Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies

The truth on Russell and Vivien? by Andrew Brink Peter Ackroyd. T. S. Eliot. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. Pp. 400; 67 illustrations. C$27.95. Two QUESTIONS MIGHT be asked of Peter Ackroyd's T. S. Eliot. The first is specifically of interest to readers of Russell, while the second is of more general literary interest: how accurately does the biography portray Eliot's and his wife Vivien's relations with Bertrand Russell, and does it fulfil its stated purpose in showing the connection between Eliot's life and his poetry? I believe that in both respects Ackroyd's book leaves something to be desired, but that nonetheless it makes an important contribution to understanding English culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Together with Lyndall Gordon's Eliot's Early Years (1977), Ackroyd's biography is our main guide to the life and creative experience of T. S. Eliot, undoubtedly a major figure in modern literature . Eliot's unwillingness to be the subject of an official biography hampers both writers' access to the letters he didn't burn. Ackroyd's search for sources has been more fruitful than Gordon's, and his remarks on Eliot's relations with Russell are the more daring and controversial. Eliot did himself a disservice by trying to circumvent the inevitable biographical investigation of great artists. It will take still more disentangling of the story to rid it of answerable mystery and ambiguity. Let us look at the most controversial point: Vivien Eliot's alleged amour with Russell. It is impossible to discover in detail from Russell's Autobiography just what his relations with the Eliots had been. In 1914 Eliot was a philosophy student of Russell's at Harvard but, when Eliot turned to poetry, Russell seems to have been less interested, except that he believed he'd given Eliot an idea for The Wasteland. t In the Autobiography Russell's fullest account ofthe Eliots' married relationship appears in a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell of July, 1915. Russell does not comment but lets the letter speak for itself: Vivien was "light, a little vulgar, adventurous, full of life" (p. 54). He became interested in their welfare, easing their poverty by giving some debentures; but he also seems to have thought that he could, in some way, ease Vivien's psychosomatic suffering. It appears from another letter in the AutobiogI The Autobiography ofBertrand Russell, 1914-1944 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968), p. 18n. 77 78 Russell summer 1985 raphy that by September, 1916 Russell's special relationship with Vivien was being modified, but Russell does not explain just how (p. 74). Fuller consideration of Russell's correspondence with Lady Ottoline enabled Ronald Clark to elaborate the mystery but not to solve it. Clark's biography remains equivocal as to just what degree of intimacy existed between Russell and Vivien Eliot, a difficult and inveigling woman who convinced him that her artistic gifts were worth salvaging. Clark sees Russell's motives as an attempt to save Eliot from a damaging marriage, and, less altruistic, his wish to distance himselffrom Lady Otttoline. Is this reading into the situation motives which were still more self-serving? When Russell gave the Eliots accommodation in his Bury Street flat he assured Lady Ottoline that he was acting from "the purest philanthropy ", and that she need not worry about hidden designs.2 But did he, after all, have sexual relations with Vivien? Clark first writes: "he and Mrs. Eliot did not ... become lovers. To Ottoline, to whom he never lied however much he might prevaricate, he could say, 'I never contemplated risking my reputation with her, and I never risked it so far as I can judge'" (I Sept. 1916; ibid., pp. 310-II). Yet Clark's cryptic conclusion is: "from the summer of 1916 there is little doubt that the picture is the unusual one of Russell as much pursued as pursuer" (p. 313). Clark seems to have had· in mind other evidence which he was unable to document, so he left the matter hanging. The question was taken up by a bolder biographer, Robert H. Bell, who published "Bertrand Russell and the Eliots" in The...