4 January 1918. Bertrand Russell → Colette O'Niell

Non-fiction

Project 1917 is a series of events that took place a hundred years ago as described by those involved. It is composed only of diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers and other documents

Bertrand Russell Colette O'Niell

London, United Kingdom

I feel so full of love and tenderness that I must write once more before you go – a letter to go with you in the train and make you feel my spirit travelling with you. I think I have at last come to a real understanding of the whole situation, and it has made me happier. Tell me if you think I have got it right. I have to understand things in order to acquiesce in them.

It seems to me that your nature has two sides which are very separate. One is the side that has made me love you, the side that made you a pacifist... that hates prisons and cruelty, that sees visions of a happier world and loves the beauty of sunsets and the sea, and is moved to terrible pain in moments of passion. It is all this makes me love you with a love that your beauty and vitality could not call forth of themselves.

Then there is another side: The side that goes into your work, and into your more boisterous pleasures, the only side that you show to most people, aiming at personal success, rather harsh and ruthless, fond of enjoyment and full of vigorous youth. This side is partly indifferent to me, partly disagreeable. Owing the fact that it includes your work, it is a very important side of you. As I do not care about it, I was bound to leave you unsatisfied, and your instinct naturally led you to Maurice, who likes in you just what I like least – or so imagine.

I respect people's work when I feel that it is rooted in something impersonal, like love of man or truth or art. But though I have tried hard, I have not succeeded in believing that your work is rooted in any feeling of that sort, though those feelings come in as controlling it, inspiring it. I may be wrong about this, very likely I am. It is largely because I feel this that I fail to satisfy you, and you need Maurice. If it were not him, it would be somebody else. [...]

I only meant to say I love you, and I understand about Maurice...

This is not the letter I meant to write. I am such a miserable failure myself morally that I do not know how I dare to speak of moral things to you.

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