DOI: 10.4324/9781315824499-7
Principia Mathematica being finished, I felt somewhat at a loose end. The feeling was delightful, but bewildering, like coming out of prison. Being at the time very much interested in the struggle between the Liberals and the Lords about the Budget and the Parliament Act, I felt an inclination to go into politics. I applied to Liberal Headquarters for a constituency, and was recommended to Bedford. I went down and gave an address to the Liberal Association, which was received with enthusiasm. Before the address, however, I had been taken into a small back room, where I was subjected to a regular catechism, as nearly as I remember in the following terms:
Q. Are you a member of the Church of England?
A. No, I was brought up as a Nonconformist.
Q. And have remained so?
A. No, I have not remained so.
Q. Are we to understand that you are an agnostic?
A. Yes, that is what you must understand.
Q. Would you be willing to attend church occasionally?
A. No, I should not.
Q. Would your wife be willing to attend church occasionally?
A. No, she would not.
Q. Would it come out that you are an agnostic?
A. Yes, it probably would come out.
In consequence of these answers, they selected as their candidate Mr Kellaway, who became Postmaster General, and held correct opinions during the War. They must have felt that they had had a lucky escape.
I also felt that I had had a lucky escape, for while Bedford was deliberating, I received an invitation from Trinity College to become a lecturer in the principles of mathematics. This was much more attractive to me than politics, but if Bedford had accepted me I should have had to reject Cambridge. I took up my residence at the beginning of the October term in 1910. Alys and I had lodgings in Bridge Street, and I had rooms in letter I, Nevile's Court. I became very fond of these rooms, which were the first place exclusively my own that I possessed since leaving Cambridge in 1894. we sold our house at Bagley wood, and it seemed as if life were going to be settled in a new groove.
This, however, was not the case. In the Election of January, 1910, while I was still living at Bagley Wood, I decided that I ought to help the Liberals as much as I could, but I did not want to help the Member for the constituency in which I was living, as he had broken some pledges which I considered important. I therefore decided to help the Member for the neighbouring constituency across the river. This Member was Philip Morrell, a man who had been at Oxford with my brother-in-law, Logan, who had been passionately attached to him. Philip Morrell had married Lady Ottoline Cavendish-Bentinck, sister of the Duke of Portland. I had known her slightly since we were both children, as she had an aunt named Mrs Scott,1 who lived at Ham Common. I had two vivid memories connected with Mrs Scott's house, but neither of them concern Ottoline. The first of these memories was of a children's party at which I first tasted ice-cream. I thought it was an ordinary pudding, and took a large spoonful. The shock caused me to burst into tears, to the dismay of the elders, who could not make out what had happened. The other experience was even more unpleasant. In getting out of a carriage at her door, I fell on the paving-stones, and hurt my penis. After this I had to sit twice a day in a hot bath and sponge it carefully. As I had always hitherto been taught to ignore it, this puzzled me. When Philip first became engaged to Ottoline, Logan was filled with jealous rage, and made unkind fun of her. Later, however, he became reconciled. I used to see her and Philip occasionally, but I had never had any high opinion of him, and she offended my Puritan prejudices by what I considered an excessive use of scent and powder. Crompton Davies first led me to revise my opinion of her, because she worked for his Land Values Organisation in a way that commanded his admiration.
During the Election of January 1910, I addressed meetings in support of Philip Morrell most nights, and spent most days in canvassing. I remember canvassing a retired Colonel at Iffley, who came rushing out into the hall exclaiming: 'Do you think I'd vote for a scoundrel like that? Get out of the house, or I'll put the dogs on you!' I spoke in almost every village between Oxford and Caversham. In the course of this campaign I had many opportunities of getting to know Ottoline. I discovered that she was extraordinarily kind to all sorts of people, and that she was very much in earnest about public life. But Philip, in common with all the other Liberal Members in the neighbourhood, lost his seat, and was offered a new constituency at Burnley, for which he was Member from December 1910 until the 'Hang-the-Kaiser' Election. The result was that for some time I did not see much of the Morrells. However, in March 1911 I received an invitation to give three lectures in Paris, one at the Sorbonne and two elsewhere. It was convenient to spend the night in London on the way, and I asked the Morrells to put me up at their house, 44 Bedford Square. Ottoline had very exquisite though rather startling taste, and her house was very beautiful. In Alys there was a conflict between Quaker asceticism and her brother's aestheticism. She considered it right to follow the best artistic canons in the more public part of one's life, such as drawing-rooms and dresses for the platform. But In her instincts, and where she alone was concerned, Quaker plainness held sway; for example, she always wore flannel night-gowns. I have always liked beautiful things, but been incapable of providing them for myself. The atmosphere of Ottoline's house fed something in me that had been starved throughout the years of my first marriage. As soon as I entered it, I felt rested from the rasping difficulties of the outer world. When I arrived there on March 19th, on my way to Paris, I found that Philip had unexpectedly had to go to Burnley, so that I was left tête-á-tête with Ottoline. During dinner we made conversation about Burnley, and politics, and the sins of the Government. After dinner the conversation gradually became more intimate. Making timid approaches, I found them to my surprise not repulsed. It had not, until this moment, occurred to me that Ottoline was a woman who would allow me to make love to her, but gradually, as the evening progressed, the desire to make love to her became more and more insistent. At last it conquered, and I found to my amazement that I loved her deeply, and that she returned my feeling. Until this moment I had never had complete relations with any woman except Alys. For external and accidental reasons, I did not have full relations with Ottoline that evening, but we agreed to become lovers as soon as possible. My feeling was overwhelmingly strong, and I did not care what might be involved. I wanted to leave Alys, and to have her leave Philip. What Philip might think or feel was a matter of indifference to me. If I had known that he would murder us both (as Mrs Whitehead assured me he would) I should have been willing to pay that price for one night. The nine years of tense self-denial had come to an end, and for the time being I was done with self-denial. However, there was not time to settle future plans during that one evening. It was already late when we first kissed, and after that, though we stayed up till four in the morning, the conversation was intermittent. Early the next day I had to go to Paris, where I had to lecture in French to highly critical audiences. It was difficult to bring my mind to bear upon what I had to do, and I suspect that I must have lectured very badly. I was living in a dream, and my surroundings appeared quite unreal. Ottoline was going to Studland (in those days quite a tiny place), and we arranged that I should join her there for three days. Before going, I spent the weekend with Alys at Fernhurst, I began the weekend by a visit to the dentist, who told me that he thought I had cancer, and recommended a specialist, whom, however, I could not see for three weeks, as he had gone away for his Easter holiday. I then told Alys about Ottoline. She flew into a rage, and said that she would insist upon a divorce, bringing in Ottoline's name. Ottoline, on account of her child, and also on account of a very genuine affection for Philip, did not wish for a divorce from him. I therefore had to keep her name out of it. I told Alys that she could have the divorce whenever she liked, but that she must not bring Ottoline's name into it. She nevertheless persisted that she would bring Ottoline's name in. Thereupon I told her quietly but firmly that she would find that impossible, since if she ever took steps to that end, I should commit suicide in order to circumvent her. I meant this, and she saw that I did. Thereupon her rage became unbearable. After she had stormed for some hours, I gave a lesson in Locke's philosophy to her niece, Karin Costelloe, who was about to take her Tripos. I then rode away on my bicycle, and with that my first marriage came to an end. I did not see Alys again till 1950, when we met as friendly acquaintances.1
From this scene I went straight to Studland, still believing that I had cancer. At Swanage, I obtained an old-fashioned fly with an incredibly slow horse. During his leisurely progress up and down the hills, my impatience became almost unendurable. At last, however, I saw Ottoline sitting in a pine-wood beside the road, so I got out, and let the fly go on with my luggage. The three days and nights that I spent at Studland remain in my memory as among the few moments when life seemed all that it might be, but hardly ever is. I did not, of course, ten Ottoline that I had reason to fear that I had cancer, but the thought of this possibility heightened my happiness by giving it greater intensity, and by the sense that it had been wrenched from the jaws of destruction. When the dentist told me, my first reaction was to congratulate the Deity on having got me after all just as happiness seemed in sight. I suppose that in some underground part of me I believed in a Deity whose pleasure consists of ingenious torture. But throughout the three days at Studland, I felt that this malignant Deity had after all been not wholly successful. When finally I did see the specialist, it turned out that there was nothing the matter.
Ottoline was very tall, with a long thin face something like a horse, and very beautiful hair of an unusual colour, more or less like that of marmalade, but rather darker. Kind ladies supposed it to be dyed, but in this they were mistaken. She had a very beautiful, gentle, vibrant voice, indomitable courage, and a will of iron. She was very shy, and, at first, we were both timid of each other, but we loved profoundly, and the gradual disappearance of the timidity was an added delight. We were both earnest and unconventional, both aristocratic by tradition but deliberately not so in our present environment, both hating the cruelty, the caste insolence, and the narrow-mindedness of aristocrats, and yet both a little alien in the world in which we chose to live, which regarded us with suspicion and lack of understanding because we were alien. All the complicated feelings resulting from this situation we shared. There was a deep sympathy between us which never ceased as long as she lived. Although we ceased to be lovers in 1916, we remained always close friends.
Ottoline had a great influence upon me, which was almost wholly beneficial. She laughed at me when I behaved like a don or a prig, and when I was dictatorial in conversation. She gradually cured me of the belief that I was seething with appalling wickedness which could only be kept under by an iron self-control. She made me less self-centred, and less self-righteous. Her sense of humour was very great, and I became aware of the danger of rousing it unintentionally. She made me much less of a Puritan, and much less censorious than I had been. And of course the mere fact of happy love after the empty years made everything easier. Many men are afraid of being influenced by women, but as far as my experience goes, this is a foolish fear. It seems to me that men need women, and women need men, mentally as much as physically. For my part, I owe a great deal to women whom I have loved, and without them I should have been far more narrow-minded.
After Studland various difficulties began to cause trouble. Alys was still raging, and Logan was quite as furious as she was. The Whiteheads, who showed great kindness at this time, finally persuaded them to abandon the idea of a divorce involving Ottoline, and Alys decided that in that case a divorce was not worth having. I had wished Ottoline to leave Philip, but I soon saw that this was out of the question. Meanwhile, Logan went to Philip, and imposed conditions, which Philip in turn had to impose upon Ottoline. These conditions were onerous, and interfered seriously with the happiness of our love. The worst of them was that we should never spend a night together. I raged and stormed, along with Philip and Logan and Alys. Ottoline found all this very trying, and it produced an atmosphere in which it was difficult to recapture the first ecstasy. I became aware of the solidity of Ottoline's life, of the fact that her husband and her child and her possessions were important to her. To me nothing was important in comparison with her, and this inequality led me to become jealous and exacting. At first, however, the mere strength of our mutual passion overcame all these obstacles. She had a small house at Peppard in the Chilterns, where she spent the month of July. I stayed at Ipsden, six miles from Peppard, and bicycled over every day, arriving about noon, and leaving about midnight. The summer was extraordinarily hot, reaching on one occasion 970 in the shade. We used to take our lunch out into the beech-woods, and come home to late tea. That month was one of great happiness, though Ottoline's health was bad. Finally, she had to go to Marienbad, where I joined her after a while, staying, however, at a different hotel. With the autumn she returned to London, and I took a flat in Bury Street, near the Museum, so that she could come and see me. I was lecturing at Cambridge all the time, but used to come up in the morning, and get back in time for my lecture, which was at 5.30. She used to suffer from terrible headaches, which often made our meetings disappointing, and on these occasions I was less considerate than I ought to have been. Nevertheless, we got through the winter with only one serious disagreement, arising out of the fact that I denounced her for being religious. Gradually, however, I became increasingly turbulent, because I felt that she did not care for me as much as I cared for her. There were moments when this feeling disappeared entirely, and I think that often what was really ill-health appeared to me as indifference, but this was certainly not always the case. I was suffering from pyorrhoea although I did not know it, and this caused my breath to be offensive, which also I did not know. She could not bring herself to mention it, and it was only after I had discovered the trouble and had it cured, that she let me know how much it had affected her.
At the end of 1913 I went to Rome to see her, but Philip was there, and the visit was very unsatisfactory. I made friends with a German lady whom I had met in the summer on the Lake of Garda. Sanger and I had spent a month walking from Innsbruck over the Alps, and had arrived at Punto San Vigilio, where we joined a party of friends, consisting of Miss Silcox, the mistress of St Felix School, Melian Stawell, and the latter's protegee, whose name I have forgotten. We observed a young woman sitting at a table by herself, and discussed whether she was married or single. I suggested that she was divorced. In order to settle the point, I made her acquaintance, and found that I was right. Her husband was a psychoanalyst, and apparently professional etiquette required that he should not get on with his wife. Consequently, at the time when I knew her, she was divorced. But as soon as honour was satisfied, they remarried, and lived happily ever after. She was young and charming, and had two small children. At that time my dominant passion was desire for children, and I could not see even a child playing in the street without an almost unbearable ache. I made friends with the lady and we made an expedition into the country. I wished to make love to her, but thought that I ought first to explain about Ottoline. Until I spoke about Ottoline, she was acquiescent, but afterwards she ceased to be so. She decided, however, that for that one day her objections could be ignored. I have never seen her since, though I still heard from her at intervals for some years.
An event of importance to me in 1913 was the beginning or my friendship with Joseph Conrad, which I owed to our common friendship with Ottoline. I had been for many years an admirer of his books, but should not have ventured to seek acquaintance without an introduction. I travelled down to his house near Ashford in Kent in a state of somewhat anxious expectation. My first impression was one of surprise. He spoke English with a very strong foreign accent, and nothing in his demeanour in any way suggested the sea. He was an aristocratic Polish gentleman to his fingertips. His feeling for the sea, and for England, was one of romantic love - love from a certain distance, sufficient to leave the romance untarnished. His love for the sea began at a very early age. When he told his parents that he wished for a career as a sailor, they urged him to go into the Austrian navy, but he wanted adventure and tropical seas and strange rivers surrounded by dark forests; and the Austrian navy offered him no scope for these desires. His family were horrified at his seeking a career in the English merchant marine, but his determination was inflexible.
He was, as anyone may see from his books, a very rigid moralist and by no means politically sympathetic with revolutionaries. He and I were in most of our opinions by no means in agreement, but in something very fundamental we were extraordinarily at one.
My relation to Joseph Conrad was unlike any other that I have ever had. I saw him seldom, and not over a long period of years. In the out-works of our lives, we were almost strangers, but we shared a certain outlook on human life and human destiny, which, from the very first, made a bond of extreme strength. I may perhaps be pardoned for quoting a sentence from a letter that he wrote to me very soon after we had become acquainted. I should feel that modesty forbids the quotation except for the fact that it expresses so exactly what I felt about him. What he expressed and I equally felt was, in his words, 'A deep admiring affection which, if you were never to see me again and forgot my existence tomorrow, would be unalterably yours usque ad finem'.
Of all that he had written I admired most the terrible story called The Heart of Darkness, in which a rather weak idealist is driven mad by horror of the tropical forest and loneliness among savages. This story expresses, I think, most completely his philosophy of life. I felt, though I do not know whether he would have accepted such an image, that he thought of civilised and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths. He was very conscious of the various forms of passionate madness to which men are prone, and it was this that gave him such a profound belief in the importance of discipline. His point of view, one might perhaps say, was the antithesis of Rousseau's: 'Man is born in chains, but he can become free.' He becomes free, so I believe Conrad would have said, not by letting loose his impulses, not by being casual and uncontrolled, but by subduing wayward impulse to a dominant purpose.
He was not much interested in political systems, though he had some strong political feelings. The strongest of these were love of England and hatred of Russia, of which both are expressed in The Secret Agent; and the hatred of Russia, both Czarist and revolutionary, is set forth with great power in Under Western Eyes. His dislike of Russia was that which was traditional in Poland. It went so far that he would not allow merit to either Tolstoy or Dostoievsky. Turgeniev, he told me once, was the only Russian novelist whom he admired.
Except for love of England and hatred of Russia, politics did not much concern him. What interested him was the individual human soul faced with the indifference of nature, and often with the hostility of man, and subject to-inner struggles with passions both good and bad that led towards destruction. Tragedies of loneliness occupied a great part of his thought and feeling. One of his most typical stories is Typhoon. In this story the Captain, who is a simple soul, pulls his ship through by unshakeable courage and grim determination. When the storm is over, he writes a long letter to his wife, telling about it. In his account his own part is, to him, perfectly simple. He has merely performed his Captain's duty as, of course, anyone would expect. But the reader, through his narrative, becomes aware of all that he has done and dared and endured. The letter, before he sends it off, is read surreptitiously by his steward, but is never read by anyone else at all because his wife finds it boring and throws it away unread.
The two things that seem most to occupy Conrad's imagination are loneliness and fear of what is strange. An Outcast of the Islands like The Heart of Darkness is concerned with fear of what is strange. Both come together in the extraordinarily moving story called Amy Foster. In this story a South-Slav peasant, on his way to America, is the sole survivor of the wreck of his ship, and is cast away in a Kentish village. All the village fears and ill-treats him, except Amy Foster, a dull, plain girl who brings him bread when he is starving and finally marries him. But she, too, when, in fever, he reverts to his native language, is seized with a fear of his strangeness, snatches up their child and abandons him. He dies alone and hopeless. I have wondered at times how much of this man's loneliness Conrad had felt among the English and had suppressed by a stern effort of will.
Conrad's point of view was far from modern. In the modern world there are two philosophies: the one which stems from Rousseau, and sweeps aside discipline as unnecessary, the other, which finds its fullest expression in totalitarianism, which thinks of discipline as essentially imposed from without. Conrad adhered to the older tradition, that discipline should come from within. He despised indiscipline and hated discipline that was merely external.
In all this I found myself closely in agreement with him. At our very first meeting, we talked with continually increasing intimacy. We seemed to sink through layer after layer of what was superficial, till gradually both reached the central fire. It was an experience unlike any other that I have known. We looked into each other's eyes, half appalled and half intoxicated to find ourselves together in such a region. The emotion was as intense as passionate love, and at the same time all-embracing. I came away bewildered, and hardly able to find my way among ordinary affairs.
I saw nothing of Conrad during the war or after it until my return from China in 1921. When my first son was born in that year I wished Conrad to be as nearly his godfather as was possible without a formal ceremony. I wrote to Conrad saying: 'I wish, with your permission, to call my son John Conrad. My father was called John, my grandfather was called John, and my great grandfather was called John; and Conrad is a name in which I see merits.' He accepted the position and duly presented my son with the cup which is usual on such occasions.
I did not see much of him, as I lived most of the year in Cornwall, and his health was failing. But I had some charming letters from him, especially one about my book on China. He wrote: 'I have always liked the Chinese, even those that tried to kill me (and some other people) in the yard of a private house in Chantabun, even (but not so much) the fellow who stole all my money one night in Bankok, but brushed and folded my clothes neatly for me to dress in the morning, before vanishing into the depths of Siam. I also received many kindnesses at the hands of various Chinese. This with the addition of an evening's conversation with the secretary of His Excellency Tseng on the verandah of an hotel and a perfunctory study of a poem, "The Heathen Chinee", is all I know about the Chinese. But after reading your extremely interesting view of the Chinese Problem I take a gloomy view of the future of their country.' He went on to say that my views of the future of China 'strike a chill into one's soul', the more so, he said, as I pinned my hopes on international socialism - 'The sort of thing', he commented, 'to which I cannot attach any sort of definite meaning. I have never been able to find in any man's book or any man's talk anything convincing enough to stand up for a moment against my deep-seated sense of fatality governing this man-inhabited world.' He went on to say that although man has taken to flying, 'he doesn't fly like an eagle, he flies like a beetle. And you must have noticed how ugly, ridiculous and fatuous is the flight of a beetle.' In these pessimistic remarks, I felt that he was showing a deeper wisdom than I had shown in my somewhat artificial hopes for a happy issue in China. It must be said that so far events have proved him right.
This letter was my last contact with him. I never again saw mm to speak to. Once I saw him across the street, in earnest conversation with a man I did not know, standing outside the door of what had been my grandmother's house, but after her death had become the Arts Club. I did not like to interrupt what seemed a serious conversation, and I went away. When he died, shortly afterwards, I was sorry I had not been bolder. The house is gone, demolished by Hitler. Conrad, I suppose, is in process of being forgotten, but his intense and passionate nobility shines in my memory like a star seen from the bottom of a well. I wish I could make his light shine for others as it shone for me.
I was invited to give the Lowell lectures in Boston during the spring of 1914, and concurrently to act as temporary professor of philosophy at Harvard. I announced the subject of my Lowell lectures, but could not think of anything to say. I used to sit in the parlour of 'The Beetle and Wedge' at Moulsford, wondering what there was to say about our knowledge of the external world, on which before long I had to deliver a course of lectures. I got back to Cambridge from Rome on New Year's Day 1914, and, thinking that the time had come when I really must get my lectures prepared, I arranged for a shorthand typist to come next day, though I had not the vaguest idea what I should say to her when she came. As she entered the room, my ideas fell into place, and I dictated in a completely orderly sequence from that moment until the work was finished. What I dictated to her was subsequently published as a book with the title Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy.
I sailed on the Mauretania on March 7th. Sir Hugh Bell was on the ship. His wife spent the whole voyage looking for him, or finding him with a pretty girl. Whenever I met him after the sinking of the Lusitania, I found him asserting that it was on the Lusitania he had sailed.
I travelled straight from New York to Boston, and was made to teel at home in the train by the fact that my two neighbours were talking to each other about George Trevelyan. At Harvard I met all the professors. I am proud to say that I took a violent dislike to Professor Lowell, who subsequently assisted in the murder of Sacco and Vanzetti. I had at that time no reason to dislike him, but the feeling was just as strong as it was in later years, when his qualities as a saviour of society had been manifested. Every professor to whom I was introduced in Harvard made me the following speech: 'Our philosophical faculty, Dr Russell, as doubtless you are aware, has lately suffered three great losses. We have lost our esteemed colleague. Professor William James, through his lamented death; Professor Santayana, for reasons which doubtless appear to him to be sufficient, has taken up his residence in Europe; last, but not least, Professor Royce, who, I am happy to say, is still with us, has had a stroke.' This speech was delivered slowly, seriously, and pompously. The time came when I felt that I must do something about it. So the next time that I was introduced to a professor, I rattled off the speech myself at top speed. This device, however, proved worthless. 'Yes, Dr Russell,' the professor replied: 'As you very justly observe, our philosophical faculty....' and so the speech went on to its inexorable conclusion. I do not know whether this is a fact about professors or a fact about Americans. I think, however, that it is the former. I noticed another fact about Harvard professors: that when I dined with them, they would always tell me the way home, although I had had to find their house without this assistance. There were limitations to Harvard culture. Schofield, the professor of Fine Arts, considered Alfred Noyes a very good poet.
On the other hand, the students, especially the post-graduates, made a great impression upon me. The Harvard school of philosophy, until the three great losses mentioned above, had been the best in die world. I had stayed with William James at Harvard in 1896, and I had admired Royce's determination to introduce mathematical logic into the philosophical curriculum. Santayana, who had a great friendship for my brother, had been known to me since 1893, and I admired him as much as I disagreed with him. The tradition of these men was still strong. Ralph Barton Perry was doing his best to take their place, and was inspired with the full vigour of what was called 'the new realism'. He had married Berenson's sister. He already displayed, however, something of that New England moralism which caused him to be intellectually ruined by the first War. On one occasion he met, in my rooms, Rupert Brooke, of whom he had not then heard. Rupert was on his way back from the South Sea Islands, and discoursed at length about the decay of manhood in these regions produced by the cessation of cannibalism. Professor Perry was pained, for is not cannibalism a sin? I have no doubt that when Rupert died, Professor Perry joined in his apotheosis, and I do not suppose he ever realised that the flippant young man he had met in my rooms was identical with the golden-haired god who had given his life for his country.
The students, however, as I said before, were admirable. I had a post-graduate class of twelve, who used to come to tea with me once a week. One of them was T. S. Eliot, who subsequently wrote a poem about it, called 'Mr Apollinax'. I did not know at the time that Eliot wrote poetry. He had, I think, already written 'A Portrait of a Lady', and 'Prufrock', but he did not see fit to mention the fact. He was extraordinarily silent, and only once made a remark which struck me. I was praising Heraclitus, and he observed: 'Yes, he always reminds me of Villon.' I thought this remark so good that I always wished he would make another. Another pupil who interested me was a man called Demos. He was a Greek whose father, having been converted by the missionaries, was an evangelical minister. Demos had been brought up in Asia Minor, and has risen to be librarian of some snail library there, but when he had read all the books in that library he felt that Asia Minor had nothing further to offer him. He therefore saved up until he could afford a passage, steerage, to Boston. Having arrived there, he first got a job as a waiter in a restaurant, and then entered Harvard. He worked hard, and had considerable ability. In the course of nature he ultimately became a professor. His intellect was not free from the usual limitations. He explained to me in 1917 that while he could see through the case made by the other belligerents for their participation in the war, and perceived clearly that their arguments were humbug, the matter was quite different in the case of Greece, which was coming in on a genuine moral issue.
When the Harvard term came to an end, I gave single lectures in a few other universities. Among others I went to Ann Arbor, where the president showed me all the new buildings, more especially the library, of which he was very proud. It appeared that the library had the most scientific card-index in the world, and that its method of central heating was extraordinarily up-to-date. While he was explaining all this, we were standing in the middle of a large room with admirable desks. 'And does anybody ever read the books?' I asked. He seemed surprised, but answered: 'Why yes, there is a man over there now reading.' We went to look, and found that he was reading a novel.
From Ann Arbor I went to Chicago, where I stayed with an eminent gynaecologist and his family. This gynaecologist had written a book on the diseases of women containing a coloured frontispiece of the uterus. He presented this book to me, but I found it somewhat embarrassing, and ultimately gave it to a medical friend. In theology he was a free-thinker, but in morals a frigid Puritan. He was obviously a man of very strong sexual passions, and his face was ravaged by the effort of self-control. His wife was a charming old lady, rather shrewd within her limitations, but something of a trial to the younger generation. They had four daughters and a son, but the son, who died shortly after the war, I never met. One of their daughters came to Oxford to work at Greek under Gilbert Murray, while I was living at Bagley Wood, and brought an introduction to Alys and me from her teacher of English literature at Bryn Mawr. I only saw the girl a few times at Oxford, but I found her very interesting, and wished to know her better. When I was coming to Chicago, she wrote and invited me to stay at her parents' house. She met me at the station, and I at once felt more at home with her than I had with anybody else that I had met in America. I found that she wrote rather good poetry, and that her feeling for literature was remarkable and unusual. I spent two nights under her parents' roof, and the second I spent with her. Her three sisters mounted guard to give warning if either of the parents approached. She was very delightful, not beautiful in the conventional sense, but passionate, poetic, and strange. Her youth had been lonely and unhappy, and it seemed that I could give her what she wanted. We agreed that she should come to England as soon as possible and that we would live together openly, perhaps marrying later on if a divorce could be obtained. Immediately after this I returned to England. On the boat I wrote to Ottoline telling her what had occurred. My letter crossed one from her, saying that she wished our relations henceforth to be platonic. My news and the fact that in America I had been cured of pyorrhoea caused her to change her mind. Ottoline could still, when she chose, be a lover so delightful that to leave her seemed impossible, but for a long time past she had seldom been at her best with me. I returned to England in June, and found her in London. We took to going to Burnham Beeches every Tuesday for the day. The last of these expeditions was on the day on which Austria declared war on Serbia. Ottoline was at her best. Meanwhile, the girl in Chicago had induced her father, who remained in ignorance, to take her to Europe. They sailed on August 3rd. When she arrived I could think of nothing but the war, and as I had determined to come out publicly against it, I did not wish to complicate my position with a private scandal, which would have made anything that I might say of no account. I felt it therefore impossible to carry out what we had planned. She stayed in England and I had relations with her from time to time, but the shock of the war killed my passion for her, and I broke her heart. Ultimately she fell a victim to a rare disease, which first paralysed her, and then made her insane. In her insanity she told her father all that had happened. The last time I saw her was in 1924. At that time paralysis made her incapable of walking, but she was enjoying a lucid interval. When I talked with her, however, I could feel dark, insane thoughts lurking in the background. I understand that since then she had no lucid intervals. Before insanity attacked her, she had a rare and remarkable mind, and a disposition as lovable as it was unusual. If the war had not intervened, the plan which we formed in Chicago might have brought great happiness to us both. I feel still the sorrow of this tragedy.
Jan. 15,1911 Colonial Club Cambridge, Mass.
Dear Russell
It is rather late to thank you for your Philosophical Essays, but you may soon see unmistakable evidence of the great interest I have taken in them, as I am writing an elaborate review - in three articles - for the Whited Sepulchre - which is what we call the Columbia Journal of Philosophy, etc. You will not expect me to agree with you in everything, but, whatever you may think of my ideas, I always feel that yours, and Moore's too, make for the sort of reconstruction in philosophy which I should welcome. It is a great bond to dislike the same things, and dislike is perhaps a deeper indication of our real nature than explicit affections, since the latter may be effects of circumstances, while dislike is a reaction against them.
I had hoped to go to Cambridge in June, but now it is arranged that I shall go instead to California, where I have never been. I am both glad and sorry for this, but it seemed as well to see the Far West once in one's life, especially as I hope soon to turn my face resolutely in the opposite direction.
Thank you again very much for sending me the book.
Yours sincerely G. Santayana
(June 1911) Newnham College Cambridge
Dear Bertie
I have heard from Alys. I cannot help saying how sad I am for you as well as her - you have been thro' hell I know - that is written in your face.
May I say just this? You have always stood to me for goodness and asceticism - I shall always think of you - till you tell me not - as doing the straight hard thing.
Yours always Jane E. Harrison
This needs no answer, forgive my writing it. You have been thro' too much these last days to want to see people, but I am always glad when you come.
Telegraph House Chichester 6 June, 1911
My dear Bertie
Mollie and I have both received your news with much regret. We had as you say an idea, but only an idea, that the original devotion had rather passed away, and that you found each other trying, but we hoped nothing so definite as a separation would result. People of good manners can often manage to get on in the same house, once they have agreed to differ, and I hope for the comfort of both of you, and your friends, that this may still be the case. But of that of course you are the only possible judges.
In the meantime we can only regret the annoyance any such rearrangement causes, and the break up of a union which seemed to promise well at the beginning. A broken marriage is always a tragedy.
Yours affectionately Russell
Trinity College Cambridge June 11th, 1911
My dear Gilbert
Thank you very much indeed for your kind letter. The decision1 as you know, is not sudden or hasty; and though the present is painful, I feel no doubt that both will in the long run be happier.
It is true that I have seen less of you than formerly - I wish it were not. But business and work seem to overwhelm one more and more. During the time I lived at Oxford I never could shake off work except by going away. I suppose that is the essence of middle age. But I do not find, on that account, that my affections grow less - it is only the outward show that suffers.
Please give my love to Mary.
Yours ever Bertrand Russell
June 17, 1911 I Tatti Settignano (Florence)
My dear Bertie
I have just received a telegram, telling me of Karin's success in her Tripos, and I cannot help writing to express my gratitude to you for your overwhelming share in bringing this about. I feel most sincerely grateful. I cannot but hope further work of the same nature may be temptingly put in her way, for she seems to have a capacity to do it well, and it might 'make a man of her', so to speak. So I beg of you to continue to bear the child in mind, and suggest her doing any work that you may think it worth while for her to do.
I won't say anything about the decision you and Alys have come to, except to send you my love and sympathy in all you have certainly suffered over it, and to assure you of B. B.'s and my continued friendliness and good wishes.
Yours always affectionately Mary Berenson
(From Gilbert Murray, on Problems of Philosophy)
The Home University Library 14 Henrietta Street Covent Garden, W.C. August 10, 1911
Messrs Williams and Norgate1 will be glad to meet Mr Russell's wishes as far as practicable, but have some difficulty in understanding his point of view. About the earwig, for instance, they are ready, if Mr Russell is inconvenienced by his suspicions of its presence in his room, to pay a rat-catcher (who is also accustomed to earwigs) two-shillings an hour to look for it and make sure, provided the total payment does not exceed Ten Shillings, (IOS.) The animal, if caught, shall be regarded as Mr Russell's property, but in no case shall its capture, or the failure to capture it, be held as exonerating Mr Russell from his contract with Messrs W & N. Mr Russell's further complaint that he has not the acquaintance of the Emperor of China cannot be regarded by Messrs W & N as due in any way to any oversight or neglect of theirs. Mr R should have stipulated for an introduction before signing his contract. As to Mr Russell's memory of his breakfast and his constantly returning alarm lest his next meal should poison him, Messrs W & N express their fullest sympathy with Mr R in his trying situation, but would point out that remonstrances should be addressed not to them but to the Head Cook at Trinity College. In the meantime they trust that they do not exceed their duty in reminding Mr Russell that, in his own words, a philosopher should not always have his mind centred upon such subjects. They would observe further that their senior editor is much gratified by Mr Russell's frank admission that a bald man is, nevertheless, a man, while his next sentence has caused some little trouble among the staff. All three editors have rather good figures; at least there is no one among them who could be called conspicuously 'plain' in that respect. Perhaps Mr Russell referred to Mr Perris?1 If so, however, we do not quite understand who is meant by the poet. We would almost venture to suggest the omission of all these personalities. When gratifying to one individual, they nearly always give pain to others.
The Mischief Inn, Madingley Road 26. VIII. 11
Dear Russell
I send you all I can find of the notes Frege sent me on my account of his work.
Hardy told me of your translation into symbolism of the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill. If you have time would you send it to me to include in the 'Philosophy of Mr B — R —'.2 Also Hardy told me of your proof of the existence of God by an infinite complex of false propositions.3 May I have this too?
Yrs. ever Philip Jourdain
Georg Cantor, the subject of the following letter, was, in my opinion, one of the greatest intellects of the nineteenth century. The controversy with Poincaré which he mentions is still (1949) raging, though the original protagonists are long since dead. After reading the following letter, no one will be surprised to learn that he spent a large part of Ms life in a lunatic asylum, but his lucid intervals were devoted to creating the theory of infinite numbers.
He gave me a book on the Bacon-Shakespeare question, and wrote on the cover: 'I see your motto is "Kant or Cantor" and described Kant as "yonder sophistical Philistine who knew so little mathematics." ' Unfortunately I never met him.
75 Victoria Street S.W. 16. 9. 11
Dear Mr Russell
By accident I met to-day Professor Georg Cantor, professor of Mathematics at Halle University, and his chief wish during his stay in England is to meet you and talk about your books. He was overcome with pleasure when he learnt on talking of Cambridge that I knew you a little - you must forgive my boasting of my acquaintance with an English 'Mathematiker' and I had to promise I would try to find out if he could see you. He proposes to visit Cambridge on Tuesday and Oxford on Thursday, and meanwhile is staying for a week at 62 Nevern Square, South Kensington.
It was a great pleasure to meet him though if you are kind enough to see him you will sympathise with my feeling worn out with nearly four hours conversation. He was like a fog horn discoursing on Mathematics - to me! - and the Bacon theory.1
Could you send a line to him or to me at Woodgate, Danehill, Sussex. He is a Geheimrath & so forth. I could relate his whole family history to you!
Yours sincerely and with many apologies Margery I. Corbett Ashby
To the Hon. Bertrand Russell Trinity College, Cambridge
19 Sept. 1911 62 Nevern Square South Kensington London
Sir and dear Colleague!
From Mrs Margaret Corbett Ashby I have to present you with the ensuing letter. I am now staying here for a week about, with my daughter Mary, probably unto Sunday 24 Sept. on which day I will depart perhaps to Paris also for a week about, or to go at home. It would give me much pleasure if you could accompany us to Paris. There we could meet perhaps Monsieur Poincaré together, which would be a fine jolly 'Trio'.
As for myself you do know perhaps, that I am a great heretic upon many scientific, but also in many literary matters, as, to pronounce but two of them: I am Baconian in the Bacon-Shakespeare question and I am quite an adversary of Old Kant, who, in my eyes has done much harm and mischief to philosophy, even to mankind; as you easily see by the most perverted development of metaphysics in Germany in all that followed him, as in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Nietzsche, etc. etc. on to this very day. I never could understand that and why such reasonable and enobled peoples as the Italiens, the English and the French are, could follow yonder sophistical philistine, who was so bad a mathematician.
And now it is that in just this abominable mummy, as Kant is, Monsieur Poincaré felt quite enamoured, if he is not bewitched by him. So I understand quite well the opposition of Mons. Poincaré, by which I felt myself honoured, though he never had in his mind to honour me, as I am sure. If he perhaps expect, that I will answer him for defending myself, he is certainly in great a mistake.
I think he is about ten years younger than I, but I have learned to wait in all things and I foresee now clearly, that in this quarrel I will not be the succumbent. I let him do at his pleasure.
But I feel no forcing to enter myself into the battle; others will him precipitate and I allowed to do with greater and more important things. As for the little differences between you and me, I am sure, that they will disappear soon after an oral discourse.
I intend to pay a visit today to Major Macmahon.
I hope to see you in these days in Cambridge or in London, and so I am, Sir,
Your very faithfull Georg Cantor
On Thursday to Friday we are to follow ail invitation of Mrs Constance Pott, an old friend and correspondent of mine, of London, staying now in Folkestone, is Clifton Crescent.
As to Kant and his successors I see, and will show you the real cause of his standing upon so seeming-fermly ground of success, honour, veneration, idolatry. This cause is, that the German Protestantism in his development to 'Liberalism' needs himself a fundament on which to build his seemly-Christianity, so Kant or one of his successors are picked out, by the protestant Theologians of divers scools, to be their Atlas. One hand washes the other, one depends on the other and one has to fall with the other !
I never did harm to Monsieur Poincaré; au contraire, je l'honorait fortement dans mes 'grundlagen einer allgemeinen-M. lehre'.
To the Hon. Bertrand Russell Trinity College, Cambridge
London 19 Sept. 1911
Dear Sir
My first letter to you was just finished as I received your despatch. If I would be free and would not depend upon the freewill of two young German Ladies, my daughter Mary and my niece Fraulein Alice Guttmann of Berlin, I would come this just day to meet you in Ipsden Wallingford. So probably I can generally not come to you!
Yours faithfully Georg Cantor
This second letter being finished, just I receive the following despatch from my dear wife at home.
'Erich erkrankt - sofort Halle kommen.'
You see, dear Sir, destiny playing upon me. The two young ladies I spoke of, are just departed to see Westminster.
It is my only son Erich, quite healthy when I left him; he is the Doctor of one division of a large Hospital of alienates in Bunzlau (Silesia). He is 32 years old.
I will hope that the worst has not happened.
He had been married three months ago and we assisted at his wedding with a very amiabel good and clever young girl, daughter of a tanner in the little Saxonia town Nossen in the Kingdom of Saxony.
My address in Halle a.d. Saale is: Handelstr. 13. We depart this evening. I hope to be here in the last half of August 1912 to the international Congress.
I had been also just writing a short description of my journey to and sojourning at Saint Andrews, and I interned to offer it to the editor of 'Review of Reviews'.
I could not go to Major Macmahon as had been my intention to do; you will see it in my first letter.
In Saint Andrews I have seen with great pleasure my very good friend Mr Hobson of Cambridge, who was going to Mailand to a congress of Mr Felix Klein, the great field-marshall of all german Mathematicians. Neither my father nor my mother were of germ an blood, the first being a Dane, borne in Kopenhagen, my mother of Austrian Hungar descension. You must know, Sir, that I am not a regular just Germain, for I am born 3 March 1845 at Saint Peterborough, Capital of Russia, but I went with my father and mother and brothers and sister, eleven years old in the year 1856, into Germany, first sojourning at Wiesbaden, then at Frankfort a/Main, then at Darmstadt, four years, then at Zurich, Berlin and Göttingen, coming then as 'Privat Dozent' Easter of the year 1869 to Halle a.d. Saale where I stay now forty two years and more.
Dear Sir
The last word of mine to you is a good one, just I receive from my wife the second telegram: 'Erich besser.' But you will understand that we must return this evening at home.
41 Grosvenor Road Westminster Embankment October 11th (1912)
My dear Bertrand
I was so sorry not to see you when you called the other day, and I feel that I cannot let your visit pass in silence.
Now don't be angry with me, if I ask you to put yourself in our place. Supposing you and Alyś were living in absolute happiness in complete comradship [sic], and you became aware that Sidney had repudiated me, and that I was 'living on in a state of dark despair'. Would you not, both of you, feel rather sore with Sidney?
I know nothing of the cause of your estrangement - all I know is that Alys wants us to be friends with you. And that is also my own instinct. I have always admired your very great intelligence, and tho' I have sometimes had my doubts about the strength of your character, I have always felt its peculiar charm.
So don't think that I have withdrawn my friendship; and if, at any time, I can be of use to you, with or without your complete confidence let me know and come and see me. And now that I have expressed quite frankly what is in my mind come and see us, if you feel inclined, and talk about the world's affairs without reference to your and Alys' troubles.
We had a delightful time in the Far East and India - there are wonderful new outlooks in Human Purpose and Human Destiny, both in Japan and among the Hindus in India. We were wholly unable to appreciate China and found ourselves unsympathetic to Mohamedan India.
Now we are again immersed in British problems: but the memory of our travels is a constant refreshment. Why don't you go for a long holiday and complete change of thought?
Ever your friend Beatrice Webb
37 Alfred Place W South Kensington, S.W. 13 October 1912
Dear Mr Russell
Thanks for your kind letter. I will ask Dr Seal to pay you a visit at Cambridge, when you will have an opportunity to know him.
I read your article on the Essence of Religion in the last issue of the Hibbert Journal with very great interest. It reminded me of a verse in the Upanishad which runs thus
'Yato vácho nivartanté aprápya manasá saha
Ánandam Brahmano Vidván na vibhéti Kutushchana.'
'From him words, as well as mind, come back baffled. Yet he who knows the joy of Brahman (the Infinite) is free from all fear.'
Through knowledge you cannot apprehend him; yet when you live the life of the Infinite and are not bound within the limits of the finite self you realise that great joy which is above all the pleasures and pains of our selfish life and so you are free from all fear.
This joy itself is the positive perception of Brahman. It is not a creed which authority imposes on us but an absolute realisation of the Infinite which we can only attain by breaking through the bonds of the narrow self and setting our will and love free.
Yours sincerely Rabindranath Tagore
Trinity College 13th Feb. 1913
My dear Goldie
It was very nice to see your handwriting, and such parts of your letter as I could decipher interested me very much! (In fact, there was very little I didn't make out in the end.) I am interested to see that India is too religious for you. Religion and daily bread - superstition and the belly - it doesn't sound attractive. I expect you will find China much more interesting - much more civilised, and more aware of the subtler values - at least if you could get in touch with the educated people.
I haven't much news. I suppose you have become aware that the Tories have dropped food taxes, and are on the move about protection in general; also that the Germans are accepting a 16 to 10 naval proportion, so that the public world is rather cheerful. Here in Cambridge things go on as usual. There is another agitation against Little Go Greek being got up, and everybody is saying what they have always said. It all seems rather remote from anything of real importance. My friend Wittgenstein was elected to the Society, but thought it a waste of time, so he imitated henry john roby1 and was cursed. I think he did quite right, though I tried to dissuade him. He is much the most apostolic and the ablest person I have come across since Moore.
I have done nothing to my Discourse. All the later summer I tried in vain to recapture the mood in which I had written it, but winter in England being in any case hopeless for that sort of writing I gave up for the present, and have been working at the philosophy of matter, in which I seem to see an opening for something important. The whole question of our knowledge of the external world is involved. In the spring of next year, I am going to Harvard for three months to lecture. I doubt if the people there are much good, but it will be interesting. Santayana has brought out a new book, Winds of Doctrine, mostly on Bergson and me. I have only looked it through so far - it has his usual qualities. Karin read a paper in praise of Bergson to the Aristotelian the other day - Moore and I attacked her with all imaginable ferocity, but she displayed undaunted courage. - Frank Darwin is going to marry Mrs Maitland, as I suppose you have heard. - There - that is all the news I can think of - it all seems curiously trivial. We here in Cambridge all keep each other going by the unquestioned assumption that what we do is important, but I often wonder if it really is. What is important I wonder? Scott and his companions dying in the blizzard seem to me impervious to doubt - and his record of it has a really great simplicity. But intellect, except at white heat, is very apt to be trivial.
I feel as if one would only discover on one's death-bed what one ought to have lived for, and realise too late that one's life had been wasted. Any passionate and courageous life seems good in itself, yet one feels that some element of delusion is involved in giving so much passion to any humanly attainable object. And so irony creeps into the very springs of one's being. Are you finding the Great Secret in the East? I doubt it. There is none - there is not even an enigma. There is science and sober daylight and the business of the day - the rest is mere phantoms of the dusk. Yet I know that when the summer comes I shall think differently.
I wish I were with you, or you with me. Give my love to Bob.1
Yours ever B. Russell
The Doves Press April 1913
My dear Bertie
At last, at last the Miltons are bound and I am sending them to your address at Trinity. I also was at Trinity this year just half a century ago and this same year just the same long time ago first saw your mother then Kate Stanley. I am not sorry then to have so long delayed as to make my little offering in this same year of grace.
In a little while this will be closed and I shall be printing no more books - did I send you my swan-song? I forget. But before I close I shall have printed the letters in their year of anniversary, 1914, and that will make a fitting end.
Let me hear of you and see you when next you come to Town.
Affectionately always T. J. Cobden-Sanderson
Hon. B. A. W. Russell Trinity College Cambridge, Eng. Esteemed Colleague
29 Sparks Street Cambridge, Mass. June 15, 1913
My son, Norbert Wiener, will this week receive his degree of Ph.D. at Harvard University, his thesis being 'A comparative Study of the Algebra of Relatives of Schroeder and that of Whitehead and Russell'. He had expected to be here next year and have the privilege of being your student in the second semester, but as he has received a travelling fellowship, he is obliged to pass the whole of the year in Europe, and so he wishes to enjoy the advantage of studying under you at Trinity during the first half of the academic year. He intended to write to you about this matter, but his great youth, - he is only eighteen years old and his consequent inexperience with what might be essential for him to know in his European sojourn, leads me to do this service for him and ask your advice.
Norbert graduated from College, receiving his A.B., at the age of fourteen, not as the result of premature development or of unusual precocity, but chiefly as the result of careful home training, free from useless waste, which I am applying to all of my children. He is physically strong (weighing 170 lbs.), perfectly balanced morally and mentally, and shows no traits generally associated with early precocity. I mention all this to you that you may not assume that you are to deal with an exceptional or freakish boy, but with a normal student whose energies have not been mis-directed. Outside of a broad, and liberal classical education, which includes Greek, Latin, and the modern languages, he has had a thorough course in the sciences, and in Mathematics has studied the Differential and integral Calculus, Differential Equations, the Galois Theory of Equations, and some branches of Modern Algebra (under Prof. Huntington). In philosophy he has pursued studies under Professors Royce, Perry, Palmer, Münsterberg, Schmidt, Holt, etc., at Harvard and Cornell Universities.1 His predilection is entirely for Modern Logic, and he wishes during his one or two years' stay in Europe to be benefited from those who have done distinguished work in that direction.
Will he be able to study under you, or be directed by you, if he comes to Cambridge in September or early October? What should he do in order to enjoy that privilege? I have before me The Student's Handbook to Cambridge for 1908. but I am unable to ascertain from it that any provisions are made for graduate students wishing to obtain such special instruction or advice. Nor am I able to find out anything about his residence there, whether he would have to matriculate in Trinity College or could take rooms in the city. This is rather an important point to him as he is anxious, as far as possible, to get along on his rather small stipend. For any such information, which would smooth his first appearance in a rather strange world to him I shall be extremely obliged to you.
I shall take great pleasure to thank you in person for any kindness that thus may be shown to my son, when, next year, you come to our American Cambridge to deliver lectures in the Department of Philosophy.
Sincerely Yours Leo Wiener Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University
Capel House Orlestone Nr. Ashford, Kent 4 Sept. 1913
Dear Sir
Why bring a bicycle in this windy, uncertain weather? The true solution is to take a ticket (by the 11 a.m. train from Charing Cross I presume) to Hamstreet (change in Ashford after a few minutes' wait) where my boy will meet you with our ancient puffer and bring you to the door before half past one. Then there is a decent train at 5.48 from Ashford to get back to town a few minutes after seven.
Whether there's anything in me to make up for you the grind of the journey I don't know. What's certain is that you will give me the very greatest pleasure by coming. So you may look upon the expedition as something in the nature of 'good works'. I would suggest Wednesday, since, as far as I know, there is no Act of Parliament as yet to stop the running of trains on that day of the week - our new secular Sunday.
Believe me very faithfully yours Joseph Conrad
Capel House Orlestone, Nr. Ashford 13 Sept. 1913
My dear Russell
Your letter has comforted me greatly. It seems to me that I talked all the time with fatuous egotism. Yet somewhere at the back of my brain I had the conviction that you would understand my unusual talkativeness. Generally I don't know what to say to people. But your personality drew me out. My instinct told me I would not be misread.
Let me thank you most heartily for the pleasure of your visit and for the letter you had the friendly thought to write.
Believe me sincerely yours Joseph Conrad
Capel House Orlestone, Nr. Ashford 22 Dec. 1913
My dear Russell
Just a word of warmest good wishes from us all.
I am glad I read the little book before coming to your essays. If in reading the first I felt moving step by step, with delight, on the firmest ground, the other gave me the sense of an enlarged vision in the clearest, the purest atmosphere. Your significant words so significantly assembled, seemed to wake a new faculty within me. A wonderful experience for which one cannot even express one's thanks - one can only accept it silently like a gift from the Gods. You have reduced to order the inchoate thoughts of a life-time and given a direction to those obscure mouvements d'ame which, unguided, bring only trouble to one's weary days on this earth. For the marvellous pages on the Worship of a free man the only return one can make is that of a deep admiring affection, which, if you were never to see me again and forgot my existence tomorrow, will be unalterably yours usque ad finem.
Yours ever J. Conrad
P.S. - I have been reading you yesterday and today and I have received too many different kinds of delight (I am speaking soberly) to be able to write more today.
3 Claremont Crescent Weston-super-Mare Jan. 31, '14
Dear Mr Russell
Many thanks for your letter which has come on here where I am, I hope, getting over a short period of illness and incapacity. I am sure that I need not tell you that my expressions of admiration for your work were not mere words. I am not able to agree with your views in some points (at least as I understand them) but I don't feel the smallest doubt about their great value. And I am full of hope and expectation that you will go on to do still better and better, though I am afraid that I can't hope for much longer to be able to appreciate and enjoy any speculation.
I think I understand what you say as to the way in which you philosophise. I imagine that it is the right way and that its promises are never illusions, though they may not be kept to the letter. There is something perhaps in the whole of things that one feels is wanting when one considers the doctrines before one, and (as happens elsewhere) one feels that one knows what one wants and that what one wants is there - if only one could find it. And for my part I believe that one does find it more or less. And yet still I must believe that one never does or can find the whole in a11 its aspects, and that there never after all will be a philosopher who did not reach his truth, after all, except by some partiality and one-sidedness - and that, far from mattering, this is the right and the only way. This is however only faith and I could not offer to prove it.
I am sure that in my own work, such as it is, I have illustrated the partiality - if nothing else. I am afraid that I always write too confidently - perhaps because otherwise I might not write at all. Still I don't see that in doing so one can do much harm, or run the risk of imposing on anyone whose judgment is of any value.
If I have helped you in any way by my objections, that I feel will justify their existence more or less - even where they are quite mistaken - and it will be a very great satisfaction to me always to have had your good opinion of my work.
Perhaps I may add that I am getting the impression that I have been tending more and more to take refuge in the unknown and unknowable - in a way which I maintain is right, but which still is not what I quite like.
Wishing you all success with your work and venturing to express the hope that you will not allow yourself to be hurried.
I am Yours truly F. H. Bradley