Stuk 227 - Letter from Bertrand Russell to Elizabeth Trevelyan

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Little Datchet Farm, Malvern, R.D.1, Pa., U.S.A. - Good to have Bessie's letter: hopes things are going as well as is possible for the Trevelyans. Being so far from England, 'one feels ashamed of comfort & safety'; Russell has 'a soft job' with one lecture a week, they have enough to live on, and are renting an old farmhouse in beautiful countryside 25 miles west of Philadelphia. Is giving a four year course on the history of philosophy and likes it very much; Peter has been busy furnishing the house but he hopes will now have some leisure; John and Kate still at the University of California but probably will come east at the end of the academic year; Conrad is very happy to be in the country. Has not yet seen [G.E.] Moore but hopes to soon; wonders what he thinks of America. 'People in the Eastern states are passionately pro-English' and are kind to the Russells. Is not pacifist this time; wonders what the Trevelyans think about it. 'Being away from home makes one more patriotic'; asks if Bessie gets any news from Holland. Seems a very long time since he used to visit the Trevelyans at Westcott: sometimes the past has such a grip on him that he 'find[s] it hard to live in the present', and so many of the people he cared for are dead, it makes him 'feel like a ghost'.

Published in Russell, B., & Griffin, N. (2001). The selected letters of Bertrand Russell. London: Routledge, vol. 2, p. 387.