BR TO LUCY M. DONNELLY, 7 FEB. 1903
BRACERS 58434. ALS. McMaster. Auto. 1: 168
Edited by Maria Forte. Proofread by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
14, Cheyne Walk,
Chelsea, S.W.1^, 2
7th Feb. 1903

Dear Lucy

I have just heard of Helen’s engagement, and for her sake I am glad — it has always seemed to me that she ought to marry, and that College life was distinctly a second-best for her. But for you, I know, it must be hard, very hard. It is a dangerous thing to allow one’s affections to centre too much in one person; for affection is always liable to be thwarted; and life itself is frail. One learns many things as year by year adds to the burden of one’s life; and I think the chief of all is the power of making all one’s loves purely contemplative. Do you know Walt Whitman’s “Out of the rolling ocean the crowd?”3 One learns to love all that is good with the same love — a love that knows of its existence, and feels warmed to the world by that knowledge, but asks for no possession, for no private gain except the contemplation itself. And there is no doubt that there are real advantages in loss: affection grows wider, and one learns insight into the lives of others. Every one who realizes at all what human life is must feel at some time the strange loneliness of every separate soul; and then the discovery in others of the same loneliness makes a new strange tie, and a growth of pity so warm as to be almost a compensation for what is lost.

Phrases, I know, do not mend matters; but it makes unhappiness far more bearable to think that some good will come of it; and indeed the facing of the world alone, without one’s familiar refuge, is the beginning of wisdom and courage.

Forgive my writing so intimately: but the world is too serious a place, at times, for the barriers of reserve and good manners.

We shall hope to see a great deal of you when you come to England, as I hope you will do. And I shall be very glad to hear from you whenever you feel inclined to write.

Yours very sincerely
Bertrand Russell.

• 1

  [document] Proofread against the original letter.

• 2

  [envelope] Miss Lucy D<remainder torn off with stamp> | Low Buildings | Bryn Mawr | Pa. | U.S.A.

• 3

  “Out of the rolling ocean the crowd?”  sic.