BRACERS Notes

Record no. Notes, topics or text
121732

Re the agents (Penningtons) for 2 Old Palace Terrace.

121733

BR welcomes him around June 15.

121734

BR has no objection to Egner adding new extracts for the U.S. edition.

121735
BR is unable to write a preface due to pressure of work undertaken.
121736

BR's tenancy at Millbank is expiring and asks if Tylor knows of anyone who would like an investment of 4 or £5,000 in a mortgage for him.

121737

A letter from Jerome Wiesner is to be sent to Rotblat.

121738

If health permits, BR and Edith will attend the Basel Congress, July 4-7. BR wants to know what is expected of him.

121739

BR cannot attend the meeting of June 16 as he has several people coming to see him "on matters of importance". Bishop of Johannesburg.

121740

BR agrees with Eaton about the FBI and the Committee on Un-American Activities, but he has come to believe that "attacks by non-Americans serve no useful purpose".

121741

BR accepts the presidency of a conference but cannot journey to India.

121742

BR and Edith will come to the Vienna Congress of Pugwash. What activities would be expected of him?

121743

BR would recommend Ayer in his place except that he is not a Fellow of the Royal Society.

121744

BR cannot accept Koch's suggestion as his time is completely occupied.

121745

BR is in entire sympathy and agrees to be a sponsor.

121746

BR declines to write a review "as I am too much occupied with nuclear warfare."

121747

Blackwell introduces himself to Dora Russell. He is in England. The first accrual of BR's archives filled 11 cabinets and 9 trunks. Blackwell hopes to add to this. He met with Dora on the trip and met John Conrad Russell, too.

Not all the letters in this folder are entered separately.

121748
121749

"There are hardly any people besides myself who can give an account of that time in China, or our passage through Japan." "In particular there was a family of husband, wife and son, Japanese socialists, whom we met, who were subsequently murdered by the Japanese police." [The woman's name was Miss Ito.]

121750

Dora thinks that the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation made a mistake when it sold the archives abroad, rather than keeping them in Britain.

121751

"I would be immensely grateful for a copy of the proceedings of the World League for Sex Reform Congress of 1929 ... this was entirely organised by Norman Haire, the Flugels and me, and had nothing to do with Russell."

121752

Dora recollects a discussion between J.E. Littlewood and BR in Lulworth about Jourdain in the summer of 1919. "There was an agonized discussion as to whether it would be right to tell a dying man, for his comfort, that his proof was 'right'. Both of them felt they could not, even in that extremity, depart from what they held to be mathematical truth.... Littlewood went to carry greetings and what comfort could be given from both of them."

121753

This is a second letter written on the same day.

"Alan Wood's The Passionate Sceptic is most misleading and inaccurate where the [Beacon Hill] School and I are concerned." "Some of Russell's own statements in the Autobiography are also not true."

121754

Re Alan Wood's book, The Passionate Sceptic:

"Wood came to dinner with Frida Laski in order to meet me, and get some information ... I said as little as possible, because I have made it a rule never to gossip about Russell or give interviews about him. But I did tell the story which has never, I think, been printed, about the part I played in helping to save Russell's life in Peking. This did not appear in Wood's book, in fact nothing favourable to me did appear in it." She is puzzled why BR allowed the publication of this book.

Re Ralph Schoenman: "My granddaughters lived in Wales with Schoenman there, and they have some strong views on the matter."

She notes that Mr. Jager's theory about her influencing BR against religion is false. "Russell always put it about that I was more revolutionary than he, because we did not agree about Russia in 1920. But at that time I did save him from simply becoming an old fashioned liberal. And Industrial Civilizaton is virtually my book." "I never became a Communist." "The one thing in politics I have cared about is to reconcile East and West. I think Russell got round to my point of view in the last period of his life." "Personally, I incline to the view that wives are people."

121755

"Russell respected intellect—and male intellect at that—above all things, as I explain in my book. He furthered the interests of any of his pupils whose minds he thought important, such as Nicod, Wittgenstein." "Why does Constance Malleson not publish her letters, or has Russell embargoed those, too? What fun for him to prevent various people ever knowing what they said about each other to him and he about them. Almost as bad as Nixon and the White House tapes."

121756

Dora believes that when BR and Wittgenstein met in the Hague, Wittgenstein was a homosexual. "I also believe that his admiration for Russell had a similar foundation. I am not among those who set store by Wittgenstein's philosophy, though he was, clearly, a fascinating and entertaining character when young. He seems to have got pompous later."

BR "told me quite definitely that his reason for breaking off with Constance Malleson, who, I am sure, he would have married, was that she wanted to go on with her career as an actress and did not want to start a family."

"The prospect of a child with Peter Spence also played a vital part in our separation."

121757

"For several years I did a fortnightly article for El Sol in Madrid, and a series of articles in the Sunday Chronicle on bringing up children."

121758

"My articles in El Sol ... began in the summer of 1926, and went on, fortnightly, for at least five years. Articles in the now defunct Sunday Chronicle began about 1932."

"My difficulty in writing about education, is that Russell altered his view so much after he left the school and the school was run mainly by me." She does not regard Beacon Hill School as "the most important thing that Russell and I did."

121759

This is a group entry for a series of letters to and from regarding the publication of Dora Russell's book, The Tamarisk Tree, published by Elek Pemberton.

121760
121761

"Rowse has always been ridiculous about Bertrand Russell. He accused him of being pro German in the First War. I heard him saying the same sort of thing after the Second War at a meeting of P.E.N. Club, when Dame Rebecca West was in the chair. I got up and attacked him then."

Re Edna Lenoir: "As to what she says about atheist books and Montreal—I am astounded. I say with—who was it?—when they banned a nude statue 'O God, O Montreal!' It is a famous saying to which Bertrand often referred."

121762

"Russell never talked with me about Spinoza except to describe him as one of his spiritual ancestors. He had a portrait of him always on the wall in his study, with his temporal ancestors. He did not visit Spinoza's house at the Hague. It was bitterly cold when we were there; I was the only person who went out of the hotel at all, to visit the library."

121763

Dora refutes many of the rumours about Beacon Hill School.

121764

This letter was written after Edith Russell visited McMaster University. She thanks Blackwell for his work on BR's archives.

This is one letter in a file folder containing letters from 1970 to 1977. Most of the letters are not entered individually.

121765

"I don't remember anything about the book you speak of about the philosophy of religion.... As to the Autobiography of 1912, I imagine that it was incorporated in the later version and the earlier draft destroyed. There were innumerable versions and stages of Autobiog. throughout the years."

"I much like Harold White's photo of Bertie standing before the bookshelves at Richmond smoking his pipe. And I like the one that ? Arya took, which Unwin has used for the cover of the U-book Outline of Philosophy. And I like the photos that that Turk [Ara Guler] and his wife took. I don't like those taken by Snowden."

121766

"I trust you are not publishing McLendon's article. I remember his visits here, and I think to Richmond too. He was a nice and worthy man, but his mental processes and his sensitiveness seemed very laborious—at least that's what I and I believe my husband, thought at the time—and, though I can't now remember the details of his article, I remember being shocked when I read it by its obtuseness." [The article was published in Russell n.s. 34 (2014): 5-34 (https://escarpmentpress.org/russelljournal/article/view/2259/2284).]


Edith writes about the embargo and about photographs taken of BR in Australia. [Does she refer to the book inscribed by Greenish with 5 photos inserted in it?]

121767

Edith writes about Colette: "Before your letter arrived I had not had the perfectly horrifying news that she had lain helpless for four days before being found. It is quite dreadful. It seems extraordinary that it should happen to her twice. After her stroke of some years ago she lay undiscovered and helpless in Ponders Cottage for two days."

121768

"Lucy Donnelly had a great collection of letters from Alys Russell. They exchanged long letters with increasing frequency from the last years of the last century till Lucy's death, most of which were preserved. And I had a fairly large collection, especially from the late 1940s. But when I left the U.S.A. in 1950, I think I destroyed the lot, certainly most of it. How I regret, now, that I did not keep them."

[However, Edith hand-copied many of the letters, and they arrived in 2013, Rec. Acq. 1685.]

121769

"I deserve censure, not congratulation, in the way that I preserved material! I allowed the great mass of letters that came following the broadcast of 'Man's Peril' and then 'The Scientists' Manifesto' and later, 'Our Imprisonment' to be destroyed! (How I regret it!) and that is to mention only a few of the holocausts."

121770

"No, I no longer possess the 'little oak table made out of the Doomsday oak at Alderley'. I gave it and the larger one to Conrad as they seemed to me to be 'family possessions'."

"But the question as to whether Bertie was 'genuine' made me laugh aloud. I should think that to write his personal letters with an 'eye on posterity' was the last thing that it ever occurred to him to do."

121771

Edith writes "about how Bryn Mawr College happened to have the ms. of John Forstice. My husband gave it to Lucy Donnelly who gave it to me. I gave it to the College along with most of my books and then asked for it back in order to return it to my husband. He had almost forgot its existence."

121772

"Thank you, too, for your suggestions about Clark's book. But I fear that its margins are not wide enough for all that I should wish to say." She notes that her correspondence with BR would not have helped Clark that much. There is not much correspondence as she and BR were almost always together.

[Edith's comments on Clark's Life of Bertrand Russell were published in Russell: https://escarpmentpress.org/russelljournal/article/view/2157, https://escarpmentpress.org/russelljournal/article/view/2178, and https://escarpmentpress.org/russelljournal/article/view/2190.]

121773

"It is difficult to realize that Lucy's death and the appalling manner of it has happened. The reasons for its happening as it did, no one seems to know."

121774

"Colette's death saddened me and, as you and Professor Slater will, I shall miss her letters very greatly."

121775

"The tone of The Sunday Times serialization was, certainly, disgusting. Clark himself, of course, might have done something about it, but there was nothing whatever that we could do. As to what 'Colette would have thought of all this'—I think that she would have loathed Clark's book and Dora's [?] as seen in the press." Clark was "just plain wrong" and thus "I am forced to look upon all his unearthed facts as dubious." Edith agrees that "the correspondence with Ottoline ranks among the best ever."

"Bertie's estate is suffering the final throes of settlement."

121776

"P. Spence, by the way, has already given all her papers to the Bodleian along with a letter to say what is to be done with them when she dies. At least, so Conrad has told me."

"I knew Mary Berenson and Karin and her daughter Judith. Ann, her other girl, I only met long ago when she was a child. Is Dr Synge Ann's or Judith's daughter? If the latter, perhaps she is the baby whom Judith once brought to spend an afternoon with us in Richmond!"

121777

Edith writes about her attempts to copy for the Russell Archives a recording "of the speech that BR made to the Great Jewish Congress that met in London in 1953." "As you remembered, it is a very moving address. The Jewish audience found it so, I was told. I wasn't at the meeting, but I remember BR's return from it and how moved he was and how impressive he had found the meeting. I don't remember ever seeing a written copy of the speech."

Edith did visit various "Whitall women" at Fernhurst.

121778

"The Crawshay's death shocked—in the sense of surprised—us all. Most of us knew that it was the way they had intended to die, but somehow we hadn't realized that it was imminent."

Edith thinks that Susan Russell (John's ex-wife) wrote "The Lasting Impressions of Bertie Russell". "She was a poet and Bertie did try to encourage her and was fond of her as she says. The piece seems to me a brilliant and sensitive and astonishingly penetrating analysis, almost wholly intuition, not reasoned at all." Michael Burn also thinks she wrote it. There are only two points that they don't agree with. "I do not think that she knows much about Islam. But I think what she says of Bertie himself on page 7 is both perceptive and accurate." "In spite of the fact that it is well-written, as the author says, and so slap-dash, it seems to me [and to Burn] one of the best short descriptions and characterizations that I know of Bertie. What a pity that Clark has none of Susan's sensitiveness or understanding."

Bertie was well aware of the "elements warring within him" but he "could not manage to bring them together in peace. We used to talk about it. A few years later, in the latter half of the fifties, he felt that at last he had succeeded and was at peace and happy." "'Diddy' was Conrad's pronunciation of 'daddy'. It was adopted by all the family and by many of their friends."

"Norah Purcell, an ex-wife of Victor Purcell, was Bertie's secretary in 1950-51."

121779

"Is it possible to prepare out of my father's minor articles a general statement of his view on the scope of civil disobedience?" This letter is contained in a file of correspondence between Blackwell and Conrad Russell; not all the letters are entered individually.

121780

Re the dissertation of Jo Newberry (later Vellacott):

"I am extremely impressed with what I have read so far, and find her work outdoes Ronald Jager's as the most sensitive and perceptive portrayal of my father I have read. I am constantly finding passages which make me understand both him and myself as his son better than I did before."

121781
"I found the picture of my father as an administrator hilariously perceptive...."
121782

Re Ronald Clark biography:

"I think he has tried hard to get at the truth, but his work has been sensationalized by those who lack time to digest it."

121783

"I would say my father's standard of classical knowledge was about that achieved by a lower second B.A. in Classics today."

"I remember my father introducing me to the joys of exploring the tube in 1944-5, and I think, got a fair picture of what it meant to him.... He would never willingly have missed the opportunity to see the night sky from a town, and one might add that though he preferred the tube to buses, he equally firmly preferred taxis to tube (he had greater skill in getting a taxi in London than anyone else I have ever met.) My father's attitude to the tube was much the same as Mr. Gladstone's: it was a fascinating new mechanical toy. I think he knew the exact depth of every central London station. The mystery of the engineering was added to a delight in train which, with my elder son, has now shown up in all four generations of the family who have grown up since railways began." "I believe my father's central bald patch dated from very early: it certainly dated from before my first memories."

121784

This letter is signed "Peg Adam". Her second married name is "Aitchison".

"I was his private secretary, and possibly is closest confidante from 1930-33...."

Re the second volume of the Autobiography: "All but I think the last chapter of this was written with me." "I was astonished at the cursory way in which this part of his life was treated, and at the many omissions."

This letter contains an excerpt from a letter from BR, see record 121785.

121785

This extract appears in a letter from Adam to Blackwell, 1969/03/04, record 121784. She is in the Canary Islands and her letters from BR are in England, thus she is working from memory.

"In the last letter I had from Bertie, handwritten very shakily, he mentioned the wish to see me, saying 'have (sic) the world wants to shoot me, and the other half wants to deify me. I hope I see you before the first half gets its way."

The date is taken from her letter to Blackwell, 10 May 1969, in which she says a copy is enclosed (it wasn't).

121786

Adam lists all the Russell materials in her possession and her memories of what she used to have from the period 1930-33 when she worked for him, which were lost in the war. She indicates she is enclosing a letter but it is not there. See record 121785. She notes that she did not see him between 1933 and 1950 when they met again in Australia. She does not think Education and the Social Order was written in the summer of 1932 at Carn Voel but earlier at Bernard Street. That is where he acquired and did the original sorting with her of the Amberley papers. She married in Jan. 1932 and visited BR and Peter at Emperor's Gate.

"My own impression is that he wrote The Scientific Outlook, Education and the Social Order and the Autobiography up to 1921 in that order." "I did not become his secretary until, I think, late November of 1930."

Adam did not meet Peter "until 1931 when, under Bertrand's tutelage, I became very much involved with her for a time."

121787

These letters concern Adler's debate with BR at the Sinai Temple Forum, 20 Jan. 1941.

121788

These letters concern Robert Sencourt, BR and Vivienne Eliot.

121789

This is a group entry for letters between Blackwell and Chao.

121790

"No".

121791

BR has no time that is not booked during his next trip to London and cannot meet the Narayans.

121792

BR is not persona grata with the Home Office.

121793

The Childs bank statement is to be sent to BR's accountant.

121794

The letters mainly concern the sale of the 12th Duke of Bedford's papers to McMaster.

121795

BR encloses (not present) his preface to Labour and the H-bomb".

121796

Armstrong writes that he cannot locate any letters that BR wrote to him during World War I. There are other letters in the file; Armstrong has nothing to send to the Russell Archives, and his memories of Catherine Marshall are vague.

121797

BR presumably returns something to the College Office that was "wrongly forwarded".

121798

BR keeps only serious press cuttings and "those informing me that I shall spend eternity in hell". He and Edith will see Priestley in Basel.

121799

BR cannot attend Schmidt's meeting on the world situation.

121800

Arnoni writes about the memorandum on Ralph Schoenman:

"I must say that Russell's recount of what had happened was very much of a cosmetics job. So do I also feel about the 'Memorandum' generally. I have many reservations about it, including about its candor and certain factual allegations. Much as I believe Schoenman to have been a liability to Russell, I even have evidence that contradicts at least some of Russell's disclaimers of responsibility, retroactive belittling of the role he had allowed Schoenman to play, his awareness of certain of Schoenman's methods, etc."

There are other letters in the file; they are not entered separately.

121801

BR sends his accountant a document from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

121802

BR cannot attend a meeting in South Wales in the autumn.

121803

BR agrees to write "Why Go to the Moon?".

121804

"The material in my possession, however, is not limited to the letter and interview mentioned in your letter, but includes five letters from Lord Russell dealing with various subjects on the Middle East."

There are two other letters in the file, both from Blackwell.

121805

BR will not write anything philosophical for the present, because of the anti-H-bomb campaign.

121806

BR is willing to sit for photography by Richard Avedon.

121807

A group entry for a file of letters between Ayer and Blackwell.

121808

BR will be happy to see Gottesman in London during the next 2 weeks.

121809

BR encloses (not present) a letter with information that Unwin may lack.

121810
BR cannot attend a meeting but expresses his best hopes for it.
121811

BR is willing to take part in a Lords debate. Simon's reply to Lord Halifax is excellent. The execution of Nagy and his friends (in Hungary) will be a setback to the campaign.

121812

BR includes a message for the Fourth World Conference Against A and H Bombs in Tokyo in August and will be glad to be a sponsor.

121813

BR forwards Yasui's letter (record 121812) with a query about sending delegates to Tokyo.

121814

BR cannot come to Venice in August but hopes he has a successful meeting.

121815

BR is glad Kaviraj no longer wishes "to cease to be", but personal association with BR would not be better than reading his published writings.

121816

BR forwards a copy of an encouraging letter from Tito.

121817

BR thanks him for sending encouraging letters from Tito and Khrushchev. The execution of Nagy and friends is distressing.

121818

BR refers to 3 of his recent books as containing answers to Katz's questions.

121819

BR cannot write the statement requested, but he has every sympathy with Pollak's goals.

121820

BR would gladly send any letters from Gorky, but he has none. [There is one in the Dora Russell boxes; see record 74934.]

121821

"Russell and my father were both Cambridge mathematicians. But I think that the link between them lay more in their political and philosophical approach than in any close mathematical affinity. Russell of course was not a churchman. But I think that both he and my father had an essentially scientific approach to the problems of life and they were both of course radicals in their general way of thinking."

There are other letters in the file.

121822

Re McKinney's Hibbert article. It concerns not analysis but a scientific hypothesis, illustrated by astronomy; the gulf is between analysis and inference to things not perceived.

121823

BR will get to work on the article at once.

121824

BR forwards a letter from Dora Russell concerning the Basel Conference.

121825

BR would like to see the caricature of Lord John Russell.

121826
BR sends one guinea.
121827

"The first time I met Russell must have been in the early 30s, when I commented publicly on a paper (his presidential address?) that he delivered to the Aristotelian Society. In the early 40s, I was in charge of a visit he paid to the University of Illinois, where I was then teaching. Later [in 1948], I spent much of a whole day sitting by his side in a touring bus in Holland. That was soon after his airplane accident and his subsequent swim to safety, of which I remember him as being very proud. There must have been other occasions, since we had a mutual friend in Susan Stebbing."

There are other letters in the file.

121828

Blanshard knew Joachim well but doesn't know where his papers are.

There are other letters in the file.

121829

Paul Blanshard sent his papers to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

121830

"Bertrand Russell has taken a great interest in my work and has actively sponsored it."

Re Semantography-Blissymbolics.

There are more letters in the file.

121831

Broad does not know where the papers of James Ward are. Broad does not have any letters from BR after Feb. 1969.

There are more letters in the file.