he aimed at bringing comfort to plain people Iaimed at bringing discomfort to philosophers; one who favoured my outlookmight retort that while he pleased the philosophers, I amused the plainpeople. However that may be, we went our separate ways, though a?ectionsurvived to the last.Whitehead was a man of extraordinarily wide interests, and his knowledgeof history used to amaze me. At one time I discovered by chance that he wasusing that very serious and rather out-of-the-way work Paolo Sarpi’s Historyof the Council of Trent, as a bed book. Whatever historical subjects came up hecould always supply some illuminating fact, such, for example, as the connec-tion of Burke’s political opinions with his interests in the City, and therelation of the Hussite heresy to the Bohemian silver mines. He had delightfulhumour and great gentleness. When I was an undergraduate he was given thenick-name of ‘the Cherub’, which those who knew him in later life wouldthink unduly disrespectful but which at the time suited him. His family camefrom Kent and had been clergymen ever since about the time of the landingof St Augustine in that county. He used to relate with amusement that mygrandfather, who was much exercised by the spread of Roman Catholicism,adjured Whitehead’s sister never to desert the Church of England. Whatamused him was that the contingency was so very improbable. Whitehead’stheological opinions were not orthodox, but something of the vicarageatmosphere remained in his ways of feeling and came out in his later philo-sophical writings.He was a very modest man, and his most extreme boast was that he did tryto have the qualities of his defects. He never minded telling stories againsthimself. There were two old ladies in Cambridge who were sisters and whosemanners suggested that they came straight out of Cranford. They were, in fact,advanced and even daring in their opinions, and were in the forefront ofevery movement of reform. Whitehead used to relate, somewhat ruefully,how when he ?rst met them he was misled by their exterior and thought itwould be fun to shock them a little. But when he advanced some slightlyradical opinion they said, ‘Oh, Mr Whitehead, we are so pleased to hear yousay that’, showing that they had hitherto viewed him as a pillar of reaction.His capacity for concentration on work was quite extraordinary. One hotsummer’s day, when I was staying with him at Grantchester, our friendCrompton Davies arrived and I took him into the garden to say how-do-you-do to his host. Whitehead was sitting writing mathematics. Davies and I stoodin front of him at a distance of no more than a yard and watched himfirst marriage 119covering page after page with symbols. He never saw us, and after a timewe went away with a feeling of awe.Those who knew Whitehead well became aware of many things in himwhich did not appear in more casual contacts. Socially he appeared kindly,rational and imperturbable, but he was not in fact imperturbable, and wascertainly not that inhuman monster ‘the rational man’. His devotion to hiswife and his children was profound and passionate. He was at all times deeplyaware of the importance of religion. As a young man, he was all but convertedto Roman Catholicism by the in?uence of Cardinal Newman. His later phil-osophy gave him some part of what he wanted from religion. Like other menwho lead extremely disciplined lives, he was liable to distressing soliloquies,and when he thought he was alone, he would mutter abuse of himself for hissupposed shortcomings. The early years of his marriage were much cloudedby ?nancial anxieties, but, although he found this very di?cult to bear, henever let it turn him aside from work that was important but not lucrative.He had practical abilities which at the time when I knew him best did not?nd very much scope. He had a kind of shrewdness which was surprisingand which enabled him to get his way on committees in a manner astonish-ing to those who thought of him as wholly abstract and unworldly. He mighthave been an able administrator but for one defect, which was a completeinability to answer letters. I once wrote a letter to him on a mathematicalpoint, as to which I urgently needed an answer for an article I was writingagainst Poincaré. He did not answer, so I wrote again. He still did not answer,so I telegraphed. As he was still silent, I sent a reply-paid telegram. But in theend, I had to travel down to Broadstairs to get the answer. His friends grad-ually got to know this peculiarity, and on the rare occasions when any ofthem got a letter from him they would all assemble to congratulate therecipient. He justi?ed himself by saying that if he answered letters, he wouldhave no time for original work. I think the justi?cation was complete andunanswerable.Whitehead was extraordinarily perfect as a teacher. He took a personalinterest in those with whom he had to deal and knew both their strong andtheir weak points. He would elicit from a pupil the best of which a pupilwas capable. He was never repressive, or sarcastic, or superior, or any of thethings that inferior teachers like to be. I think that in all the abler young menwith whom he came in contact he inspired, as he did in me, a very real andlasting a?ection.Whitehead and his wife used to stay with us in the country, and we used tostay with them in Cambridge. Once we stayed with the old Master, MontaguButler, in the Lodge, and slept in Queen Anne’s bed, but this experiencefortunately was not repeated.My lectures on German Socialism were published in 1896. This was mythe autobiography of bertrand russell 120?rst book, but I took no great interest in it, as I had determined to devotemyself to mathematical philosophy. I re-wrote my Fellowship dissertation,and got it accepted by the Cambridge University Press, who published it in1897 under the title An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry. I subsequently came tothink this book much too Kantian, but it was fortunate for my reputation thatmy ?rst philosophical work did not challenge the orthodoxy of the time. Itwas the custom in academic circles to dismiss all critics of Kant as personswho had failed to understand him, and in rebutting this criticism it was anadvantage to have once agreed with him. The book was highly praised, farmore highly in fact than it deserved. Since that time, academic reviewers havegenerally said of each successive book of mine that it showed a falling-o?.In the autumn of 1896, Alys and I went to America for three months,largely in order that I might make the acquaintance of her relations.1The ?rstthing we did was to visit Walt Whitman’s house in Camden, N.J. From therewe went to a small manufacturing town called Millville, where a cousin ofhers, named Bond Thomas, was the manager of a glass factory which had, fora long time, been the family business. His wife, Edith, was a great friend ofAlys’s. According to the Census, the town had 10,002 inhabitants, and theyused to say that they were the two. He was a simple soul, but she had literaryaspirations. She wrote bad plays in the style of Scribe, and imagined that ifonly she could get away from Millville and establish contact with the literarylights of Europe, her talent would be recognised. He was humbly devoted toher, but she had various ?irtations with men whom she imagined to be of?ner clay. In those days the country round about consisted of empty wood-land, and she used to take me long drives over dirt tracks in a buggy. Shealways carried a revolver, saying one could never know when it would comein handy. Subsequent events led me to suspect that she had been readingHedda Gabler. Two years later, they both came to stay with us in a palace inVenice, and we introduced her to various writers. It turned out that thework she had produced with such labour during the ten years’ isolation inMillville was completely worthless. She went back to America profoundlydiscouraged, and the next we heard was that, after placing her husband’slove letters over her heart, she had shot herself through them with therevolver. He subsequently married another woman who was said to beexactly like her.We went next to Bryn Mawr to stay with the President, Carey Thomas,sister of Bond Thomas. She was a lady who was treated almost with awe by allthe family. She had immense energy, a belief in culture which she carried outwith a business man’s e?ciency, and a profound contempt for the male sex.The ?rst time I met her, which was at Friday’s Hill, Logan said to me beforeher arrival: ‘Prepare to meet thy Carey.’ This expressed the family attitude. Iwas never able myself, however, to take her quite seriously, because she wasfirst marriage 121so easily shocked. She had the wholly admirable view that a person whointends to write on an academic subject should ?rst read up the literature, so Igravely informed her that all the advances in non-Euclidean geometry hadbeen made in ignorance of the previous literature, and even because of thatignorance. This caused her ever afterwards to regard me as a mere farceur.Various incidents, however, con?rmed me in my view of her. For instance,once in Paris we took her to see ‘L’Aiglon’, and I found from her remarks thatshe did not know there had been a Revolution in France in 1830. I gave hera little sketch of French history, and a few days later she told me that hersecretary desired a handbook of French history, and asked me to recommendone. However, at Bryn Mawr she was Zeus, and everybody trembled beforeher. She lived with a friend, Miss Gwinn, who was in most respects theopposite of her. Miss Gwinn had very little will-power, was soft and lazy, buthad a genuine though narrow feeling for literature. They had been friendsfrom early youth, and had gone together to Germany to get the Ph.D degree,which, however, only Carey had succeeded in getting. At the time that westayed with them, their friendship had become a little ragged. Miss Gwinnused to go home to her family for three days in every fortnight, and at theexact moment of her departure each fortnight, another lady, named MissGarrett, used to arrive, to depart again at the exact moment of Miss Gwinn’sreturn. Miss Gwinn, meantime, had fallen in love with a very brilliant youngman, named Hodder, who was teaching at Bryn Mawr. This roused Carey tofury, and every night, as we were going to bed, we used to hear her angryvoice scolding Miss Gwinn in the next room for hours together. Hodder hada wife and child, and was said to have a?airs with the girls at the College. Inspite of all these obstacles, however, Miss Gwinn ?nally married him. Sheinsisted upon getting a very High Church clergyman to perform the cere-mony, thereby making it clear that the wife whom he had had at Bryn Mawrwas not his legal wife, since the clergyman in question refused to marrydivorced persons. Hodder had given out that there had been a divorce, butMiss Gwinn’s action showed that this had not been the case. He died soonafter their marriage, worn out with riotous living. He had a very brilliantmind, and in the absence of women could talk very interestingly.While at Bryn Mawr, I gave lectures on non-Euclidean geometry, and Alysgave addresses in favour of endowment of motherhood, combined with pri-vate talks to women in favour of free love. This caused a scandal, and we werepractically hounded out of the college. From there we went to Baltimore,where I lectured on the same subject at the Johns Hopkins University. Therewe stayed with her uncle, Dr Thomas, the father of Carey. The Thomases werea curious family. There was a son at Johns Hopkins who was very brilliantin brain surgery; there was a daughter, Helen, at Bryn Mawr, who had themisfortune to be deaf. She was gentle and kind, and had very lovely red hair.the autobiography of bertrand russell 122I was very fond of her for a number of years, culminating in 1900. Once ortwice I asked her to kiss me, but she refused. Ultimately she married SimonFlexner, the Head of the Rockefeller Institute of Preventive Medicine. Iremained very good friends with her, although in the last years of her life Isaw her seldom. There was another daughter who had remained a pious andvery orthodox Quaker. She always alluded to those who were not Quakers as‘the world’s people’. They all of them used ‘thee’ in conversation, and so didAlys and I when we talked to each other. Some of the Quaker doctrines