Chapter 4

Engagement

In the summer of 1889, when I was living with my Uncle Rollo at his house on the slopes of Hindhead, he took me one Sunday for a long walk. As we were going down Friday's Hill, near Fernhurst, he said: 'Some new people have come to live at this house, and I think we will call upon them.' Shyness made me dislike the idea, and I implored him, whatever might happen, not to stay to supper. He said he would not, but he did, and I was glad he did. We found that the family were Americans, named Pearsall Smith, consisting of an elderly mother and father, a married daughter and her husband, named Costelloe, a younger daughter at Bryn Mawr home for the holidays, and a son at Balliol. The father and mother had been in their day famous evangelistic preachers, but the father had lost his faith as the result of a scandal which arose from his having been seen to kiss a young woman, and the mother had grown rather too old for such a wearing life. Costelloe, the son-in-law, was a clever man, a Radical, a member of the London County Council. He arrived fresh from London while we were at dinner, bringing the latest news of a great dock strike which was then in progress. This dock strike was of considerable interest and importance because it marked the penetration of Trade Unionism to a lower level than that previously reached. I listened open-mouthed while he related what was being done, and I felt that I was in touch with reality. The son from Balliol conversed in brilliant epigrams, and appeared to know everything with contemptuous ease. But it was the daughter from Bryn Mawr who especially interested me. She was very beautiful, as appears from the following extract from the Bulletin, Glasgow, May 10, 1921: 'I remember meeting Mrs Bertrand Russell at a civic reception or something of the kind (was it a reception to temperance delegates?) in Edinburgh twenty odd years ago. She was at that time one of the most beautiful women it is possible to imagine, and gifted with a sort of imperial stateliness, for all her Quaker stock. We who were present admired her so much that in a collected and dignified Edinburgh way we made her the heroine of the evening.' She was more emancipated than any young woman I had known, since she was at college and crossed the Atlantic alone, and was, as I soon discovered, an intimate friend of Walt Whitman. She asked me whether I had ever read a certain German book called Ekkehard, and it happened that I had finished it that morning. I felt this was a stroke of luck. She was kind, and made me feel not shy. I fell in love with her at first sight. I did not see any of the family again that summer, but in subsequent years, during the three months that I spent annually with my Uncle Rollo, I used to walk the four miles to their house every Sunday, arriving to lunch and staying to supper. After supper they would make a camp fire in the woods, and sit round singing Negro spirituals, which were in those days unknown in England. To me, as to Goethe, America seemed a romantic land of freedom, and I found among them an absence of many prejudices which hampered me at home. Above all, I enjoyed their emancipation from good taste. It was at their house that I first met Sidney Webb, then still unmarried.

Sidney and Beatrice Webb, whom I knew intimately tor a number of years, at times even sharing a house with them, were the most completely married couple that I have ever known. They were, however, very averse from any romantic view of love or marriage. Marriage was a social institution designed to fit instinct into a legal framework. During the first ten years of their marriage, Mrs Webb would remark at intervals, 'As Sidney always says, marriage is the waste-paper basket of the emotions'. In later years there was a slight change. They would generally have a couple to stay with them for the week-end, and on Sunday afternoon they would go for a brisk walk, Sidney with the lady and Beatrice with the gentleman. At a certain point, Sidney would remark, 'I know just what Beatrice is saying at this moment. She is saying, "As Sidney always says, marriage is the waste-paper basket of the emotions".' Whether Sidney ever really did say this is not known.

I knew Sidney before his marriage. But he was then much less than half of what the two of them afterwards became. Their collaboration was quite dove-tailed. I used to think, though, this was perhaps an undue simplification, that she had the ideas and he did the work. He was perhaps the most industrious man that I have ever known. When they were writing a book on local government, they would send circulars to all local government officials throughout the country asking questions and pointing out that the official in question could legally purchase their forthcoming book out of the rates. When I let my house to them, the postman, who was an ardent socialist, did not know whether to be more honoured by serving them or annoyed at having to deliver a thousand answers a day to their circulars. Webb was originally a second division clerk in the civil service, but by immense industry succeeded in rising into the first division. He was somewhat earnest and did not like jokes on sacred subjects such as political theory. On one occasion I remarked to him that democracy has at least one merit, namely, that a Member of Parliament cannot be stupider than his constituents, for the more stupid he is, the more stupid they were to elect him. Webb was seriously annoyed and said bitingly, 'That is the sort of argument I don't like'.

Mrs Webb had a wider range of interests than her husband. She took considerable interest in individual human beings, not only when they could be useful. She was deeply religious without belonging to any recognised brand of orthodoxy, though as a socialist she preferred the Church of England because it was a State institution. She was one of nine sisters, the daughters of a self-made man named Potter who acquired most of his fortune by building huts for the armies in the Crimea. He was a disciple of Herbert Spencer, and Mrs Webb was the most notable product of that philosopher's theories of education. I am sorry to say that my mother, who was her neighbour in the country, described her as a 'social butterfly', but one may hope that she would have modified-this judgement if she had known Mrs Webb in later life. When she became interested in socialism she decided to sample the Fabians, especially the three most distinguished, who were Webb, Shaw and Graham Wallas. There was something like the Judgment of Paris with the sexes reversed, and it was Sidney who emerged as the counterpart of Aphrodite.

Webb had been entirely dependent upon his earnings, whereas Beatrice had inherited a competence from her father. Beatrice had the mentality of the governing class, which Sidney had not. Seeing that they had enough to live on without earning, they decided to devote their lives to research and to the higher branches of propaganda. In both they were amazingly successful. Their books are a tribute to their industry, and the School of Economics is a tribute to Sidney's skill. I do not think that Sidney's abilities would have been nearly as fruitful as they were if they had not been backed by Beatrice's self-confidence. I asked her once whether in her youth she had ever had any feeling of shyness. 'O no,' she said, 'if I ever felt inclined to be timid as I was going into a room full of people, I would say to myself, "You're the cleverest member of one of the cleverest families in the cleverest class of the cleverest nation in the world, why should you be frightened".'

I both liked and admired Mrs Webb, although I disagreed with her about many very important matters. I admired first and foremost her ability, which was very great. I admired next her integrity: she lived for public objects and was never deflected by personal ambition, although she was not devoid of it. I liked her because she was a warm and kind friend to those for whom she had a personal affection, but I disagreed with her about religion, about imperialism, and about the worship of the State. This last was of the essence of Fabianism. It led both the Webbs and also Shaw into what I thought an undue tolerance of Mussolini and Hitler, and ultimately into a rather absurd adulation of the Soviet Government.

But nobody is all of a piece, not even the Webbs. I once remarked to Shaw that Webb seemed to me somewhat deficient in kindly feeling. 'No,' Shaw replied, 'you are quite mistaken., Webb and I were once in a tram-car in Holland eating biscuits out of a bag. A handcuffed criminal was brought into the tram by policemen. All the other passengers shrank away in horror, but Webb went up to the prisoner and offered him biscuits.' I remember this story whenever I find myself becoming unduly critical of either Webb or Shaw.

There were people whom the Webbs hated. They hated Wells, both because he offended Mrs Webb's rigid Victorian morality and because he tried to dethrone Webb from his reign over the Fabian Society. They hated Ramsay MacDonald from very early days. The least hostile thing that I ever heard either of them say about him was at the time of the formation of the first Labour Government, when Mrs Webb said he was a very good substitute for a leader.

Their political history was rather curious. At first they co-operated with the Conservatives because Mrs Webb was pleased with Arthur Balfour for being willing to give more public money to Church Schools. When the Conservatives fell in 1906, the Webbs made some slight and ineffectual efforts to collaborate with the Liberals. But at last it occurred to them that as socialists they might feel more at home in the Labour Party, of which in their later years they were loyal members.

For a number of years Mrs Webb was addicted to fasting, from motives partly hygienic and partly religious. She would have no breakfast and a very meagre dinner. Her only solid meal was lunch. She almost always had a number of distinguished people to lunch, but she would get so hungry that the moment it was announced she marched in ahead of all her guests and started to eat. She nevertheless believed that starvation made her more spiritual, and once told me that it gave her exquisite visions. 'Yes,' I replied, 'if you eat too little, you see visions; and if you drink too much, you see snakes.' I am afraid she thought this remark inexcusably flippant. Webb did not share the religious side of her nature, but was in no degree hostile to it, in spite of the fact that it was sometimes inconvenient to him. When they and I were staying at a hotel in Normandy, she used to stay upstairs in the mornings since she could not bear the painful spectacle of us breakfasting. Sidney, however, would come down for rolls and coffee. The first morning Mrs Webb sent a message by the maid, 'We do not have butter for Sidney's breakfast'. Her use of 'we' was one of the delights of their friends.

Both of them were fundamentally undemocratic, and regarded it as the function of a statesman to bamboozle or terrorise the populace. I realised the origins of Mrs Webb's conceptions of government when she repeated to me her father's description of shareholders' meetings. It is the recognised function of directors to keep shareholders in their place, and she had a similar view about the relation of the Government to the electorate.

Her father's stories of his career had not given her any undue respect for the great. After he had built huts for the winter quarters of the French armies in the Crimea, he went to Paris to get paid. He had spent almost all his capital in putting up the huts, and payment became Important to him. But, although everybody in Paris admitted the debt, the cheque did not come. At last he met Lord Brassey who had come on a similar errand. When Mr Potter explained his difficulties, Lord Brassey laughed at him and said, 'My dear fellow, you don't know the ropes. You must give fifty pounds to the Minister and five pounds to each of his underlings.' Mr Potter did so, and the cheque came next day.

Sidney had no hesitation in using wiles which some would think unscrupulous. He told me, for example, that when he wished to carry some point through a committee where the majority thought otherwise, he would draw up a resolution in which the contentious point occurred twice. He would have a long debate about its first occurrence and at last give way graciously. Nine times out of ten, so he concluded, no one would notice that the same point occurred later in the same resolution.

The Webbs did a great work in giving intellectual backbone to British socialism. They performed more or less the same function that the Benthamites at an earlier time had performed for the Radicals. The Webbs and the Benthamites shared a certain dryness and a certain coldness and a belief that the waste-paper basket is the place for the emotions. But the Benthamites and the Webbs alike taught their doctrines to enthusiasts. Bentham and Robert Owen could produce a well-balanced intellectual progeny and so could the Webbs and Keir Hardie. One should not demand of anybody all the things that add value to a human being. To have some of them is as much as should be demanded. The Webbs pass this test, and indubitably the British Labour Party would have been much more wild and woolly if they had never existed. Their mantle descended upon Mrs Webb's nephew, Sir Stafford Cripps, and but for them I doubt whether the British democracy would have endured with the same patience the arduous years through which we have been passing.

When I mentioned at home that I had met Sidney Webb, my grandmother replied that she had heard him lecture once in Richmond, and that he was 'not quite....' 'Not quite what?' I persisted. 'Not quite a gentleman in mind or manners,' she finally said.

Among the Pearsall Smiths I escaped from this sort of thing. Among them I was happy and talkative and free from timidity. They would draw me out in such a way as to make me feel quite intelligent. I met interesting people at their house, for instance William James. Logan Pearsall Smith indoctrinated me with the culture of the nineties Flaubert, Walter Pater, and the rest. He gave me rules for good writing, such as 'Put a comma every four words; never use "and" except at the beginning of a sentence'. I learned to make sentences full of parentheses in the style of Walter Pater. I learned the right thing to say about Manet, and Monet, and Degas, who were in those days what Matisse and Picasso were at a later date.

Logan Pearsall Smith was seven years older than I was, and gave me much moral advice. He was in a state of transition between the ethical outlook of Philadelphia Quakerism and that of Quartier-Latin Bohemia. Politically he was a socialist, having been converted by Graham Wallas, one of the founders of the Fabian Society (who, however, at a later date reverted to Liberalism). Logan tried to adapt the philanthropic practice of the Quakers to the socialist creed. In sexual morality he was at that time very ascetic, in fact almost Manichaean, but in religion he was agnostic. He wished to persuade free-thinking young people to preserve a high standard of personal discipline and self-denial. With this object, he created what he called humorously 'The Order of Prigs', which I joined, and whose rules I obeyed for several years.¹

¹ I give the rules in the Appendix on p. 85, and these are followed by fragments of some of the letters received from L. P. S. during my years at Cambridge.

With each year that passed I became more devoted to Alys, the unmarried daughter. She was less flippant than her brother Logan, and less irresponsible than her sister, Mrs Costelloe. She seemed to me to possess all the simple kindness which I still cherished in spite of Pembroke Lodge, but to be devoid of priggery and prejudice. I wondered whether she would remain unmarried until I grew up, for she was five years older than I was. It seemed unlikely but, I became increasingly determined that, if she did, I would ask her to marry me. Once, I remember, I drove with her and her brother to Leith Hill to visit Judge Vaughan Williams, whose wife wore an Elizabethan ruff and was otherwise surprising. On the way they elicited from me that I believed in love at first sight, and chaffed me for being so sentimental. I felt deeply wounded, as the time had not yet come to say why I believed in it. I was aware that she was not what my grandmother would call a lady, but I considered that she resembled Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennett. I think I was conscious of a certain pleasurable broadmindedness in this attitude.

I came of age in May 1893, and from this moment my relations with Alys began to be something more than distant admiration. In the following month I was Seventh Wrangler in the mathematical Tripos, and acquired legal and financial independence. Alys came to Cambridge with a cousin of hers, and I had more opportunities of talking with her than I had ever had before. During the Long Vacation, she came again with the same cousin, but I persuaded her to stay for the inside of a day after the cousin was gone. We went on the river, and discussed divorce, to which she was more favourable than I was. She was in theory an advocate of free-love, which I considered admirable on her part, in spite of the fact that my own views were somewhat more strict. I was, however, a little puzzled to find that she was deeply ashamed of the fact that her sister had abandoned her husband for Berenson, the art critic. Indeed, it was not till after we were married that she consented to know Berenson. I was very much excited by her second visit to Cambridge, and began to correspond regularly with her. I was no longer spending the summers at Haslemere, because my grandmother and my Aunt Agatha did not get on with my Uncle Rollo's second wife. But on the 13th of September, I went to Friday's Hill for a two days' visit. The weather was warm and golden. There was not a breath of wind, and in the early morning there were mists in the valleys. I remember that Logan made fun of Shelley for speaking of 'golden mists', and I in turn made fun of Logan, saying there had been a golden mist that very morning, but before he was awake. For my part I was up and about early, having arranged with Alys to go for a walk before breakfast. We went and sat in a certain beech-wood on a hill, a place of extraordinary beauty looking like an early Gothic cathedral, and with a glimpse of distant views through the tree trunks in all directions. The morning was fresh and dewy, and I began to think that perhaps there might be happiness in human life. Shyness, however, prevented me from getting beyond feeling my way while we sat in the wood. It was only after breakfast, and then with infinite hesitation and alarm, that I arrived at a definite proposal, which was in those days the custom. I was neither accepted nor rejected. It did not occur to me to attempt to kiss her, or even take her hand. We agreed to go on seeing each other and corresponding, and to let time decide one way or the other. All this happened out-of-doors, but when we finally came in to lunch, she found a letter from Lady Henry Somerset, inviting her to the Chicago World's Fair to help in preaching temperance, a virtue of which in those days America was supposed not to have enough. Alys had inherited from her mother an ardent belief in total abstinence, and was much elated to get this invitation. She read it out triumphantly, and accepted it enthusiastically, which made me feel rather small, as it meant several months of absence, and possibly the beginning of an interesting career.

When I came home, I told my people what had occurred, and they reacted according to the stereotyped convention. They said she was no lady, a baby-snatcher, a low-class adventuress, a designing female taking advantage of my inexperience, a person incapable of all the finer feelings, a woman whose vulgarity would perpetually put me to shame. But I had a fortune of some £20,000 inherited from my father, and I paid no attention to what my people said. Relations became very strained, and remained so until after I was married.

At this time I kept a locked diary, which I very carefully concealed from everyone. In this diary I recorded my conversations with my grandmother about Alys and my feelings in regard to them. Not long afterwards a diary of my father's, written partly in shorthand (obviously for purposes of concealment), came into my hands. I found that he had proposed to my mother at just the same age at which I had proposed to Alys, that my grandmother had said almost exactly the same things to him as she had to me, and that he had recorded exactly the same reflections in his diary as I had recorded in mine. This gave me an uncanny feeling that I was not living my own life but my father's over again, and tended to produce a superstitious belief in heredity.¹

¹ In a letter to Alys, September 2, 1894, I wrote: 'My Aunt Georgy [the Lady Georgiana Peel, my grandmother's step-daughter] yesterday was very kind, but too inquisitive (as indeed most women are); she said even in old times at the slightest thought of a marriage my grandmother used to get into a sort of fever and be fussy and worried about it.'

Although I was deeply in love, I felt no conscious desire for any physical relations. Indeed, I felt that my love had been desecrated when one night I had a sexual dream, in which it took a less ethereal form. Gradually, however, nature took charge of this matter.

The next occasion of importance was on January 4, 1894, when I came up from Richmond for the day to visit Alys at her parents' house, 44 Grosvenor Road. It was a day on which there was a heavy snow-storm. All London was buried under about six inches of snow, and I had to wade through it on foot from Vauxhall. The snow brought a strange effect of isolation, making London almost as noiseless as a lonely hill top. It was on this occasion that I first kissed Alys. My only previous experience in this direction was with the housemaid mentioned in an earlier chapter, and I had not foreseen how great would be the ecstasy of kissing a woman whom I loved. Although she still said that she had not made up her mind whether to marry me or not, we spent the whole day, with the exception of meal-times, in kissing, with hardly a word spoken from morning till night, except for an interlude during which I read Epipsychidion aloud. I arrived home quite late, having walked the mile and a half from the station through a blizzard, tired but exultant.

Throughout my next term at Cambridge, there were alternations in her feelings. At some moments she seemed eager to marry me, and at other moments determined to retain her freedom. I had to work very hard during this time, as I was taking the second part of the Moral Sciences Tripos in one year, but I never found that love, either when it prospered or when it did not, interfered in the slightest with my intellectual concentration. When the Easter Vacation came, I went first with my Aunt Maude to Rome to stay with my uncle the Monsignor. And from there I went to Paris, where Logan had an apartment, and his mother and Alys were staying close by. It was my first experience of the life of American art students in Paris, and it all seemed to me very free and delightful. I remember a dance at which Alys appeared in a dress designed by Roger Fry. I remember, also, some rather unsuccessful attempts to instil culture into me by taking me to see Impressionist pictures in the Luxembourg. And I remember floating on the Seine at night near Fontainebleau with Alys beside me, while Logan filled the night with unbending cleverness. When I got back to Cambridge, James Ward spoke to me gravely about wasting my last vacation on the Continent when I ought to have been working. However, I did not take him seriously, and I got a First with distinction.

About the time that I finished with Triposes, Alys consented to become definitely engaged to me. At this, my people, who had never ceased from opposition, began to feel that something drastic must be done. They had no power to control my actions, and their strictures on her character had naturally remained without effect. Nevertheless, they found a weapon which very nearly gave them the victory. The old family doctor, a serious Scotsman with mutton-chop whiskers, began to tell me all the things that I had dimly suspected about my family history: how my Uncle William was mad, how my Aunt Agatha's engagement had had to be broken off because of her insane delusions, and how my father had suffered from epilepsy (from what medical authorities have told me since, I doubt whether this was a correct diagnosis). In those days, people who considered themselves scientific tended to have a somewhat superstitious attitude towards heredity, and of course it was not known how many mental disorders are the result of bad environment and unwise moral instruction. I began to feel as if I was doomed to a dark destiny. I read Ibsen's Ghosts and Björnson's Heritage of the Kurts. Alys had an uncle who was rather queer. By emphasising these facts until they rendered me nearly insane, my people persuaded us to take the best medical opinion as to whether, if we were married, our children were likely to be mad. The best medical opinion, primed by the family doctor, who was primed by the family, duly pronounced that from the point of view of heredity we ought not to have children. After receiving this verdict in the house of the family doctor at Richmond, Alys and I walked up and down Richmond Green discussing it. I was for breaking off the engagement, as I believed what the doctors said and greatly desired children, Alys said she had no great wish for children, and would prefer to marry, while avoiding a family. After about half an hour's discussion, I came round to her point of view. We therefore announced that we intended to marry, but to have no children. Birth control was viewed in those days with the sort of horror which it now inspires only in Roman Catholics. My people and the family doctor tore their hair. The family doctor solemnly assured me that, as a result of his medical experience, he knew the use of contraceptives to be almost invariably gravely injurious to health. My people hinted that it was the use of contraceptives which had made my father epileptic. A thick atmosphere of sighs, tears, groans, and morbid horror was produced, in which it was scarcely possible to breathe. The discovery that my father had been epileptic, my aunt subject to delusions, and my uncle insane, caused me terror, for in those days everybody viewed the inheritance of mental disorders superstitiously. I had sensed something of the kind, though without definite knowledge. On July 21, 1893 (which I subsequently learnt to be Alys's birthday), I dreamed that I discovered my mother to be mad, not dead, and that, on this ground, I felt it my duty not to marry. After the facts had been told to me, I had great difficulty in shaking off fear, as appears from the following reflections, which I showed to nobody, not even Alys, until a much later date.

July 20-21 (1894). Midnight. This night is the anniversary of my dream about Alys, and also of her birth. Strange coincidence, which, combined with the fact that most of my dream has come true, very strongly impresses my imagination. I was always superstitious, and happiness has made me more so; it is terrifying to be so utterly absorbed in one person. Nothing has any worth to me except in reference to her. Even my own career, my efforts after virtue, my intellect (such as it is), everything I have or hope for, I value only as gifts to her, as means of shewing how unspeakably I value her love. And I am happy, divinely happy. Above all, I can still say, thank God, lust has absolutely no share in my passion. But just when I am happiest, when joy is purest, it seems to transcend itself and fell suddenly to haunting terrors of loss - it would be so easy to lose what rests on so slender and unstable a foundation! My dream on her birthday; my subsequent discovery that my people had deceived me as in that dream; their solemn and reiterated warnings; the gradual discovery, one by one, of the tragedies, hopeless and unalleviated, which have made up the lives of most of my family; above all, the perpetual gloom which hangs like a fate over PL,¹ and which, struggle as I will, invades my inmost soul whenever I go there, taking all joy even out of Alys's love; all these, combined with the fear of heredity, cannot but oppress my mind. They make me feel as though a doom lay on the family and I were vainly battling against it to escape into the freedom which seems the natural birthright of others. Worst of all, this dread, of necessity, involves Alys too. I feel as tho' darkness were my native element, and a cruel destiny had compelled me, instead of myself attaining to the light, to drag her back with me into the gulf from which I have partially emerged. I cannot tell whether destiny will take the form of a sudden blow or of a long-drawn torture, sapping our energies and ruining our love; but I am haunted by the fear of the family ghost, which seems to seize on me with clammy invisible hands to avenge my desertion of its tradition of gloom.

¹ Pembroke Lodge.

All these feelings of course are folly, solely due to chocolate cake and sitting up late; but they are none the less real, and on the slightest pretence they assail me with tremendous force. Painful as it will necessarily be to them, I must for some time avoid seeing more than a very little of my people and of PL, otherwise I really shall begin to fear for my sanity. PL is to me like a family vault haunted by the ghosts of maniacs - especially in view of all that I have recently learnt from Dr Anderson. Here, thank heaven, all is bright and healthy, my Alys especially; and as long as I can forget PL and the ghastly heritage It bequeaths to me I have no forebodings, but only the pure joy of mutual love, a joy so great, so divine, that I have not yet ceased to wonder how such a thing can exist in this world which people abuse. But oh I wish I could know it would bring joy to her in the end, and not teach her further, what alas it has already begun to teach her, how terrible a thing life may be and what depths of misery it can contain.

The fears generated at that time have never ceased to trouble me subconsciously. Ever since, but not before, I have been subject to violent nightmares in which I dream that I am being murdered, usually by a lunatic. I scream out loud, and on one occasion, before waking, I nearly strangled my wife, thinking that I was defending myself against a murderous assault.

The same kind of fear caused me, for many years, to avoid all deep emotion, and live, as nearly as I could, a life of intellect tempered by flippancy. Happy marriage gradually gave me mental stability, and when, at a later date, I experienced new emotional storms, I found that I was able to remain sane. This banished the conscious fear of insanity, but the unconscious fear has persisted.

whatever indecision I had felt as to what we ought to do was ended when Alys and I found another doctor, who assured me breezily that he had used contraceptives himself for many years, that no bad effects whatever were to be feared, and that we should be fools not to marry. So we went ahead, in spite of the shocked feelings of two generations. As a matter of fact, after we had been married two years we came to the conclusion that the medical authorities whom we had consulted had been talking nonsense, as indeed they obviously were, and we decided to have children if possible. But Alys proved to be barren, so the fuss had been all about nothing.

At the conclusion of this fracas I went to live at Friday's Hill with Alys's people, and there I settled down to work at a Fellowship dissertation, taking non-Euclidean Geometry as my subject. My people wrote almost daily letters to me about 'the life you are leading', but it was clear to me that they would drive me into insanity if I let them, and that I was getting mental health from Alys. We grew increasingly intimate.

My people, however, were not at the end of their attempts. In August they induced Lord Dufferin, who was then our Ambassador in Paris, to offer me the post of honorary attache. I had no wish to take it, but my grandmother said that she was not much longer for this world, and that I owed it to her to see whether separation would lessen my infatuation. I did not wish to feel remorse whenever she came to die, so I agreed to go to Paris for a minimum of three months, on the understanding that if that produced no effect upon my feelings, my people would no longer actively oppose my marriage. My career in diplomacy, however, was brief and inglorious. I loathed the work, and the people, and the atmosphere of cynicism, and the separation from Alys. My brother came over to visit me, and although I did not know it at the time, he had been asked to come by my people, in order to form a judgement on the situation. He came down strongly on my side, and when the three months were up, which was on November 17th, I shook the dust of Paris off my feet, and returned to Alys. I had, however, first to make my peace with her, as she had grown jealous of her sister, of whom I saw a good deal during the latter part of my time in Paris. It must be said that making my peace only took about ten minutes.

The only thing of any permanent value that I derived from my time in Paris was the friendship of Jonathan Sturges, a man for whom I had a very great affection. Many years after his death, I went to see Henry James's house at Rye, which was kept at that time as a sort of museum. There I suddenly came upon Sturges's portrait hanging on the wall. It gave me so great a shock that I remember nothing else whatever about the place. He was a cripple, intensely sensitive, very literary, and belonging to what one must call the American aristocracy (he was a nephew of J. P. Morgan). He was a very witty man. I took him once Into the Fellows' Garden at Trinity, and he said: 'Oh yes! This is where George Eliot told F. W. H. Myers that there is no God, and yet we must be good; and Myers decided that there is a God, and yet we need not be good.' I saw a great deal of him during my time in Paris, which laid the foundations of a friendship that ended only with his death.

Letters

15 rue du Sommerard Paris Oct. 25 '91

My dear Bertie

I have been meaning to write to you before, to tell you how much I enjoyed my visit to Cambridge, but I have been through such a season of woe in settling myself here! It is all due to that bothersome new order, for it is very hard to get rooms within the fixed margin, and I am much too proud to confess an excess so soon. So I have at last settled myself in the Latin Quarter, up seven flights of stairs, and I find that the spiritual pride that fills my breast more than amply compensates for all the bother. It is nice to feel better than one's neigh bours! I met a friend yesterday who is living in cushioned ease across the river, and I felt so very superior, I am rather afraid that when I write to my adviser, I shall receive a hair shirt by return of post. Have you tried to observe the discipline? I do not speak evil, for I have no one to speak it to, though I think it of my landlady. And the other day, I was so reduced by the state of my things when I moved here that I could do nothing but eat a bun and read Tid-bits.

I have begun to write a novel, but be assured, it is not religious, and is not to be rejected by the publishers for a year or two yet.

My journey here after I left you was most amusing. On the steamer we sat in rows and glared at each other, after the pleasant English manner. There was a young marriẽd couple who stood out as a warning and a lesson to youth. He was a puzzled looking, beardless young man, and she was a limp figure of a woman, and there was a baby. The husband poured his wife into an armchair, and then walked up and down with the baby. Then he stood for a long while, looking at the watery horizon as if he were asking some question of it. But the dismal unwellness of his wife and baby soon put an end to his meditations. What a warning to youth! And I might have been in his place!

I hope you went to the debate to prove that the upper classes are uneducated - those broad generalisations are so stimulating - there is so much that one can say.

I hope you mean to join our order, and it you do, make me your adviser. I will set you nice penances, and then I shall be sure to hear from you - for there must be some rules that you will break - some rift in your integrity.

Give my regards to Sheldon Amos if you see him.

Yours ever, Logan Pearsall Smith

15 Rue du Sommerard Paris Nov. 1891

Dear Bertie

I enclose the rules - the general outlines - we must have a meeting of the Order before long to settle them definitely. As for rule one, you had better fix a sum, and then keep to that. By the account you enclosed to me, you appear to be living on eggs and groceries - I should advise you to dine occasionally. Then at College one ought to entertain more or less - and that ought not to count as board and lodging. As to rule 4 - I should say at College it is perhaps better not to do too much at social work.

What you say about changing one's self denial is only too true and terrible - it went to my heart - one does form a habit, and then it is no bother. I will write to the Arch Prig about it.

Of course you must consider yourself a member, and you must confess to me, and I will write you back some excellent ghostly advice. And you must get other members. We shall expect to enroll half of Trinity.

I am living as quietly as an oyster, and I find it pleasant to untangle oneself for a while from all social ties, and look round a bit. And there is so much to look at here!

Yours ever, Logan Pearsall Smith

Here are the rules of The Order of Prigs as Logan Pearsall Smith drew them up.

Maxims: Don't let anyone know you are a prig.

1. Deny yourself in inconspicuous ways and don't speak of your economies.

2. Avoid all vain and unkind criticism of others.¹

3. Always keep your company manners on - keep your coat brushed and your shoe-laces tied.

4. Avoid the company of the rich and the tables of the luxurious - all those who do not regard their property as a trust.

5. Don't be a Philistine! Don't let any opportunities of hearing good music, seeing good pictures or acting escape you.

6. Always let others profit as much as possible by your skill in these things.

7. Do what you can to spread the order.

¹ Logan was the most malicious scandal-monger I have ever Known.

Specific Rules:

1. Don't let your board and lodging exceed two pounds a week.

2. Keep a strict account of monies spent on clothes and pleasure.

3. If your income provides more than the necessities of Life, give at least a tenth of it in Charity.

4. Devote an evening a week, or an equivalent amount of time, to social work with the labouring Classes, or visiting the sick.

5. Set apart a certain time every day for examination of conscience.

6. Abstain entirely from all intoxicating liquors, except for the purposes of health.

7. Practise some slight self-denial every day, for instance Getting up when called. No cake at tea, No butter at breakfast, No coffee after dinner.

8. Observe strictly the rules of diet and exercise prescribed by one's doctor, or approved by one's better reason.

9. Read some standard poetry or spiritual book every day, for at least half an hour.

10. Devote ½ hour every other day, or. 1½ hours weekly, to the keeping fresh of learning already acquired - going over one's scientific or classical work.

11. Keep all your appointments punctually, and don't make any engagements or promises you are not likely to fulfil.

The Arch Prig¹ or the associate Prig is empowered to give temporary or permanent release from any of these rules, if he deem it expedient.

¹ I don't know who the Arch Prig was, or even whether he existed outside Logan's imagination.

All neglect of the rules and maxims shall be avowed to the Arch Prig, or one's associate, who shall set a penance, if he think it expedient.

Suggested penances:

1. Pay a duty call.

2. Write a duty letter.

3. Learn some poetry or prose.

4. Translate English into another language.

5. Tidy up your room.

6. Extend your hospitality to a bore.

7. (Hair shirts can be had of the Arch Prig on application.)

15 Rue du Sommerard Paris Dec. 3 1891

My dear Bertie

I think you make an excellent Prig, and you have lapses enough to make it interesting. I was shocked however by the price, 12/6 you paid for a stick. There seems an odour of sin about that. 2/6 I should think ought to be the limit, and if the morality of Cambridge is not much above that of Oxford, I should think that your 12/6 stick would not keep in your possession long.

I know nothing about tobacco and meerschaums, so I cannot follow you into these regions of luxury. I must ask some one who smokes pipes about it. Well, I think you'd better impose one of the penances out of the list on yourself and then if you continue in sin I shall become more severe.

I find Priggishness, like all forms of excellence, much more difficult than I had imagined - by-the-by - let me tell you that if one simply thinks one has read one's half hour, one has probably read only a quarter of an hour. Human nature, at least my nature, is invariably optimistic in regard to itself.

No, the rule as to 1½ hrs. a week need not apply to you - but you ought to go to concerts, unless you are too busy. As to charities - there are an infinite number that are good - but why not save what money you have for such purposes for the Prig fund? And then when we have a meeting we can decide what to do with it. It will be most interesting when we all meet, to compare experiences. I am afraid it may lead however to reflexions of a pessimistic tinge.

My adviser the Arch Prig, has failed me - if it were not speaking evil I should insinuate the suspicion that he had got into difficulties with the rules himself, which would be very terrible.

I live alone here with the greatest contentment. One inherits, when one comes here, such a wealth of tradition and civilisation! The achievements of three or four centuries of intelligence and taste - that is what one has at Paris. I was bewildered at first, and shivered on the brink, and was homesick for England, but now I have come to love Paris perfectly.

Do write again when you have collected more sins, and tell me whether the fear of penance acts on you in the cause of virtue. It does on a cowardly nature like mine.

Yours ever, Logan Pearsall Smith

15 Rue du Sommerard Paris Jan. 11th 1892

My dear Bertie

I have just read through your letter again to see if I could not find some excuse for imposing a penance on you, for having hurt my foot this afternoon, I feel in a fierce mood. But I am not one of those who see sin in a frock coat - if it be well fitting. But wait a bit - are you sure you told me what you had read in order, as you say, to confound my scepticism - was there not a slight infringement of maxim i lurking in your mind? If upon severe self-examination you find there was, I think you had better finish learning the 'Ode to the West Wind' which you partly knew last summer.

So far I have written in my official capacity as your adviser. But as your friend I was shocked and startled by your calm statement that you indulge in 'all the vices not prohibited by the rules'. These I need not point out are numerous, extending from Baccarat to biting one's finger nails - I hesitate to believe that you have abandoned yourself to them all. I think you must have meant that you read a great deal of Browning.

I am living in great quiet and contentment. A certain portion of the day I devote to enriching the English language with tales and moralities, the rest of the time I contemplate the mind of man as expressed in art and literature. I am thirsting of course for that moment - and without doubt the moment will come - when I shall hear my name sounded by all Fame's tongues and trumpets, and see it misspelled in all the newspapers. But I content myself in the meantime, by posing as a poet in the drawing rooms of credulous American ladies.

As a novelist or 'fictionist' to use the Star expression, I make it my aim to show up in my tales, in which truth is artistically mingled with morality, 'Cupid and all his wanton snares'. I also wish to illustrate some of the incidents of the eternal war between the sexes. What will the whited sepulchres of America say? Je m'en fiche.

Well, it is pleasant thus to expatiate upon my own precious identity.

I suppose you are 'on the threshold' - as one says, when one wishes to write high style - the threshold of another term - and so resuming my character of moral adviser I will salt this letter with some sententious phrase, if I can find one that is both true and fresh - but I cannot think of any - the truth is always so banal - that is why the paradox has such a pull over it.

Yours ever, Logan Pearsall Smith

14 Rue de la Grande Chaumière, Paris March 19 '92

Dear Bertie

I think members ought to be admitted to the Order, who are moderate drinkers, if they are satisfactory in other ways. Good people are so rare. But on all these points we must debate when we meet. We are going to Haslemere sometime in Easter Week, I think, and I hope you will keep a few days free to pay us a visit then. But I will write to you again when I get to England. As you see by my address, I have moved again, and I am at last settled in a little apartment furnished by myself. I am in Bohemia, a most charming country, inhabited entirely by French Watchmen and American and English art students, young men and women, who live in simple elegance and deshabille. My £2.0.0 a week seems almost gross extravagance here, and one's eyes are never wounded by the sight of clean linen and new coats. Really you can't imagine how charming it is here - everybody young, poor and intelligent and hard at work.

When I came here first, I knew some 'society' people on the other side of the river, and used to go and take tea and talk platitudes with them, but now their lives seem so empty, their minds so waste and void of sense, that I cannot approach them without a headache of boredom. How dull and unintelligent people can make themselves if they but try.

Yours ever, L. P. Smith

Friday's Hill Haslemere Nov. 24 '92

Ça va bien à Cambridge, Bertie? I wish I could look in on you - only you would be startled at my aspect, as I have shaved my head till it is as bald as an egg, and dressed myself in rags, and retired to the solitude of Fernhurst, where I am living alone, in the Costelloe Cottage.¹ Stevens wrote to me, asking me to send something to the Cambridge Observer² and, prompted by Satan (as I believe) I promised I would. So I hurried up and wrote an article on Henry James, and when I had posted it last night, it suddenly came over me how stupid and bad it was. Well, I hope the good man won't print it.

¹ This was a cottage close to Friday's Hill, inhabited by the family of Logan's married sister Mrs Costelloe (afterwards Mrs Berenson).² This was a high-brow undergraduate magazine, mainly promoted by Oswald Sickert (brother of the painter), who was a close friend of mine.

There are good things in the Observer he sent me. I was quite surprised - it certainly should be encouraged. Only I don't go with it in its enthusiasm for impurity - its jeers at what Milton calls 'The sage and serious doctrine of virginity'. It is dangerous for Englishmen to try to be French, they never catch the note - the accent. A Frenchman if he errs, does it 'dans tin moment d'oubli', as they say - out of absentmindedness, as it were - while the Englishman is much too serious and conscious. No, a civilisation must in the main develop on the lines and in the ways of feeling already laid down for it by those who founded and fostered it. I was struck with this at the 'New English Art Club' I went up to see. There are some nice things, but in the mass it bore the same relation to real art - French art - as A Church Congress does to real social movements.

So do show Sickert and his friends that a gospel of impurity, preached with an Exeter Hall zeal and denunciation, will do much to thicken the sombre fogs in which we live already.

I shall stay in England for a while longer - when does your vac. begin and where do you go?

Yrs. L. P. Smith

14 rue de la Grande Chaumière, Paris Feb. 14th '93

My dear Bertie

I was sorry that Musgrave and I could not get to Richmond, but I was only a short time in London. I shall hope to go at Easter, if I am back. Paris welcomed me as all her own, when I got here and I have been living in the charm of this delightful and terrible place. For it is pretty terrible in many ways, at least the part of Paris I live in. Perhaps it is the wickedness of Paris itself, perhaps the fact that people live in this quarter without conventions or disguises or perhaps - which I am inclined to believe - the life of artists is almost always tragical - or not wanting at least in elements of Tragedy - that gives me the sense of the wretchedness and the fineness of life here. Just think this very morning I discovered that a girl here I know had gone mad. She came in to see me, begged me to help her write a book to attack French immorality and now I am waiting to see the doctor I sent for, to see if we must shut her up.

As for morality, well - one finds plenty of the other thing, both in women and men. I met the other day one of the Young Davies' at Studd's studio - and my heart sank a little at the sight of another nice young Englishman come to live in Paris. But he I suppose can take care of himself.

But I must not abuse Paris too much, for after all this, and perhaps on account of it, Paris is beyond measure interesting. There are big stakes to be won or lost and everybody is playing for them.

Yours, L. Pearsall Smith

44 Grosvenor Road Westminster Oct. 29 '93

My dear Bertie

You I suppose are watching the yellowing of the year at Cambridge, and Indulging in the sentiments proper to the season. I am still kept unwillingly in London, and see no present prospect of getting away. I have tried to like London, for its grimy charms have never yet been adequately commended; - and charms it certainly has - but I have decided that if ever I 'do' London hatred and not love must be my inspiration, and for literary purposes hatred is an excellent theme. All French realism is rooted in hatred of life as it is, and according to Harold Joachim's rude but true remark, such pessimism must be based somehow on optimism. 'No shadow without light', and the bright dream of what London might be, and Paris already, to a small extent is - makes the present London seem ignoble and dark. Then I have been going a little into literary society - not the best literary society, but the London Bohemia of minor novelists, poets and journalists - and it does not win one to enthusiasm. No; the London Bohemia is wanting in just that quality which would redeem Bohemia - disinterestedness - it is a sordid, money-seeking Bohemia, conscious of its own meanness and determined to see nothing but meanness in die world at large. They sit about restaurant tables, these pale-faced little young men, and try to show that all the world is as mean and sordid as they themselves are - and indeed they do succeed for the moment in making the universe seem base.

How do you like your philosophy work? Don't turn Hegelian and lose yourself in perfumed dreams - the world will never get on unless a few people at least will limit themselves to believing what has been proved, and keep clear the distinction between what we really know and what we don't.

Yours ever, Logan Pearsall Smith

Queen's Hotel Barnsley Nov. 16 1893

Dear Bertie

Thanks so much for your generous cheque¹ - the need here is very great, but thanks to the money coming in, there is enough to keep the people going in some sort of way. They are splendid people certainly - and it is hard to believe they will ever give in. It seems pretty certain to me that the Masters brought on the strike very largely for the purpose of smashing the Federation. Of course the Federation is often annoying - and I daresay the owners have respectable grievances, but their profits are very great and no one seems to think that they could not afford the 'living wage'. Within the last year a good deal of money has been invested in collieries here, and several new pits started, showing that the business is profitable. Well, it does one good to see these people, and the way they stick by each other, men and women, notwithstanding their really dreadful privations.

¹ In support of a miners' strike.

Yrs. Logan Pearsall Smith

44 Grosvenor Road Westminster Embankment S.W. Nov. 1893

Dear Bertie

You forgot to endorse this - write your name on the back, and send it to J. T. Drake, 41 Sheffield Road. It will be weeks before many of the Barnsley people will be able to get to work, and this money will come in most usefully. Every 10/- gives a meal to 240 children! I am very glad that I went to Barnsley, though I went with groans, but it does one good to see such a fine democracy. I wish you could have seen a meeting of miners I went to; a certain smart young Tory MP came with some courage, but very little sense to prove to the miners that they were wrong. They treated him with good-natured contempt and when he told them that their wages were quite sufficient they replied 'Try it lad yourself' - 'It wouldn't pay for your bloody starched clothes'. 'Lad, your belly's fool' and other playful remarks. 'Noo redooction' a woman shouted and everyone cheered. Then a miner spoke with a good deal of sense and sarcasm, and the young MP was In about as silly a position as one could be in - well-fed, well-dressed and rosy. The contrast between him and the man to whom he preached contentment was what you call striking. But he had to smile and look gracious, as only Tories can, and pretend he was enjoying it immensely.

Yrs. L. Pearsall Smith

44 Grosvenor Road Westminster Embankment S.W. Dec. 2nd (1893)

My dear Bertie

Of course I know how matters stand, and naturally being as fond of my sister as I am, I do not regard your way of feeling as folly. And if you remain of the same mind after several years, I can assure you that I don't know of anyone who I should like better as a brother-in-law — nor indeed do I think there is anyone who would make a better husband for Alys. But sincerely I think you would make a mistake by engaging yourself too soon - but I dare say you don't intend to do that. One never knows what one will develop into, and anyhow the first few years after 21 should be given to self education, and the search for one's work, and marriage, or even a settled engagement, interferes sadly with all that.

Yes I do believe in you, Bertie, though the faculty for belief is not one of those most developed in me - only I shall believe more in your decision when I see that after a few years of good work and experience of the world you still remain the same. Win your spurs, mon cher - let us see that you are good and sensible - as indeed we believe you are your friends all have the highest ideas of your ability and promise, only keep yourself free and interested in your work. Love should be the servant, and not the master of life.

Yours affy. L. P. S.

The following letters were written to Alys during our three-months' separation.

Pembroke Lodge Richmond, Surrey July 31st 1894

My darling Alys

As was to be expected there is nothing particular to be told, as nothing has happened. So far, however, it has not been particularly odious. When I arrived I found my Grandmother on a sofa in her sitting-room, looking very pale and sad; still, I was relieved to find her out of bed. Our meeting was very affectionate, though silent. We have talked only of indifferent subjects; she obviously realises that it is bad for her health to talk of anything agitating. The Doctor does not allow her to have any correspondence but what my Aunt thinks good for her (though she herself doesn't know this), however she was given my letter this morning and seems to have been pleased with it. My false conscience has been rather subdued by thee and the atmosphere of Friday's Hill, so that I find it far more endurable than last time in spite of my grandmother's illness; perhaps because of it too, in a way, because it sets everything in a kindlier and more natural key.

My aunt has been cross-questioning me about all my plans, but her comments, though most eloquent, have been silent. I told her about America, and she seemed to think it odd we should go unmarried: I said 'Well we thought it would be better than marrying before going out there', but to that she made no answer. All she said was 'I shan't tell Granny about that just yet'. She will probably have to go away for her health in September and she fished for me to offer to stay here with my grandmother; but I said I should be at Friday's Hill. I said I might in the following months come here every now and then, but should mainly live at Friday's Hill. She looked thunder, but said nothing. She has realised the uselessness of advice or criticism. She spoke about my grandmother seeing thee, but I said it would be better not without me.

My grandmother unfortunately is not so well this evening; she has to take sleeping-draughts and medicines for her digestion constantly and they are afraid both of stopping them and of her becoming dependent on them. She is very affecting in her illness, but having steeled my conscience I don't mind so much. She has been writing verses about Arthur to try and distract her mind from this one topic; she has also been reading a good deal with the same end in view; but apparently she has not succeeded very well.

But really it isn't half so bad here as it might be, so thee needn't make thyself unhappy about me or imagine I shall come back in the state of mind I was in yesterday fortnight. However I don't want - if I can help it, to make any promises as to when I shall come back. Goodnight Dearest. I am really happy but for being unutterably bored and I hope thee is enjoying the country even without me to force thee to do so.

Thine devotedly Bertie

Ramsbury Manor Wiltshire Aug. 30th 1894

My Darling

I am very much perplexed by this offer of a post in Pans. If I were sure it wouldn't last beyond Xmas, and then would not tie me down to the same sort of post in future, I should feel inclined to accept it: it would pass the time of our separation very enjoyably (for I should certainly enjoy being at the Paris Embassy immensely); it would give me about as much of the world as could well be crammed into the time; it would give me some knowledge of the inside of diplomacy, and would certainly be a valuable experience, if it could remain an isolated episode. I don't know whether it would necessarily postpone our meeting and marriage; I fear it would; and that would be an argument against it. Also I am afraid of the world and its tone, as they are very bad for me, especially when I enjoy them, and I am very much afraid that such a career, once entered on, would be very hard to leave. Besides it would mean a number of aristocratic ties, which would hamper our future activity. And hardly any home appointment could induce me to give up the year of travel we propose, as I am sure that would not only be far the pleasantest way of spending our first year of marriage, but would also have great educational value. I wish my grandmother had given me more particulars: all that is clear from her letter is that it would give her great satisfaction if I accepted it. I should probably offend Lord Dufferin if I refused it, though perhaps that could be avoided. I do wish we could meet to discuss it; and £ should like to have Logan's opinion.

2 p.m. The more I think of it, the more it seems to me that it would be the first step in a career I wish to avoid; but I cannot be sure till I hear more. And if I refuse, it would of course definitely cut me off from Secretaryships etc., as people wouldn't want to offer things to so fastidious and apparently capricious a young man. That is an advantage or the reverse according as you look at it. My brain is in a whirl and it is too hot to think.

Pembroke Lodge Richmond, Surrey Sep. 1, 9 p.m. '94

My darling Alys

Now that I am home again I have time to write a really long letter, and I feel tonight as if I could write for ever: I am made sentimental and full of thoughts by the place. I am reminded so vividly of last September that it seems as if I had all my work still before me. I went out today and sat by the fountain and thought of the long solitary days I used to spend there, meditating, wishing, scarcely daring to hope; trying to read the minutest indications in the bare, dry little letters thee used to write me, and in the number of days thee waited before answering mine; miserable in a way, mad with impatience, and yet full of a new life and vigour, so that I used to start with surprise at finding I no longer wished to die, as I had done for 5 years, and had supposed I always should do. How I counted the hours till Dunrozel came to visit here, and I was free to leave my Grandmother! Being here alone again I feel as if the intervening year had been a dream; as if thee still were to me a distant, scarcely possible heaven; indifferent, as heaven must be, to mere earthly stragglers. But there is a strange weariness, like that of a troublesome dream, which forms an undercurrent to all my thoughts and makes the dream-feelings different in tone from those of last September; a weariness compounded of all the struggles and anxieties and pains of the past year, of all the strain and all the weary discussions and quarrels which winning thee has cost me, I am not unhappy, however, far from it; but for the moment it seems as if I had lived my life, and it had been good; it reached a climax, a supreme moment, and now there seems no more need to care about it: it can have nothing better in store, and therefore there would be no bitterness in death.

I suppose thee will think these feelings morbid, but I don't know that they are particularly so. I got into a dreamy mood from reading Pater: I was immensely impressed by it, indeed it seemed to me almost as beautiful as anything I had ever read (except here and there, where his want of humour allowed him to Ml into a discordant note, as with the valetudinarian cat); especially I was struck by the poplars and another passage I can't find again. It recalled no definite childish memories, because since the age of definite memories I have not lived in a world of sensuous impressions like that of Florian; but rather in the manner of Wordsworth's Ode, I dimly feel again the very early time before my intellect had killed my senses. I have a vague confused picture of the warm patches of red ground where the setting summer sun shone on it, and of the rustling of the poplars in front of the house when I used to go to bed by daylight after hot days, and the shadow of the house crept slowly up them. I have a vague feeling of perpetual warm sunny weather, when I used to be taken driving and notice the speckled shadows moving across the carriage, before it occurred to me that they were caused by the leaves overhead. (As soon as I discovered this, the scientific interest killed the impression, and I began speculating as to why the patches of light were always circular and so on.) But very early indeed I lost the power of attending to impressions per se, and always abstracted from them and sought the scientific and intellectual and abstract that lay behind them, so that it wouldn't have occurred to me, as to Florian, to need a philosophy for them; they went bodily into my mental waste-paper basket. (That is why the book made me so dreamy, because it carried me back to my earliest childhood, where nothing seems really real.) I didn't begin to need such a philosophy till the age of puberty, when the sensuous and emotional reasserted itself more strongly than before or since, so that I felt carried back for a time to my infancy; then I made a sort of religion of beauty, such as Florian might have had; I had a passionate desire to find some link between the true and the beautiful, so strong that beauty gave me intense pain (tho' also a tingling sensuous thrill of tremendous strength), for the constant sense of this unfulfilled requirement of harmony between it and fact. I read Alastor after I had lived some time in this state, and there I found the exact mood I had experienced, vividly described. It was only gradually, as I came to care less and less for beauty, as I got through die natural period of morbidness (for in me so intense a passion for the beautiful was necessarily abnormal), only as I became more purely intellectual again, that I ceased to suffer from this conflict. Of course my taste of real life in the Fitz episode got me out of such mere sentimentality, and since then it has been only by moments I have suffered from it. If I could believe in Bradley, as I do most days, I should never suffer from it again....

Sunday morning Sep. 2

I sent thee a wire from Reading early yesterday morning to say 'Shan't come since Nov. 17 is unchanged', but I suppose thee was already gone from Chichester before it arrived. Thee says thee will come to Paris if I can't come to England, but I rather gather from my Grandmother that I shall be able to chuck this post when I like. Will thee send my hat in my hat-box, as I need both? And please write by the 1st post tomorrow, otherwise I may be gone. I shall probably go the day after hearing from Lord Kimberley. But I can't go and see Edith and Bryson, as they surely are staying in Britanny till Nov? Shall I send the Pater to Mariechen, or straight to Carey Thomas? All these details are tiresome, and I am sorry not to have remembered all the things I want sent in one batch, but my memory works that way unavoidably.

I like the Tragic Muse immensely, it is such fun; besides it is singularly appropriate to my present situation. - My Aunt Georgy yesterday was very kind, but too inquisitive (as indeed most women are); she said even in old times at the slightest thought of a marriage my Grandmother used to get into a sort of fever and be fussy and worried about it....

... I am grown quite glad of the Paris plan, and shall make a great effort not to hate my companions too much. At any rate I ought to be able to write amusing letters from there. Give me literary criticisms of my descriptions, so that I may make them as vivid as possible. - It is sad thee should have grown bored with thy friend's talk, but it is difficult to throw oneself into other people's petty concerns when one's own are very absorbing and interesting. I am not sorry thee has come to understand why I minded thy going right away to America more than a separation with thee still in London. Thee thought it very silly then, and so no doubt it is, but it is natural.

I hope this letter is long enough to satisfy thee: it has been a great satisfaction to write it, and I shall expect a very long one in return. If thee hears from Edith Thomas, thee will send me her letter, won't thee? I will wire as soon as I know when I'm going to Paris.

Goodbye my Darling. It was much better not to meet again and have the pain of a real parting.

Thine devotedly Bertie

Pembroke Lodge Richmond, Surrey Sep. 3 '94, 10 a.m.

Dearest Alys

I got three letters from thee by the 1st post this morning, which was delightful; one of them forwarded from Rams bury, a particularly charming one. I am returning the documents it contained, which amused me much.

I have quite settled to accept the Paris offer (owing to thy urging me to do so), and I fancy Lord Kimberley's confirmation of it is purely formal. I am only waiting here for another letter from Lord Dufferin, and then I shall be off immediately. But I am rather sorry thee makes so very light of the dangers and drawbacks of aristocracy; I begin to fear thee will never understand why I dread them, and that it is not a mere superstition. Thee and Logan could mis with aristocrats to any extent (before thy engagement at any rate) without ever coming across the stumbling-blocks they put in the way of one of their own class who wishes to 'escape'. Americans are liked in society just because they are for the most part queer specimens, and don't do the things other people do or abstain from the things other people abstain from; people expect a sort of spectacular amusement from them, and therefore tolerate anything, though all but a very small minority make up for it by bitterly abusing them behind their backs. It thus comes about that you would never see aristocrats as they are with one of themselves; rigid and stiff and conventional, and horrified at the minutest divergence from family tradition. Besides they are mostly my relations and my Grandmother's friends; unless I make a fool of myself in Paris, this offer will lead to others, at home; any refusal will give great pain to my Grandmother (whose death is by no means to be counted on) and will offend and annoy the whole set of them. Also being my relations they all feel they have a right to advise; when I am trying to work quietly and unobtrusively, in a way which seems to me honest, but is very unlikely to bring me the slightest fame or success till I'm 50 at least, they will come and badger me to go in for immediate success; from my many connections and the good will most of them unfortunately bear me, it will probably be easily within my reach, and I shall be pestered and worried almost out of my life by their insistence. And (I must confess it) horrible as such a thought is, I do not entirely trust thee to back me up. I have a passion for experience, but if I am to make anything of the talents I have, I must eschew a vast deal of possible experience, shut myself up in my study, and live a quiet life in which I see only people who approve of such a life (as far as possible); I know myself well enough to be sure (though it is a confession of weakness) that if thee insists on my having a lot of experience, on my seeing a heterogeneous society and going out into the world, and perhaps having episodes of an utterly different, worldly sort of life, my nervous force will be unequal to the strain; I shall either have to give up the work my conscience approves of, or I shall be worn out and broken down by the time I'm 30. In short, [I] know my own needs, much better than thee does; and it is very important to me that thee should back me up in insisting on them. Casual experience of life is of very little use to a specialist, such as I aspire to be; good manners are absolutely useless. Thee has a sort of illogical kindness (not to call it weakness), which prevents thy seeing the application of a general rule to a particular case, if anybody is to derive a little pleasure from its infraction, so that thee is quite capable, while protesting that in general thee wishes me to lead a quiet student's life, of urging me in every particular case to accept offers, and go in for practical affairs, which really are hindrances to me. Both of us, too, are in danger of getting intoxicated by cheap success, which is the most damning thing on earth; if I waste these years, which ought to be given almost entirely to theoretic work and the acquisition of ideas by thought (since that is scarcely possible except when one is young), my conscience will reproach me throughout the rest of my life. Once for all, G. A. [God Almighty] has made me a theorist, not a practical man; a knowledge of the world is therefore of very little value to me. One hour spent in reading Wagner's statistics is probably of more value than 3 months in casual contact with society. Do be stern and consistent in accepting this view of myself, as otherwise (if I have to fight thee as well as my relations and the world) I shall certainly miss what I hope it lies in me to do. Thee may read what thee likes of this to Logan and see if he doesn't agree with me. The needs of a theorist are so utterly different from thine that it seems impossible for thee to realise how things of the greatest importance to thee may be utterly worthless to me. Beatrice Webb's case is very different, for she married a man whom all her smart relations hated, while thee with thy damnably friendly manner cannot help ingratiating thyself with them all! Besides I should imagine she was a person who feels it less than I do when she has to go against the wishes of those who are fond of her. And besides, all the early years of her life were wasted, so that she never can become first-rate,¹ or more than a shadow of her husband. - Excuse the tone of this letter: the fact is I have had the fear a long time that thee would ruin my career by wishing me to be too practical, and it has now at last come to a head....

¹ What a mistaken judgement!

Pembroke Lodge Richmond, Surrey Sep. 3 1894

Dearest Alys

... It was hardly in early boyhood I wished to harmonise the true and the beautiful, but rather when I was 16 and 17. I was peculiar chiefly because I was so constantly alone - when I had a spell of the society of other boys I soon became much more like them. I think when I was quite a child I was more thoughtful than rather later. I remember vividly a particular spot on the gravel walk outside the dining-room here, where a great uncle of mine told me one fine summer's afternoon at tea time that I should never enjoy future fine afternoons quite so much again. He was half in joke half in earnest, and went on to explain that one's enjoyments grow less and less intense and unmixed as one grows older. I was only 5 years old at the time, but, being a pessimistic theory about life, it impressed me profoundly; I remember arguing against it then, and almost weeping because I felt he probably knew better and was likely to be right; however I know now that he certainly wasn't, which is a consolation. Then as now, I hugged my enjoyments with a sort of personal affection, as tho' they were something outside of me. Little did he think what a profound impression his chance careless words had made!...

Pembroke Lodge Richmond, Surrey Sunday morning September 9th 1894

Dearest Alys

... It is strange, but I'm really in some ways happier than during the month at Friday's Hill; I realise that thee and I together were trying to stamp out my affection for my Grandmother, and that the attempt was a failure. My conscience was bad, so that I dreamt about her every night, and always had an uneasy consciousness of her in the background of even the happiest moments. Now, if she dies, I shall have a good conscience towards her: otherwise I should have had, I believe for life, that worse sort of remorse, the remorse for cruelty to a person whom death has removed from one's longing to make up for past deficiencies. My love for her is altogether too real to be ignored with impunity....

Victoria, 9 a.m. September 10th

Dearest Alys

I have got off after all today! I got thy two letters at breakfast: they will sustain me during the voyage. I feel too journeyfied to be sentimental or to have anything at all to say. I am very glad to be off, of course. But I was a little put off by my visit to the d'Estournelles yesterday. All the people were French except the Spanish Ambassador and the Italian Ambassadress, and I was not much impressed by their charms or even their manners: except the Spaniard, they were all oppressively and too restlessly polite for English taste: there was none of the repose and unobtrusiveness which constitutes good breeding to the British mind. I am to see three of them again in Paris, worse luck. It is very hard to live up to their incessant compliments and always have one ready to fire off in return....

British Embassy Paris Friday, October 12th, 1894 9.45 a.m.

My dearest Alys

... I had a perfectly delightful evening with Miss Belloc¹ last night from 7 till 12 - as she stayed so late I suppose she enjoyed it too. I believe she was really very nice but to me she was surrounded by the halo of Friday's Hill and I should have thought her charming if she'd been the devil incarnate, or anything short of human perfection. We met at 7 at Neal's Library, Rue Rivoli - then we walked some time in the Tuilleries Gardens and elsewhere, and then dined at a queer quiet place in the Palais Royal. Then we walked about again for a long time, and both smoked an enormous number of cigarettes, and finally I left her at the door of her hotel at midnight, with hopes of another meeting today or tomorrow. We talked of thee and all the family, of French and English people, of Grant Allen, Stead and Mrs Amos, of the Embassy and its dreariness - of the various French poets who'd been in love with her and whom she'd been in love with - of her way of getting on with her French conventional relations and of their moral ideas (always incomprehensible and therefore interesting to me) - of Lady Henry and Pollen (whom we agreed to loathe) and Miss Willard - of vice in general and the difference between Parisian and London vice in particular and of her experiences in the way of being spoken to - and many other things. I found her talk very interesting and I think she enjoyed herself too - though not of course as much as I did, because she was the first congenial person I'd seen since I was at Vétheuil,¹ and the first to whom I could talk about thee. Her French sentiments come in very oddly - it is difficult to fit them in with her love of Stead - altogether being of two nations has made her not so much of a piece as she ought to be. But I did enjoy my evening - far more than anything since I left Friday's Hill - for the first time I was able to admire the Seine at night (which is perfectly lovely) without growing maudlin....

¹ Afterwards Mrs Lowndes. She was a sister of Hilaire Belloc.¹ I stayed a week-end at Vétheuil with three sisters named Kinsella, who were friends of the Pearsall Smiths. I there met Condor the painter, whose only remark was: 'Wouldn't it be odd if one were so poor that one had to give them shaving soap instead of cream with their tea?' It was there also that I made the acquaintance of Jonathan Sturges, who was in love with one of the sisters.

Monday, October 15th, 1894 12.30 a.m.

My Beloved

Don't say thee thinks of me from my letters as 'brains in the abstract', it does sound so cold and dry and lifeless. Letters are bad, but they ought to have more reality than that. To me too tonight five weeks seems a long time - that is because my brother is with me. I shall be glad when he goes. I hate him and half fear him - he dominates me when he is with me because I dread his comments if he should know me as I am. Thee hasn't made me less sensitive but more so because I have had to embody one result of my real self in a form in which all the world can see it, which gives every one a hold for attacking me - I dread the moment when the Embassy people will discover it. Even the joy of getting away from all the people who annoy me would be enough by itself to be an intense source of joy....

British Embassy, Paris Wednesday, October 17th 1894 10 a.m.

My darling Alys

... I don't at all wish to alarm people - but my brother, of his own accord yesterday, while we were dining at La Perouse, said he could well imagine it, that he was afraid of me, though of hardly anyone else, because I never let myself go, and one felt me coldly critical inside. - Of course that is what I feel with my brother, but I'm sorry If I'm that way with people like Miss Belloc. He thinks himself a person of universal Whitmaniac sympathy; but if you sympathise with everybody it comes to much the same as sympathising with none, or at any rate not with those who are hated!...

My brother won't want to come to Germany - I don't think he likes thee, which is a mercy - he thinks thee has the American hardness, by which he means not submitting completely to the husband and not being sensual. He says American women only love from the waist upwards. Thee can imagine I don't open my soul to him! It seems hard on thee to give thee a second objectionable brother-in-law called Frank....

British Embassy October 20th 1894 3 p.m.

My darling Alys

I think the real use of our separation is to give me a good conscience and to hasten our marriage. Thee doesn't think my good conscience will last, but I think it will if I don't see too much of my Grandmother. I feel no duties now, only a mild irritation when I think of her and Aunt Agatha, and it will be a good thing to continue to feel so. And all this separation is well worth while, for we should never have been really happy together without the knowledge we had really done something serious for my Grandmother.... I enclose Sanger's two letters - I have answered saying I would probably do two Dissertations - the second letter is much more encouraging than the first. I said I would make the Geometry the chief one my first shot and the Economics my second shot...

I have been reading more Mill and beginning an Essay on Axioms for the Moral Science Club at Cambridge, of which Trotter, the hardworking Scotsman I beat and despise, is Secretary. It will be an immense pleasure to go to Cambridge and read a paper and enjoy the Society again. The Society is a real passion to me - after thee, I know no greater joy. I shall read them a paper on controlling our passions, in which I shall point out that we can't, and that the greater they are the less we ought to though the more easily we can. - This sounds paradoxical but isn't. I take refuge in intellectual activity which has always been rather of the nature of a dissipation and opiate to me.

Goodbye my Darling, my Joy. I will write again tomorrow.

Thine heart and soul Bertie

British Embassy, Paris October 22nd 1894, 9 p.m.

My darling Alys

... I don't think thee'll be tempted to grow too dependent on me, because thee'll find I shall be bored if thee always agrees with me, and shall want an argument now and then to give my brain a little exercise. I feel a real and solid pleasure when anybody points out a fallacy in any of my views, because I care much less about my opinions than about their being true. But thee Must think for thyself instead of merely taking scraps from different people - that is what makes thy opinions so disjointed, because thee takes different opinions from different people, thinking the two subjects independent - but no two subjects are really independent, so that people with different Popes for different things have an extraordinary hotch-potch of views. Logan, thee and Mariechen all have that vice, Logan least, M. most.

Logan once told me thee had better taste in pictures than M., and yet thee seldom opens thy mouth, but leaves all the talking on such subjects to her dogmatising. This is an example how thee wastes thy mind, not from modesty, but from a combination of laziness and pride, the same pride that kept thee silent so long about thy real opinions. - What M. says about getting ideas from somewhere is true of herself but by no means of everybody - e.g. in my paper on space which I'm writing now, there is a whole section of close reasoning which I have seen nowhere, and which, for ought I know, may be quite original. It is like the rule of speak when you're spoken to - if everyone followed it, there could be no ideas in the world: they have to come from someone originally. And even when one's ideas are got from others, they have quite a different complexion when one has fought against them and wrestled with them and struggled to understand the process by which they are acquired than when one lazily accepts them because one thinks the man a good man. I fought every inch of the way against Idealism in Metaphysic and Ethics - and that is why I was forced to understand it thoroughly before accepting it, and why when I came to write it out. Ward used to be enchanted at my lucidity. But having lapsed into mere bragging, perhaps this homily had better stop!...

British Embassy, Paris Wednesday, October 31st 1894 9.30 p.m.

My darling Alys

... I shan't mind being 'run' in the unimportant details of practical things - where to dine, what to eat, etc. - in important practical matters, when I've had a little practice in them, I maintain that I'm not incompetent and I should sit on thee vigorously if thee tried to dictate to me! But Evelyn Nordhoff is right that thee wouldn't be likely to do so. As long as I remain a student or a theorist of any sort, I shall have so duties to the outside world. I remember saying to thee on the Chelsea Embankment last November what Logan is always repeating, that that sort of person ought to lead a selfish life in small things, because it increases one's efficiency, and the work is so vastly more important than any good one does by little politenesses and so forth. Fortunately my needs are simple - tea and quiet are all I require. I enjoyed my lunch with the Dufferins very much. I was alone with Lord and Lady Dufferin and he was perfectly charming, though he appeared to have forgotten all about my engagement, at least nothing was said about it. He is really a delicious man - so perfect and well-rounded. He was very gracious - said it had been the greatest pleasure to him to find he could please my Grandmother by giving me this place - asked if there had been much work: so I said not so much lately, and he smiled and said there was always less with an Ambassador than a Minister. I told them Phipps was in raptures over Sarah's new play, and they smiled again and said they had no very high opinion of Phipps's taste. They seem to share the general contempt. He treated me so affectionately that my heart quite warmed to him, in spite of its being due to my Grandparents, not to myself. I was not the least shy, and did and said exactly what was proper. Thee will be glad to know that Lady Dufferin was atrociously dressed, in a sort of grey serge. Lord Dufferin had just come in from bicycling: he rides right up to the very Embassy door and wheels his machine in himself. The French used to be shocked but now, largely owing to him I believe, it has become far more fashionable for swells than it is in England. When he was in Petersburg there was quite a scandal because one night, by way of Duncrambo or some similar game, he acted a pig and hopped and grunted, and everyone thought it very shocking for an Ambassador. He treats his wife with a curious formal polite affection, which I believe is perfectly genuine, only that the habit of formal politeness has made that his only possible manner: but it sounds odd to hear 'my Love' and such terms in the tone in which he might say Your Majesty or Your Excellency. It was a glorious day and I went all round the Bois with Dodson, which I also enjoyed immensely - all the autumn tints were at their very finest, and I can't imagine more ideal weather. Coming back he was vastly impressed by my nerve in the traffic. I suppose it is mathematics or something, but I know I'm singularly good at riding through crowded streets! I quite won his respect, as he is of the type that worships 'nerve' in any form. He came lumbering on behind. He is a nice simple innocent youth, who thinks everybody else stupendously clever. Harford and I smile over him, but we both like him and I think he likes both of us.

I didn't mean to go on to a 2nd sheet but I'm not sleepy enough to go to bed, though it's 10.30, and I can't settle down to any other occupation than writing to thee - It's nice riding with Dodson, because it makes him mad with envy to see me go without using my hands on the handles!...¹

¹ I find myself shocked by the conceit and complacency of the above letter and of some of the others written about the same time. I wonder that Alys endured them.

Cambridge² November 3rd, 1.30

² I went to Cambridge for the week-end, but did not see Alys as the three months had not expired.

My dearest Alys

... I have been wildly happy all morning: ever since I left King's Cross I've felt as if we'd just parted and I were coming back as I did so often by that train last winter. It's perfectly delightful seeing my friends again - I never knew before how fond I am of them and how infinitely nicer (and cleverer!) they are than the ordinary run of young men. I've just been seeing Ward who says there's nothing philosophical for me to do in Economics but I might very well take some mathematical job of pure theory, only then I should have to begin specialising almost at once. He advised me to take in time and motion too in my other Dissertation, and discuss Newton's 3 laws, which would be interesting. It is lovely weather, and the yellow elms are heavenly, and all the people are good and nice, and it is perfect paradise after the hell of Paris. I had a glorious long talk with Sanger and revelled in his intellectual passion.... I will write again by Lion³ tomorrow, a longer letter telling all that happens. Ward is to be shewn my paper on Space and I shall be wildly eager to hear what he says about it. Short of love, his praise is about the most delightful thing in the world to me. I got none today, but enjoyed seeing him, he's such a delightful man. Now I must hunt up someone to lunch. Less than a fortnight thank heaven! Fare thee well my Beloved.

³ Lion FitzPatrick - afterwards Mrs Phillimore.

Thine ever most devotedly Bertie

In the train - Cambridge Sunday, November 4th 1894 5.15 p.m.

My dearest Alys

It is a great pity all my letters come in a lump and I'm very sorry to have addressed Friday's Hill. I hope it won't happen again, I'm so glad thee's happy and busy too - if I were imagining thee unhappy it would be unendurable not to see thee tonight - as it is, it gives me pleasure to think thee is near. It has been perfectly delightful to be at Cambridge again. Moore and Sanger and Marsh were so nice to see again. I love them all far more than I supposed before. We had a large meeting last night. McT. and Dickinson and Wedd came, at which I could not help feeling flattered. Thee will be glad to hear that several of them thought my paper too theoretical, though McT. and I between us persuaded them in time that there was nothing definite to be said about practical conduct. I have left my paper behind as Marsh and Sanger want to read it over again. McT. spoke first and was excessively good, as I had hoped. I said in my paper I would probably accept anything he said, and so I did. For my sake he left out immortality, and reconciled my dilemma at the end without it. I can't put what he said in a letter, but I dare say I shall bring it out in conversation some day. We had a delightful dinner at Marsh's before the meeting, and I was so glad just to be with them again that I didn't talk a bit too much. Moore though he didn't say much looked and was as glorious as ever - I almost worship him as if he were a god. I have never felt such an extravagant admiration for anybody. I always speak the truth to Marsh, so I told-him we were separated three months to please my grandmother; the rest asked no inconvenient questions. Most of them were pleased with my paper, and were glad of my making Good and less good my terms instead of right and wrong. The beginning also amused them a good deal. I stayed up till 2 talking to Marsh and then slept till 10.30, when I went to breakfast with Sanger. I lunched with Marsh, and talked shop with Amos and saw my rooms. As he has furnished them - they're brighter but not near so nice. Sanger thought my bold idea in my Space paper 'colossal' - I hope Ward will think so too! Amos tells me Ward said I was so safe for a Fellowship that it didn't matter a bit what I wrote on - but this must be taken cum grano salis - it is slightly coloured by Amos's respect for me. They all urged me to do what I'm good at, rather than fly off to Economics, tho' all of them greatly respect Economics and would be delighted to have me do them ultimately. I have great respect for their judgments because they are honest and know me. So I shall do 2 Dissertations next year and only Space this - or Space and Motion, as Ward suggests. But of course I shall work at Economics at once. Sanger is working at Statistics, and explained several hideous difficulties in the theory, important for practice too, since the whole question of Bimetallism and many others turn on them. I had never suspected such difficulties before, and they inspired me with keen intellectual delight from the thought of obstacles to be overcome. My intellectual pleasures during the last years have been growing very rapidly keener, and I feel as if I might make a great deal out of them when we're married and all our difficulties are settled. I am convinced since reading Bradley that all knowledge is good, and therefore shouldn't need to bother about immediate practical utility - though of course, when I come to Economics, that will exist too. I'm very glad to find that passion developing itself, for without it no one can accomplish good thinking on abstract subjects - one can't think hard from a mere sense of duty. Only I need little successes from time to time to keep it a source of energy. My visit to Cambridge has put me in very good conceit with myself and I feel very happy to think we are within our fortnight and that Mariechen will make it fly. I laughed more than in all the time since I left Friday's Hill and I talked well and made others laugh a great deal too....

Trinity College, Cambridge December 9th 1894, 2 a.m.

My dearest Alys

I will write a little letter tonight though it is late. Sanger met me at the station and took me to tea with Marsh, where I found Crompton who is as charming as ever and in better spirits than I ever saw him before, delighted with the law and very glad to feel settled for life. Moore read about lust and set forth exactly thy former ideal which he got from me when we met the normal man on the walking-tour. His paper did not give any good arguments, but was beautifully written in parts, and made me very fond of him. A year ago I should have agreed with every word - as it was, I spoke perfectly frankly and said there need be nothing lustful in copulation where a spiritual love was the predominant thing, but the spiritual love might seek it as the highest expression of union. Everybody else agreed with me, except McT. who came in after the discussion was over. Crompton was very good indeed and quite worsted Moore, though Moore would not admit it. I am going to see all the dons tomorrow. I have been arguing with Amos, who is much incensed at my advocacy of hyperspace, and is not coming to the wedding (not as a consequence of our differences!)...

Thine ever devotedly Bertie

I was at this time very intimate with Eddie Marsh (afterwards Sir Edward Marsh), so I told him about Alys and got him to go and see her. She was engaged in a crusade to induce daughters to rebel against their parents. This is alluded to in Marsh's letter.

Cold Ash, Newbury March 25, '94

My dear Russell

I want to thank you for two very pleasant occasions last week. I went on Sunday and found the room full of two American girls, one of whom went away to write home and the other to do political economy. Then we had a delightful talk for an hour or two, about you and other matters. I think we shall be great friends. I'm very happy about you, still more so than I was before.

She wanted to make my sister revolt, and accordingly asked me to bring her to lunch last Wednesday wh. was exceedingly kind. My sister also seemed to make great friends, and was most enthusiastic when we went away. I don't know if she'll revolt or not. Mr Pearsall Smith is a dear old boy. I think he was very sarcastic to me but I'm not really sure if he was or not. Among other things he said I talked exactly like old Jowett, wh. I don't believe. What funny grammar they talk to one another.

It isn't much worth while telling you what you know already, I don't mean about the grammar, so perhaps this letter ought to come to an end here but it would be rather short so I'll go on with my own affairs. The most interesting thing is that I've been seeing a certain amount of Robert Bridges; he's a charming man, with thick dark hair which grows like thatch and a very attractive imped. in his sp. He reminded me curiously of Verrall, though he's much bigger all over and his face has funny bumps like Furness. I went for a walk with him on Friday; he talked in a very interesting way, tho' not quite as Coleridge talked to Hazlitt; after lunch he got a headache or something and seemed to get somehow much older (he's 49) and talked about his own plays a good deal. He had a perfect right to, as of course I was interested, but it was very funny how openly he praised them. He said 'I think I've given blank verse all the pliability it's capable of in the Humours of the Court, don't you?' - 'The Feast of Bacchus is amusing from beginning to end: it's sure to find its way to the stage and when it gets there it'll keep there.'

This isn't vanity in the least, he's quite free from that. I'm just going over there to church, I hear he's trained the choir with remarkable success.

I suppose you're having an awfully good time in Rome. Don't bother to write till you come back. I thought you'd like to hear about Sunday. I should go on writing, except that I'm not sure how much goes for 2½d. Please remember me to Miss Stanley.

Yr. affectionate friend Edward Marsh

Heidelberg Neuenheimer Landstr. 52 Sept. 15

My dear Russell

I was just going comfortably to sleep over my Grammatik when I unluckily fell to wondering whether the opposite to an icicle was called an isinglass or bicicle; and the shock of remembering that I was thinking about stalactite and stalagmite woke me up completely; but I'm not going to do any more Grammatik; so here is the answer to your letter, though it was so far from proper as to be quite shocking.

I should have thought Paris was a very good exchange for Dresden, as the separation would have taken place in either case wouldn't it? I'm very sorry not to see you, though in some ways it's a good thing, as I'm not in the least either solemn or suitable, and it's quite enough, to have been seen by Sanger. I'm not going to give you an account of all my wickednesses, as I'm tired of doing that; I resolved to write to all my friends and see who'd be shocked first, beginning at the most likely end with Barran, G. Trevy, Conybeare; to my utter astonishment they contented themselves one after the other with telling me not to get fat, and the first person who thought of being horror-struck was Moore.

I'm getting on pretty well with German, though I haven't arrived at the stage of finding it a reasonable medium for the expression of thought. I think the original couple who spoke it must have died rather soon after the Tower of Babel, leaving a rather pedantically-minded baby, who had learnt all the words of one syllable, and had to make up the long ones with them - at least how else can you account for such words as Handschule and be-ab-sicht-igen? I never knew a language so little allusive - compare the coarseness of 'sich kleiden' with the elegance of 'se mettre' - English gains by having so many Latin words - their literalness is concealed - for instance independence is exactly the same as Unabhängigkeit, yet the one seems quite respectable, while the other is unspeakably crude. I can read pretty well by now, and can mostly find some way or other of expressing what I mean, but I can't understand when people talk at their natural pace. Unluckily all the plays they've done yet at Mannheim are too unattractive to go to; but I've seen more operas since I've been here than in my whole previous life, though that isn't saying much. The performances aren't quite satisfactory, as the actors are so dreadful to look at. I went to Fidelio yesterday. The heroine was played by a lady whom I mistook at first for Corney Grain - you know she is disguised as a page. Fat women are in a sad dilemma - either they must have their bodices all of the same stuff, in which case they look as if they were just going to burst, or they must have an interval of some other stuff, in which case they look as if they had. For instance Fidelio had a brown - jerkin? it was my idea of a jerkin - open in front, with something white showing underneath; and puffs of white in the sleeves, which had just that effect. I've seen innumerable sights since I've been here (anything does for a sight in Germany). I scandalised everybody the other day by going to sleep in the middle of being driven slowly round Frankfort in a fly. I don't think even die Frenchmen find the sight quite so funny as I do - but they're mostly rather young (I ought to explain it's a big pension full of Frenchmen learning German and Germans teaching them. I'm the only Englishman). They're mostly also very delightful - I've made great friends with one German, who is a very charming, but not Apostolic, and one Frenchman who is, very; I've hardly ever seen a Frenchman who hadn't a charm of his own, quite apart from his merits....

Here came Mittagessen, after which I'm as learned to say I fond myself almost incapable of further exertion (by the way lie Frau Professor says I'm viel angenehmer in that respect than most Englishmen - I mean in respect of my general habit of 'eating what's set before me', according to the nursery rule). So I've read through what I've written already. I'm afraid it reads rather leichtsinnig - but consider that it's an exquisite day and I'd spent the rest of the morning in the garden saying to myself 'behold how good and how pleasant a thing it is for persons of different nationalities to sit together in chairs' - with an interval for my German lesson, which was as usual very funny, the Professor who talks English very badly, makes up examples out of the rules; and I had to translate such sentences as 'Rid yourself of your whimps', 'Do you remember my?' and 'He posted off all his wretches' - which, when I heard the German, I recognised as 'He boasted of all his riches'.

Write me a postcard now and then when your brain is for the moment off the boil - I'm here till the end of the month - I should like very much to come back by Paris, but I'm debarred by 2 considerations, both insurmountable - I) I shan't have any money left II) I haven't any clothes in which I could come within a mile of an Embassy, or be seen about with anyone connected with one - I hope you're getting on all right.

Yrs. fraternally E. H. M.

Heidelberg (1894)

My dear Russell

I've got just ½ an hour before Abendessen, and I can think of 7 people on the spur of the moment whom I ought to write to rather than you - however you seem to 'feel it more', as Mrs Gummidge says. I'm awfully sorry you aren't enjoying yourself more in Paris. I should have thought the mere feel of the place would be enough but your account of your people's letters is most depressing - the idea of consoling oneself with a bad hymn when one might console oneself with the Walrus and the Carpenter, say - however the 10th of December isn't very far off.

I don't quite understand your not liking Frenchmen - is it simply because they're unchaste? It is very disgusting - all the ones here for instance fornicate pretty regularly from 16 years old, and talk about it in a way that would sicken me in England - but it's merely a matter of education, and one can't object to individual people because they behave in the way they've been brought up to....

Yours fraternally Edward Marsh

Heidelberg Oct. 1 (1894)

Dear Russell

Barran sent me the enclosed letter for you today, and I accompany it with the greatest of all the treasures I found in 'Zion's Herald' When one follows out the similitude in its details, it becomes too delightful especially the tact with which God has got over the little awkwardness caused by the 'Great superiority of his Social Station'. 'As is usual with lovers' is a good touch - and so is the coyness with which mankind is represented as 'wondering what God can see in us'. The whole thing is an 'Editorial'.

I got your letter this morning, and I'm very glad you're a little happier. I wondered for a long time if I could get in a day at Paris on my way back, but time, money and clothes were all inexorably against it.

The Frenchmen I've known here were nearly all too young to be repulsively bestial; some of them will become so no doubt, others, I think, will not. My chief friend for instance went to a brothel once to see what it was like and was so much sickened he could hardly 'baiser', as they call it.

I shall write you a very serious letter some day, for the sake of my character, but till then, I'll go on being frivolous if you like.

My last great adventure was meeting O. B.¹ accidentally at the station - he was on his way to Elfiel to buy German champagne (!) and had come here for German cigars. I brought him for a night to the Pension - he made a great impression on every one, and was very jolly. Almost the first thing he told me was that the Duchesses of York and Teck are going to pay him a visit at Cambridge next term - which, as he remarked, would give people a great deal to talk about, but it wasn't his fault, as they'd practically invited themselves.

¹ Oscar Browning.

What news of your brother?

Yours fraternally E. H. Marsh

40 Dover Street, W May 11 1894

Dearest Bertrand

I have been back¹ 3 weeks but have been overwhelmed with arrears of work and now I write because I have heard that a report is going about that you are probably going to be engaged to Miss Pearsall Smith. I hope this is not so, for if you thought you wd. be too young to enter Parliament before you were 29 I must think it would be a great pity for you to engage yr. self and take such an important step at 21 or 22. I forget which you are - It would stop you in so many things and you have seen so very little of the world 'of Young Women' as Lady Russell puts it, that I shall be very sorry if you have bound yr. self thus early. But all this may be idle gossip and you may be sure I shall not spread it, but could not help writing to say what a pity I think it wd. be at the very outset of life to enter on such an engagement and with a girl a good bit older than yourself. Do not answer my letter unless you wish it, but I shall hope that what I have is merely gossip founded perhaps on yr. having been at the Wild Duck with die young lady.

¹ From Rome, where I had accompanied her.

Yrs. afft. Maude Stanley

Clandeboye Co. Down Septr. 5, '94

My dear Bertie

Lady Russell will have told you that everything has been arranged for your going to Paris. I am sure you will like it, and the climate is charming at this time of the year: and though perhaps there may be a certain amount of work, I hope it will not be too much to prevent you taking advantage of your stay to see all that is to be seen in Paris, for the autumn is the best time for that.

I think, if it could be arranged, that it would be very desirable from our official point of view that you should stay for at least three months, though I hope we shall tempt you to remain longer and to go out a little into Paris society, which would amuse you very much.

I have written to all the authorities at Paris to warn them of your arrival, and to tell them to do everything they can to make you feel at home.

Yours very sincerely Dufferin and Ava

Hotel du Prince de Galles Paris Sep. 11, 1894

Dear Lord Dufferin

I have waited till I was established here to thank you warmly for your two kind letters to me. It is very good of you to take so much trouble about me, and I have indeed been most cordially received by everybody. I arrived in Paris last night and spent this morning at the Embassy. I am sure I shall like the work, and that the life generally will be very agreeable.

I will certainly stay the three months which you speak of as officially desirable, indeed under ordinary circumstances I should have been glad to stay any length of time; but I am engaged to be married, and had hoped that the wedding might be in December; so you will, I am sure, understand that I should be glad to be free then, if that is possible without any inconvenience. I hope you will not think this wish ungracious on my part - no lesser inducement could have made me wish to shorten my stay here, and I am deeply obliged to you for having given me the appointment - but as I do not intend to take up the diplomatic service as my career, it seemed perhaps needless to postpone my wedding, for which I feel a natural impatience.

Yours gratefully and sincerely Bertrand Russell

The following letters have to do with a project, which I entertained for a short time, of abandoning mathematical philosophy for economics, and also with the affairs of The Society. It was the practice for one member, in rotation, to read a short paper, chosen by the others the previous Saturday out of four suggested subjects. In the subsequent discussion it was a rule that everyone must say something.

Trinity College, Cambridge Oct. 18th, '94

Dear Russell

When I first read your letter I thought that you had gone raving mad. I took it round to Marsh, and he did not take such a serious view of the case. I will, of course, ask Ward about it directly. I don't know how far it would be possible for you to do much good at the subject, but I am fairly certain that the amount of economics which you would have to read, would not be more than you could easily do. But I expect that, as well as Psychology and Ethics that you would have to learn some politics and law. I doubt whether you will really find much life in trying to find out whether the word 'Utility' can have any meaning and what is meant by a man's 'demand for tobacco'. Surely you have a very excellent opportunity of being of some service to the Universe by writing about space whereas I doubt if you will quickly increase human happiness by doing the basis of economics. For, on the one hand, owing chiefly to the spread of democracy, it is distrusted and despised, and on the other hand the few people who, like myself, think that it is or ought to be a science naturally do not much mind whether it means anything or not. I expect McTaggart will have a fit if I tell him what you say. Trotter would like a paper from you (if it is possible) for the Moral Science Club. Last Saturday we chose subjects and Marsh is reading on Saturday on, I think, 'Why we like nature'. Please let someone know as soon as possible which day you are coming up on. It is splendid of you to come. We are thinking about George Trevvy but are not quite decided. I hear that Edward Carpenter has published yet another pamphlet on 'Marriage'. I will send you a copy as soon as I get one.

Have you got Erdmann's book on the Axioms of Geometry or do you know of anyone up here who has it; as I rather want to read it and can't find it in the 'Varsity library. Do you see the English papers? Some women have been raising hell about the prostitutes at the Empire and it is probably going to be closed. I wish they would protest against those in the streets instead.

I can't find anything to write about in Economics and I find law somewhat dull so I should be depressed if it were not that I am going to hear the 9th Symphony on the day after tomorrow.

Yours frat. Charles Percy Sanger

Trinity College, Cambridge Oct. 19th, '94

Dear Russell

I went to Ward and asked him about you. He said immediately that you had better do economics, if you thought that you would like it better. That the important thing was to work at what you liked and that though your dissertation would have to go in by August, yet you worked very fast and would probably have enough time. He also said that there was not the slightest objection to your sending in two or more dissertations, or that if you write an article on space in 'Mind' or elsewhere that you could count that in with your dissertation on Economics. But that, as one would expect, two moderate dissertations do not count as one good one. He said that he would not advise you about economics and suggested that you should write to Marshall. Have you read Keynes'¹ book on the Scope and Method of Economics? I think that that perhaps might interest you. Marsh tells me that McTaggart is rather horrified.

¹ The Keynes in question was the father of Lord Keynes.

Your friend Charles Percy Sanger

Trinity College, Cambridge Oct. 23, '94

Dear Russell

I'm very glad you're coming soon and it's all your eye to say you don't want to write a paper.

Your first letter to Sanger was most subversive, the effect on us can only be compared (in its humble way) to that produced on Europe by the Cabinet Council last month - Sanger came rushing round here to say you were quite mad, and finding me unprepared with an opinion offered me his. Not being entirely satisfied with my attitude he proceeded to spoil McTaggart's appetite by telling him the dreadful news as he was marching up to the Fellows' table. He's since been more or less pacified by Ward - I don't know anything about the rights and wrongs of the case, but I can't refrain from appealing to your better nature to consider what o'clock it is, to consider what a long way you've got to go before July, to consider anything - before embarking on a rash project.

I was awfully glad to get your letter (the day before I left Heidelberg) and hear you were happier in Paris; I don't know how often I've nearly answered it since - I seem to be working very hard this term, as I do nothing else in the day except perhaps a game of 5's, 30 pages of Zola, and of course meals, but these very moderate and un-Heidelberg. Life affords few distractions. I know lamentably few people, yet die temptation to call on freshers is one which is easy to resist. The fact is I'm getting old and posé, even rheumatic, and almost respectable; parts of this letter are in my new Mary Bennet style. Z.B., the idea of life affording few distractions, though not perhaps wholly new, strikes me as well expressed.

I saw Miss Pearsall Smith on Saturday at the Richter Concert, and we discussed the comparative fascination of space and economics. She looked very well - and had such a pretty green cloak with fur trimmings. Sanger said he was going to tell you what had been happening in the Society. Last Sat. was rather a failure, as I had discovered that my paper was all nonsense on Friday; besides wh. Sanger and I were so completely done by the Concert that we hadn't an idea in our heads. I tod 'brain stoppage' every time I was asked a question. We are thinking of little Trevy,¹ but Moore who knows him better than anyone else has scruples. I'm rather hoping that a young Babe at King's may turn out embryonic - He's infinitely the cleverest and most fascinating of the family.

¹ George Trevelyan, Master of Trinity, OM, etc., etc.

I've done a fabulous amount of work today so I'd better leave off. esp. as I shall see you so soon and talking is better than writing (esp. my writing wh. has gone rather funny on this page).

Yrs. fraternally E.M. (Edward Marsh)

Trinity College, Cambridge Oct. 22nd, '94

Dear Russell

I am very glad that you ran arrange to come up. I will see about the rooms. We should be very glad if you would read a paper as there are only four of us now.

Maggie Tulliver or Cleopatra sounds such a good subject that you had better read on it and thus don't trouble to send subjects for us to choose. Last week Marsh read an excellent paper on 'Do we like nature', but unfortunately the discussion was not so good as Marsh and I were quite stupid (we had heard the Choral Symphony in the afternoon) and there were only Moore and Dickinson besides. Dickinson was good and I expect that Moore was, but I couldn't understand him. In the letter that I wrote telling you what Ward had said, I don't know whether I sufficiently emphasised the fact that his great point was that you should work at what you like (in distinction I think to what you might think you ought to do). He was quite strong on the point that if Metageometry bored you, it was better that you should do something else. We are quite divided about George Trevey - that is to say Marsh and Wedge wood are in favour of him, and I am, on whole, neutral but Moore thinks that most of our discussions would not interest him. The spookical [psychical] society have got hold of a medium who does things that they can't explain. Myers is, of course, triumphant and Sidgwick is forced to admit that at the time he was convinced, but thinks that he isn't now.

Yours frat. Charles Percy Sanger

Trinity College, Cambridge Wednesday (1894)

Dear Russell

I'll send the paper off tomorrow; the end part is rather muddling to an uneducated person, but I'm glad I read it again.

I've just come back from a concert I was next an old lady who was exactly like the leg of mutton in Alice; the features were almost identical and she had a becoming pink paper frill on her head, which a closer inspection revealed as a dyed feather. I don't think she can have known the picture.

MacT.'s paper on Sunday was very interesting. Mackenzie remarked afterwards that Hegel's theory of punishment was quite different, and MacT. simply continued to smile - I don't know wh. was in the right, but I never saw MacT. shut up so easily. It was very funny to see Trotter follow him in the room, humble and imitative - he had an air of being 'also stark mad, in white cotton' (do you remember the Confidante in the Critic?)

I had such a funny scene with my bedmaker the night you left. I was in my bedroom, and heard a timid voice calling me. 'Well', I said. 'Isn't this a sad affair, sir?' she began in her plaintive voice. 'What?' I asked (I thought Mrs Appleton must have had twins at least) 'About your table, sir'. 'Well?' 'Weren't you surprised to find the leaf still in?' 'Very much, why was it?' 'Didn't the gentleman tell you, sir?' 'What gentleman? What's happened?' It turned out she'd broken a bit of the wood, just as Tommy Booth came in with a pipe of mine. Wasn't it extraordinary how she couldn't tell me straight out? I hope when my wife dies, or anything like that, I shall always have someone to make my troubles ridiculous by their exaggerated concern. I never can mind when anything goes wrong in my room. I can't resist Mrs Roper's sympathy.

Oswald Sickert's book is out at last, he sent me a copy this morning. It is dedicated to me, which makes me very proud - it reads much better than it did in MS. I think it's splendid.

We're going to have another enormous meeting next Sat. Mayor, Trevy, Theo all coming to Moore's paper. I dare say I'll write to you about it. I think this is the end of my news for the present and it's near 12.

Goodnight E. H. M. (Marsh)

Trinity College Cambridge Nov. 21 st '94

My dear Russell

I've just come back from such a funny concert - not that it was particularly funny, but I was put in a thoroughly unmusical frame of mind by the first performer who appeared - one of the wiry and businesslike kind (of monkeys, I mean - she is a monkey) - she played very much like a person, but not quite. Of course it was very creditable to the result of so recent an evolution to do it so well but it hindered one's appreciation of the music. The next person was a singer - one of those middle aged ladies who have an air of being caricatures of their former selves - she made one of those curious conf essions which are only heard In Concert rooms about her behaviour once in a state of drink, when she enlaced a gentleman in her arms - Te souviens-tu de notre ivresse quand nos bras étaient ȩnlacés? Conybeare remarked that if she was in ivresse she was now in evening dress - her arch curtseys at the end were a sight to be seen.

When did I last write to you? Have you beard about Moore's paper on Friendship? There's not much to say about it, as it was a specification of one's own ideal more or less, without much practical bearing. Of course our poor old friend copulation came in for its usual slating, one wd. think from the way people talk about it in the Society that it was a kind of Home Rule Bill that has to be taken some notice of, but which everyone thinks a bore. The discussion was interesting. Trevy, Theo and Mayor were all up. Mayor gave Theo occasion to say he hadn't expected to find him such a middle aged phenomenon so soon. Mayor took wings - Wedd was there too, he and Theo talked well.¹ Last Sat. McT. read an old paper. Why are roseleaves crumpled? on the origin of evil. - It wasn't quite satisfactory, as on the one hand MacT. has changed his position since he wrote it, and on the other it was rather a nuisance no one except him knowing the dialectic - one felt like the audience at an extension-lecture. Sanger reads on What is education? on Sat. Crompton will be up.

¹ Mayor and Theodore Davies were exact contemporaries, Mayor being the best and Theodore the second-best classical scholar of their year. To 'take wings' is to retire from habitual presence at meetings of The Society, Which usually is done in the man's fifth or sixth year.

Lady Trevy was up today. I always like her very much, she has such an essential gaiety. I met a lovely person on Sunday, Miss Stawell, whom Dickinson was nice enough to ask me to meet. I think she's very superior indeed - she seems to have quite a rare feeling for beauty in art, I hope we shall see more of her.² Mayor's sister was there too, she seemed rather common and flippant in comparison. It's great fun seeing so much of Verrall as I do now - (I go to him for composition again), the other day I asked him the meaning of something in the Shelley we had to translate - 'I'm sure I can't tell you my little dear', he answered, 'you pays yr money and you takes your choice.' That kind of thing makes me very cheerful.

² Miss Stawell became a very distinguished classicist.

The day's coming very near now, isn't it? What a wonderful thought. Remember to tell me how your grandmother is when you write.

Yrs. fraternally Edward M. (Marsh)

By the way thanks for the photograph, it's good on the whole, tho' you look rather bumptious.

Pembroke Lodge, Richmond, Surrey Sep. 16/'94

Dearest Bertie

I can't say I am much disappointed with your second letter - for 'I mean' to do so and so in yr first left little hope of yr considering any other course. Of course I am very sorry, as U.R.¹ and Auntie will be - she writes as if she cd not think you wd. wish to be out of the country this winter - but that is nothing.² You must do what you think best, and I must remember

¹ Uncle Rollo.² On the ground that she was likely to die during the winter.

As one by one thy hopes depart Be resolute and calm—

They have been departing in rapid succession of late - but when I turn my mind to good and happy Dunrozel, to human perfection in Agatha, to the goodness and unceasing affection of my old children and their children, to other relations and to many faithful friends, I feel how much beauty there still is in life for wch in my old age I have to thank God. And for you, my too dear boy, I can only try to hope, though the way is not easy to find. Have you called on the people to whom the Baronne gave you letters? She asked me yesterday. The Warburtons are gone, and Lotty,³ dear wonderful Lotty, come. You know what it is to her and me to be together. I'm glad you like Mr Dodson (no g) - I think there must be everythg. to like in Mr Hardinge or Ld. Dufferin wd. not call him 'a great friend' - I did not imagine Ld. Terence to be very nice - Ld. D's children seem to be rather disappointments. Of course one cannot find everybody with whom one has intercourse having the same interests as oneself, but one can often be the better for entering into theirs - I do hope that as time goes on and you know more people, you will enjoy Paris thoroughly - there is so much to enjoy there. Very good accounts of Auntie you'll be glad to hear but this is horrid letterless Sunday. Rollo proposes to come to me the 20th when Lotty goes - brings Arthur and Lisa - for 10 days - such a joy in prospect.

³ Her sister. Lady Charlotte Portal.

Goodbye and God bless you my dearest Child.

Yr. ever loving Granny

My letters are for you alone - Remember I am more than willing to believe that you will profit by yr German experience, as regards yr studies.

Pembroke Lodge Richmond, Surrey Oct. 9, '94

Dearest Bertie

I am glad you have had more Embassy work to do. I guessed it would be so, owing to the 'tension' I think that's the diplomatic word - between England and France - it must also have been more interesting work I shd think? I hope and trust that both countries will behave well, in wch case peace and goodwill will be preserved. I shd think the Govt of both likely to do so. I am also very glad Mr Austin Lee is back - he is a man well worth knowing. By this time, accordg to the D.E.'s (d'Estournelles), a good many of their friends are returning to Paris and I shall be anxious to hear how you get on with the scientific, the political, the musical and charming among them to whom you have letters....

My dearest Child, you must not wish time to pass more quickly than it does! There is little enough of it for us to make the use of that we ought. Of course I understand as anybody would that you regret even this short separation - but perhaps you don't know how very much you would have suffered in the estimation of the many who wish you well in the highest sense and care for us and know what we had always thought and felt about you, had you remained in England leading the life you were leading - indeed you had already suffered greatly and so had she and I felt that having work to do abroad was the only chance to prevent increasing blame and if you are to marry her, before you have learned to know anybody else, I do most earnestly wish that there may be as little unfavourable impression as possible. You wrote to me once, dear boy, that you dreamed of me constantly by night and thought of me by day and wondered how you cd make me happier about you - and I have sometimes thought of puttg down on paper what has made me and yr Uncle and Aunt so unhappy - in regular order of events and incidents - to help you, even now, to make us happier. Shall I do so? There is nothing I wish more ardently than to have good reason to love dearly the person you marry if I live to see you married. I am going on pretty well - only a very slow downward progress of the disease - so that I am still able to do pretty much as usual, except breathing in bed - I have discomfort but nothg worth callg pain.

If you write to Auntie only say about me that you hear I am going on very well.

Yr most loving Granny

Pembroke Lodge Richmond, Surrey Oct. 23/'94

Dearest Bertie

We were glad of your letter to Tat,¹ but sorry that no notice had yet been taken of your cards. The cycling in the Bois de Boulogne must be great fun. I suppose you go with the others? You don't mention Lord Dufferin having arrived; which according to newspapers ought I think to be the case. What a pity Frank's visit was no pleasure. I think he really went out of good nature to you on my telling him how lonely you felt, but we quite understand what you mean. I am better for the moment. I hope it may turn out for more than the moment - for Agatha's sake especially. She, poor darling, is far from well, and obliged to stay very late in bed. Dear good Isabel [Mrs Warburton] went yesterday - her visit has been touchingly delightful, in spite of or indeed partly because of my being very unwell most of the time — she is so simpatica, and we had much solemn conversation intermingled with pressing topics. - You have never answered my next to last letter, which I thought you would like but I will not enter upon the subject of you and Miss P. S. - writing is so unsatisfactory - except just to say her refusal to see me makes everything very difficult to me. It is the first time in my long life that such a thing has happened to me, I don't think it is doing her any good and tho' for her sake I put it as gently as I can. She was so good and thanked me when from my interest in her I several times told her where I thought she had been wrong - and on her various visits after that she was altogether nice, and I was growing happy and hopeful that we should find her deserving of the love we were more than ready to give. Then came the sudden and to us utterly unaccountable change - and I cannot but be saddened by the thought that the person you love is one who refuses to see me and whom therefore I can never know any better even if I live longer than is likely. However nothing can pain me much longer here below, and in the meantime I try as a duty not to think about all this, as it seems that mental troubles are particularly bad for my kind of illness. God bless you, my boy, and her too, is my most earnest prayer.

¹ Aunt Agatha.

Yr ever loving Granny

Pembroke Lodge Richmond, Surrey Oct. 30, 1894

Dearest Bertie

Granny is much less well again - bad nights, pains and weakness. She is quite kept to bed today - and yesterday. Of course she cannot see yr. letters. I have told her of them. She long ago saw Alys's letter to her and I think you will remember that in hers to Alys she said she wished once to say what she felt on that subject of yr proposed course - and never again. I suppose you will come here on yr way to Cambridge? Let me know at once. Granny I'm certain will be medically ordered never to touch on painful subjects and of course, I never shall, and she has once for all said what she felt and what was her duty to say if she cared for you and Alys. Dearest Bertie I cannot write more I am so disheartened seeing Granny suffer. It pains me beyond expression that you think I have been 'hard' and without sympathy. If my words have ever seemed so you must remember and will know some day that only love was in my heart and that nothing but love prevented absolute silence on my part for speaking was far more painful than you now understand.

Your loving Auntie

Pembroke Lodge Richmond, Surrey Nov. 19, 1894

My dear Alys

Rollo reminded us that Dec. 14th was the day of the death of Prince Albert and of Princess Alice - and considering our situation with regard to the Queen, we feel we could none of us like the Wedding being on that day. I am sure you will not mind our mentioning this. Would not the 15th do? We did not quite understand the reasons against that day. I hope you and Bertie had a pleasant visit to Dover Street.

Yours affectly. Agatha Russell

Pembroke Lodge Richmond, Surrey Dec. 10, 1894

My dearest Child

As my voice fails me whenever I try to speak of what is coming, although it is an event so full of happiness to you, it is natural that I should write you a few farewell words. More especially on this anniversary of a day once among the gladdest and most beloved of the year¹ - now as sad as it is sacred for me. For the memories it brings me of my dear, my gentle, my noble and deeply loving and hardly tried Johnny, naturally turn my thoughts to you, in whom we have always felt that something was still left to us of him - My memories of him are memories of unutterable joy, mingled with sorrow and anguish hard to bear even now, when he is past all sorrows.

¹ My father's birthday.

When he and your mother, in the bloom of youth and health, asked me to look upon you as my own child in case of their death, I little thought that I should be called upon to fulfil the promise I gave them. But ere long the day came and your home was left empty. You came to us as an innocent, unconscious little comforter in our darkened home, and have been to us all three as our very own child. You were intertwined with our very being, our life was shaped and ordered with a view to your good; and as you grew in heart and mind you became our companion as well as our child. How thankfully I remember that all through your childhood and boyhood you would always cheerfully give up your own wishes for those of others, never attempt an excuse when you had done wrong, and never fail to receive warning or reproof as gratefully as praise. We trusted you, and you justified our trust, and all was happiness and affection.

Manhood came and brought with it fresh cause for thankfulness in your blameless and honourable University career. But manhood brings also severance and change. You are leaving us now for a new life, a new home, new ties and new affections. But your happiness and welfare must still be ours and our God will still be yours. May you take with you only that which has been best, and ask His forgiveness for what has been wrong, in the irrevocable past. May He inspire you to cherish holy thoughts and noble aims. May you remember that humble, loving hearts alone are dear to Him. May such a heart ever be yours, and hers who is to travel life's journey by your side.

God bless you both, and grant you light to find and to follow the heavenward path.

Ever, my dear, dear Child Your most loving Granny

The following letter was my last contact with Edward Fitzgerald. He distinguished himself as a climber in New Zealand and the Andes, after escaping in this way from a period of despair brought about by his wife's death after only a few months of marriage. In the end he ran off with a married lady and made no attempt to keep up with old friends.

Colombo, Ceylon Nov. 18 th, '94

My dear Russell

Drop me a line occasionally to tell me how you are getting on and also when your marriage is coming off.

I have stopped here for a little while to look around. I went up country the other day to Arsuradhapura and to Vauakarayankulam (don't try to pronounce that name, I find it worse than snakes) and got some big game shooting which I enjoyed. The country was however all under water and they said very feverish, but I did not feel that although I slept out several nights in the mists and got drenched through. I am off on a regular spree so to speak and am not coming home for three years at least. I have planned Japan and some climbing in South America before I return.

Drop me a line when you feel so inclined that I may know of your wandering. I will write occasionally when I feel so inclined, which you will say is not often. I suppose you have seen Austin's new apartment in the Avenue Hochell?

I will now draw this (letter?!) to a close.

Ever yours Edw. A. Fitzgerald