Brixton Letter 73
BR to Gladys Rinder
August 19, 1918
- TL(TC)
- McMaster
- Edited by
Kenneth Blackwell
Andrew G. Bone
Nicholas Griffin
Sheila Turcon
Cite The Collected Letters of Bertrand Russell, https://russell-letters.mcmaster.ca/brixton-letter-73
BRACERS 79640
<Brixton Prison>1
19 August 1918.
Dear Miss Rinder
Your letter2
has not yet arrived, but I will begin with various odds and ends.… I have been reading simultaneously Voltaire and Tchehov: impossible to imagine a greater contrast. Here is a typical last sentence of Tchehov:3
“The pain in his nose was soon over, but the torture in his heart remained.” I don’t know any other author who would end a story with this remark. Like all modern Russians, he represents the art of concealing defeat by fine phrases; Dostoevsky began it, and as time goes on the phrases grow finer and the defeat grows less concealed.4
I find it very hard to feel much sympathy with the Russians in their misfortunes:5
the whole cause of them is lack of will, with consequent rottennessa through and through; Gorky’s In the World6
illustrates this. Russia rouses the Puritan in me to fury. I don’t defend this attitude: it is a lapse into morality as above defined. (In a message in the earlier part of this letter7
he gives this definition of morality — “Morality = the art of inflicting pain without incurring public hostility. Df.”b I arrived at this Df.8
inductively by looking for some common quality in the acts commonly called moral: I could find none except that used in the above Df.) All Russians have a “soul”, which is merely an inner inexpungable citadel of self esteem, after every other defence of that pleasant emotion has been surrendered to the enemy. Voltaire is extraordinarily different: healthy, bustling, objective, fruitful for the future, very conscious of the developement of mankind. I found in a book about him two very comforting sentences, — one “Il faut que des philosophes aient 2 ou 3 trous sous terre contre les chiens qui courent après eux”9
, c — the other “Les années d’apprentissage de Voltaire sont finies. Il était temps: il touchait à la soixantaine.”10
, d It was after that that he did most of his important work. So I reflected that there is hope for us all, and that even though we be 46 we need not despair of achieving something before we die. It is fearful though, how much time one has wasted before discovering what one believes or how one wanted to live. “Creative and possessive”11
was the key for me.…
The Governor tells me E.S.P. Haynes12
heard I wanted a canary; he was misinformed, it was an orang-outang, which I hoped would throw light on mind in its origine and in the Cabinet. But I am afraid the Governor would prove obdurate: he would say it would worry the warders.…
Oh dear, I do want to get on faster with my work. But if I am let alone I shall get a lot done this winter. I have a furious desire to get things done, first of all as regards analysis of mind.13 The only “consolations of philosophy” I know of are the consolations of doing philosophy, which are the same as those of doing anything else. — Love to everybody,
Yours v. sinc.
B. Russell
- 1
[document] The letter was edited from a typed copy in the Russell Archives. There are several typed versions of the document and no original, and thus no initials of prison approval. The typescript chosen here (document .054846) is a ribbon copy with Rinder’s ink corrections (as has the carbon, though fewer of them, at document 200299F, BRACERS 19331); in addition there are three pencil corrections, possibly in Edith Russell’s hand (she wrote “Aut” for “Autobiography” at the top, although the letter was not, in the end, published there).
- 2
Your letter Rinder wrote BR on 17 August 1918 (BRACERS 79619).
- 3
typical last sentence of Tchehov This spelling of “Chekhov” is unusual but was employed by Constance Garnett in her translation of the collection in which the title-story concludes with the passage quoted by BR: The Witch and Other Stories (London: Chatto & Windus, 1918), p. 21.
- 4
Dostoevsky … less concealed These critical notes notwithstanding, BR, when young, had been intrigued and impressed by the genre he labelled “modern psychological fiction” in 1895 (Papers 1: 261), of which Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was a prime exponent.
- 5
Russians in their misfortunes BR was not expressing contempt for the Bolshevik experiment, towards which he remained largely sympathetic until witnessing its methods at first hand as part of a visiting British Labour Delegation in May 1920. Although he lamented here a defective national character, he tended to blame Russian misfortunes on the failure of the Allies to respond to Petrograd’s peace diplomacy after the overthrow of the Tsar but before the Bolshevik seizure of power, and on the policies of armed intervention and economic blockade directed at the revolutionary regime since then.
- 6
Gorky’s In the World Translated by Gertrude M. Foakes (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1918). This was the second volume of autobiography by Russian revolutionary and writer Maxim Gorky (1868–1936), chronicling the grim and drab reality of the Russian lives he encountered as a runaway orphan wandering and working across the Tsarist Empire. While visiting Russia with a British Labour Delegation in May 1920, BR had a short audience with an ailing Gorky in Petrograd. He found him “the most lovable, and to me the most sympathetic, of all the Russians I saw” (The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism [London: Allen & Unwin, 1920], p. 43).
- 7
(In a message in the earlier part of this letter The typist or early editor (probably Rinder) speaks here, quoting from a part of the original that is not extant. The interpolation is retained because BR corrected another typing of the letter (BRACERS 117621) with this text. He made several corrections to it, most likely without the original to hand.
- 8
Df. The abbreviation in mathematical logic for “Definition”.
- 9
“Il faut que … après eux” [Translation:] “It is necessary that philosophers have 2 or 3 subterranean holes against the dogs who run after them” (Gustave Lanson, Voltaire, 7th ed. [Paris: Hachette, 1929? (1st ed., 1906)], p. 133).
- 10
“Les années … soixantaine.” [Translation:] “The years of Voltaire’s apprenticeship are finished. It’s about time: he reached sixty” (Lanson, Voltaire, p. 82).
- 11
“Creative and possessive” BR was referring to his theory of impulse: “Impulses may be divided into those that make for life <creative> and those that make for death <possessive>” (Principles of Social Reconstruction [London: Allen & Unwin, 1916], p. 22). The former impulses were to objects that might be shared, the latter to those the possession of which by one person would preclude their possession by others. BR explained the distinction at greater length in Political Ideals (1917), Ch. 1.
- 12
E.S.P. Haynes “Who was a cousin of the Governor. The idea of the canary was due to a joke of Desmond MacCarthy’s.” (BR’s note on RA 210.080040F.) Haynes (1877–1949), a radical lawyer and rationalist author, was an acquaintance of both BR and his brother, Frank (with whom he had worked on divorce law reform). He gave informal legal advice to BR during his defence (see Papers 14: 391).
- 13
analysis of mind The research that eventually resulted in The Analysis of Mind (1921).
Textual Notes
- a
rottenness Misspelt as “rotteness”.
- b
public hostility. Df.” The closing quotation marks were editorially supplied.
- c
“Il faut que … après eux” Errors in the text were probably the transcriber’s: “des philosophes” was “les philosophes”, and “trous sous terre” was “trois sousterre” (“trois” was omitted from subsequent typings).
- d
“Les années … soixantaine.” The dash prior to the quotation was editorially supplied.
- e
origin Misspelt as “origen”.
Annotations by BR
In the late 1940s, when BR was going through his archives, and in the 1950s when he was revising his Autobiography, he would occasionally annotate letters. He did this to sixteen of the Brixton letters. Links to them are gathered here for convenient access to these new texts. In the annotations to the letters they are always followed by “(BR’s note.)”
Letter 2, note 5 happy.
5, note 6 congratulations to G.J.
9, note 28 bit of Girondin history.
12, note 6 friend.
15, note 2 (the letter in general).
20, note 7 G.J.
31, note 3 Dr’s treatment.
40, notes 9, 10 Ld. G.L.G, Lady B’s.
44, note 14 S.S.
48, note 48 Mother Julian’s Bird.
57, notes 13, 16 Ld. Granville’s to Ly. B., bless that Dr. … seat of intellect.
70, note 15 Mrs Scott.
73, note 12 E.S.P. Haynes.
76, note 4 Cave.
85, note 2 Marsh on Rupert.
102, notes 23, 28 Woolley, K. Lonsdale.
General Annotations
Brett note from Auto. 2: 93
Cousens note from Auto. 2: 71
Kyle note with her letters to BR
Rinder note from Auto. 2: 88n.
Silcox note on BRACERS 80365
Brixton Prison
Located in southwest London Brixton is the capital’s oldest prison. It opened in 1820 as the Surrey House of Correction for minor offenders of both sexes, but became a women-only convict prison in the 1850s. Brixton was a military prison from 1882 until 1898, after which it served as a “local” prison for male offenders sentenced to two years or less, and as London’s main remand centre for those in custody awaiting trial. The prison could hold up to 800 inmates. Originally under local authority jurisdiction, local prisons were transferred to Home Office control in 1878 in an attempt to establish uniform conditions of confinement. These facilities were distinct from “convict” prisons reserved for more serious or repeat offenders sentenced to longer terms of penal servitude.
Desmond MacCarthy
(Charles Otto) Desmond MacCarthy (1877–1952), literary critic, Cambridge Apostle, and a friend of BR’s since their Trinity College days in the 1890s. MacCarthy edited the Memoir (1910) of Lady John Russell.
Edith Russell
Edith Russell (1900–1978) was an American biographer and part-time academic at Bryn Mawr College with whom BR became acquainted through his American friend Lucy Donnelly. She was the author of Wilfred Scawen Blunt (1938) and Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr (1947). The former Edith Bronson Finch became BR’s fourth wife in 1952. She was a director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.
Frank Russell
John Francis (“Frank”) Stanley Russell (1865–1931; 2nd Earl Russell from 1878), BR’s older brother. Author of Lay Sermons (1902), Divorce (1912), and My Life and Adventures (1923). BR remembered Frank bullying him as a child and as having the character and appearance of a Stanley, but also as giving him his first geometry lessons (Auto. 1: 26, 36). He was accomplished in many fields: sailor, electrician, house builder, pioneer motorist, local politician, lawyer, businessman and company director, and (later) constructive junior member of the second Labour Government. Frank was married three times. The first marriage involved serious legal actions by and against his wife and her mother, but a previous scandal, which ended his career at Oxford, had an overshadowing effect on his life (see Ruth Derham, “‘A Very Improper Friend’: the Influence of Jowett and Oxford on Frank Russell”, Russell 37 [2017]: 271–87). The second marriage was to Mollie Sommerville (see Ian Watson, “Mollie, Countess Russell”, Russell 23 [2003]: 65–8). The third was to Elizabeth, Countess von Arnim. Despite difficulties with him, BR declared from prison: “No prisoner can ever have had such a helpful brother” (Letter 20).
Governor of Brixton Prison / Carleton Haynes
Captain Carleton Haynes (1858–1945), the Governor of Brixton Prison in 1918, was a retired army officer and a cousin of BR’s acquaintance, the radical lawyer and author E.S.P. Haynes. In March 1919 BR sent Haynes, in jest, a copy (now in the Russell Archives) of his newly published Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy — so that the governor’s collection of works written by inmates while under his charge would “not ... be incomplete” (BRACERS 123167).
Gladys Rinder
W. Gladys Rinder worked for the No-Conscription Fellowship and was “chiefly concerned with details in the treatment of pacifist prisoners” (BR’s note, Auto. 2: 88). More specifically, she helped administer the Conscientious Objectors’ Information Bureau, a joint advisory committee set up in May 1916 and representing two other anti-conscription organizations — the Friends’ Service Committee and Fellowship of Reconciliation — as well as the NCF. One C.O. later testified to her “able and zealous” management of this repository of records on individual C.O.s (see John W. Graham, Conscription and Conscience: a History, 1916–1919 [London: Allen & Unwin, 1922], p. 186). Rinder exhibited similar qualities in assisting with the distribution of BR’s correspondence from prison and in writing him official and smuggled letters. Her role in the NCF changed in June 1918, and after the Armistice she assumed control of a new department dedicated to campaigning for the immediate release of all imprisoned C.O.s. She appears to have lost touch with BR after the war but continued her peace advocacy, which included publishing occasionally on international affairs. In 1924 she travelled to Washington, DC, as part of the British delegation to a congress of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Decades later Colette remembered Rinder to Kenneth Blackwell as somebody who “seemed about 40 in 1916–18. She was a completely nondescript person, but efficient, and kind” (BRACERS 121687).