Chapter 11
With my return from China in September 1921, my life entered upon a less dramatic phase, with a new emotional centre. From adolescence until the completion of Principia Mathematica, my fundamental preoccupation had been intellectual. I wanted to understand and to make others understand; also I wished to raise a monument by which I might be remembered, and on account of which I might feel that I had not lived in vain. From the outbreak of the First World War until my return from China, social questions occupied the centre of my emotions: the War and Soviet Russia alike gave me a sense of tragedy, and I had hopes that mankind might learn to live in some less painful way. I tried to discover some secret of wisdom, and to proclaim it with such persuasiveness that the world should listen and agree. But, gradually, the ardour cooled and the hope grew less; I did not change my views as to how men should live, but I held them with less of prophetic ardour and with less expectation of success in my campaigns.
Ever since the day, in the summer of 1894, when I walked with Alys on Richmond Green after hearing the medical verdict, I had tried to suppress my desire for children. It had, however, grown continually stronger, until it had become almost insupportable. When my first child was born, in November 1921,I felt an immense release of pent-up emotion, and during the next ten years my main purposes were parental. Parental feeling, as I have experienced it, is very complex. There is, first and foremost, sheer animal affection, and delight in watching what is charming in the ways of the young. Next, there is the sense of inescapable responsibility, providing a purpose for daily activities which scepticism does not easily question. Then there is an egoistic element, which is very dangerous: the hope that one's children may succeed where one has failed, that they may carry on one's work when death or senility puts an end to one's own efforts, and, in any case, that they will supply a biological escape from death, making one's own life part of the whole stream, and not a mere stagnant puddle without any overflow into the future. All this I experienced, and for some years it filled my life with happiness and peace.
The first thing was to find somewhere to live. I tried to rent a flat, but I was both politically and morally undesirable, and landlords refused to have me as a tenant. So I bought a freehold house in Chelsea, No. 31 Sydney Street, where my two older children were born. But it did not seem good for children to live all the year in London, so in the spring of 1922 we acquired a house in Cornwall, at Porthcurno, about four miles from Land's End. From then until 1927 we divided our time about equally between London and Cornwall; after that year, we spent no time in London and less in Cornwall.
The beauty of the Cornish coast is inextricably mixed in my memories with the ecstasy of watching two healthy happy children learning the joys of sea and rocks and sun and storm. I spent a great deal more time with them than is possible for most fathers. During the sis months of the year we spent in Cornwall we had a fixed and leisurely routine. During the morning my wife and I worked while the children were in the care of a nurse, and later a governess. After lunch we all went to one or other of the many beaches that were within a walk of our house. The children played naked, bathing or climbing or making sand castles as the spirit moved them, and we, of course, shared in these activities. We came home very hungry to a very late and a very large tea; then the children were put to bed and the adults reverted to their grown-up pursuits. In my memory, which is of course fallacious, it was always sunny, and always warm after April. But in April the winds were cold. One April day, when Kate's age was two years three and a half months, I heard her talking to herself and wrote down what she said:
The North wind blows over the North Pole.
The daisies hit the grass.
The wind blows the bluebells down.
The North wind blows to the wind in the South.
She did not know that any one was listening, and she certainly did not know what 'North Pole' means.
In the circumstances it was natural that I should become interested in education. I had already written briefly on the subject in Principles of Social Reconstruction, but now it occupied a large part of my mind. I wrote a book, On Education, especially in early childhood, which was published in 1926 and had a very large sale. It seems to me now somewhat unduly optimistic in its psychology, but as regards values I find nothing in it to recant, although I think now that the methods I proposed with very young children were unduly harsh.
It must not be supposed that life during these six years from the autumn of 1921 to the autumn of 1927 was all one long summer idyll. Parenthood had made it imperative to earn money. The purchase of two houses had exhausted almost all the capital that remained to me. When I returned from China I had no obvious means of making money, and at first I suffered considerable anxiety. I took whatever odd journalistic jobs were offered me: while my son John was being born, I wrote an article on Chinese pleasure in fireworks, although concentration on so remote a topic was difficult in the circumstances. In 1922 I published a book on China, and in 1923 (with my wife Dora) a book on The Prospects of Industrial Civilization, but neither of these brought much money. I did better with two small books, The A.B.C. of Atoms (1923) and The A.B.C. of Relativity (1925), and with two other small books, Icarus or The Future of Science (1924) and What I Believe (1925). In 1924 I earned a good deal by a lecture tour in America. But I remained rather poor until the book on education in 1926. After that, until 1933,I prospered financially, especially with Marriage and Morals (1929) and The Conquest of Happiness (1930). Most of my work during these years was popular, and was done in order to make money, but I did also some more technical work. There was a new edition of Principia Mathematica in 1925, to which I made various additions; and in 1927 I published The Analysis of Matter, which is in some sense a companion volume to The Analysis of Mind, begun in prison and published in 1921. I also stood for Parliament in Chelsea in 1922 and 1923, and Dora stood in 1924.
In 1927, Dora and I came to a decision, for which we were equally responsible, to found a school of our own in order that our children might be educated as we thought best. We believed, perhaps mistakenly, that children need the companionship of a group of other children, and that, therefore, we ought no longer to be content to bring up our children without others. But we did not know of any existing school that seemed to us in any way satisfactory. We wanted an unusual combination: on the one hand, we disliked prudery and religious instruction and a great many restraints on freedom which are taken for granted in conventional schools; on the other hand, we could not agree with most 'modern' educationists on thinking scholastic instruction unimportant, or in advocating a complete absence of discipline. We therefore endeavoured to collect a group of about twenty children, of roughly the same ages as John and Kate, with a view to keeping these same children throughout their school years.
For the purposes of the school we rented my brother's house, Telegraph House, on the South Downs, between Chichester and Peters field. This owed its name to having been a semaphore station in the time of George III, one of a string of such stations by which messages were flashed between Portsmouth and London. Probably the news of Trafalgar reached London in this way.
The original house was quite small, but my brother gradually added to it. He was passionately devoted to the place, and wrote about it at length in his autobiography, which he called My Life and Adventures. The house was ugly and rather absurd, but the situation was superb. There were enormous views to East and South and West; in one direction one saw the Sussex Weald to Leith Hill, in another one saw the Isle of Wight and the liners approaching Southampton. There was a tower with large windows on all four sides. Here I made my study, and I have never known one with a more beautiful outlook.
With the house went two hundred and thirty acres of wild downland, partly heather and bracken, but mostly virgin forest - magnificent beech trees, and yews of vast age and unusual size. The woods were full of every kind of wild life, including deer. The nearest houses were a few scattered farms about a mile away. For fifty miles, going eastward, one could walk on footpaths over unenclosed bare downs.
It is no wonder that my brother loved the place. But he had speculated unwisely, and lost every penny that he possessed. I offered him a much higher rent than he could have obtained from anyone else, and he was compelled by poverty to accept my offer. But he hated it, and ever after bore me a grudge for inhabiting his paradise.
The house must, however, have had for him some associations not wholly pleasant. He had acquired it originally as a discreet retreat where he could enjoy the society of Miss Morris, whom, for many years, he hoped to marry if he could ever get free from his first wife. Miss Morris, however, was ousted from his affections by Molly, the lady who became his second wife, for whose sake he suffered imprisonment after being condemned by his Peers for bigamy. For Molly's sake he had been divorced from his first wife. He became divorced in Reno and immediately thereupon married Molly, again at Reno. He returned to England and found that British law considered his marriage to Molly bigamous on the ground that British law acknowledges the validity of Reno marriages, but not ox Reno divorces. His second wife, who was very fat, used to wear green corduroy knickerbockers; the view of her from behind when she was bending over a flower-bed at Telegraph House used to make one wonder that he had thought her worth what he had gone through for her sake.
Her day, like Miss Morris's, came to an end, and he fell in love with Elizabeth. Molly, from Whom he wished to be divorced, demanded £400 a year for life as her price; after his death, I had to pay this. She died at about the age of ninety.
Elizabeth, in her turn, left him and wrote an intolerably cruel novel about him, called Vera. In this novel, Vera is already dead; she had been his wife, and he is supposed to be heartbroken at the loss of her. She died by falling out of one of the windows of the tower of Telegraph House. As the novel proceeds, the reader gradually gathers that her death was not an accident, but suicide brought on by my brother's cruelty. It was this that caused me to give my children an emphatic piece of advice: 'Do not marry a novelist.'
In this house of many memories we established the school. In managing the school we experienced a number of difficulties which we ought to have foreseen. There was, first, the problem of finance. It became obvious that there must be an enormous pecuniary loss. We could only have prevented this by making the school large and the food inadequate, and we could not make the school large except by altering its character so as to appeal to conventional parents. Fortunately I was at this time making a great deal of money from books and from lecture tours in America. I made four such tours altogether - during 1924 (already mentioned), 1927, 1929, and 1931. The one in 1927 was during the first term of the school, so that I had no part in its beginnings. During the second term, Dora went on a lecture tour in America. Thus throughout the first two terms there was never more than one of us in charge. When I was not in America, I had to write books to make the necessary money. Consequently, I was never able to give my whole time to the school.
A second difficulty was that some of the staff, however often and however meticulously our principles were explained to them, could never be brought to act in accordance with them unless one of us was present.
A third trouble, and that perhaps the most serious, was that we got an undue proportion of problem children. We ought to have been on the look-out for this pit-fall, but at first we were glad to take almost any child. The parents who were most inclined to try new methods were those who had difficulties with their children. As a rule, these difficulties were the fault of the parents, and the ill effects of their unwisdom were renewed in each holiday. Whatever may have been the cause, many of the children were cruel and destructive. To let the children go free was to establish a reign of terror, in which the strong kept the weak trembling and miserable. A school is like the world: only government can prevent brutal violence. And so I found myself, when the children were not at lessons, obliged to supervise them continually to stop cruelty. We divided them into three groups, bigs, middles, and smalls. One of the middles was perpetually ill-treating the smalls, so I asked him why he did it. His answer was: 'The bigs bit me, so I hit the smalls; that's fair.' And he really thought it was.
Sometimes really sinister impulses came to light. There were among the pupils a brother and sister who had a very sentimental mother, and had been taught by her to profess a completely fantastic degree of affection for each other. One day the teacher who was superintending the midday meal found part of a hatpin in the soup that was about to be ladled out. On inquiry, it turned out that the supposedly affectionate sister had put it in, 'Didn't you know it might kill you if you swallowed it?' we said. 'Oh yes,' she replied, 'but I don't take soup.' Further investigation made it fairly evident that she had hoped her brother would be the victim. On another occasion, when a pair of rabbits had been given to a child that was unpopular, two other children made an attempt to burn them to death, and in the attempt, made a vast fire which blackened several acres, and, but for a change of wind, might have burnt the house down.
For us personally, and for our two children, there were special worries. The other boys naturally thought that our boy was unduly favoured, whereas we, in order not to favour him or his sister, had to keep an unnatural distance between them and us except during the holidays. They, in turn, suffered from a divided loyalty: they had either to be sneaks or to practise deceit towards their parents. The complete happiness that had existed in our relations to John and Kate was thus destroyed, and was replaced by awkwardness and embarrassment. I think that something of the sort is bound to happen whenever parents and children are at the same school.
In retrospect, I feel that several things were mistaken in the principles upon which the school was conducted. Young children in a group cannot be happy without a certain amount of order and routine. Left to amuse themselves, they are bored, and turn to bullying or destruction. In their free time, there should always be an adult to suggest some agreeable game or amusement, and to supply an initiative which is hardly to be expected of young children.
Another thing that was wrong was that there was a pretence of more freedom than in fact existed. There was very little freedom where health and cleanliness were concerned. The children had to wash, to clean their teeth, and to go to bed at the right time. True, we had never professed that there should be freedom in such matters, but foolish people, and especially journalists in search of a sensation, had said or believed that we advocated a complete absence of all restraints and compulsions. The older children, when told to brush their teeth, would sometimes say sarcastically: 'Call this a free school!' Those who had heard their parents talking about the freedom to be expected in the school would test it by seeing how far they could go in naughtiness without being stopped. As we only forbade things that were obviously harmful, such experiments were apt to be very inconvenient.
In 1929, I published Marriage and Morals, which I dictated while recovering from whooping-cough. (Owing to my age, my trouble was not diagnosed until I had infected most of the children in the school.) It was this book chiefly which, in 1940, supplied material for the attack on me in New York. In it, I developed the view that complete fidelity was not to be expected in most marriages, but that a husband and wife ought to be able to remain good friends in spite of affairs. I did not maintain, however, that a marriage could with advantage be prolonged if the wife had a child or children of whom the husband was not the father; in that case, I thought, divorce was desirable. I do not know what I think now about the subject of marriage. There seem to be insuperable objections to every general theory about it. Perhaps easy divorce causes less unhappiness than any other system, but I am no longer capable of being dogmatic on the subject of marriage.
In the following year, 1930,I published The Conquest of Happiness, a book consisting of common-sense advice as to what an individual can do to overcome temperamental causes of unhappiness, as opposed to what can be done by changes in social and economic systems. This book was differently estimated by readers of three different levels. Unsophisticated readers, for whom it was intended, liked it, with the result that it had a very large sale. Highbrows, on the contrary, regarded it as a contemptible pot-boiler, an escapist book, bolstering up the pretence that there were useful things to be done and said outside politics. But at yet another level, that of professional psychiatrists, the book won very high praise. I do not know which estimate was right; what I do know is that the book was written at a time when I needed much self-command and much that I had learned by painful experience if I was to maintain any endurable level of happiness.
I was profoundly unhappy during the next few years and some things which I wrote at the time give a more exact picture of my mood than anything I can now write in somewhat pale reminiscence.
At that time I used to write an article once a week for the Hearst Press. I spent Christmas Day, 1931, on the Atlantic, returning from one of my American lecture tours. So I chose for that week's article the subject of 'Christmas at Sea'. This is the article I wrote:
Christmas at Sea
For the second time in my life, I am spending Christmas Day on the Atlantic, The previous occasion when I had this experience was thirty-five years ago, and by contrasting what I feel now with what I remember of my feelings then, I am learning much about growing old.
Thirty-five years ago I was lately married, childless, very happy, and beginning to taste the joys of success. Family appeared to me as an external power hampering to freedom: the world, to me, was a world of individual adventure. I wanted to think my own thoughts, find my own friends, and choose my own abode, without regard to tradition or elders or anything but my own tastes. I felt strong enough to stand alone, without the need of buttresses.
Now, I realise, what I did not know then, that this attitude was dependent upon a superabundant vitality. I found Christmas at sea a pleasant amusement, and enjoyed the efforts of die ship's officers to make the occasion as festive as possible. The ship rolled prodigiously, and with each roll all the steamer trunks slid from side to side of all the state-rooms with a noise like thunder. The louder the noise became, the more it made me laugh: everything was great fun.
Time, they say, makes a man mellow. I do not believe it. Time makes a man afraid, and fear makes him conciliatory, and being conciliatory he endeavours to appear to others what they will think mellow. And with fear comes the need of affection, of some human warmth to keep away the chill of the cold universe. When I speak of fear, I do not mean merely or mainly personal fear; the fear of death or decrepitude or penury or any such merely mundane misfortune. I am thinking of a more metaphysical fear. I am thinking of the fear that enters the soul through experience of the major evils to which life is subject: the treachery of friends, the death of those whom we love, the discovery of the cruelty that lurks in average human nature.
During the thirty-five years since my last Christmas on the Atlantic, experience of these major evils has changed the character of my unconscious attitude to life. To stand alone may still be possible as a moral effort, but is no longer pleasant as an adventure. I want the companionship of my children, the warmth of the family fire-side, the support of historic continuity and of membership of a great nation. These are very ordinary human joys, which most middle-aged persons enjoy at Christmas. There is nothing about them to distinguish the philosopher from other men; on the contrary, their very ordinariness makes them the more effective in mitigating the sense of sombre solitude.
And so Christmas at sea, which was once a pleasant adventure, has become painful. It seems to symbolise the loneliness of the man who chooses to stand alone, using his own judgment rather than the judgment of the herd. A mood of melancholy is, in these circumstances, inevitable, and should not be shirked.
But there is something also to be said on the other side. Domestic joys, like all the softer pleasures, may sap the will and destroy courage. The indoor warmth of the traditional Christmas is good, but so is the South wind, and the sun rising out of the sea, and the freedom of the watery horizon. The beauty of these things is undiminished by human folly and wickedness, and remains to give strength to the faltering Idealism of middle age.
December 25, 1931.
As is natural when one is trying to ignore a profound cause of unhappiness, I found impersonal reasons for gloom. I had been very full of personal misery in the early years of the century, but at that time I had a more or less Platonic philosophy which enabled me to see beauty in the extra-human universe. Mathematics and the stars consoled me when the human world seemed empty of comfort. But changes in my philosophy have robbed me of such consolations. Solipsism oppressed me, particularly after studying such interpretations of physics as that of Eddington. It seemed that what we had thought of as laws of nature were only linguistic conventions, and that physics was not really concerned with an external world. I do not mean that I quite believed this, but that it became a haunting nightmare, increasingly invading my imagination. One foggy night, sitting in my tower at Telegraph House after everyone else was asleep, I expressed this mood in a pessimistic meditation;
Modern Physics
Alone in my tower at midnight, I remember the woods and downs, the sea and sky, that daylight showed. Now, as I look through each of the four windows, north, south, east and west, I see only myself dimly reflected, or shadowed in monstrous opacity upon the fog. What matter? Tomorrow's sunrise will give me back the beauty of the outer world as I wake from sleep.
But the mental night that has descended upon me is less brief, and promises no awakening after sleep. Formerly, the cruelty, the meanness, the dusty fretful passion of human life seemed to me a little thing, set, like some resolved discord in music, amid the splendour of the stars and the stately procession of geological ages. What if the universe was to end in universal death? It was none the less unruffled and magnificent. But now all this has shrunk to be no more than my own reflection in the windows of the soul through which I look out upon the night of nothingness. The revolutions of nebulae, the birth and death of stars, are no more than convenient fictions in the trivial work of linking together my own sensations, and perhaps those of other men not much better than myself. No dungeon was ever constructed so dark and narrow as that in which the shadow physics of our time imprisons us, for every prisoner has believed that outside his walls a free world existed; but now the prison has become the whole universe. There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendour, no vastness, anywhere; only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.
why live in such a world? Why even die ?
In May and June, 1931,I dictated to my then secretary. Peg Adams, who had formerly been secretary to a Rajah and Ranee, a short autobiography, which has formed the basis of the present book down to 1921. I ended it with an epilogue, in which, as will be seen, I did not admit private unhappiness, but only political and metaphysical disillusionment. I insert it here, not because it expressed what I now feel, but because it shows the great difficulty I experienced in adjusting myself to a changing world and a very sober philosophy.
Epilogue
My personal life since I returned from China has been happy and peaceful. I have derived from my children at least as much instinctive satisfaction as I anticipated, and have in the main regulated my life with reference to them. But while my personal life has been satisfying, my impersonal outlook has become increasingly sombre, and I have found it more and more difficult to believe that the hopes which I formerly cherished will be realised in any measurable future. I have endeavoured, by concerning myself with the education of my children and with making money for their benefit, to shut out from my thoughts the impersonal despairs which tend to settle upon me. Ever since puberty I have believed in the value of two things: kindness and clear thinking. At first these two remained more or less distinct; when I felt triumphant I believed most in clear thinking, and in the opposite mood I believed most in kindness. Gradually, the two have come more and more together in my feelings. I find that much unclear thought exists as an excuse for cruelty, and that much cruelty is prompted by superstitious beliefs. The War made me vividly aware of the cruelty in human nature, but I hoped for a reaction when the War was over. Russia made me feel that little was to be hoped from revolt against existing governments in the way of an increase of kindness in the world, except possibly in regard to children. The cruelty to children involved in conventional methods of education is appalling, and I have been amazed at the horror which is felt against those who propose a kinder system.
As a patriot I am depressed by the downfall of England, as yet only partial, but likely to be far more complete before long. The history of England for the last four hundred years is in my blood, and I should have wished to hand on to my son the tradition of public spirit which has in the past been valuable. In the world that I foresee there will be no place for this tradition, and he will be lucky if he escapes with his life. The feeling of impending doom gives a kind of futility to all activities whose field is in England.
In the world at large, if civilisation survives, I foresee the domination of either America or Russia, and in either case of a system where a tight organisation subjects the individual to the State so completely that splendid individuals will be no longer possible.
And what of philosophy? The best years of my life were given to the Principles of Mathematics, in the hope of finding somewhere some certain knowledge. The whole of this effort, in spite of three big volumes, ended inwardly in doubt and bewilderment. As regards metaphysics, when, under the influence of Moore, I first threw off the belief in German idealism, I experienced the delight of believing that the sensible world is real. Bit by bit, chiefly under the influence of physics, this delight has faded, and I have been driven to a position not unlike that of Berkeley, without his God and his Anglican complacency.
When I survey my life, it seems to me to be a useless one, devoted to impossible ideals. I have not found in the post-war world any attainable ideals to replace those which I have come to think unattainable. So far as the things I have cared for are concerned, the world seams to me to be entering upon a period of darkness. When Rome fell, St Augustine, a Bolshevik of the period, could console himself with a new hope, but my outlook upon my own time is less like his than like that of the unfortunate Pagan philosophers of the time of Justinian, whom Gibbon describes as seeking asylum in Persia, but so disgusted by what they saw there that they returned to Athens, in spite of the Christian bigotry which forbade them to teach. Even they were more fortunate than I am in one respect, for they had an intellectual faith which remained firm. They entertained no doubt as to the greatness of Plato. For my part, I find in the most modern thought a corrosive solvent of the great systems of even the recent past, and I do not believe that the constructive efforts of present-day philosophers and men of science have anything approaching the validity that attaches to their destructive criticism.
My activities continue from force of habit, and in the company of others I forget the despair which underlies my daily pursuits and pleasure. But when I am alone and idle, I cannot conceal for myself that my life had no purpose, and that I know of no new purpose to which to devote my remaining years. I find myself involved in a vast mist of solitude both emotional and metaphysical, from which I can find no issue.
[June II, 1931.]
Letters
From Joseph Conrad Oswalds
Bishopsbourne, Kent Oct. 23rd. 1922
My Dear Russell
When your book1 arrived we were away for a few days. Perhaps les convenances demanded that I should have acknowledged the receipt at once. But I preferred to read it before I wrote. Unluckily a very unpleasant affair was sprung on me and absorbed all my thinking energies for a fortnight. I simply did not attempt to open the book till all the worry and flurry was over, and I could give it two clear days.
1 The Problem of China.
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 Chinese, But after reading your extremely interesting view of the Chinese Problem I take a gloomy view of the future of their country.
He who does not see the truth of your deductions can only be he who does not want to see. They strike a chill into one's soul especially when you deal with the American element. That would indeed be a dreadful fate for China or any other country. I feel your book the more because the only ray of hope you allow is the advent of international socialism, the sort of thing 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. After all it is but a system, not very recondite and not very plausible. As a mere reverie it is not of a very high order and wears a strange resemblance to a hungry man's dream of a gorgeous feast guarded by a lot of beadles in cocked hats. But I know you wouldn't expect me to put faith in any system. The only remedy for Chinamen and for the rest of us is the change of hearts, but looking at the history of the last 2000 years there is not much reason to expect that thing, even if man has taken to flying - a great 'uplift', no doubt, but no great change. 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.
Your chapter on Chinese character is the sort of marvellous achievement that one would expect from you. It may not be complete. That I don't know. But as it stands, in its light touch and profound insight, it seems to me flawless. I have no difficulty in accepting it, because I do believe in amenity allied to barbarism, in compassion co-existing with complete brutality, and in essential rectitude underlying the most obvious corruption. And on this last point I would offer for your reflection that we ought not to attach too much importance to that trait of character - just because it is not a trait of character! At any rate no more than in other races of mankind. Chinese corruption is, I suspect, Institutional: a mere method of paying salaries. Of course it was very dangerous. And in that respect the Imperial Edicts recommending honesty failed to affect the agents of the Government. But Chinese, essentially, are creatures of Edicts and in every other sphere their characteristic is, I should say, scrupulous honesty.
There is another suggestion of yours which terrifies me, and arouses my compassion for the Chinese, even more than the prospect of an Americanised China. It is your idea of some sort of selected council, the strongly disciplined society arriving at decisions etc. etc. (p. 244). If a constitution proclaimed in the light of day, with at least a chance of being understood by the people is not to be relied on, then what trust could one put in a self-appointed and probably secret association (which from the nature of things must be above the law) to commend or condemn individuals or institutions? As it is unthinkable that you should be a slave to formulas or a victim of self-delusion, it is with the greatest diffidence that I raise my protest against your contrivance which must par la force des choses and by the very manner of its inception become but an association of mere swelled-heads of the most dangerous kind. There is not enough honour, virtue and selflessness in the world to make any such council other than the greatest danger to every kind of moral, mental and political independence. It would become a centre of delation, intrigue and jealousy of the most debased kind. No freedom of thought, no peace of heart, no genius, no virtue, no individuality trying to raise its head above the subservient mass, would be safe before the domination of such a council, and the un-avoidable demoralisation of the instruments of its power. For, I must suppose that you mean it to have power and to have agents to exercise that power - or else it would become as little substantial as if composed of angels of whom ten thousand can sit on the point of a needle. But I wouldn't trust a society of that kind even if composed of angels ... More! I would not, my dear friend, (to address you in Salvation Army style) trust that society if Bertrand Russell himself were, after 40 days of meditation and fasting, to undertake the selection of the members. After saying this I may just as well resume my wonted calmj for, indeed, I could not think of any stronger way of expressing my utter dislike and mistrust of such an expedient for working out the salvation of China.
I see in this morning's Times (this letter was begun yesterday) a leader on your Problem of China which I hope will comfort and sustain you in the face of my savage attack. I meant it to be deadly; but I perceive that on account of my age and infirmities there was never any need for you to fly the country or ask for police protection. You will no doubt be glad to hear that my body is disabled by a racking cough and my enterprising spirit irretrievably tamed by an unaccountable depression. Thus are the impious stricken, and things of the order that 'passeth understanding' brought home to one!... But I will not treat you to a meditation on my depression. That way madness lies.
Your - truly Christian in its mansuetude - note has just reached me. I admire your capacity for forgiving sinners, and I am warmed by the glow of your friendliness. But I protest against your credulity in the matter of newspaper pars. I did not know I was to stay in town to attend rehearsals. Which is the rag that decreed it I wonder? The fact is I came up for just 4 hours and 20 min. last Wednesday; and that I may have to pay another visit to the theatre (the whole thing is like an absurd dream) one day this week. You can not doubt men Compire that I do want to see the child whose advent has brought about this intimate relation between us. But I shrink from staying the night in town. In fact I am afraid of it. This is no joke. Neither is it a fact that I would shout on housetops. I am confiding it to you as a sad truth. However - this cannot last; and before long I'll make a special trip to see you all on an agreed day. Meantime my love to him - special and exclusive; Please give my duty to your wife as politeness dictates and as my true feelings demand - remember me most affectionately to ma tris honoriée Commére. And pray go on cultivating forgiveness towards this insignificant and unworthy person who dares to subscribe himself
Always yours Joseph Conrad
From Wm. F. Philpott
Chelsea, S.W. 14.11.22
Dear Sir
Herewith I return some of the literature you have sent for my perusal.
One of the papers says 'Why do thinking people vote Labor'.
Thinking people don't vote Labor at all, it is only those who cannot see beyond their nose who vote Labor.
According to your Photo it does not look as though it is very long since you left your cradle so I think you would be wise to go home and suck your titty. The Electors of Chelsea want a man of experience to represent them. Take my advice and leave Politics to men of riper years. If you cannot remember the Franco Prussian War of 1870 or the Russo Turkish War of 1876/7 then you are not old enough to be a Politician.
I can remember both those Wars and also the War of -/66 when the Battle of Sadowa was fought.
England had men of experience to represent them then.
I am afraid we shall never get anyone like Lord Derby (The Rupert of Debate) and Dizzy to lead us again.
Yours obedy Wm. F. Philpott
Parliamentary General Election, 15th November, 1922
To the Electors of Chelsea
Dear Sir or Madam
At the invitation of the Executive Committee of the Chelsea Labour Party, I come before you as Labour candidate at the forthcoming General Election. I have been for many years a member of the Independent Labour Party, and I am in complete agreement with the programme of the Labour Party as published on October 26.
The Government which has been in power ever since the Armistice has done nothing during the past four years to restore normal life to Europe. Our trade suffers because our customers are ruined. This is the chief cause of the unemployment and destitution, unparalleled in our previous history, from which our country has suffered during the past two years. If we are to regain any measure of prosperity, the first necessity is a wise and firm foreign policy, leading to the revival of Eastern and Central Europe, and avoiding such ignorant and ill-considered adventures as nearly plunged us into war with the Turks. The Labour Party is the only one whose foreign policy is sane and reasonable, the only one which is likely to save Britain from even worse disasters than those already suffered. The new Government, according to the statement of its own supporters, does not differ from the old one on any point of policy. The country had become aware of the incompetence of the Coalition Government, and the major part of its supporters hope to avert the wrath of the electors by pretending to be quite a different firm. It is an old device - a little too old to be practised with success at this time of day. Those who see the need of new policies must support new men, not the same men under a new label.
There is need of drastic economy, but not at the expense of the least fortunate members of the community, and above all not at the expense of education and the care of children, upon which depends the nation's future. What has been thrown away in Irak and Chanak and such places has been wasted utterly, and it is in these directions that we must look for a reduction in our expenditure.
I am a strong supporter of the capital levy, and of the nationalisation of mines and railways, with a great measure of control by the workers in those industries. I hope to see similar measures adopted, in the course of time, in other industries.
The housing problem is one which must be dealt with at the earliest possible moment. Something would be done to alleviate the situation by the taxation of land values, which would hinder the holding up of vacant land while the owner waits for a good price. Much could be done if public bodies were to eliminate capitalists' profits by employing the Building Guild. By these methods, or by whatever methods prove available, houses must be provided to meet the imperative need.
The main cure for unemployment must be the improvement of our trade by the restoration of normal conditions on the Continent. In the meantime, it is unjust that those who are out of work through no fault of their own should suffer destitution; for the present, therefore, I am in favour of the continuation of unemployed benefit.
I am in favour of the removal of all inequalities in the law as between men and women. In particular, I hold that every adult citizen, male or female, ought to be entitled to a vote.
As a result of mismanagement since the armistice, our country and the world are faced with terrible dangers. The Labour Party has a clear and sane policy for dealing with these dangers. I am strongly opposed to all suggestions of violent revolution, and I am persuaded that only by constitutional methods can a better state of affairs be brought about. But I see no hope of improvement from parties which advocate a continuation of the muddled vindictiveness which has brought Europe to the brink of ruin. For the world at large, for our own country, and for every man, woman and child in our country, the victory of Labour is essential. On these grounds I appeal for your votes.
Bertrand Russell
From G. B. Shaw
10 Adelphi Terrace, W.C.2 [1922]
Dear Russell
I should say yes with pleasure if the matter were in my hands; but, as you may imagine, I have so many calls that I must leave it to the Labor Party, acting through the Fabian Society as far as I am concerned, to settle where I shall go. You had better therefore send in a request at once to the Fabian Society, 25 Tothill Street, Westminster, S.W.1. for a speech from me.
I must warn you, however, that though, when I speak, the hall is generally full, and the meeting is apparently very successful, the people who run after and applaud me are just as likely to vote for the enemy, or not vote at all, on polling day. I addressed 13 gorgeous meetings at the last election; but not one of my candidates got in.
Faithfully G. Bernard Shaw
P.S. As you will see, this is a circular letter, which I send only because it explains the situation. Nothing is settled yet except that I am positively engaged on the 2nd, 3rd and 10th.
I suppose it is too late to urge you not to waste any or your own money on Chelsea, where no Progressive has a dog's chance. In Dilke's day it was Radical; but Lord Cadogan rebuilt it fashionably and drove all the Radicals across the bridges to Battersea. It is exasperating that a reasonably winnable seat has not been found for you. I would not spend a farthing on it myself, even if I could finance the 400 or so Labor candidates who would like to touch me for at least a fiver apiece.
From and to Jean Nicod
France 15 June [1919]
Dear Mr Russell
We shall come with joy. We are both so happy to see you. How nice of you to ask us!
I have not written to you all this time because I was doing nothing good, and was in consequence a little ashamed.
Your Justice in War Time is slowly appearing in La Forge, and is intended to be published in book-form afterwards. I ought to have done better, I think.
And I have done no work, only studied some physics. I have been thinking a tremendous time on the External World, with no really clear results. Also, I have been yearning in vain to help it /l=a'/ faire peau neuve.
So you will see us coming at the beginning of September at Lul-worth. We feel quite elated at the thought of being some time with you.
Yours very sincerely Jean Nicod
53 rue Gazan Paris XIVe 28th September 1919
Dear Mr Russell
I could not see Romain Rolland, who is not in Paris now. I shall write to him and send him your letter with mine.
We are not going to Rumania. I am going to Cahors to-morrow, and Thérèse is staying here. There is now a prospect of going to Brazil in eighteen months. Of course I am ceasing to believe in any of these things; but we are learning a great deal of geography.
I have definitely arranged to write a thesis on the external world. Part of it will be ready at Christmas, as I am being assured that I shall find very little work at Cahors.
We hope to hear that you are back in Cambridge now.
You know how glad we both are to have seen you again.
Yours Jean Nicod
I, rue Pot Trinquat, Cahors 20 April [1920]
Dear Mr Russell
Here is the geometry of the fish, as you said you liked it. It will appear in the Revue du Métaphysique, but I cannot refrain from sending it to you now as a prolongation of our talk, I hope you will look through it, but please do not feel bound to write to me about it. I know you are very busy.
It was so nice of you to stop. When I heard that you were to come, it seemed like the realisation of a dream- This day with you has been a great joy to me.
Yours very sincerely Jean
I do not want the MS. back.
Campagne Saunex Prégny, Geneve 22 Sept. 1921
Dear Mr Russell
Do you know that your death was announced in a Japanese paper? I sent a telegram to the University of Peking, who answered 'Recovered' - but we were terribly anxious. We hope you are quite well again now.
I shall leave this office in February or March, with some money, and do nothing till next October at the very least. I do hope that I shall see you.
Yours affectionately Jean Nicod
70, Overs trand Mansions Prince of Wales Road Battersea, S.W.II 2.10.21
Dear Nicod
I have sent your query to Whitehead, as I have forgotten his theory and never knew it very thoroughly. I will let you know his answer as soon as I get it. I am glad your book is so nearly done. Please let me see it when it is. -I know about the announcement of my death - it was a fearful nuisance. It was in the English and American papers too. I am practically well now but I came as near dying as one can without going over the edge - Pneumonia it was. I was delirious for three weeks, and I have no recollection of the time whatever, except a few dreams of negroes singing In deserts, and of learned bodies that I thought I had to address. The Doctor said to me afterwards: 'When you were ill you behaved like a true philosopher; every time that you came to yourself you made a joke.' I never had a compliment that pleased me more.
Dora and I are now married, but just as happy as we were before. We both send our love to you both. It will be delightful to see you when you leave Geneva. We shall be in London.
Yours aff. Bertrand Russell
31 Sydney Street London, S.W.3 13.9.23
Dear Nicod
I have been meaning to write to you for the last eight months, but have somehow never done so. Did Keynes ever answer your letter? He is now so busy with politics and money-making that I doubt if he ever thinks about probability. He has become enormously rich, and has acquired The Nation. He is Liberal, not Labour.
Principia Mathematica is being reprinted, and I am writing a new introduction, abolishing axiom of reducibility, and assuming that functions of props are always truth-functions, and functions of functions only occur through values of the functions and are always extensional. I don't know if these assumptions are true, but it seems worth while to work out their consequences.
What do you think of the enclosed proposal? I have undertaken to try to get articles. I asked if they would admit Frenchmen, and they say yes, if they write in German or English. Will you send me an article for them? I want to help them as much as I can. Do.
All goes well with us. Dora expects another child about Xmas tune, and unfortunately I have to go to America to lecture for three months at the New Year.
The world gets more and more dreadful. What a misfortune not to have lived fifty years sooner. And now God has taken a hand at Tokyo. As yet, he beats human war-mongers, but they will equal him before long.
Yours ever Bertrand Russell
From Moritz Schlick, founder of the Vienna Circle
Philosophisches Institut der Umversität in Wien Vienna, Sep. 9th 1923
Dear Mr Russell
Thank you most heartily for your kind letter. I was overjoyed to receive your affirmative answer. I feel convinced that the future of the magazine is safe since you have consented to lend your help by being one of the editors. It is a pity, of course, that you cannot send an article of your own immediately and that you have not much hope of getting contributions from your English and American friends during the next months, but we must be patient and shall be glad to wait till you have more time. I am sure that the scheme will work very well later on- It already means a great deal to know that we have your support, that your name will in some way be identified with the spirit of the magazine.
Thank you for your further suggestions. In my opinion contributions by M. Nicod would be most welcome, and I have no doubt that none of the editors would object to French articles, but unfortunately the publisher (who of course takes the business standpoint) has declared that at present he cannot possibly print anything in French, but I hope he will have nothing against publishing articles by French authors in the German or English language.
I have written to Reichenbach about your suggestion concerning the Polish logicians at Warsaw; I do not think there will be any political difficulties in approaching them. I believe we must be careful not to have too many articles dealing with mathematical logic or written in symbolic form in the first issues, as they might frighten away many readers, they must get used to the new forms gradually.
I have asked Reichenbach to send you some offprints of his chief papers; I hope you have received them by the time these lines reach you.
I should like to ask you some philosophical questions, but I am extremely busy just now. Our 'Internationale Hochschulkurse' are beginning this week, with lecturers and students from many countries. It would be splendid if you would be willing to come to Vienna on a similar occasion next year.
Thanking you again I remain
yours very sincerely M. Schlick
From Jean Nicod
Chemin des Coudners Petit Sacormex, Geneve 17 September, 1923
Dear Mr Russell
I should like very much to dedicate my book La Géométrie dans le Monde sensible to you. It is not very good; but I still hope that bits of it may be worth something. Will you accept it, such as it is? I have thought of the following inscription:
A man maitre
L'Honorable Bertrand Russell
Membre de la Société Royale d'Angleterre
en témoignage de reconnaissante affection
Can I let it go like that? The book is the chief one of my theses. The other one is Le Probléme logique de l' Induction, which is a criticism of Keynes. I think I prove there that two instances differing only numerically (or in respects assumed to be immaterial) do count for more than one only; also, that Keynes' Limitation of Variety does not do what he thinks it does. Both books will be printed in three weeks or so (although they cannot be published till after their discussion en Sorbonne some time next winter).
I've sent my ms. to Keynes, offering to print his answer along with it. But he says he is too absorbed by other things; and altogether, I fear that he does not take me seriously - which is sad, because I am sure my objections well deserve to be considered.
Physically, I am settling down to a state which is not health, but which allows some measure of life, and may improve with time.
We hope you three are flourishing, and send you our love.
Jean Nicod
Chemin des Coudriers Petit Saconnex, Genéve 19 Sept. 1923
Dear Mr Russell
I got your letter the very morning I had posted mine to you.
I should love to write an article for this new review. But I have just sent one to the Revue de Métaphysique (on relations of values (i.e. truth values) and relations of meanings in Logic) and have nothing even half ready. I have been thinking of a sequel to my book, dealing with a universe of perspectives where objects are in motion (uniform) and Restricted Relativity applies, everything being as simple as possible. I would set forth what the observer (more like an angel than a man) would observe, and the order of his sensible world. What attracts me to that sort of thing is its quality of freshness of vision - to take stock of a world as of something entirely new. But it may well be rather childish, and I don't propose to go on with it until you have seen the book itself and tell me it is worth while.
Since you are re-publishing Principia, I may remind you that I Have proved both Permutation and Association by help of the other three primitive props (Tautology, Addition, and the syllogistic prop.), where I only changed the order of some letters. It is in a Memoir I wrote for the BA degree. I have entirely forgotten how it is done, but I daresay I could find it again for you, if you wished to reduce your 5 prim, props to those three (observe there is one with one letter, one with two letters, and one with three letters).
Keynes did answer the letter I sent you. His answer convinced me I was right on both points; so I went on with my small book. It is a pity he will not do anything more for the theory of Induction.
Your soil does look pleased with the stones he holds. His appearance is splendid.
We send our love.
Yours ever Jean Nicod
From and to Therese Nicod
le 18 février [1924]
Dear Mr Russell
Jean has died on Saturday last after a short illness.
Je veux vous l'écrire pendant qu'il repose encore prés de moi dans cette tnaison oú il a tant travaillé, tant espéré guérir - et oú nous avons été si heureux.
Vous saves cotnbien il vous aimait - quelle lumiire vous avez eété pour ltd - vous savez aussi l'être délicieux et noble qu'il était. C'est absolument déchirant.
Je voudrais avoir des nouvelles de Dora.
Affectueusemeni á vous deux.
Thérése Nicod
Genéve 22 Juillet 1924
Dear Mr Russell
Please pardon me for not having thanked you sooner for the Preface (or introduction, we shall call it what you think best). I do not tell you how grateful I am to you because I know you did it for Jean.
I shall translate it as soon as I get some free time, we are absolutely loaded with things to do.
Of course your preface is everything and more that we could want it to be. I mean to say that it is very beautiful - How could I suggest a single alteration to it.
I remember that last winter I wrote to Jean that he was the most beautiful type of humanity I knew. (I' do not recollect what about - We had outbreaks like that from time to time) and he answered immediately: 'Mot le plus beau type d'Thumanity queje connais c'est Russell.'
Thank you again most deeply.
Yours very sincerely Thérése Nicod
12 Chemin Thury Genéve le 19 octobre 1960
Cher Lord Russell
Permettez-moi de ḿadresser á vous á trovers toutes ces armies. J'ai toujours eu l'intention defaire une réédition des théses dejean Nicod etje seas qu'aujourt'hui encore, sapensée n'est pas oubliie.J'ai eu l'occasion de reneontrer derm&remmt M.Jean Hyppolite, Directeur de FEcole ttormale supérieure qui m'a vivement conseillee de rééditer en premier Le probléme logique de 1'induction dont il avail gardéun souvenir tout á fait précis et qu'il recommande aux jeunes phiiosophes.
Parmi ceux qui m'ont donni la meme earned je citeran le Professeur Gonseth de Zurich, M. Gaston Bachelord, Jean Lacroix, etc. J'ai même trouvé, l'autre jour, par hasard, dans un manuel paru en 1959 un passage intitulé: 'Axiome de Nicod'.
L'ouvrage réédité paraitrait á Parts, aux Presses universitaires de France, qui en assureront la diffusion.
Je viens vous demander, st vousjugez cette réédition opportune, de bien vouloir accepter d'icrire quelques lignes qui s'ajouteraient á la premiire priface de M. Lcdande. Qui mieux que vous pour rait dormer á ce tardif hommage le poids et l'envoi?
Veuillez, cher Lord Russell, recevotr l'assurance de ma profonde admiration et de mes sentiments respectueux.
Thérése Nicod
Je vous écris á une adresse quj'ai trouvée par hasard dans un magazine et dont je suis si peu stire que je me permets de recommander le plu
Plas Penrhyn 1 November, 1960
Dear Thérése Ntcod
Thank you for your letter of October 19. I was very glad to have news of you. I entirely agree with you that it is very desirable to bring out a new edition of Nicod's work on induction which I think is very important and which has not received adequate recognition. I am quite willing to make a short addition to the preface by Monsieur Lalande. I suppose that you are in communication with Sir Roy Harrod (Christ Church, Oxford) who has been for some time concerned in obtaining a better English translation of Nicod's work than the one made long ago.
I was very sorry to hear of the death of your son.
If ever you are in England it would be a very great pleasure to see you.
Yours very sincerely Bertrand Russell
From G. B. Shaw1
1 This letter was addressed to my brother and is about his My Life and Adventures, published 1923.
Hotel Metropole Minekeadj Somerset II April 1923
My dear Russell
The other day I read your laudably unapologetic Apologia from cover to cover with unflagging interest. I gather from your Au Revoir that it is to be continued in your next.
I was brought up - or left to bring myself up - on your father's plan all through. I can imagine nothing more damnable than the position of a boy started that way, and then, when he had acquired an adult freethinking habit of mind and character, being thrust back into the P.L. sort of tutelage. You say you had a bad temper; but the fact that you neither burnt the lodge nor murdered Uncle Rollo is your eternal testimonial to the contrary.
No doubt Winchester saved Rollo and his shrine. Your description of the school is the only really descriptive description of one of the great boys farms I have ever read.
ever G. Bernard Shaw
Extract from Unity, Chicago
19 Jun. 1924
Bertrand Russell has returned to England, and one of the most impressive tours ever made in this country by a distinguished foreigner has thus come to an end. Everywhere Professor Russell spoke, he was greeted by great audiences with rapturous enthusiasm, and listened to with a touching interest and reverence. At most of his meetings, admission was charged, frequently at regular theater rates, but this seemed to make no difference in die attendance. Throngs of eager men and women crowded the auditoriums where he appeared, and vied with one another in paying homage to the distinguished man whom they so honored. From this point of view, Bertrand Russell s visit was a triumph. From another and quite different point of view, it was a failure and disgrace! What was the great public at large allowed to know about this famous Englishman and the message which he brought across the seas to us Americans? Nothing! The silence of our newspapers was wellnigh complete. Only when Mr Russell got into a controversy with President Lowell, of Harvard, which gave opportunity to make the eagle scream, did his name or words appear in any conspicuous fashion in our public prints. The same journals which publish columns of stuff about millionaires, actors, singers, prizefighters and soldiers from abroad, and blazen forth their most casual comments about anything from women to the weather, reported almost nothing about this one of the most eminent Europeans of the day. But this is not the worst. Turn from the newspapers to the colleges and universities! Here is Mr Russell, the ablest and most famous mathematical philosopher of modern times - for long an honored Fellow of Cambridge, England - author of learned essays and treatises which are the standard authorities in their field - at the least, a great scholar, at the most, one of the greatest of scholars! But how many colleges in America officially invited him to their halls? How many gave him degrees of honor? So far as we know, Smith College was the only institution which officially received him as a lecturer, though we understand that he appeared also at the Harvard Union. Practically speaking, Professor Russell was ignored. A better measure of the ignorance, cowardice and Pharisaism of American academic life we have never seen!
From T, S. Eliot
9, Clarence Gate Gardens N.W.I 15.X.23
Dear Bertie
I was delighted to get your letter. It gives me very great pleasure to know that you like the Waste Land, and especially Part V which in my opinion is not only the best part, but the only part that justifies the whole, at all. It means a great deal to me that you like it.
I must tell you that 18 months ago, before it was published anywhere, Vivien wanted me to send you the MS. to read, because she was sure that you were one of the very few persons who might possibly see anything in it. But we felt that you might prefer to have nothing to do with us: It is absurd to say that we wished to drop you.
Vivien has had a frightful illness, and nearly died, in the spring - as Ottoline has probably told you. And that she has been in the country ever since. She has not yet come back.
Dinner is rather difficult for me at present. But might I corns to tea with you on Saturday? I should like to see you very much - there have been many times when I have thought that.
Yours ever T.S.E.
9, Clarence Gate Gardens N.W.I 21 April. [1925]
Dear Bertie
If you are still in London I should very much like to see you.
My times and places are very restricted, but it is unnecessary to mention them unless I hear from you.
I want words from you which only you can give. But if you have now ceased to care at all about either of us, just write on a slip 'I do not care to see you' or 'I do not care to see either of you' - and I will understand.
In case of that, I will tell you now that everything has turned out as you predicted 10 years ago. You are a great psychologist.
Yours T.S.E.
The Criterion 17, Thavies Inn London, E.C.I 7 May [1925]
My dear Bertie
Thank you very much indeed for your letter. As you say, it is very difficult for you to make suggestions until I can see you. For instance, I don't know to what extent the changes which have taken place, since we were in touch with you, would seem to you material. What you suggest seems to me of course what should have been done years ago. Since then her1 health is a thousand times worse. Her only alternative would be to live quite alone - if she could. And the fact that living with me has done her so much damage does not help me to come to any decision. I need the help of someone who understands her -I find her still perpetually baffling and deceptive. She seems to me like a child of 6 with an immensely clever and precocious mind. She writes extremely well (stories, etc.) and great originality. And I can never escape from the spell of her persuasive (even coercive) gift of argument.
1 This refers to his first wife.
Well, thank you very much, Bertie -I feel quite desperate. I hope to see you in the Autumn.
Yours ever T.S.E.
From my brother Frank
50 Cleveland Square London, W.2 8 June, 1925
Dear Bertie
I lunched with the Aunt Agatha on Friday, and she was even more tedious than usual. In fact, she gave me the treatment that I think she generally reserves for you. She began by being very sighful and P.L.y about Alys, and said how she still loved you and how determined you had been to marry her. She infuriated me so that I reminded her at last that at the time the P.L. view, which she had fully shared, was that you were an innocent young man pursued by a designing woman, and that the one view was not any truer than the other. Then die went on to Birth Control, with a sniff at Dora, and aggravated me to such an extent that I was bound to tell her that I did not think old women of seventy-three were entitled to legislate for young ones of twenty-five. Thereupon she assured me that she had been twenty-five herself once, but I unfortunately lacked the courage to say Never! You can gather how provoking she must have been from the fact that I was driven to reply, which I don't generally do. She then went on to try and make mischief about you and Elizabeth, by telling me how much you were in love with Elizabeth and how regularly you saw her.1 She really is a villainous old cat.
1 This, of course, was quite untrue.
In order to take the taste of her out of my mouth when I got home I read, or at any rate looked through, three books I had not seen before: Daedalus, Icarus and Hypoxia. Haldane's Test Tube Mothers' gave me the shivers: I prefer the way of the music-hall song! I liked what I read of Dora's book, and intend to read it more carefully.
Will you tell Dora that I am not the least anxious to go to the Fabian people, as it would bore me to tears, and would only have done it to bade her up, so I hope she won't put anyone else on to me. Dora says you are fiat, and something that at first I thought was 'beneath consideration', which gave me a faint hope that you had ceased to be a philosopher, but on looking at it again I see that it is 'writing about education'.
Dorothy Wrinch said that she was coming down to see you early in August, and I suggested driving her down, but I suppose that means taking old Heavyweight too. The time she suggested, shortly after the August Bank Holiday, would suit me if you could have me then. You will no doubt be surprised to hear that I am going to the British Ass. this year, as it is held at Southampton, quite convenient.
Damn that acid old spinster.
Yours affectionately Russell
50 Cleveland Square London, W.2 15 June, 1925
Dear Bertie
Thanks for your amusing letter. I was going to write to you anyhow, because I have been reading your delightful What I believe. My word! You have compressed it, and succeeded in saying a good many things calculated to be thoroughly annoying and disconcerting to the virtuous in the space. I am so delighted with it that I am going to get half-a-dozen copies and give them away where I think they will be appreciated. I like your conclusive proof that bishops are much more brutal than Aztecs who go in for human sacrifices. I don't think I shall try a copy on my tame bishop because, although I am very fond of him, intellect is not his strong point.
I am going to write to Dorothy and make your suggestion.
Yours affectionately Russell
From Gertrude Beasly
8 woburn Place, W.C.I Gresham Hotel, London June 21. 1925
Dear Mr Russell
Shortly after you left in March I found a publisher for my book, a semi-private company in Paris. Several weeks ago a few of the proofs reached me. Yesterday morning I found myself before the Magistrate at Bow Street after a night in prison.
In the afternoon of June 19 an officer from Scotland Yard called to see me bringing with him a bundle of the proofs of my book which he described as 'grossly obscene'. He said I would have to appear before the Magistrate on the charge of sending improper matter through the post. He examined my passport and found it had not been registered. I was arrested and escorted to Bow Street to register my passport, and detained over night. The Alien Officer brought a charge of failure to register my passport to which I pleaded guilty before the Magistrate and offered explanation of my negligence. The Scotland Yard agent brought a charge of sending obscene literature by post and asked the Magistrate to punish (I believe he said) and make arrangement for my deportation. The punishment, I believe, refers to a heavy fine or imprisonment.
I am on bail, 10 pounds, and the case is to be tried on Saturday June 27 at about 11 o'clock, I shall find out definitely tomorrow as to the hour.
Mr Ewer thinks he can find an attorney to take my case. I shall go to the American Consul tomorrow and talk with others here who know me, Shall probably see Dr Ellis tomorrow.
If you can offer any advice I shall be glad.
Sincerely yours Gertrude Beasly
Miss Beasly was a schoolteacher from Texas, who wrote an autobiography. It was truthful, which is illegal.
To Max Newman, the distinguished mathematician
24th April 1928
Dear Newman
Many thanks for sending me the off-print of your article about me in Mind. I read it with great interest and some dismay. You make it entirely obvious that my statements to the effect that nothing is known about the physical world except its structure are either false or trivial, and I am somewhat ashamed at not having noticed the point for myself.
It is of course obvious, as you point out, that the only effective assertion about the physical world involved in saying that it is susceptible to such and such a structure is an assertion about its cardinal number. (This by the way is not quite so trivial an assertion as It would seem to be, if, as is not improbable, the cardinal number involved is finite. This, however, is not a point upon which I wish to lay stress.) It was quite clear to me, as I read your article, that I had not really intended to say what in fact I did say, that nothing is known about the physical world except its structure. I had always assumed spacio-temporal continuity with the world of percepts, that is to say, I had assumed that there might be co-punctuality between percepts and non-percepts, and even that one could pass by a finite number of Steps from one event to another compresent with it, from one end of the universe to the other. And co-punctuality I regarded as a relation which might exist among percepts and is itself perceptible.
I have not yet had time to think out how far the admission of co-punctuality alone in addition to structure would protect me from your criticisms, nor yet how far it would weaken the plausibility of my metaphysic. What I did realise was that spacio-temporal continuity of percepts and non-percepts was so axiomatic in my thought that I failed to notice that my statements appeared to deny it.
I am at the moment much too busy to give the matter proper thought, but I should be grateful if you could find time to let me know whether you have any ideas on the matter which are not merely negative, since it does not appear from your article what your own position is. I gathered in talking with you that you favoured phenomenalism, but I do not quite know how definitely you do so.
Yours sincerely Bertrand Russell
To Harold Laski
12th May 1928
My dear Laski
I am afraid it is quite impossible for me to speak to the Socratic Society this term, much as I should like to do so. But the fact is I am too busy to have any ideas worth having, like Mrs Eddy who told a friend of mine that she was too busy to become the second incarnation.
I am not at all surprised that Bentham suggests companionate marriage; in fact one could almost have inferred it. I discovered accidentally from an old envelope used as a bookmark that at the moment of my birth my father was reading Bentham's. Table of the Springs of Action. Evidently this caused me to be Benthamitically 'conditioned', as he has always seemed to me a most sensible fellow. But as a schoolmaster, I am gradually being driven to more radical proposals, such as those of Plato. If there were an international government I should seriously be in favour of the root and branch abolition of the family, but as things are, I am afraid it would make people more patriotic.
ours ever Bertrand Russell
To Mr Gardner Jackson
28th May 1929
Dear Mr Jackson
I am sorry I shall not be in America at the time of your meeting on August 23rd, the more so as I shall be there not so very long after that, I think you are quite right to do everything possible to keep alive the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti. It must, I think, be clear to any unprejudiced person that there was not such evidence against them as to warrant a conviction, and I have no doubt in my own mind that they were wholly innocent. I am forced to conclude that they were condemned on account of their political opinions and that men who ought to have known better allowed themselves to express misleading views as to the evidence because they held that men with such opinions have no right to live. A view of this sort is one which is very dangerous, since it transfers from the theological to the political sphere a form of persecution which it was thought that civilised countries had outgrown. One is not so surprised at occurrences of this sort in Hungary or Lithuania, but in America they must be matters of grave concern to all who care for freedom of opinion.
Yours sincerely Bertrand Russell
P.S. I hope that out of the above you can make a message for the meeting; if you do not think it suitable, please let me know, and I will concoct another.
From and to Mr C. L. Aiken
8, Plympton St. Cambridge, Mass. March 2, 1930
My Dear Mr Russell
I am preparing a free-lance article on the subject of parasitic nuisances who bedevil authors: autograph and photograph hunters, those thoughtless myriads who expect free criticism, poems, speeches, lectures, jobs, and who in general impose on the literary professional. (I suppose you will place me in the same category, but hope you can feel that the end justifies the means in this case.)
would you be so good as to send me an account ot your grievances, the length and nature of which of course I leave to you?
Very truly yours Clarice Lorenz Aiken
19th March 1930
Dear Air Aiken
In common with other authors, I suffer a good deal from persons who think that an author ought to do their work for them. Apart from autograph hunters, I get large numbers of letters from persons who wish me to copy out for them the appropriate entry in Who's Who, or ask me my opinion on points which I have fully discussed in print.
I get many letters from Hindus, beseeching me to adopt some form of mysticism, from young Americans, asking me where I think the line should be drawn in petting, and from Poles, urging me to admit that while all other nationalism may be bad that of Poland is wholly noble.
I get letters from engineers who cannot understand Einstein, and from parsons who think that I cannot understand Genesis, from husbands whose wives have deserted them - not (they say) that that would matter, but the wives have taken the furniture with diem, and what in these circumstances should an enlightened male do?
I get letters from Jews to say that Solomon was not a polygamist, and from Catholics to say that Torquemada was not a persecutor. I get letters (concerning whose genuineness I am suspicious) trying to get me to advocate abortion, and I get letters from young mothers asking my opinion of bottle-feeding.
I am sorry to say that most of the subjects dealt with by my correspondents have escaped my memory at the moment, but the few that I have mentioned may serve as a sample.
Yours very truly Bertrand Russell
To Miss Brooks1
1 who became the Rev. Rachel Gleason Brooks, for whose still unpublished book on China I in 1931 wrote a preface.
5th May 1930
Dear Miss Brooks
I am not sure whether you are right in saying that the problem of America is greater than that of China. It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China. I think America is very worrying. There is something incredibly wrong with human relations in your country. We have a number of American children at our school, and I am amazed at their mothers' instinctive incompetence. The fount of affection seems to have dried up. I suppose all Western civilisation is going to go the same way, and I expect all our Western races to die out, with the possible exception of the Spaniards and Portuguese. Alternatively the State may take to breeding the necessary citizens and educating them as Janissaries without family ties. Read John B. Watson on mothers. I used to think him mad; now I only think him American; that is to say, the mothers that he has known have been American mothers. The result of this physical aloofness is that the child grows up filled with hatred against the world and anxious to distinguish himself as a criminal, like Leopold and Loeb.
Yours sincerely Bertrand Russell
Here is part of the preface I wrote:
In view of the aggression of Western nations, the Chinese who were in many respects more civilised than ourselves and at a higher ethical level, were faced with the necessity of developing a policy with more military efficacy than could be derived from the Confucian teaching. Social life in Old China was based upon the family. Sun Yat Sen justly perceived that if China was to resist successfully the onslaughts of military nations, it would be necessary to substitute the state for the family; and patriotism for filial piety - in a word, the Chinese had to choose whether they would die as saints or live as sinners. Under Christian influence they chose the latter alternative.
Assuming the nationalist (Chiang Kai Shek) government to be successful, the outcome must be to add another and very important member to the ruthless militaristic governments which compete in everything except the destruction of civilisation on which task alone they are prepared to cooperate. All the intellect, all the heroism, all the martyrdoms, and agonising disillusionments of Chinese history since 1911, will have led up only to this: to create a new force for evil and a new obstacle to the peace of the world. The history of Japan should have taught the West caution. But Western civilisation with all its intelligence is as blind in its operation as an avalanche, and must take its course to what dire conclusion, I dare not guess.
In her book This is Your Inheritance: A History of the Chemung County, N.Y. Branch of the Brooks Family (p. 167, published by Century House, Watkins Glen, New York, U.S.A., 1963) she wrote: 'Bertrand Russell's preface (omitting the laudatory remarks about the author) sums up what happened during our lifetime in China ... This preface was taken down by me in the parlor of the Mayflower hotel in Akron, Ohio on the morning of Dec. 1st, 1931 as Mr Russell paced the floor smoking his pipe. Then he signed it and we went to the railroad station; he to go to another lecturing appointment and I to return to Oberlin.'
To H. G. Wells
24th May '28
My dear H.G.
Thank you very much for sending me your book on The Open Conspiracy. I have read it with the most complete sympathy, and I do not know of anything with which I agree more entirely. I enjoyed immensely your fable about Provinder Island. I am, I think, somewhat less optimistic than you are, probably owing to the fact that I was in opposition to the mass of mankind during the war, and thus acquired the habit of feeling helpless.
You speak for example, of getting men of science to join the Open Conspiracy, but I should think there is hardly a single one who would do so, with the exception of Einstein - a not unimportant exception I admit. The rest in this country would desire knighthoods, in France to become membres de l'institut, and so on. Even among younger men, I believe your support would be very meagre. Julian Huxley would not be willing to give up his flirtations with the episcopate; Haldane would not forego the pleasure to be derived from the next war.
I was interested to read what you say about schools and education generally, and that you advocate 'a certain sectarianism of domestic and social life in the interests of its children' and 'grouping of its families and the establishment of its own schools'. It was the feeling of this necessity which led us to found Beacon Hill School, and I am every day more convinced that people who have the sort of ideas that we have ought not to expose their children to obscurantist influence, more especially during their early years when these influences can operate upon what will be their unconscious in adult life.
This brings me to a matter which I approach with some hesitation, but which I had decided to write to you about before I read your book. This school is costing me about £2000 a year, that is to say very nearly the whole of my income. I do not think that this is due to any incompetence in management; in fact all experimental schools that I have ever heard of have been expensive propositions. My income is precarious since it depends upon the tastes of American readers who are notoriously fickle, and I am therefore very uncertain as to whether I shall be able to keep the school going. In order to be able to do so I should need donations amounting to about £1000 a year. I have been wondering whether you would be willing to help in any way towards the obtaining of this sum, either directly or by writing an appeal which might influence progressive Americans. I should be very grateful if you would let me know whether you would consider anything of the sort. You will see of course that an appeal written by Dora and me is less effective than one from an impartial pen, especially if that pen were yours.
I believe profoundly In the importance of what we are doing here. If I were to put into one single phrase our educational objects, I should say that we aim at training initiative without diminishing its strength. I have long held that stupidity is very largely the result of fear leading to mental inhibitions, and the experience that we are having with our children confirms me in this view. Their interest in science is at once passionate and intelligent, and their desire to understand the world in which they live exceeds enormously that of children brought up with the usual taboos upon curiosity. What we are doing is of course only an experiment on a small scale, but I confidently expect its results to be very important indeed. You will realise that hardly any other educational reformers lay much stress upon intelligence. A. S. Neill, for example, who is in many ways an admirable man, allows such complete liberty that his children fail to get the necessary training and are always going to the cinema, when they might otherwise be interested in things of more value. Absence of opportunity for exciting pleasures at this place is, I think, an important factor in the development of the children's intellectual interests. I note what you say in your book on the subject of amusements, and I agree with it very strongly.
I hope that If you are back in England you will pay a visit to this school and see what we are doing.
Yours very sincerely Bertrand Russell
From and to A. S. Neill, the progressive schoolmaster
Summerhill, Lyme Regis, Dorset 23.3.26
Dear Mr Russell
I marvel that two men, working from different angles, should arrive at essentially the same conclusions. Your book and mine are complementary. It may be that the only difference between us comes from our respective complexes. I observe that you say little or nothing about handwork in education. My hobby has always been handwork, and where your child asks you about stars my pupils ask me about steels and screw threads. Possibly also I attach more importance to emotion in education than you do.
I read your book with great interest and with very little disagreement. Your method of overcoming your boy's fear of the sea I disagreed with heartily! An introverted boy might react with the thought: 'Daddy wants to drown me.' My complex again ... arising from my dealing with neurotics mostly.
I have no first-hand knowledge of early childhood, for I am so far unmarried, but your advices about early childhood seem to me to be excellent. Your attitude to sex instruction and masturbation is splendid and you put it in a way that will not shock and offend. (I have not that art!)
I do not share your enthusiasm for Montessori. I cannot agree with a system set up by a strong churchwoman with a strict moral aim. Her orderliness to me is a counterblast against original sin. Besides I see no virtue in orderliness at alL My workshop is always in a mess but my handwork isn't. My pupils have no interest in orderliness until they come to puberty or thereabouts. You may find that at the age of five your children will have no use for Montessori apparatus. Why not use the apparatus to make a train with? I argued this out with Madame Macaroni, Montessori's chief lieutenant a few years ago. Is it not our awful attitude to learning that warps our outlook? After all a train is a reality, while an inset frame is purely artificial. I never use artificial apparatus. My apparatus in the school is books, tools, test tubes, compasses. Montessori wants to direct a child. I don't.
By the way, to go back to the sea fear, I have two boys who never enter the water. My nephew age nine (the watch-breaker of the book) and an introverted, boy of eleven who is full of fears. I have advised the other children to make no mention of the sea, never to sneer at the two, never to try and persuade them to bathe. If they do not come to bathing from their own inner Drang... well, it does not much matter. One of my best friends, old Dauvit in my native village, is 89 and he never had a bath in his life.
You will be interested to know Homer Lane's theory about timetable sucking. He used to advocate giving a child the breast whenever it demanded it. He held that in sucking there are two components... pleasure and nutrition. The timetable child accumulates both components, and when die sticking begins the pleasure component goes away with a rush and is satisfied in a sort of orgasm. But the nutrition element is unsatisfied, and he held that many cases of mal-nutrition were due to this factor, that the child stopped sucking before the nutrition urge was satisfied.
To me the most interesting thing about your book is that it is scholarly (nasty word) in the sense that it is written by a man who knows history and science. I am ignorant of both and I think that my own conclusions come partly from a blind intuition. I say again that it is marvellous that we should reach very much the same philosophy of education. It is the only possible philosophy today, but we cannot hope to do much in the attack against schools from Eton to the LCC. Our only hope is the individual parent.
My chief difficulty is the parent, for my pupils are products of ignorant and savage parents. I have much fear that one or two of them, shocked by my book, may withdraw their children. That would be tragedy.
Well, thank you ever so much for the book. It is the only book oa education that I have read that does not make me swear. All the others are morals disguised as education.
One warning however ... there is always the chance that your son may want to join the Primrose League one day! One in ten million chance, but we must face the fact that human nature has not yet fitted into any cause and effect scheme; and never will fit in.
If you ever motor to your Cornwall home do stop and see us here.
Yours very truly A. S. Neill
Summerhill School Leiston, Suffolk 18.12.30
Dear Russell
Have you any political influence? The Labour Ministry are refusing to let me employ a Frenchman to teach French. The chap I want is with me now, has been analysed and is a tiptop man to deal with my bunch of problem kids. Other schools have natives to teach their languages ... and I naturally ask why the hell a damned department should dictate to me about my educational ways. I have given the dept a full account of the man and why he is necessary to me and the fools reply: 'But the Dept is not satisfied that a British subject could not be trained in the special methods of teaching in operation in your school.'
Have you any political bigbug friend who would or could get behind the bloody idiots who control our departments? I am wild as hell.
Cheerio, help me if you can. I know George Lansbury but hesitate to approach him as he will have enough to do in his own dept.
Yours A. S. Neill
20th Dec. 30
Dear Neill
What you tell me is quite outrageous. I have written to Charles Trevelyan and Miss Bondfield, and I enclose copies of my letters to them.
I wonder whether you make the mistake of mentioning psychoanalysis in your application. You know, of course, from Homer Lane's case that policemen regard psycho-analysis as merely a cloak for crime. The only ground to put before the department is that Frenchmen are apt to know French better than Englishmen do. The more the department enquires into your methods, the more it will wish to hamper you. Nobody is allowed to do any good in this country except by means of trickery and deceit.
Yours ever Bertrand Russell
To Charles Trevelyan
20th Dec. 30
Dear Trevelyan
A. S. Neill, of Summerhill School, Leiston, Suffolk, who is, as you probably know, very distinguished in the educational world, having developed from a conventional school dominie into one of the most original and successful innovators of our time, writes to me to say that the Ministry of Labour is refusing to allow him to continue to employ Frenchmen to teach French. He has at present a French master whose services he wishes to retain, but the Ministry of Labour has officially informed him that Englishmen speak French just as well as Frenchmen do, and that his present master is not to be allowed to stay.
I think you will agree with me that this sort of thing is intolerable. I know that many of the most important questions in education do not come under your department but are decided by policemen whose judgment is taken on the question whether a foreigner Is needed in an educational post. If the principles upon which the Alien Act Is administered had been applied in Italy in the 15th century, the Western world would never have acquired a knowledge of Greek and the Renaissance could not have taken place.
Although the matter Is outside your department, I cannot doubt that the slightest word from you would cause die Ministry of Labour to alter its decision. A. S. Neill is a man of international reputation, and I hate the thought of what he may do to hold up British Bumbledom to ridicule throughout the civilised world. If you could do anything to set the matter right, you will greatly relieve my anxiety on this score.
Yours very sincerely Bertrand Russell
P.S. I have also written to Miss Bondneld on this matter.
From and to A, S. Neill
Summerhill School Leiston, Suffolk 22.12.30
Dear Russell
Good man! That's the stuff to give the troops. Whatever the result accept my thanks. I didn't mention psychoanalysis to them. I applied on the usual form and they wrote asking me what precise steps I had taken 'to find a teacher of French who was British or an alien already resident in this country'. Then I told them that I wanted a Frenchman but that any blinking Frenchie wouldn't do ... that mine was a psychological school and any teacher had to be not only an expert in his subject but also in handling neurotic kids.
Apart from this display of what you call Bumbledom I guess that there will be some battle when Trevelyan's Committee on Private Schools issues its report. You and I will have to fight like hell against having a few stupid inspectors mucking about demanding why Tommy can't read. Any inspector coming to me now would certainly be greeted by Colin (aged 6) with the friendly words, 'Who the fucking hell are you?' So that we must fight to keep Whitehall out of our schools.
I'll let you know what happens. Many thanks,
Yours A. S. Neill
About time that you and I met again and compared notes.
Leiston. 31.12.30
Dear Russell
You have done the deed. The letter [from the Ministry of Labour] is a nasty one but I guess that the bloke as wrote it was in a nasty position. Sounds to me like a good prose Hymn of Hate.
I have agreed to his conditions ... feeling like slapping the blighter in the eye at the same time. It is my first experience with the bureaucracy and I am apt to forget that I am dealing with a machine.
Many thanks for your ready help. My am approach to you may be when the Committee on Private Schools gets busy. They will call in all the respectable old deadheads of education as expert witnesses (Badley and Co) and unless men of moment like you make a fight for it we (the out and outer Bolshies of education) will be ignored. Then we'll have to put up with the nice rules advocated by the diehards. Can't we get up a league of heretical dominies called the 'Anal'-ists?
Yours with much gratitude A. S. Neill
5th Jan. 31
Dear Neill
Thank you for your letter and for the information about your French teacher. I am sorry you accepted the Ministry of Labour's terms, as they were on the run and could, I think, have been induced to grant unconditional permission.
I suppose you do not mind if I express to Miss Bondfield my low opinion of her officials, and to Trevelyan my ditto of Miss Bondfield? It Is quite possible that the Ministry may still decide to let you keep your present master indefinitely. I am going away for a short holiday, and I am therefore dictating these letters now to my secretary who will not send them until she hears from you that you are willing they should go. Will you therefore be so kind as to send a line to her (Mrs O. Harrington), and not to me, as to whether you are willing the letters should go.
Yours ever Bertrand Russell
Neill agreed to my sending the following letters:
To Miss Bondfield
12th Jan. 31
Dear Miss Bondfield
I am much obliged to you for looking into the matter of Mr A. S. Neill's French teacher. I doubt whether you are aware that in granting him permission to retain his present teacher for one year your office made it a condition that he should not even ask to retain his present teacher after the end of that year.
I do not believe that you have at any time been in charge of a school, but if you had, you would know that to change one's teachers once a year is to increase enormously the difficulty of achieving any kind of success. What would the headmaster of one of our great public schools say to your office if it were to insist that he should change his teachers once a year? Mr Neill is attempting an experiment which everybody interested in modern education considers very important, and it seems a pity that the activities of the Government in regard to him should be confined to making a fair trial of the experiment impossible. I have no doubt whatever that you will agree with me in this, and that some subordinate has failed to carry out your wishes in this matter.
With apologies for troubling you,
I remain Yours sincerely Bertrand Russell
To Charles Trevelyan
12th Jan. 31
Dear Charles
Thank you very much for the trouble you have taken In regard to the French teacher at A. S. Neill's school. The Ministry of Labour have granted him permission to stay for one year, but on condition that Neill does not ask to have his leave extended beyond that time. You will, I think, agree with me that this is an extraordinary condition to have made. Neill has accepted it, as he has to yield to force majeure, but there cannot be any conceivable justification for it. Anybody who has ever run a school knows that perpetual change of masters is intolerable. What would the Headmaster of Harrow think if the Ministry of Labour obliged him to change his masters once a year?
Neill is trying an experiment which everybody interested in education considers most important, and Whitehall is doing what it can to make it a failure. I do not myself feel bound by Neill's undertaking, and I see no reason why intelligent people who are doing important work should submit tamely to the dictation of ignorant busybodies, such as the officials in the Ministry of Labour appear to be. I am quite sure that you agree with me in this.
Thanking you again,
Yours very sincerely Bertrand Russell
To and from A. S. Neill
27th Jan. 31
Dear Neill
As you will see from the enclosed, there is nothing to be got out of the Ministry of Labour.
I have written a reply which I enclose, but I have not sent it. If you think it will further your case, you are at liberty to send it; but remember Miss Bondfield is celibate.
Yours ever Bertrand Russell
The enclosed reply to the Ministry of Labour:
27th Jan. 31
Dear Sir
Thank yon very much for your letter of January 26th. I quite understand the principle of confining employment as far as possible to the British without regard for efficiency. I think, however, that the Ministry is not applying the principle sufficiendy widely. I know many Englishmen who have married foreigners, and many English potential wives who are out of a job. Would not a year be long enough to train an English wife to replace the existing foreign one in such cases?
Yours faithfully Bertrand Russell
Summerhill School Leiston, Suffolk 28.1.31
Dear Russell
No, there is no point in replying to the people. Very liKely the chief aim in govt offices is to save the face of the officials. If my man wants to stay on later I may wangle it by getting him to invest some cash in the school and teach on as an employer of labour. Anyway you accomplished a lot as it is. Many thanks. I think I'll vote Tory next time I
Today I have a letter from the widow of Norman MacMunn. She seems to be penniless and asks me for a job as matron. I can't give her one and don't suppose you can either. I have advised her to apply to our millionaire friends in Dartington Hall. I am always sending on the needy to them ... hating them all the time for their affluence. When Elmhirst needs a new wing he writes out a cheque to Heals ... Heals 1 And here am I absolutely gravelled to raise cash for a pottery shed. Pioneering is a wash out, man. I am getting weary of cleaning up the mess that parents make. At present I have a lad of six who shits his pants six times daily ... his dear mamma 'cured' him by making him eat the shit. I get no gratitude at all ... when after years of labour I cure this lad the mother will send him to a 'nice' school. It ain't good enough ... official indifference or potential enmity, parental jealousy ... the only joy is in the kids themselves. One day Til chuck it all and start a nice hotel round about Salzburg.
You'll gather that I am rather fed this morning, I'd like to meet you again and have a yam. Today my Stimmung is partly due to news of another debt ... £150 this last year all told. All parents whose problems I bettered.
Yours A. S. Neill
I wonder what Margaret Bondneld's views would be on my views on Onanie!
31st Jan. 31
Dear Neill
I am sorry you are feeling so fed up. It is a normal mood with me so far as the school is concerned. Parents owe me altogether about £500 which I shall certainly never see. I have my doubts as to whether you would find hotel keeping much better. You would find penniless pregnant unmarried women left on your hands, and would undertake the care of them and their children for the rest of their natural lives. You might find this scarcely more lucrative than a modern school. Nobody can make a living, except by dishonesty or cruelty, at no matter what trade.
It is all very sad about Elmhirst. However, I always think that a man who marries money has to work for his living. I have no room for a Matron at the moment, having at last obtained one who is completely satisfactory.
I have sometimes attempted in a mild way to get a little financial support from people who think they believe in modern education, but I have found the thing that stood most in my way was the fact which leaked out, that I do not absolutely insist upon strict sexual virtue on the part of the staff. I found that even people who think themselves quite advanced believe that only the sexually starved can exert a wholesome moral influence.
Your story about the boy who shits in his pants is horrible. I have not had any cases as bad as that to deal with.
I should very much like to see you again. Perhaps we could meet in London at some time or other ...
Yours Bertrand Russell
From Mrs Barnard Shaw
Ayot St Lawrence Welwyn, Herts. 28 Oct. 1928
Dear Bertrand Russell
I was grateful and honoured by your splendidness in sending me your MS. of your lecture and saying I may keep it. It's wonderful of you. I have read it once, and shall keep it as you permit until I have time for another good, quiet go at it.
You know you have a humble, but convinced admirer in me. I have a very strong mystical turn in me, which does not appear in public, and I find your stuff the best corrective and steadier I ever came across!
My best remembrances to you both. I hope the school is flourishing.
Yours gratefully C. F. Shaw
To C. P. Sanger
Telegraph House Harting, Petersfield 23 Dec. 1929
My dear Charlie
I am very sorry indeed to hear that you are so ill. I do hope you will soon be better. Whenever the Doctors will let me I will come and see you. It is a year today since Kate's operation, when you were so kind I remember how Kate loved your visits. Dear Charlie, I don't think I have ever expressed the deep affection I have for you, but I suppose you have known of it.
I got home three days ago and found everything Here satisfactory. The children are flourishing, and it is delicious to be at home. One feels very far off in California and such places. I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.
My warmest good wishes for a speedy recovery,
Yours very affectionately Bertrand Russell
From Lord Rutherford
Newnharn Cottage Queen's Road Cambridge March 9, 1931
Dear Bertrand Russell
I have just been reading with much interest and profit your book The Conquest of Happiness & I would like to thank you for a most stimulating and I think valuable analysis of the factors concerned. The chief point where I could not altogether agree was in your treatment of the factors of envy & jealousy. Even in the simple ~ and I agree with you - fundamentally happy life of the scientific man, one has naturally sometimes encountered examples of this failing but either I have been unusually fortunate or it may be too obtuse to notice it in the great majority of my friends. I have known a number of men leading simple lives whether on the land or in the laboratory who seemed to me singularly free from this failing. I quite agree with you that it is most obtrusive in those who are unduly class-conscious. These remarks are not in criticism but a mere personal statement of my own observations in these directions.
I was very sorry to hear of the sudden death of your brother whom I knew only slightly, and I sympathise with you in your loss. I hope, however, you will be interested enough to take some part in debates in the House of Lords in the future.
Yours sincerely Rutherford