Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness (1921-1970)
By Ray Monk. Free Press, 574 pages, $40.

A Fabian socialist from early adulthood, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a social and sometimes intellectual snob, though given the brilliance of his analytical mind, he had a lot to be arrogant about. Russell’s philosophical works changed the entire orientation of logic, from the idealism of Kant and the Euclidean perfectionism of Descartes to a nuts-and-bolts, maybe-it-works-and-maybe-it-doesn’t applicationist approach that has more or less prevailed ever since. But people also remember him as a radical political activist and the author of numerous popularizing books of philosophy. During World War I he was a pacifist, during World War II a patriot who did broadcasts for the BBC. Then there was his private life: he had four wives and several significant mistresses.

All of these Bertrand Russells act their parts in Ray Monk’s 1100-page biography, the second volume of which has now appeared. Monk, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Southampton, has devoted almost a decade to his subject. It shows. There can be very few episodes in Russell’s long life that are not visited here. Intellectual combat, political debate, journalism, loves and fallings out of love are all narrated. Almost every episode is worth the telling.

The madness that clung to Russell’s family heritage like (as Monk puts it, quoting from Ibsen) “a ghost in the cargo” taints both volumes from start to end; it frightened his soul and left him on the margins of homicidal mania. Russell had two sons and two daughters, plus one who was adopted: he tyrannized them all. At times Monk’s narrative reads like Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. Volume two roams over every sort of Russell, public, private, and somewhere in between. If this jumble of conflicting, unresolved situations and professions was how he lived from age 50 on, then his was one of the unhappiest lives imaginable. His soul is never seen to rest, nor his grudges, nor his loves.

His wives fared the worst. Alys Smith, whom he fell in love with as a young philosopher, he soon grew out of love with, and Russell out of love was a cold, hard man. Dora took him from the philosophical world he had tired of into the world of political action; when he tired of that, he tired of her, and eventually he grew to hate her. Patricia “Peter” Spence, whom he married when he was in his 60s and she in her 20s, he loved torridly, and she him; but eventually the abyss of age that cleaved them separated them. Edith Finch, whom he married as an elder notable, fared better: their love was a gentle glow that burned softly and steadily as Russell grew into his 90s. Yet even here there was a surprise: in his 80s, after not having seen each other for 50 years, he and Alys communicated again — she still loving him and wanting his love almost to her dying day, at age 84, he reminiscing, kindly, even tenderly, but not with romance.

These soap operas Monk relates with feeling and insight and a novelist’s gift for narrative illumination, but it is, of course, the philosopher Russell whom he admires best. Unfortunately the philosopher Russell has exited the stage before volume two begins, leaving what Monk posits as inferior Russells who turn out tacky journalism, sloppy articles, second-hand popularizations of philosophy, and incompetent polemics. Never mind that in his History of Western Philosophy, the sections on Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics brilliantly sum up these central ideas of modern epistemology and physics. Never mind that whatever field of discussion he entered, the force of his personality ensured him a vast audience.

People took to Russell. Here he was, a snob to the core, aristocrat and socialist, Victorian in manner yet advocating the bluntest viewpoints on religion, morals, politics, war. That Monk underlines the abysmal unhappiness of the man only makes us wonder at him the more. Did he after all yearn for his lost glory days as the philosopher of the moment, the colleague of Ludwig Wittgenstein? Did he long once again to be the repressed lover of Evelyn Whitehead? The passionate pursuer of Lady Ottoline Morrell? The bedmate of Colette? Monk’s unhappy scenes lead us to conclude that he did. And why not? To how many is it given to have discovered the mechanics of logic and also to touch so many brilliant and beautiful women?

Issue Date: June 21-28, 2001