Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Archives

Reviews The ogresses by Margaret Moran Barbara Strachey. Remarkable Relations: The Story ofthe Pearsall Smith Family. London; Gollancz, 1980. 351 pp. £9.95. ONCE DURING THEIR courtship, Russell wrote to Alys Pearsall Smith: "Relations are all a nuisance but they needn't pester us long" (10 June 1894). Events were to prove this remark far too optimistic. Russell's own people used compelling if futile tactics to prevent this marriage, and in time he found himself much more than simply pestered by his first set of in-laws. Eventually, he was to fear having a child lest it should resemble his wife's mother or one of her formidable cousins.. This book tells the story of the family Russell acquired by his first marriage. From a perspective that is neither judgmental (as Russell's gradually became) nor apologetic, these people are presented as the fascinating, exasperating and eccentric group that they actually were. From the opening section devoted to Alys's parents, Hannah and Robert, the chronicle extends to their descendants into the third and fourth generation. Besides these family founders, their children (Mary, Logan and Alys) and Mary's daughters (Ray and Karin) receive full consideration. But the personality who commands the most attention is Hannah. She dominates the book not only because she is alive for all except the last few pages, but also because her view of the family forms the central idea. Her belief in the pre-eminence of women, especially in the transfer of authority to the eldest daughter, is borrowed to give cohesiveness to an account of the varied circumstances of seven people over the course of an entire century. Hannah's theory about the matriarchal nature of her line led Barbara Strachey to consider using "The Ogresses" as her title. This is the term that Logan had applied to his overpowering female relatives. Justifiable though the appellation might be, it lacks the advantage of the revision which so deliberately places the emphasis on the interaction among the. various members of the family. However domin;mt Hannah's presence 151 152 Russell winter 1981-82 undeniably is, Strachey's book is nevertheless a group portrait rather than the study ofa single individual. As such, it is required to accomplish some difficult tasks that are not expected of a conventional biography. Instead oftracing one personality in all its complexity, this book makes individual traits and unique experiences-vivid though they aresubordinate to the collective identity of "Smithness". The power of this consanguinity is established by showing qualities like a penchant for self-dramatization, a tendency to nervous instability, a fondness for crusades and a capacity for independent thought to be shared attributes. A second challenge for a family biographer is that without the predefined boundaries of birth and death which enclose an individual life, the opening and closing must be selected without seeming unduly arbitrary. In theory, ancestry could be traced backward as far as research can reach. Similarly, the various lateral branches and their marriage connections could extend outward almost indefinitely. Barbara Strachey begins with the marriage of Hannah and Robert, although some briefoutline oftheir Quaker background is provided. With a keen sense of the poignant moment, she ends with the death of Alys, the last of the second generation . What makes this conclusion affecting is that Alys's death came only months after a reunion with Russell from which she had derived false hopes about at last being able to rekindle his love. The spanof the book follows in general outline the scope of the family archives which the author inherited. This enormous treasure-trove of over 20,000 letters, many diaries and other memorabilia is used effectively so that the book surpasses an earlier work on the same subject, The Transatlantic Smiths by Robert Allerton Parker (1959). One major advantage these documents provide is that they allow the people to speak for themselves. Moreover, the quotations give every incident a sense of immediacy, an uninhibited candour and a satisfying richness of detail. Necessarily, the dependence on these primary sources imposes an anecdotal structure. But since the family members wrote so assiduously about themselves in one form or another, no significant episode can...