BR TO ALYS RUSSELL, 21 SEPT. 1893
BRACERS 20367. ALS(M). Camellia Collections. SLBR 1: #11
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by A. Duncan and K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Pembroke Lodge,1
Richmond,
Surrey.
Sep. 21.  1893.
10.30 p.m.

Dear Alys

Your letter arrived at supper, and my grandmother’s enquiry who it was from formed a very good opening for the conversation. As soon as my uncle was gone to see my aunt Gertrude I told her. She is really too entirely wonderful and saint-like. I never before felt her goodness so much. She was of course a good deal pained but she did not utter one word of reproof or for a moment suggest the slightest blame to either of us. She said (to which I heartily agreed) that I was much too young to be engaged yet: she took exactly the opposite view from your mother’s that if we meet and correspond often it is as good as an engagement: I tried to explain but found it impossible. I saw she thought you also were in love and I hardly dared explicitly undeceive her as I saw she would probably blame you if I did and that I couldn’t have stood. I told her several times there was more affection on my side but I believe she thought that mere modesty, particularly as I had begun by saying (was I not justified?) that we were both fond of each other: thinking to avoid the word love, but of course she did not observe the shade of difference. You remember we had determined to emphasize the difference as little as possible and throughout I never mentioned love. She told me, what I was greatly astonished to hear, that she had a somewhat similar experience with my father, though nothing had then been said of love, and she had died.2 She said we were already very intimate and didn’t need to know each other any better for our purposes, but when I said I felt it my duty to do otherwise she said no more. She is going to tell my uncle tomorrow and of course to write to your mother. She repeated all that she had said before and how she thought we ought not to write and meet regularly (which shews how completely unable she is to understand the situation): finally she promised never to say another word against our doings and I am happy to say never once doubted the morality of our motives. I gather she will neither help nor hinder our meeting. — The talk was painful: but I felt that no one was to blame, which made it much less so than it might have been; and the same feeling made her much less unhappy than she might have been: particularly as I assured her that it was at least as likely as not it would never come to marriage and if it did, at any rate not for many years. I feel much happier now all is open. — There was only one thing which was amusing, but that too had its sting: she said she had hoped Harold Russell3 would have saved me from that danger! He of all people! — I am very glad of what you tell me about your mother; but as for my caring less I don’t think that is likely. You see I really have known you fairly well longer than you have me because there was all the time when I was shy and silent and the whole time I bottled up most of my thoughts because I can’t help it. — I am glad you don’t like the Walt: I don’t either. It was really rather an excess of honesty to represent it as expressing what my feelings had ever been; but in any case I cannot see why one should be ashamed of any feeling which has not got the better of one’s reason; it seems to me the stronger it is the more glad one should be to have conquered it and have made it help (as every conquered feeling does) to the formation of a stable character. Such intensity and concentration is scarcely likely to occur often so that one may feel a certain confidence of being always able to act reasonably. — The other quotation was pointed out to me by Logan: there is a resignation about it which I scarcely even can bring myself to wish to aspire to though it is sublime.a — I hope you will not be too much afraid of trusting your feelings: you know you have years and years to test them and I shall never for an instant, however you may be, forget that one termination of our friendship is quite as likely as the other.b — It would be hopeless to sacrifice an iota of your honesty for my grandmother’s sake: besides I think the opportunity will not often occur. But she will never object to our meeting as much as we wish, as she knows I think it right. — Bohemianism and river trips are not likely to commend themselves to our elders:4 and if there were ever a chance of meeting acquaintances it would be to be avoided: short of that I see only good in it; besides it ought to be allowable and some one must begin. — I should have been furious too about vaccination: it is the one opinion in the course of a long catechism in which I found favour with my grandmother Stanley. — It would be nice if you didn’t go to America. — Don’t let me shirk the last and bitterest duty: a confession of sins belonging to a self that is dead but which can be dead only to myself: no one else has a right to consider it so. This must be in conversation and you must compel me to it. Whenc I am with you I cannot bring myself to the point but I think everything ought to be told: don’t you? —I have read a great deal more of Green5 and have much to say about him but not now.

Ever yours
Bertrand Russell.

If you wish my grandmother more clearly to understand your position say so: but I don’t think it would do any good.

• 1

  [document] Document 300008.

• 2

  she had died Janet Chambers (d. 1863); see Amberley Papers, Vol. 1.

• 3

  Harold Russell One of Russell’s cousins. He was the grandson of Lord John’s brother, William. It is not known what he had done to set such a dire example.

• 4

  Bohemianism and river trips … to our elders In Alys’s letter of 20 September she described how she had told her mother of their relationship. Her mother, she said, did not altogether approve of Bohemianism and river trips — the latter a reference to their trip on the Cam in August when they had first spoken of marriage.

• 5

  I have read a great deal more of Green T.H. Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics (1883), a seminal work for the British neo-Hegelians. Alys had been reading it, too, apparently in preparation for tackling McTaggart’s pamphlet.

Textual Notes

• a

  though it is sublime inserted

• b

  the other after deleted another

• c

  When after deleted indecipherable word