be hurt. He did not seem to be, as I put it very carefully. He is undisciplinedin thought, and mistakes his wishes for facts. He is also muddle-headed. Hesays ‘facts’ are quite unimportant, only ‘truths’ matter. London is a ‘fact’ not a‘truth’. But he wants London pulled down. I tried to make him see that thatwould be absurd if London were unimportant, but he kept reiterating thatLondon doesn’t really exist, and that he could easily make people see itdoesn’t, and then they would pull it down. He was so con?dent of his powersof persuasion that I challenged him to come to Trafalgar Square at once andbegin preaching. That brought him to earth and he began to shu?e. Hisattitude is a little mad and not quite honest, or at least very muddled. He hasnot learnt the lesson of individual impotence. And he regards all my attemptsto make him acknowledge facts as mere timidity, lack of courage to thinkboldly, self-indulgence in pessimism. When one gets a glimmer of the factsinto his head, as I did at last, he gets discouraged, and says he will go to theSouth Sea Islands, and bask in the sun with 6 native wives. He is tough work.The trouble with him is a tendency to mad exaggeration.July 1915TuesdayYes, the day Lawrence was with me was horrid. I got ?lled with despair,and just counting the moments till it was ended. Partly that was due to liver,but not wholly. Lawrence is very like Shelley – just as ?ne, but with a similarimpatience of fact. The revolution he hopes for is just like Shelley’s prophecyof banded anarchs ?eeing while the people celebrate a feast of love. Hispsychology of people is amazingly good up to a point, but at a certain pointhe gets misled by love of violent colouring.Friday evg. I dined with my Harvard pupil, [T. S.] Eliot, and his bride. Iexpected her to be terrible, from his mysteriousness; but she was not so bad.the first war 263She is light, a little vulgar, adventurous, full of life – an artist I think he said, butI should have thought her an actress. He is exquisite and listless; she says shemarried him to stimulate him, but ?nds she can’t do it. Obviously he marriedin order to be stimulated. I think she will soon be tired of him. She refuses togo to America to see his people, for fear of submarines. He is ashamed of hismarriage, and very grateful if one is kind to her. He is the Miss Sands type ofAmerican. [Miss Sands was a highly-cultivated New Englander, a painter anda friend of Henry James and Logan Pearsall Smith.]HatchKingsley GreenHaslemereThurs. mg.[Postmark 9 Sp. ’15]My DarlingI was very glad of your letter this morning – such a dear letter. I wish Icould avoid getting unhappy. I can, if I have interests away from you and donot stay on and on in the family atmosphere – but otherwise the feeling ofbeing a mere super?uous ghost, looking on but not participating, grows toostrong to be borne. By spending some days in town each week it will be allright. The Lady18has been explaining the situation to me, and is going to doso further today, as she is taking me out for a picnic, while Mrs Waterlow[her sister] goes to town. She says – and I believe her – that she wasunguarded with my brother at ?rst, because she looked upon him as safelymarried, and therefore suitable as a lover. Suddenly, without consulting her,he wrote and said he was getting divorced. It took her breath away, and rather?attered her; she drifted, said nothing de?nite, but allowed him tacitly toassume everything. Now she is feeling very worried, because the inexorablemoment is coming when his divorce will be absolute and she will have todecide. Her objections to him are the following:(a) He sleeps with 7 dogs on his bed. She couldn’t sleep a wink in suchcircumstances.19(b) He reads Kipling aloud.(c) He loves Telegraph House, which is hideous.I daresay other objections might be found if one searched long enough,they are all three well chosen to appeal to me. She is a ?atterer, and hasevidently set herself to the task of getting me to be not against her if shebreaks with him. But it is an impossible task. I am too fond of my brother, andshall mind his su?ering too much, to forgive her inwardly even if she has aperfectly good case. She says she is still in great uncertainty, but I don’t thinkshe will marry him. She would be delighted to go on having him for a lover, butI feel sure he will never agree to that.I must ?nish, as this must be posted in a moment.the autobiography of bertrand russell 264Don’t worry about me. It will be all right as long as I don’t let my thoughtsget too concentrated on what I can’t have. I loved the children’s picnic, becausefor once I was not a ghost. I can’t enter into the family life when you arepresent, partly because you absorb my attention, partly because in your pres-ence I am always paralysed with terror, sti? and awkward from the sense ofyour criticism. I know that some things I do or don’t do annoy you, forreasons I don’t understand, and it makes it impossible for me to be naturalbefore you, though sometimes it makes me exaggerate the things you hate.But when I am not tired, I can surmount all those things. Owing to beingconstrained and frightened when I am with you, my vitality doesn’t last longat Garsington, and when it is gone I become defenceless against thoughts Iwant to keep at a distance.Thursday night[Postmark London,29 October ’15]My DarlingI was glad to get your letter. I had begun to feel anxious. I am glad Lawrencewas so wonderful. I have no doubt he is right to go, but I couldn’t desertEngland. I simply cannot bear to think that England is entering on its autumn oflife – it is too much anguish. I will not believe it, and I will believe there ishealth and vigour in the nation somewhere. It is all hell now, and shame – butI believe the very shame will in the end wake a new spirit. The more Englandgoes down and down, the more profoundly I want to help, and the more Ifeel tied to England for good or ill. I cannot write of other things, they seemso small in comparison.YourB.Wednesday[Postmark Nov. 10, ’15]Eliot had a half holiday yesterday and got home at 3.30. It is quite funnyhow I have come to love him, as if he were my son. He is becoming muchmore of a man. He has a profound and quite unsel?sh devotion to his wife,and she is really very fond of him, but has impulses of cruelty to him fromtime to time. It is a Dostojevsky type of cruelty, not a straightforward every-day kind. I am every day getting things more right between them, but I can’tlet them alone at present, and of course I myself get very much interested. Sheis a person who lives on a knife-edge, and will end as a criminal or a saint – Idon’t know which yet. She has a perfect capacity for both.[1915] Wed.My DarlingI don’t know what has come over me lately but I have sunk again into thestate of lethargy that I have had at intervals since the war began. I am sure Ithe first war 265ought to live di?erently, but I have utterly lost all will-power. I want someoneto take me in hand and order me about, telling me where to live and what todo and leaving me no self-direction at all. I have never felt quite like thatbefore. It is all mental fatigue I am sure, but it is very intense, and it leaves mewith no interest in anything, and not enough energy to get into a betterframe of mind by my own e?orts. In fact I should ?ght against anything thatmight be suggested to do me good. My impulse is just to sit still and brood.I can’t do much till my lectures are over but that won’t be long now. If Icould get some one like Desmond [MacCarthy] to come to the country withme then and make me walk a lot, I should get better. But everyone is busy andI haven’t the energy to arrange things. I don’t do any work. I shall have to getto work for Harvard some time but the thought of work is a nightmare. I amsure something ought to be done or I shall go to pieces.Irene [Cooper Willis] has just been here scolding me about Helen[Dudley] – someone told her the whole story lately – that hasn’t made meany more cheerful than I was before. Sense of Sin is one of the things thattrouble me at these times. The state of the world is at the bottom of it I think,and the terrible feeling of impotence. I thought I had got over it but it hascome back worse than ever. Can you think of anything that would help me? Ishould be grateful if you could. My existence just now is really too dreadful.I know now that it is just an illness and it doesn’t any longer make mecritical of you or of anybody. It is my will that is gone. I have used it toomuch and it has snapped.You have enough burdens already – but if you know anyone who couldlook after me for a while and order me about it would make a di?erence.YourB.Sat. [1916]I enclose a letter from Captain White. You will see that he feels the same sortof hostility or antagonism to me that Lawrence feels – I think it is a feelingthat seems to exist in most of the people with whom I feel in sympathy on thespiritual side – probably the very same thing which has prevented you fromcaring for me as much as you thought you would at ?rst. I wish you could?nd out and tell me what it is. It makes one feel very isolated. People withwhom I have intellectual sympathy hardly ever have any spiritual life, or atany rate have very little; and the others seem to ?nd the intellectual side of meunbearable. You will think I am lapsing into morbidness again, but that is notso; I simply want to get to the bottom of it so as to understand it; if I can’t getover it, it makes it di?cult to achieve much.I had told White I was troubled by the fact that my audiences grow, andthat people who ought to be made uncomfortable by my lectures20are not –the autobiography of bertrand russell 266notably Mrs Acland [whose husband was in the Government], who sits enjoy-ing herself, with no feeling that what I say is a condemnation of the Govern-ment. I thought after my last lecture I would point the moral practically.I feel I know very little of what you have been thinking and feeling lately. Ihave been so busy that my letters have been dull, so I can’t complain. But itwill be a relief to see you and to ?nd out something of what has been goingon in you. Ever since the time when I was at Garsington last, I have been quitehappy as far as personal things are concerned. Do you remember that at thetime when you were seeing Vittoz [a Swiss physician who treated her] Iwrote a lot of stu? about Theory of Knowledge, which Wittgenstein criti-cised with the greatest severity? His criticism, tho’ I don’t think you realisedit at the time, was an event of ?rst-rate importance in my life, and a?ectedeverything I have done since. I saw he was right, and I saw that I could nothope ever again to do fundamental work in philosophy. My impulse wasshattered, like a wave dashed to pieces against a breakwater. I became ?lledwith utter despair,21and tried to turn to you for consolation. But you wereoccupied with Vittoz and could not give me time. So I took to casual philan-dering, and that increased my despair. I had to produce lectures for America,but I took a metaphysical subject although I was and am convinced that allfundamental work in philosophy is logical. My reason was that Wittgensteinpersuaded me that what wanted doing in logic was too di?cult for me. Sothere was no really vital satisfaction of my philosophical impulse in thatwork, and philosophy lost its hold on me. That was due to Wittgenstein morethan to the war. What the war has done is to give me a new and less di?cultambition, which seems to me quite as good as the old one. My lectures havepersuaded me that there is a possible life and activity in the new ambition. SoI want to work quietly, and I feel more at peace as regards work than I haveever done since Wittgenstein’s onslaught.From Stanley Unwin 40, Museum StreetLondon, W.C.November 29th, 1915Dear SirI notice with very great interest in the current number of The CambridgeMagazine that you are planning to give a Course of Lectures on ‘The Principlesof Social Reconstruction’.If it is your intention that the Lectures should subsequently be published inbook form, I hope we may have the pleasure of issuing them for you.We enclose a prospectus of Towards a Lasting Settlement, a volume in which weknow you are interested. We hope to publish the book on December 6th.Yours faithfullyStanley Unwin[This was the beginning of my connection with Allen & Unwin.]the first war 267From T. S. Eliot Tuesday[Jan. 1916.]Dear BertieThis is wonderfully kind of you – really the last straw (so to speak)of generosity. I am very sorry you have to come back – and Vivien saysyou have been an angel to her – but of course I shall jump at the opportunitywith the utmost gratitude. I am sure you have done everything possible andhandled her in the very best way – better than I – I often wonder howthings would have turned out but for you – I believe we shall owe her life toyou, even.I shall take the 10.30, and look forward to a talk with you before you go.Mrs Saich22is expecting you. She has made me very comfortable here.A?ectionatelyTomFrom Charlotte C. Eliot 4446 Westminster PlaceMay 23rd, 1916Dear Mr RussellYour letter relative to a cablegram sent us, was received some little timeago. I write now to thank you for the a?ection that inspired it. It was naturalyou should feel as you did with the awful tragedy of the Sussex of such recentoccurrence. Mr Eliot did not believe it possible that even the Germans,(a synonym for all that is most frightful,) would attack an American liner. Itwould be manifestly against their interest. Yet I am aware there is stilla possibility of war between Germany and America. The more we learn ofGerman methods, open and secret, the greater is the moral indignationof many Americans. I am glad all our ancestors are English with a Frenchancestry far back on one line. I am sending Tom copy of a letter writtenby his Great-great-grandfather in 1811, giving an account of his grandfather(one of them) who was born about 1676 – in the county of Devon, England –Christopher Pearse.I am sure your in?uence in every way will con?rm my son in his choice ofPhilosophy as a life work. Professor Wood speaks of his thesis as being ofexceptional value. I had hoped he would seek a University appointment nextyear. If he does not I shall feel regret. I have absolute faith in his Philosophybut not in the vers libres.Tom is very grateful to you for your sympathy and kindness. This gratitudeI share.Sincerely yoursCharlotte C. Eliot[T. S. Eliot’s mother]the autobiography of bertrand russell 268To Lucy Martin Donnelly,Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College34 Russell ChambersBury St., W.C.10 Feb. 1916My dear LucyI was glad to hear from you at Kyoto – as for Continents, there are so faronly 3 in which I have written to you – it is your plain duty to go to Africa &Australia in order to complete your collection.I do hope you will manage to come to England by the Siberian Railway. Itwould be a great pleasure to see you, & I am sure that I could make yousympathise with the point of view which I & most of my friends take aboutthe war.You needn’t have been afraid about my lectures. Helen [Flexner] wrote mequite a serious remonstrance, which amused me. I should have thought shewould have known by this time that social caution in the expression ofopinion is not my strong point. If she had known Christ before he deliveredthe Sermon on the Mount she would have begged him to keep silence for fearof injuring his social position in Nazareth. People who count in the world areoblivious of such things. As a matter of fact, my lectures are a great success –they are a rallying-ground for the intellectuals, who are coming daily more tomy way of thinking not only as regards the war but also as regards generalpolitics. All sorts of literary & artistic people who formerly despised politicsare being driven to action, as they were in France by the Dreyfus case. In thelong run, their action will have a profound e?ect. It is primarily to them that Iam speaking. – I have given up writing on the war because I have said my say& there is nothing new to say. – My ambitions are more vast & less immediatethan my friends’ ambitions for me. I don’t care for the applause one gets bysaying what others are thinking; I want actually to change people’s thoughts.Power over people’s minds is the main personal desire of my life; & this sortof power is not acquired by saying popular things. In philosophy, when I wasyoung, my views were as unpopular & strange as they could be; yet I have hada very great measure of success. Now I have started on a new career, & if I live& keep my faculties, I shall probably be equally successful. Harvard hasinvited me to give a course of lectures 12 months hence on the sort of thingsI am now lecturing on, & I have agreed to go. As soon as the war is over,people here will want just that sort of thing. When you once understand whatmy ambitions are, you will see that I go the right way about to realise them.In any large undertaking, there are rough times to go through, & of coursesuccess may not come till after one is dead – but those things don’t matter ifone is in earnest. I have something important to say on the philosophy of lifethe first war 269& politics, something appropriate to the times. People’s general outlook herehas changed with extraordinary rapidity during the last 10 years; their beliefsare disintegrated, & they want a new doctrine. But those who will mould thefuture won’t listen to anything that retains old superstitions & conventions.There is a sharp cleavage between old & young; after a gradual development, Ihave come down on the side of the young. And because I am on their side, Ican contribute something of experience which they are willing to respectwhen it is not merely criticism. – Let me hear again soon – I am interested byyour impressions of the Far East.Yrs a?yB RussellHave you read Romain Rolland’s Life of Michel Angelo? It is a wonderfulbook.To Ottoline Morrell Sunday aft.[Postmark London 30 Jan. ’16.]I have read a good deal of Havelock Ellis on sex. It is full of things thateveryone ought to know, very scienti?c and objective, most valuable andinteresting. What a folly it is the way people are kept in ignorance on sexualmatters, even when they think they know everything. I think almost all civil-ised people are in some way what would be thought abnormal, and theysu?er because they don’t know that really ever so many people are just likethem. One so constantly hears of things going wrong when people marry,merely through not knowing the sort of things that are likely to happen, andthrough being afraid to talk frankly. It seems clear to me that marriage oughtto be constituted by children, and relations not involving children ought tobe ignored by the law and treated as indi?erent by public opinion. It is onlythrough children that relations cease to be a purely private matter. The wholetraditional morality I am sure is superstitious. It is not true that the very bestthings are more likely to come to those who are very restrained – they eithergrow incapable of letting themselves go, or when they do, they become tooviolent and headlong. Do you agree?Goodbye my darling. I am as happy as one can be in these times, and veryfull of love. It will be a joy to see you again if you come up.YourB.Trin. Coll.Feb. 27 1916My DarlingI believe I forgot to tell you I was coming here for the week-end. I came tospeak to the ‘Indian Majliss’ a Club of Indian students here. They were havingthe autobiography of bertrand russell 270their annual dinner, about 100 of them, and they asked me to propose thetoast of ‘India’. Your friend Professor Shaheed Suhrawardy was there, andspoke extraordinarily well. They had asked me because of the line I have takenabout the war – at least I suppose so. But when I came to speak an odd senseof responsibility came over me. I remembered that after all I don’t want theGermans to win, and I don’t want India to rebel at this moment. I said that if Iwere a native of India I did not think I should desire a German victory. Thiswas received in dead silence, and subsequent speeches said that was the onlything in my speech that they disagreed with. Their nationalism was impres-sive. They spoke of unity between Moslems and Hindoos, of the oppressive-ness of England, of sharp defeat as the only way of checking tyrants. Many ofthem were able, very earnest, quite civilised. The man who spoke last was abiologist, full of passion for science, just going to return to India. ‘I amgoing’, he said, ‘from this land of prosperity to the land of plague andfamine, from this land of freedom to the land where if I am truthful I amdisloyal, if I am honest I am seditious; from this land of enlightenment to theland of religious bigotry, the land that I love, my country. A man must bemore than human to love such a country; but those who would serve it havebecome more than human.’ What a waste to make such men ?ght politicalbattles! In a happier world, he would probably discover preventives for chol-era; as it is, his life will be full of strife and bitterness, resisting evil, notcreating good. All of them were fearless and thoughtful; most of them werevery bitter. Mixed in with it all was an odd strain of undergraduate fun andbanter, jibes about the relative merits of Oxford and Cambridge, and such talkas amuses the English youth in quiet times. The mixture, which was in eachseparate speech, was very curious.Tonight I meet them again, or some of them, and give them my lecture oneducation. I am very glad indeed to have got to know their point of view andtheir character. It must be appallingly tragic to be civilised and educated andbelong to such a country as India.Helen [Dudley] is coming to lunch. I hope I shall see Nicod; alsoArmstrong23. Yesterday I lunched with Waterlow24which was dull.I spoke to the Indians for half an hour, entirely without preparation or anyscrap of notes. I believe I speak better that way, more spontaneously and lessmonotonously.Trinity CollegeSunday evening 19 Mar. ’16My DarlingThe melancholy of this place now-a-days is beyond endurance – theColleges are dead, except for a few Indians and a few pale paci?sts andbloodthirsty old men hobbling along victorious in the absence of youth.Soldiers are billeted in the courts and drill on the grass; bellicose parsonsthe first war 271preach to them in stentorian tones from the steps of the Hall. The town atnight is plunged in a darkness compared to which London is a blaze of light.All that one has cared for is dead, at least for the present; and it is hard tobelieve that it will ever revive. No one thinks about learning or feels it of anyimportance. And from the outer deadness my thoughts travel to the deadnessin myself – I look round my shelves at the books of mathematics and phil-osophy that used to seem full of hope and interest, and now leave me utterlycold. The work I have done seems so little, so irrelevant to this world inwhich we ?nd we are living. And in everything except work I have failed soutterly. All the hopes of ?ve years ago come before me like ghosts. I struggleto banish them from my mind but I can’t. All our happy times are in mymemory, though I know it is better not to think of them. I know I must workand think and learn to be interested in mental things, but utter wearinessoverwhelms me in the thought. It is no use to keep on running away fromspectres. I must let them catch me up and then face them. When I have learntto work properly again, I shall feel more inward independence, and thingswill be better. Ever since I knew you, I have tried to get from you what oneought to get out of oneself.46 Gordon SquareBloomsburyTuesday night[1916]My DarlingI have not heard from you since the letter you wrote on Friday, but as Ionly get my letters once a day now (when I call for them, in the morning) itis not surprising.I had a queer adventure today. Lloyd George was led to think he mightas well ?nd out at ?rst hand about the conscientious objectors, so he hadCli?ord Allen and Miss Marshall and me to lunch at his place near Reigate,fetching us and sending us back in his own motor. He was very unsatisfac-tory, and I think only wanted to exercise his skill in trying to start a process ofbargaining. Still, it was worth something that he should see Allen and knowthe actual man. It will make him more reluctant to have him shot.I feel convinced the men will have to su?er a good deal before public
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