BR TO LUCY M. DONNELLY, 20 AUG. 1911
BRACERS 58512. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 1: #175
Edited by M. Forte and N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Ipsden,
Wallingford.1
20. August 1911

My dear Lucy

I am very sorry indeed that you feel I have vanished from your world. Believe me, you have not vanished from my thoughts by any means. It is true, of course, that my separation from Alys makes you hear less of me, and will lead to my seeing less of you when you come to England; still I shall hope to manage to see a good deal of you when you do come. I did not realize you had never been in Cambridge — it is odd. Cambridge is more like home to me than any other place. I have known it 21 years, most of the people I know with similar pursuits live there, and many of the most important events of my life have happened to me there. You must imagine me in a fairly large room, looking out on a Renaissance cloistered court, with Wren’s library at one end and the Elizabethan College Hall at the other. My room contains many books, but only one picture (the picture of my mother that used to be at Bagley Wood), and the little Spinoza and Leibniz. In the main it is rather severe. For the moment, there is no one at Cambridge, and I have taken lodgings between the Thames and the Chilterns, in a region I got to know bicycling from Oxford — very beautiful, a mixture of corn-fields and beech-woods climbing the hill-sides. Towards the end of September I go back to Cambridge. Meanwhile I am very busy; I have just finished my book for the Middle West,2 which I will send you when it is out. I have already started another little book;3 I have proofs constantly, a presidential address for the Aristotelian Soc. to write,4 Trinity Fellowship Dissertations to read, etc. My main plan in the way of work is to write a big book on Theory of Knowledge, but I don’t want to embark on that for a good while5 — I want to read a good deal first. Lately I have been reading a lot of Plato (in English!); he is extraordinarily good.

It is very good news about Helen. I am so glad you and she no longer have any friction. One’s life is terribly the poorer when one’s comrades of many years fail one in any way. — All you tell me of Seal Harbour and of the children interests me greatly.6

Our politics have been very exciting, and until lately very exhilarating.7 But just now we are in the midst of a railway strike.8 Traffic is not so much upset as might be expected, but there is great bitterness; the Govt. has been very unsympathetic to the men, and has probably lost much ground in consequence.

I am not going abroad. Now that I am at Cambridge I find it hard to do much writing in term-time, so I must stick at it in Vacations. My duties at Cambridge are distracting, not tiring, so I have very little need of a holiday. But I am only working a very moderate amount. The heat, for a long time, has been greater than I have ever known it in England — I like Italy in August, but the heat here has been too great for me.

I am happier than I have been for many years. The cessation of daily friction has set free a great deal of energy which I put now into thinking, and I feel prepared to embark upon new big tasks as I did not before. I fear Alys still minds, but I can’t help thinking in the long run it will be for her happiness too. For many years past she has been bitterly miserable, and the only issue for us both was to face it and begin a new way of life.

Please give my love to Helen. Write again sooner than before, please, and don’t think of me as if I no longer existed.

Yours affectionately
Bertrand Russell.

• 1

  [document] Proofread against the original letter.

• 2

  I have just finished my book for the Middle West  The Problems of Philosophy.

• 3

  I have already started another little book  Prisons.

• 4

  a presidential address for the Aristotelian Soc. to write “On the Relations of Universals and Particulars”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1913; 16 in Papers 6). Read to the Society on 30 October 1911.

• 5

  My main plan … write a big book on Theory of Knowledge … for a good while. He started it in 1913, but it was never finished. The 350-page manuscript is published as Papers 7.

• 6

  All you tell me of Seal Harbour and of the children interests me greatly. Lucy Donnelly was staying at Seal Harbor, Maine, with Helen Flexner and her children.

• 7

  Our politics have been very exciting, and until lately very exhilarating. On 10 August, after a long fight with the Commons, the House of Lords reluctantly passed the Liberals’ bill to restrict its powers, rather than have the King create enough Liberal peers to ensure the bill’s passage. Russell had hopes that a more radical political agenda would now be possible for the Liberals.

• 8

  we are in the midst of a railway strike Among much other industrial unrest, a national railway strike had started on 18 August in support of demands for better pay and conditions. There was even the prospect of a general strike at the beginning of August. Asquith, not surprisingly, was bolder in standing up to the workers than he had been in standing up to the Lords. Churchill, as Home Secretary, called out the troops to keep the trains running.