BIOGRAPHY
Monk's Russell
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`It would appear that Monk has allowed his personal animus to cloud his judgment somewhat more than the subject of his biography did.'
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TO those of us who are familiar with Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970) through his autobiography and his more popular writing, the two volume biography by Ray Monk (Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude and Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness) makes revealing, if sometimes painful, reading. To record so long and varied a life as that of Bertrand Russell, mathematician, philosopher, social reformer, anti-war protestor and campaigner against nuclear weapons would be a daunting task for any biographer. The bibliography of his published writing alone lists over 3000 items and the unpublished documents in the Russell Archives contain 40, 000 letters in addition to a vast number of journals, manuscripts and other papers. It is through this tropical luxuriance of material, besides interviews with Russell's surviving descendants, relatives and friends, that Monk tries to reach the heart of the darkness in Russell's life.
In one sense Monk is eminently suited to the task. A professional philosopher, he has published a biography of Wittgenstein (Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius). While earlier biographies of Russell (Bertrand Russell: The Passionate Sceptic by Alan Wood, 1957, and The Life of Bertrand Russell by Kenneth Clark, 1982) ignore the more technical aspects of his philosophy, Monk is able to give an account of these abstruse topics in a manner accessible to the general reader. However, in the process of sifting through Russell documents, Monk developed a profound dislike for his subject, which emerges, time and again in his account of Russell's personal life.
A fear of madness
Two factors, Monk believes, influenced Russell's relationships with other people — a deep-rooted fear of madness and a quite colossal vanity. There was indeed a streak of hereditary madness in the family. Russell's Uncle Willy ended his days in an asylum and in a desperate bid to prevent Russell's first marriage, his grandmother, the old countess Russell, had called the family doctor in to solemnly warn Russell that his descendants could well suffer from the same malady. This proved to be a prescient warning in the case of his son John. Always unstable, withdrawn and anxious, a victim of Russell's behaviourist theories on education and a bitter custody battle between his parents, John Russell compounded his problems by marrying Susan, the equally neurotic daughter of the American poet Vachel Lindsay, whom he had met at a psychotherapy session. Susan's promiscuity and ultimate desertion of him sent John over the edge into lunacy and faced with this development, Russell, according to Monk, abandoned John — he tried his best to get him certified and confined to an asylum, and when this was unsuccessful, left him in the care of Dora, John's mother, and dissociated himself completely from the life of his elder son.
The price of `free' love
Russell's relationships with the several women in his life were characterised on the one hand by a deep passion, expressed in hundreds of lyrical love letters, followed often by equally bitter separations. Russell's first marriage when he was 22 to Alys Pearsall Smith, a woman several years his senior whom the inexperienced Russell fell in love with "at first sight", slid into disaster very soon. Russell endured its cold lovelessness for eight years before starting an affair with the famous literary hostess Lady Ottoline Morel. Ottoline's interest in him was not primarily sexual and he sought consolation in the arms of a string of mistresses.
He had always had a deep desire for children (Alys and he had been childless) and when he met the feminist Dora Black, who was willing to have children with or without marriage, he persuaded her to marry him as soon as he got a divorce from Alys. Dora never believed that fathers had any rights in the business of procreation. She did not realise that for Russell, the legitimacy of possible heirs to the earldom of Russell was of paramount importance. Dora and Russell had an "open" marriage — both recognising the other's right to have relationships outside. What Russell did not anticipate was that for Dora this meant having children by any lover she might choose. And after their first two children John and Kate were born, Dora had two other children by another man. Although Russell politely concealed his rage and frustration at this arrangement, and tolerated it for the sake of his two elder children, the marriage was doomed. Russell announced that he would be henceforth living in with Patricia (Peter) Spence, the governess he had engaged for John and Kate, a woman nearly 40 years his junior. In spite of her professions of sexual freedom, Dora's reaction was one of dismay: "I felt sick and shrivelled inside... something had gone that I feared might now never return".
Abandoning his earlier ideals of free love as exemplified in Marriage and Morals he decided to settle into conventional marital bliss with Peter. They had a son, Conrad, but incompatibility in age and temperament tore the marriage apart and alienated Russell from his older children as the determined Dora and he fought bitterly to retain their loyalties. Nor did he fare better with Conrad. After their separation Peter prevented him from having anything to do with Russell, threatening never to speak to him if he did. Many years later, when he was in his early thirties Conrad sought to reconcile himself to his dying father. True to her word, Peter cut herself off from him completely.
`A quite colossal vanity'
Belonging as he did to two elites — the aristocratic and the intellectual — Russell could perhaps be forgiven for thinking rather well of himself but as Monk shows, his egoism went well beyond that. It is universally acknowledged that the work he did in the first two decades of the 20th Century in the fields of mathematics and philosophy are a permanent and important contribution in those areas. On the eve of the First World War, having completed his magnum opus Principia Mathematica on which he had toiled for 10 years, Russell was at a loose end. The War seems to have given him a fresh purpose in life. He re-emerged as a pacifist social and political philosopher, writing The Principles of Social Reconstruction, which was a success on both sides of the Atlantic. But his former friend D.H. Lawrence, however, had seen what was really the motive behind Russell's protests against the First World War — a perverted lust for power and he had no problem telling Russell so to his face, resulting in the end of their friendship.
It was by feeding his vanity with fulsome flattery that Ralph Schoenman, a self-promoting left wing activist, insinuated himself into Russell's life in 1960s. Alienated from both his sons by this time, Russell came to consider Schoenman as the son he never had. Under Schoenman's influence Russell was convinced that he was a world statesman who could play a major role in international affairs. Even admirers of Russell are agreed that the Schoenman phase was a sad fall for the author of Principia Mathematica. Under Schoenman's direction, spectacular acts like the `sit-in' at the Ministry of Defence and the rally at Trafalgar Square where the world was urged to "remember your humanity and forget the rest" established Russell as the voice of youthful rebellion in the eyes of the media.
That Russell was no world statesman is evident from his involvement with the Sino Indian war of 1962. While conceding that he did not understand all the ramifications of the complicated dispute, Russell nevertheless heaped praise on China and condemned Indian bellicosity. Similarly, during the Cuban Missile Crisis Russell wrote to both Kennedy and Khrushchev on equal terms. The fact that Khrushchev used his letter as an excuse to communicate his willingness to come to a compromise with the United States was projected by Russell's secretariat as evidence that he had personally played a key role in defusing this crisis. Later, when Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation was set up, they used these instances to obtain funds from various sources on the pretext of promoting world peace. Schoenman diverted these funds to left wing "Guevarist" revolutionary movements. The unsavoury relationship with Schoenman was brought to an end in 1967 on the initiative of Russell's fourth wife Edith.
Sympathetic interpretations
As Monk confesses in the preface to the second volume, "In writing this book I have had to confront, in a way that is new to me, my own reactions to the subject. For ten years I have, as it were, lived with Russell, and for the most part, it has been an uncomfortable experience". In other words, he had developed a rooted dislike for his subject. There is no doubt that Russell made a mess of his relations with his spouses and children. Monk contrives to blame his early behaviourist theories of education for his children's later problems. Given John's nature it is hardly likely that any system would have helped him. To put the blame entirely on Russell is unfair. In later life it was Russell's belief that John was clinically ill and needed professional help. Not much is known even today about schizophrenia and any parent whose offspring suffers from this disease is at least deserving of sympathy — certainly more sympathy than Monk can spare for Russell.
The Russell of the 1960s was a man whose judgement had been impaired by age as well as an exaggerated sense of his own influence. The bizarre sight of this great man, a life long opponent of communism, supporting Guevarist revolutionary movements was painful to many of his admirers. But here, too, a more charitable interpretation is possible — a man in his nineties was clearly being manipulated behind the scenes. It would appear that Monk has allowed his personal animus to cloud his judgement somewhat more than the subject of his biography did. While admiring the painstaking scholarship of the author, one awaits a more balanced assessment — meanwhile, Monk's biography will, unfortunately, remain the "definitive" one for some time to come.
JAIDEV RAJA
Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude 1872 - 1921, Ray Monk, Free Press, 1996, p. 720.
Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness 1921 - 1970, Ray Monk, Free Press, 2001, p.592.
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