BR TO LUCY M. DONNELLY, 13 APR. 1903
BRACERS 58436. ALS. McMaster. Auto. 1: 169
Edited by Maria Forte. Proofread by K. Blackwell

Churt, Farnham1, 2
April 13. ’03.

Dear Lucy

It is impossible to tell you how like sunshine it was to me to hear that my letter had been a comfort. But alas! it is easier to see what is good than to practise it; and old as this observation is, I have not yet got used to it, or made up my mind that it really is true. Yet I have seen and known, at times, a life at a far higher level than my present one; and my precepts are very greatly superior to anything that I succeed in achieving.

Yes, the logic of life is a wonderful thing: sometimes I think of making up a set of aphorisms, to be called “Satan’s joys”; such as: Giving causes affection, receiving causes tedium; the reward of service is unrequited love. (This is the biography of all virtuous mothers, and of many wives.) Passions are smirched by indulgence and killed by restraint: the loss in either case is inevitable. And so on. But these bitter truths, tho’ they deserve to be recognized so far as they are true, are not good to dwell upon. Wherever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure: a larger heart, and a greater self-restraint, would put a calm autumnal sadness in the place of the instinctive outcry of pain. One of the things that make literature so consoling is, that its tragedies are all in the past, and have the completeness and repose that comes of being beyond the reach of our endeavours. It is a most wholesome thing, when one’s sorrow grows acute, to view it as having all happened long, long ago; to join, in imagination, the mournful company of dim souls whose lives were sacrificed to the great machine that still grinds on. I see the past, like a sunny landscape, where the world’s mourners mourn no longer. On the banks of the river of Time, the sad procession of human generations is marching slowly to the grave; but in the quiet country of the past, the tired wanderers rest, and all their weeping is hushed.

But as for me, I have felt no emotions of any kind, except on rare occasions, for some time now; and that is a state of things most convenient for work, tho’ very dull. We are living a quiet country life: Alys is well, except now and then for a day or two. We read Montaìgne aloud: he is pleasant and soothing, but very unexciting. To myself I am reading the history of Rome in the middle ages, by Gregorovius, a delightful book. Gilbert Murray, who is our near neighbour, has been telling me about Orphic tablets, and their directions to the soul after death: “Thou wilta find a cypress, and by the cypress a spring, and by the spring two guardians, who will say to thee: who art thou? where comest thou? And thou wilt reply: I am the child of earth and of the starry heaven; I am parched with thirst, I perish.” Then they tell him to drink of the fountain; sometimes the fountain itself speaks. Certainly a beautiful mysticism.

We are looking forward to your visit next winter. The spring is here, but I have hardly noticed it. Give my love to Helen, and my best wishes to yourself. This is an egotistical letter, but you must forgive it.

Yrs very sincerely
Bertrand Russell.

• 1

  [document] Proofread against the original letter.

• 2

  [envelope] Miss Lucy Donnelly | Low Buildings | Bryn Mawr | Pa. | U.S.A.

Textual Notes

• a

  Thou wilt written over thou will 〈?〉