The World as I Found It (14 page)

He could not reply to her with the same heat. But he could not give in to her either — or to her irksome recollections.

Wittgenstein may have written to his sister, but his father, for then at least, had the last word, sending him a Christmas card that was purposely saccharine and frilly. Inside, beneath the powdered glass snowflakes and sugarplums, was a lump of coal.

L
ATER
, Wittgenstein would say that what could be said about logic must be capable of being said
all at once.
And later, much later, it would seem to Russell that he had seen Wittgenstein's genius all at once, as if Wittgenstein were the visitation of some forgotten, vanquished or extinct version of himself. Who recognizes an heir all at once? Who doesn't deny or quarrel with the likeness or say that the heir comes
too soon?
It took Russell longer than all at once to see who his new student was, yet within a matter of months he would cease to think of him as a student and would regard him as something the likes of which he had never seen.

Russell had received Frege's letter recommending Wittgenstein. Not long after, he received Wittgenstein's own courtly letter in clumsy English saying that he greatly admired his
Principia
and wanted to follow in his footsteps, clarifying logical points Russell had raised in his great work.
Clarifying what?
wondered Russell aloud. Not that he thought his book was the last word on the subject, but what cheek! For a mere
student
to fancy improving ten years of intensive thinking — much less the thinking of two men!

On second thought, though, it occurred to Russell that the gaffe was perhaps unintentional — the fumbling of a man with an imperfect command of English. In a more positive vein, Russell was intrigued to hear that Frege's candidate was an engineer. Thanks to Poincaré and Einstein, among others, science had been steadily gaining hegemony over mathematics and philosophy, disciplines whose results were less quantifiable and certainly less tangible than aeroplanes, light bulbs and miracle serums. As a philosopher who wanted to make logic and mathematics achieve the rigor and method of a science, and who moreover hoped to make philosophy a sort of
governess
over the methods and suppositions of the sciences themselves, Russell had long wished that he and his pupils were better grounded in mechanics and other more empirically based subjects. He now felt this especially keenly, working in the shadow of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, which was directed by the great J. J. Thomson, discoverer of the electron and Nobel laureate in 1906. Cavendish had also given rise to the New Zealander Ernest Rutherford, another recent laureate, who in collaboration with Thomson had done pioneering work with x-rays to explore the nature of the atomic nucleus. Working at Cavendish now was Charles Wilson, nicknamed “Cloud” Wilson, who had developed a cloud chamber for observing ions. There was William Lawrence Bragg, a young man who was doing an x-ray study of the structure of crystals. And now, with a young Dane named Niels Bohr, Rutherford was attempting to plot out the structure of the atom. Russell had good reason to feel physics breathing down his neck.

Leaps in progress were much like cyclones, it seemed to Russell. He hoped a kind of cyclone might just be touching down at Cambridge, perhaps with him at its center. Russell, the scientist manqué, even dreamed of becoming another Aristotle, founder of a school that would produce a new breed of thinker: the scientist-philosopher.

For these reasons, Russell was especially intrigued with Wittgenstein. But Frege further incited Russell's curiosity — and his sense of competition — when he wrote that this Wittgenstein was fearless and unrelenting in discussion, that he had in him not only the bulldog but originality.

On the strength of this, Russell recommended admission — he even smoothed the admissions process by agreeing, sight unseen, to be the student's adviser. It was hardly incumbent on Russell to do this. By virtue of mere gratitude and civility — or, failing that, by virtue of sheer grubbing, apple-polishing practicality — a student would have repaid his benefactor with a courtly visit. At least the student would have sent his master an appreciative note.

But Russell received nothing. In matters of manners and Cambridge punctilio, Russell was less hidebound than most, but still he was disappointed, especially when he found that his German (he had forgotten that Wittgenstein was Austrian) had taken charge of his rooms.

“Still no sign of my German,” he wrote Ottoline in one of his daily letters. “Frege said he was guilty of impetuosity, but he said nothing about his being ill-mannered. Well, we shall see …”

Like Wittgenstein, Russell was intensely aware of the excitement around Cambridge with the start of the new year. He found these annual rites pleasant, even nostalgic, but in his uncertainty about Ottoline his feelings had a way of turning on him unexpectedly, with memories of his own youth at Cambridge — memories mixed with the irony of
not knowing
in a place where he had been elevated precisely in the expectation that he did indeed
know
something, that he was not still struggling, confused and burdened by doubt.

How very odd it was at times for Russell to find himself a victualer of knowledge in a place where formerly he had been a consumer. Trinity had not changed so much in twenty years. True, the students were more worldly and less innocent — certainly, they were less religiously inclined and guilt plagued than they had been in his day. But the place itself never changed, not outwardly. With its mix of styles, Trinity College, like the rest of Cambridge, was a piece of architectural legislation cobbled over centuries by various kings, queens, bishops, architects and ages. In one direction, there were spires and Renaissance balustrades, in another, castle keeps notched with archer's roosts. Inside the walled battlements of Great Court, which enclosed a three-hundred-foot green, there was Neville's fountain, the very center of Trinity. Built in 1602 in a High Renaissance style, it was a pedestaled cupola of carved stone that, at a distance, looked like ivory, almost translucent in the deepening afternoon light. But Great Court was most beautiful at sunset, when the red stone walls, having soaked up the day's sun, suddenly released their color, filling the air with the warm, glowing effulgence of old claret.

At times now, walking along the same paths, almost against his will, Russell would remember Alys as a fresh thing, would remember that time when it seemed he could see the whole of life as an unsegmented green distance. Heraclitus was wrong, he thought. All was not in flux; nothing ever changed. Looking down, he could see his feet, the same feet clad in virtually the same shoes, below what seemed the same flapping trousers that he had worn at age twenty. And not only did his feet look no different but they seemed to fall into the same pools of shadow, as if at each stage of life there were stirrups in which one mechanically inserted each successive step. All one's life mounting the same predestined path, the same rungs, inhaling the same smells and the same scenes, which hung like smoke, then dispelled in the broader gaze. And always the way the red stone glowed at dusk, and how, when one looked up, the moon appeared like a coin seen through very deep water, and then the way the light nested on the same feathery layers of creepers that bearded the library and underhung the archways, beneath which had passed Bacon, Newton, Thackeray and a host of others who surely had trod these same paths, staring at their feet while mulling these same doubts, hopes and griefs.

Russell sometimes found it a bit oppressive to be among these confident young believers — to see them all so excited and flushed, so full of themselves, strutting about in their new wools, silk neckties and tweeds. What a thing it was to watch them, newly enfranchised into adult life and duly empowered in their allowances, with money for the washer-woman and tobacconist and for the sundry purveyors of spirits, not to mention the tailor, bookseller and grocer. For some there would even be money for manservants and motorcars, private dinners in their rooms and larks to London to consort with expensive whores — in short, to begin laying in the store of memories and regrets that would dog them, too, when they were forty and passing down some too-redolent path. Walking through Great Court, Russell could feel the whole year unfolding. Here were the freshmen being ragged and run around. Here were the big sportsmen in their flannels and magnificent sweaters. At night, around banging pianos, there would be voices raised in song. In Hall, on audit night, they would merrily taste the new ale, as well as Trinity's own pale sherry and the Bucellus of Magdalene. Dressed in caps and gowns with Geneva bands under their chins, the proctors would stroll the streets along with their top-hatted proctor's men, or “Bulldogs,” searching for miscreants who might be out carousing late, riding bicycles without lamps or flinging lumps of sugar at the borough constabulary. A few of the more idle, obstreperous or drunken would be sent home to rusticate, but for the others, the gay progress would swell into the next term and the next. And such a grand time it was. All the clubs would now be starting up, the choristers, dramatists, and
littérateurs
, the scullers and Trinity's own Foot Beagles, all groping for evanescent trophies and laurels, all putting out their innocent hopes like flags. Such youthful enthusiasm! Come join us. Do be like us. All the world is a stage. All life is the hearty fellowship of rowing, footballing, cricketeering, debating, singing, scribbling, chess playing and carousing. No, thought Russell, doggedly sniffing for the trail he had lost. All life is, is getting started. Just getting started.

Still, there was tradition to fall back on.

As a rule, Russell frowned on tradition, but at Trinity it was a different story. In class, students and dons alike wore the mortarboard and long black scholar's robes, though only the dons wore the red ribbons that distinguished and exalted them. And Russell did find a certain grandeur to it, strutting along like one newly coronated in his flapping black gown. So, too, was it reassuring to be addressed in the diffident voice of the Cambridge student, the voice of men who, even when they were absolutely positive of something, would say with collegial, English tentativeness,
It would seem
… or
One might reasonably wonder if
…

As someone accustomed to such consideration, Russell was surprised when, entering class on the first day, he saw a young man with a tuft of brown hair lift his gown and reach into a suit jacket of decidedly German tailoring. Avoiding Russell's gaze, the young man dropped his gown and, with a baleful look, conspicuously sat down in the last row. And still not a word? thought Russell. What cheek! Russell felt it like a taunt, amazed that the German would even have the gall to show himself.

Russell took a good, long look at the young man as he walked presidingly to the front and began his course on philosophy and the foundations of logic. The German looked younger than he had expected. And, to his discomfort, he was staring. He had a copybook open, but never once did he pick up his pen — this as the other students, with typical first-day zeal, raced to take down Russell's every word.

On the first day, it was important for the don to captivate — in short, to
stun.
Here Russell was in his element. Talking quickly and zestfully, tearing at the subject in gleeful hunks, throwing out seemingly insurmountable questions only to swat them down like flies, Russell did indeed stun, at least to judge by their wide-eyed looks as they filed out afterward.

All except his German, that is. The German was still sitting. With his head craned up to the ceiling, he seemed oblivious to the fact that class had ended. What was his problem? Russell wondered. The language? At several points during the lecture, Russell had seen him squinting up at the ceiling, mouthing his words suspiciously, like some foreign food. At yet another point, the German had squeezed his eyes shut, wincing painfully, as if he had heard a screech beyond human frequency. But now Russell decided to put him out of mind. Let the rude German come to me if he has difficulties, he thought. He left.

The windy green of Great Court was filled with what looked like a flock of fluttering blackbirds as students and dons winged by in their black gowns. Striding along, Russell heard a guttural voice:

Sir … Sir …

Turning, he saw it was the German. The young man did not excuse himself but straightaway said, I am Wittgenstein. From the class. And I must say, sir, I think you are wrong, quite. This cannot be so. To my satisfaction you have not proved that we can know
anything
of the world. Not with such certainty.
Spoken
proposition, yes. This much I will admit. This much I can accept. But the rest you say with such a confident — no, I cannot…

To openly confront a don on one's first day like this — it was so astounding that Russell had to smile. Almost baiting him, Russell replied, Oh, do you?