“that is the highest praise I can give a book”

This 1928 letter to Russell from the art critic Clive Bell (1881-1964) was written from ‘Charleston’, a country home in Sussex. The fact that it was the residence of Bell’s wife, the artist Vanessa Bell (sister of Virginia Woolf), her lover, Duncan Grant, and Vanessa and Duncan’s daughter, Angelica, did not concern Bell. He and Vanessa had been married since 1907—and would remain so until Vanessa’s death in 1961—but they had an open marriage and both had numerous affairs. Clive’s tolerance even extended to Angelica who grew up believing he was her father. Meanwhile, Vanessa’s other affairs had included Clive’s friend and collaborator, Roger Fry, artist, critic, and fellow member of the Bloomsbury group. Charleston had become a frequent meeting place for the group, of which Vanessa, Virginia, and their brothers had been the principal founders years earlier at their London home.

Russell had met Bell at Cambridge when Bell was an undergraduate there at the turn of the twentieth century. In later years, Russell would have crossed paths with Clive and Vanessa Bell in various settings, especially at Garsington, the home of Russell’s lover, Ottoline Morrell, during the First World War, where Clive sought refuge as a conscientious objector.

The Bells, even by Bloomsbury standards, were malicious gossips and were often critical of Russell and Ottoline. But like other Bloomsberries, Clive Bell admired Russell’s intellect. As Bell wrote in his memoir, Old Friends: “Bertrand Russell, though no one has ever called him ‘Bloomsbury’, appeared to be a friend and was certainly an influence.” This letter displays that admiration. Bell has just finished reading Russell’s Sceptical Essays and tells Russell: “They are a positive, and continual, pleasure to read: that is the highest praise I can give a book.” But Bell also displays some self-admiration—for which he was known—as he experiences “a strong glow of gratified vanity” in having understood the book “from beginning to end.”

In his reply, Russell thanks Bell for his “charming letter.” He also mentions that his Sydney Street house in London has sold and that he now lives most of the year at Telegraph House—this was the location of ‘Beacon Hill,’ the experimental school that Russell and his wife, Dora, had opened the previous year, 1927. Some of the ‘experimenting’ that went on at the school involved the adults more than the children, and the Russells’ marriage soon rivalled that of the Bells for complexity. Both Russell and Dora had other lovers shortly after Beacon Hill opened, and by 1931 there lived at the school Dora, her lover Griffin Barry, their young daughter, Harriet (whom Russell treated initially as his own), and Russell’s lover, Patricia ‘Peter’ Spence, the former governess of the Russells’ children who would later become his third wife.

There are approximately 20 letters between Clive Bell and Russell in the Russell archives, dated 1910-1945. There are no letters at all from Vanessa Bell in the archives. However, in December 2016, the archives acquired a caricature portrait of Russell by Vanessa Bell, likely done in the 1920s. You can see a digital copy of it here.

Sources: (1) Clive Bell. Old Friends: Personal Recollections. London: Chatto & Windus, 1956. (2) Frances Spalding. Vanessa Bell. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983. (3) Katie Roiphe. Uncommon Arrangements: seven portraits of married life in London literary circles, 1910-1939. The Dial Press, 2007. (4) Letter from Russell to Bell, 28 September 1928 (copy), Bertrand Russell Archives, RA3 820; the original is at King’s College Library.