Brixton Letter 53
BR to Gladys Rinder
July 30, 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-53
Auto. 2: 88-9
BRACERS 116687
<Brixton Prison>1
30th July, 1918.
Many thanks for Spectator review. Is it not odd that people can in the same breath praise “The Free Man’s Worship”2 , a and find fault with my views on the war?3 “The Free Man’s Worship” is merely the expression of the pacifist outlook when it was new to me. So many people enjoy rhetorical expressions of fine feelings, but hate to see people perform the actions that must go with the feelings if they are genuine. How could any one, approving “The Free Man’s Worship”, expect me to join in the trivial self-righteous moral condemnation of the Germans? All moral condemnation is utterly against the whole view of life that was then new to me but is now more and more a part of my being. I am naturally pugnacious, and am only restrained (when I am restrained) by a realization of the tragedy of human existence, and the absurdity of spending our little moment in strife and heat. That I, a funny little gesticulating animal on two legs, should stand beneath the stars and declaim in a passion about my rights — it seems so laughable, so out of all proportion. Much better, like Archimedes, be killedb because of absorption in eternal things.4 And when once men get away fromc their rights, from the struggle to take up more room in the world than is their due, there is such a capacity of greatness in them. All the loneliness and the pain and the eternal pathetic hope — the power of love and the appreciation of beauty — the concentration of many ages and spaces in the mirror of a single mind — these are not things one would wish to destroy wantonly, for any of the national ambitions that politicians praise. There is a possibility in human minds of something mysterious as the night-wind, deep as the sea, calm as the stars, and strong as Death, a mystic contemplation, the “intellectual love of God”.5 Those who have known it cannot believe in wars any longer, or in any kind of hot struggle. If I could give to others what has come to me in this way, I could make them too feel the futility of fighting. But I do not know how to communicate it: when I speak, they stare, applaud, or smile, but do not understand.
- 1
[document] The letter was edited from a typed copy (document 201179) in the Malleson papers in the Russell Archives; the original is not known to be extant. The letter was published in BR’s Autobiography, 2: 88–9.
- 2
“The Free Man’s Worship” First published in The Independent Review on December 1903 (B&R C03.03), BR included it in Philosophical Essays (1910) and (retitled “A Free Man’s Worship”) in Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (1918). He later parted ways with the manner of rhetorical expression in the essay but not the outlook described (see A Free Man’s Worship with a Special Preface [Portland, Maine: Thomas Bird Mosher, 1923] and headnote to 4 in Papers 12).
- 3
Spectator review ... praise “The Free Man’s Worship” … my views on the war? The Spectator’s review, eponymously titled “Mysticism and Logic”, appeared in no. 4,695 (22 June 1918): 647–8, and had been brought to BR’s attention by Lucy Silcox (see BRACERS 80383). Mysticism and Logic included “A Free Man’s Worship”. The anonymous reviewer, purportedly male, is identified in the marked copy of The Spectator as Mrs. C. Williams-Ellis, the former Amabel Strachey (1893–1984) and daughter of the Spectator’s editor, John St. Loe Strachey. Her brother was John Strachey. In 1915 she married the architect Major Clough Williams-Ellis, who soon began building Portmeirion, the Italianate village close to BR’s final home in North Wales. In 1960 BR prefaced a sci-fi anthology, Out of This World, Vol. 1, edited by Amabel. It’s not known when they became friends, or whether BR ever knew she was the reviewer. The review praised his style exceptionally highly (“Rather than overload an argument he will go to the most heroic lengths of elimination”) and equally so “A Free Man’s Worship”. Still the review concluded: “Mr. Russell has written a noble and deeply moving work. If the present writer has erred, it is not in praising too highly, but in not being generous enough in his eulogy. And yet, feeling as he does about Mr. Russell’s views on the war, he can say in all sincerity that he would rather be the humblest English soldier fighting for the good cause than have written this most memorable book.” It is, therefore, less surprising that Amabel’s first book written with Clough was The Tank Corps (1919).
- 4
Archimedes … killed ... absorption in eternal things The ingenuity of Archimedes (c.287–212 BC) had greatly assisted the defence of Syracuse from besieging Roman forces during the Second Punic War. As a result, it was ordered that Archimedes be spared when the Greek city eventually fell. But the Greek mathematician and inventor was nevertheless killed — reputedly by an impatient soldier after Archimedes insisted that he complete a mathematical diagram before being escorted to the Roman commander.
- 5
“intellectual love of God” BR quoted Letter 53 in his Autobiography (2: 88–9) and in the same chapter wrote: “What Spinoza calls ‘the intellectual love of God’ has seemed to me the best thing to live by, but I have not had even the somewhat abstract God that Spinoza allowed himself to whom to attach my intellectual love” (2: 38). BR had included a statement of the concept in the Principles of Social Reconstruction lectures: “It is this happy contemplation of what is eternal that Spinoza calls the intellectual love of God. To those who have once known it, it is the key of wisdom” (pp. 245–6). See the discussions of the concept in K. Blackwell, The Spinozistic Ethics of Bertrand Russell (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985). It is a notoriously difficult concept to make precise, but in the current letter BR’s emphasis is on the triviality of moral condemnation. One shouldn’t “find fault with a man for anything he does because he is bound to do that” (interview with Robert Bolt, The Life and Times of Bertrand Russell [London: BBC, 1964], shot list, pp. 12–13 [RA, box 1.31]; quoted in Blackwell, ibid., p. 22).
- a
“The Free Man’s Worship” Quotation marks and initial caps were editorially supplied on the three occurrences of the title.
- b
be killed Auto. 2: 89 follows document .007052FP, BRACERS 93482, with “to be killed”.
- c
get away from Auto. 2: 89 follows document .007052FP, BRACERS 93482, which follows document 200299H, BRACERS 19333, with “get”. Document 200299G, BRACERS 19332, has “got” but was altered in blue ink by Colette or her editor to “get”.
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.
Constance Malleson
Lady Constance Malleson (1895–1975), actress and author, was the daughter of Hugh Annesley, 5th Earl Annesley, and his second wife, Priscilla. “Colette” (as she was known to BR) was raised at the family home, Castlewellan Castle, County Down, Northern Ireland. Becoming an actress was an unusual path for a woman of her class. She studied at Tree’s (later the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), debuting in 1914 with the stage name of Colette O’Niel at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London, in a student production. She married fellow actor Miles Malleson (1888–1969) in 1915 because her family would not allow them to live together. In 1916 Colette met BR through the No-Conscription Fellowship and began a love affair with him that lasted until 1920. The affair was rekindled twice, in 1929 and 1948; they remained friends for the rest of his life. She had a great talent for making and keeping friends. Colette acted in London and the provinces. She toured South Africa in 1928–29 and the Middle East, Greece and Italy in 1932 in Lewis Casson and Sybil Thorndike’s company. She acted in two films, both in 1918, Hindle Wakes and The Admirable Crichton, each now lost. With BR’s encouragement she began a writing career, publishing a short story in The English Review in 1919. She published other short stories as well as hundreds of articles and book reviews. Colette wrote two novels — The Coming Back (1933) and Fear in the Heart (1936) — as well as two autobiographies — After Ten Years (1931) and In the North (1946). She was a fierce defender of Finland, where she had lived before the outbreak of World War II. Letters from her appeared in The Times and The Manchester Guardian. Another of her causes was mental health. She died five years after BR in Lavenham, Suffolk, where she spent her final years. See S. Turcon, “A Bibliography of Constance Malleson”, Russell 32 (2012): 175–90.
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).