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Russians that there is no promise for them in atomic war. Then the ?rst, vitalstep will have to be taken.We shall have to set up an arrangement under which all ?ssionable rawmaterial is owned by an international authority, and is only mined andprocessed by that authority. No nation or individual must have access to?ssionable raw material.And there would have to be an international inspectorate to ensure that thislaw is maintained.The Russians have a morbid fear of being inspected. We shall have to helpthem to overcome it. For until they are agreeable to it nothing can be e?ect-ively done.The H-bomb tests must be helping to persuade them. Hence to put o? thetests would simply be to put o? the day of agreement. It goes without sayingthat we, too, must always be ready to negotiate and to agree.Once this ?rst, vital agreement has been reached it should be possible,gradually, to extend international control.That is the only answer I can see.the autobiography of bertrand russell 53615AT HOME AND ABROADMore important than anything in pulling me through the dark apprehensionsand premonitions of these last two decades is the fact that I had fallen in lovewith Edith Finch and she with me. She had been a close friend of LucyDonnelly whom I had known well at the turn of the century and had seensomething of during my various American visits as I had of Edith during myyears in the United States in the thirties and forties. Lucy was a Professor atBryn Mawr, where Edith also taught. I had had friendly relations with BrynMawr ever since I married a cousin of the President of that College. It was the?rst institution to break the boycott imposed on me in America after mydismissal from the City College of New York. Paul Weiss of its Departmentof Philosophy wrote asking me to give a series of lectures there, an invita-tion which I gladly accepted. And when I was writing my History of WesternPhilosophy, the Bryn Mawr authorities very kindly allowed me to make use oftheir excellent library. Lucy had died and Edith had moved to New Yorkwhere I met her again during my Columbia lectures there in 1950.Our friendship ripened quickly, and soon we could no longer bear to beparted by the Atlantic. She settled in London, and, as I lived at Richmond, wemet frequently. The resulting time was in?nitely delightful. Richmond Parkwas full of reminiscences, many going back to early childhood. Relatingthem revived their freshness, and it seemed to me that I was living the past allover again with a fresh and happier alleviation from it. I almost forgot thenuclear peril in the joys of recollection. As we walked about the grounds ofPembroke Lodge and through Richmond Park and Kew Gardens, I recalled allsorts of things that had happened to me there. There is a fountain outsidePembroke Lodge at which the footman, employed to make me not afraid ofwater, held me by the heels with my head under water. Contrary to allmodern views, this method was entirely successful: after the ?rst application,I never feared water again.Edith and I each had family myths to relate. Mine began with Henry VIII,of whom the founder of my family had been a protégé, watching on hisMount for the signal of Anne Boleyn’s death at the Tower. It continued to mygrandfather’s speech in 1815, urging (before Waterloo) that Napoleonshould not be opposed. Next came his visit to Elba, in which Napoleon wasa?able and tweaked his ear. After this, there was a considerable gap in thesaga, until the occasion when the Shah, on a State visit, was caught in the rainin Richmond Park and was compelled to take refuge in Pembroke Lodge. Mygrandfather (so I was told) apologised for its being such a small house, towhich the Shah replied: ‘Yes, but it contains a great man.’ There was a verywide view of the Thames valley from Pembroke Lodge marred, in mygrandmother’s opinion, by a prominent factory chimney. When she wasasked about this chimney, she used to reply, smiling: ‘Oh, that’s not a factorychimney, that’s the monument to the Middlesex Martyr.’Edith’s family myths, as I came to know them, seemed to me far moreromantic; an ancestor who in 1640 or thereabouts was either hanged orcarried o? by the Red Indians; the adventures of her father among the Indianswhen he was a little boy and his family for a short time lived a pioneering lifein Colorado; attics full of pillions and saddles on which members of herfamily had ridden from New England to the Congress at Philadelphia; tales ofcanoeing and of swimming in rocky streams near where Eunice Williams,stolen away by the Indians in the great massacre at Deer?eld, Massachusetts,was killed. It might have been a chapter from Fennimore Cooper. In the CivilWar, Edith’s people were divided between North and South. Among themwere two brothers, one of them (a Southern General) at the end had tosurrender his sword to his brother, who was a Northern General. She herselfhad been born and brought up in New York City, which, as she rememberedit, seemed very like the New York of my youth of cobbled streets and hansomcabs and no motor cars.All these reminiscences, however entertaining, were only some of thearabesques upon the cake’s icing. Very soon we had our own myths to add tothe collection. As we were strolling in Kew Gardens one morning, we sawtwo people sitting on a bench, so far away that they seemed tiny ?gures.Suddenly, one of them jumped up and ran fast towards us and, when hereached us, fell to his knees and kissed my hand. I was horri?ed, and soabashed that I could think of nothing whatsoever to say or do; but I wastouched, too, by his emotion, as was Edith, who pulled herself togetherenough to learn that he was a German, living in England, and was grateful tome for something; we never knew for what.We not only took long walks in the neighbourhood of Richmond and inthe autobiography of bertrand russell 538London, along the River and in the Parks and in the City of a Sunday, but wesometimes drove farther a?eld for a walk. Once on the Portsmouth Road wemet with an accident. Through no fault of ours we were run into by a farmlorry and our car was smashed to bits. Luckily, at the time there were plentyof observers of our guiltlessness. Though shaken up, we accepted a lift fromsome kind passers-by into Guildford where we took a taxi to Blackdown tohave our intended walk. There I recalled my infant exploits. My people hadtaken Tennyson’s house during a summer’s holiday when I was two yearsold, and I was made by my elders to stand on the moor and recite in aheart-rending pipe,O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!We went to plays, new and old. I remember particularly Cymbeline, acted inRegent’s Park, Ustinov’s Five Colonels, and The Little Hut. My cousin Maud Russellinvited us to a party celebrating the achievement of the mosaic ?oor designedby Boris Anrep in the National Gallery. My portrait summoning Truth from awell occurs there with portraits of some of my contemporaries. I enjoyedsittings to Jacob Epstein for a bust that he asked to make of me which Inow have.These small adventures sound trivial in retrospect, but everything at thattime was bathed in the radiant light of mutual discovery and of joy in eachother. Happiness caused us for the moment to forget the dreadful outerworld, and to think only about ourselves and each other. We found that wenot only loved each other entirely, but, equally important, we learned grad-ually that our tastes and feelings were deeply sympathetic and our interestsfor the most part marched together. Edith had no knowledge of philosophyor mathematics; there were things that she knew of which I was ignorant. Butour attitude towards people and the world is similar. The satisfaction that wefelt then in our companionship has grown, and grows seemingly withoutlimit, into an abiding and secure happiness and is the basis of our lives. Mostthat I have to relate henceforth may be taken, therefore, to include herparticipation.Our ?rst long expedition was to Fontainebleau when the only reminder ofpublic squabbles was owing to Mussadeq’s attempt to secure a monopoly ofPersian oil. Apart from this, our happiness was almost as serene as it couldhave been in a quiet world. The weather was sunny and warm. We consumedenormous quantities of fraises du bois and créme fra?che. We made an expeditioninto Paris where, for past services, the French radio poured unexpected cashupon me that ?nanced an epic luncheon in the Bois, as well as solemnerthings, and where we walked in the Tuileries Gardens and visited Notreat home and abroad 539Dame. We never visited the Chateau at Fontainebleau. And we laughedconsumedly – sometimes about nothing at all.We have had other holidays in Paris since then, notably one in 1954 whichwe determined should be devoted to sight-seeing. We had each lived in Parisfor fairly long periods, but I had never visited any of the things that oneshould see. It was pleasant to travel up and down the river in the bateauxmouches, and to visit various churches and galleries and the ?ower and birdmarkets. But we had set-backs: we went to the Ste Chapelle one day and foundit full of Icelanders being lectured to on its beauties. Upon seeing me, theyabandoned the lecture and crowded about me as the ‘sight’ of most impor-tance. My remembrance of the Ste Chapelle is somewhat garbled. We retreatedto the terrace of our favourite restaurant opposite the Palais de Justice. Thenext day we went to Chartres which we both love. But, alas, we found itturned – so far as it could be – into a tourists’ Mecca full of post-cards andsouvenirs.In the spring of ?fty-two we visited Greece where we spent some time inAthens and then ten days or so driving through the Peloponesus. As everyonedoes, we at once set o? for the Acropolis. By mistake and thinking to take ashort cut, we approached it from the back. We had to scramble up a cli? bygoat paths and through barbed wire to get there. We arrived scratched andbreathless, but triumphant. We returned again often by more orthodoxroutes. It was very beautiful by moonlight. And very quiet; till suddenly, atmy elbow, I heard a voice say: ‘Mis-ter Russ-ell, is it not?’, with the accentportentous upon each syllable. It was a fellow tourist from America.The mountains were still snow-capped, but the valleys were full of blos-soming fruit trees. Kids gambolled in the ?elds, and the people seemedhappy. Even the donkeys looked contented. The only dark spot was Spartawhich was sullen and brooding beneath Taygetus from which emanated aspirit of frightening evil. I was thankful to reach Arcadia. It was as Arcadianand lovely as if born of Sidney’s imagination. At Tiryns, the guardian of theancient citadel bemoaned the fact that it had been very badly restored. Uponbeing asked when this distressing renovation had taken place, he replied,‘During the Mycenaean times’. Delphi left me quite unmoved, but Epidauruswas gentle and lovely. Oddly enough its peace was not broken by a bus-loadof Germans who arrived there shortly after us. Suddenly, as we were sittingup in the theatre dreaming, a beautiful clear voice soared up and over us. Oneof the Germans was an operatic Diva and, as we were, was enchanted bythe magic of the place. On the whole, our fellow tourists did not trouble us.But the United States army did. Their lorries were everywhere, especially inAthens, and the towns were noisy with the boisterous, cock-sure, shoutingsand demands of their men. On the other hand, the Greeks whom we metor observed in passing, seemed gentle and gay and intelligent. We werethe autobiography of bertrand russell 540impressed by the happy way in which they played with their children in theGardens at Athens.I had never before been in Greece and I found what I saw exceedinglyinteresting. In one respect, however, I was surprised. After being impressed bythe great solid achievements which everybody admires, I found myself in alittle church belonging to the days when Greece was part of the ByzantineEmpire. To my astonishment, I felt more at home in this little church than Idid in the Parthenon or in any of the other Greek buildings of Pagan times.I realised then that the Christian outlook had a ?rmer hold upon me than Ihad imagined. The hold was not upon my beliefs, but upon my feelings. Itseemed to me that where the Greeks di?ered from the modern world it waschie?y through the absence of a sense of sin, and I realised with someastonishment that I, myself, am powerfully a?ected by this sense in my feel-ings though not in my beliefs. Some ancient Greek things, however, didtouch me deeply. Among these, I was most impressed by the beautiful andcompassionate Hermes at Olympia.In 1953, Edith and I spent three weeks in Scotland. On the way we visitedthe house where I was born on the hills above the Wye valley. It had beencalled Ravenscroft, but is now called Cleddon Hall. The house itself was keptup, but during the war the grounds had got into a sorry condition. Myparents had, at their own instructions, been buried in the adjoining wood,but were later at the family’s wish, transported to the family vault at Chenies.On the way, too, we visited Seatoller in Borrowdale, where I had spent ?veweeks as a member of a reading party in 1893. The party was still remem-bered, and the visitor’s book contained proof of a story that I had told Edithwithout obtaining belief, namely that Miss Pepper, who had waited on us,subsequently married a Mr Honey. On arriving at St Fillans (our destination)I told the receptionist that I had not been there since 1878. She stared, andthen said; ‘But you must have been quite a little boy.’ I had remembered fromthis previous visit various landmarks at St Fillans such as the wooden bridgeacross the river, the house next to the hotel which was called ‘Neish’, and astony bay which I had imagined to be one of the ‘sun-dry places’ mentionedin the Prayer Book. As I had not been there since 1878, the accuracy of mymemories was considered established. We had many drives, sometimes alongno more than cart tracks, and walks over the moors that remain memorableto us. One afternoon, as we climbed to the crest of a hill, a doe and her fawnappeared over the top trotting towards us and, on our way down, on theshore of a wild little tarn, a proud and very tame hoopoe alighted and lookedus over. We drove home to St Fillans through the gloomy valley of Glencoe, asdark and dreadful as if the massacre had just taken place.Two years later we went again to St Fillans. This time, however, we had a farless carefree time. We had to stop on the way in Glasgow for me to make aat home and abroad 541speech in favour of the Labour candidate for Rotherglen, a tireless worker forWorld Government. Our spirits were somewhat damped by the fact that Ihad gradually developed trouble with my throat which prevented me fromswallowing properly, a trouble which I take pleasure in saying, resulted frommy e?orts to swallow the pronouncements of politicians. But much moredistressing than any of this was the fact that my elder son had fallen seriouslyill. We were beset by worry about him during the whole of this so-called‘holiday’. We were worried, too, about his three young children who were atthat time more or less, and later almost wholly, in our care.When Peter left me I had continued to live at Ffestiniog, happily workingthere in a house on the brow of the hill with a celestial view down the valley,like an old apocalyptic engraving of Paradise. I went up to London onlyoccasionally, and when I did, I sometimes visited my son and his family atRichmond. They were living near the Park in a tiny house, much too small fortheir family of three little children. My son told me that he wanted to give uphis job and devote himself to writing. Though I regretted this, I had somesympathy with him. I did not know how to help them as I had not enoughmoney to stake them to an establishment of their own in London while I livedin North Wales. Finally I hit upon the scheme of moving from Ffestiniog andtaking a house to share with my son and his family in Richmond.Returning to Richmond, where I spent my childhood, produced a slightlyghostly feeling, and I sometimes found if di?cult to believe that I still existedin the ?esh. Pembroke Lodge, which used to be a nice house, was beingruined by order of the Civil Service. When they discovered, what they did notknow until they were told, that it had been the home of famous people, theydecided that everything possible must be done to destroy its historic interest.Half of it was turned into ?ats for park-keepers, and the other half into a teashop. The garden was cut up by a complicated system of barbed wire, witha view, so I thought at the time, to minimising the pleasure to be derivedfrom it.1I had hoped vaguely that I might somehow rent Pembroke Lodge andinstall myself and my family there. As this proved impossible, I took a largishhouse near Richmond Park, turning over the two lower ?oors to my son’sfamily and keeping the top two for myself. This had worked more or less wellfor a time in spite of the di?culties that almost always occur when twofamilies live at close quarters. We had a pleasant life there, living separately,each having our own guests, and coming together when we wished. But itmade a very full life, with the family coming and going, my work, and theconstant stream of visitors.Among the visitors were Alan and Mary Wood who came to see me about abook that he wished to write on my philosophical work. He soon decided todo a life of me ?rst. In the course of its preparation we saw much of both himthe autobiography of bertrand russell 542and his wife and came to be very fond of them and to rely upon them. Someof the encounters with visitors, however, were odd. One gentleman fromAmerica who had suggested coming to tea, turned up accompanied by amistress of the American McCarthy whose virtues she extolled. I was angry.Another was an Indian who came with his daughter. He insisted that shemust dance for me while he played her accompaniment. I had only a shorttime before returned from hospital and did not welcome having all thefurniture of our sitting-room pushed back and the whole house shake as shecavorted in what, under other circumstances, I might have thought lovelygyrations.That visit to the hospital became one of the myths to which I have alreadyreferred. My wife and I had gone on a long walk in Richmond Park onemorning and, after lunch, she had gone up to her sitting-room which wasabove mine. Suddenly I appeared, announcing that I felt ill. Not unnaturally,she was frightened. It was the ?ne sunny Sunday before the Queen’s coron-ation. Though my wife tried to get hold of a neighbour and of our owndoctors in Richmond and London, she could get hold of no one. Finally, sherang 999 and the Richmond police, with great kindness and much e?ort,came to the rescue. They sent a doctor who was unknown to me, the only onewhom they could ?nd. By the time the police had managed to get hold of ourown doctors, I had turned blue. My wife was told by a well-known specialist,one of the ?ve doctors who had by then congregated, that I might live fortwo hours. I was packed into an ambulance and whisked to hospital wherethey dosed me with oxygen and I survived.The pleasant life at Richmond had other dark moments. At Christmas, 1953,I was waiting to go into hospital again for a serious operation and my wife andhousehold were all down with ?u. My son and his wife decided that, as shesaid, they were ‘tired of children’. After Christmas dinner with the childrenand me, they left, taking the remainder of the food, but leaving the children,and did not return. We were fond of the children, but were appalled by thisfresh responsibility which posed so many harassing questions in the midst ofour happy and already very full life. For some time we hoped that their parentswould return to take up their r?le, but when my son became ill we had toabandon that hope and make long-term arrangements for the children’s edu-cation and holidays. Moreover, the ?nancial burden was heavy and ratherdisturbing: I had given ￡10,000 of my Nobel Prize cheque for a little morethan ￡11,000 to my third wife, and I was now paying alimony to her and to mysecond wife as well as paying for the education and holidays of my youngerson. Added to this, there were heavy expenses in connection with my elderson’s illness; and the income taxes which for many years he had neglected topay now fell to me to pay. The prospect of supporting and educating his threechildren, however pleasant it might be, presented problems.at home and abroad 543For a time when I came out of the hospital I was not up to much, but byMay I felt that I had recovered. I gave the Herman Ould Memorial Lecture tothe ??? Club called ‘History as an Art’. We were asked to supper afterwardsby the Secretary of the Club and I enjoyed indulging my literary hates andloves. In particular, my great hate is Wordsworth. I have to admit the excel-lence of some of his work – to admire and love it, in fact – but much of it istoo dull, too pompous and silly to be borne. Unfortunately, I have a knackof remembering bad verse with ease, so I can puzzle almost anyone whoupholds Wordsworth.A short time later, on our way home to Richmond from Scotland, westopped in North Wales where our friends Rupert and Elizabeth Crawshay-Williams had found a house, Plas Penrhyn, that they thought would make apleasant holiday house for us and the children. It was small and unprenten-tious, but had a delightful garden and little orchard and a number of ?nebeech trees. Above all, it had a most lovely view, south to the sea, west toPortmadoc and the Caernarvon hills, and north up the valley of the Glaslyn toSnowdon. I was captivated by it, and particularly pleased that across the valleycould be seen the house where Shelley had lived. The owner of Plas Penrhynagreed to let it to us largely, I think, because he, too, is a lover of Shelley andwas much taken by my desire to write an essay on ‘Shelley the Tough’ (asopposed to the ‘ine?ectual angel’). Later, I met a man at Tan-y-Ralt, Shelley’shouse, who said he had been a cannibal – the ?rst and only cannibal I havemet. It seemed appropriate to meet him at the house of Shelley the Tough.Plas Penrhyn seemed to us as if it would be an ideal place for the children’sholidays, especially as there were friends of their parents living nearby whomthey already knew and who had children of their own ages. It would be ahappy alternative, we thought, to cinemas in Richmond and ‘camps’. Werented it as soon as possible.But all this was the daily background and the relief from the dark world ofinternational a?airs in which my chief interest lay. Though the receptionaccorded Human Society in Ethics and Politics was so amiable, its publication hadfailed to quiet my uneasiness. I felt I must ?nd some way of making theworld understand the dangers into which it was running blindly, head-on.I thought that perhaps if I repeated parts of Human Society on the ??? itwould make more impression than it had hitherto made. In this, however, Iwas thwarted by the refusal of the ??? to repeat anything that had alreadybeen published. I therefore set to work to compose a new dirge for thehuman race.Even then, in the relatively early days of the struggle against nucleardestruction, it seemed to me almost impossible to ?nd a fresh way of puttingwhat I had already, I felt, said in so many di?erent ways. My ?rst draft of thebroadcast was an anaemic product, pulling all the punches. I threw it away atthe autobiography of bertrand russell 544once, girded myself up and determined to say exactly how dreadful theprospect was unless measures were taken. The result was a distilled version ofall that I had said theretofore. It was so tight packed that anything that I havesince said on the subject can be found in it at least in essence. But the ??? stillmade di?culties, fearing that I should bore and frighten many listeners. Theyasked me to hold a debate, instead, with a young and cheerful footballer whocould o?set my grim forebodings. This seemed to me utterly frivolous andshowed so clearly that the ??? Authorities understood nothing of what it wasall about that I felt desperate. I refused to accede to their pleadings. At last, itwas agreed that I should do a broadcast in December by myself. In it, as I havesaid, I stated all my fears and the reasons for them. The broadcast, now called‘Man’s Peril’, ended with the following words: ‘There lies before us, if wechoose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we,instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal, as ahuman being to human beings: remember your humanity, and forget therest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot,nothing lies before you but universal death.’The broadcast had both a private and a public e?ect. The private e?ect wasto allay my personal anxiety for a time, and to give me a feeling that I hadfound words adequate to the subject. The public e?ect was more important. Ireceived innumerable letters and requests for speeches and articles, far morethan I could well deal with. And I learned a great many facts that I had notknown before, some of them rather desolating: a Battersea County Councillorcame to see me and told me of the provisions that the Battersea Council hadpromulgated that were to be followed by all the inhabitants of that district incase of nuclear attack. Upon hearing the warning siren, they were to rush toBattersea Park and pile into buses. These, it was hoped, would whisk them tosafety in the country.Almost all the response to the broadcast of which I was aware was seriousand encouraging. But some of my speeches had farcical interludes. One ofthem I remember with some smug pleasure: a man rose in fury, remarkingthat I looked like a monkey; to which I replied, ‘Then you will have thepleasure of hearing the voice of your ancestors’.I received the prize given by Pears’ Cyclopaedia for some outstanding workdone during the past year. The year before, the prize had been given to ayoung man who ran a mile in under four minutes. The prize cup which Inow have says ‘Bertrand Russell illuminating a path to Peace 1955’.One of the most impressive meetings at which I spoke was held in April,1955, in memory of the Jews who died at Warsaw in February, 1943. Themusic was tragic and beautiful, and the emotion of the assembled companyso deep and sincere as to make the meeting very moving. There were recordsmade of my speech and of the music.at home and abroad 545Among the ?rst organisations to show a pronounced interest in myviews were the World Parliamentarians and, more seriously perhaps, theParliamentary World Government Association with whom I had many meet-ings. They were to hold joint meetings in Rome in April, 1955, at which theyinvited me to speak. We were put up, oddly enough, in the hotel in which Ihad stayed with my Aunt Maude on my ?rst trip to Rome over a half centurybefore. It was a cold barracks that had ceased to provide meals for its guests,but was in a pleasant part of the old city. It was Spring and warm. It was agreat pleasure to wander about the city and along the Tiber and up the Pinciofor the otherwise unprovided meals. I found the Roman meetings very mov-ing and interesting. I was happy that my speeches seemed to a?ect people,both at the meeting in the Chamber of Deputies and elsewhere. At all of themthere were very mixed audiences. After one, I was held up by a man almost intears because he had not been able to understand what had been said becausehe spoke no English. He besought me to translate what I had said intoEsperanto. Alas, I could not. I enjoyed, too, meeting a number of friendly andnotable literary and political ?gures in whose work I had been interested butwith whom I had never before had a chance to discuss matters.I had hoped, on the way north from Rome, to pay a visit to BernardBerenson at Settignano. In this I was prevented by the pressure of work. Later,I learned that he took my defection very ill, especially as he had felt me, he