Frank Russell: A Whole From The Parts

Frank Russell: A Whole From The Parts William Bruneau Ruth Derham. Bertrand’s Brother: the Marriages, Morals and Misdemeanours of Frank, 2nd Earl Russell. Stroud, Gloucs.: Amberley Publishing, 2021. Pp. 351. 40 illust. £24.05; cdn$50.02; us$$39.95 (hb). isbn: 978-1-3981-02835; 978-1-3981-0284 2 (ebook). Hermes (Mercury in Roman usage) was the god of writers, boundary-crossers, and thieves.1 Biographers might thank Hermes when they “borrow” another’s life for a short while, crossing psychological and logistical boundaries to write that life. Hermes may provide the inspiration, but his adepts must do the composing, travelling, and … thieving. Ruth Derham’s biography of Frank Russell is within the hermetic tradition, bar the larceny. She gives an integrated picture of Frank, filling in the blanks left by his autobiography, My Life and Adventures (1923). That autobiography is a study in discontinuity, 348 pages in 36 chapters. He salts his commentary on the folly of humankind with shorter discussions on the follies of Frank Russell. Frank’s education had been planned by his parents, John and Kate Amber-ley, on radically liberal lines. There was to be no religious practice or instruction. Even as a small boy, Frank (and Bertie) would have freedom and the right to learn from experience. Frank was given a tutor who agreed on these essentials. Frank quickly acquired a taste for personal liberty. This happy circumstance would not last. Frank’s (and Bertie’s) mother, Kate (née Stanley) (b. 1842) and sister Rachel (b. 1868), died in 1874. “Johnny,” the children’s father (b. 1842), died in 1876. Frank was eight years old when his mother and sister died, ten years old at his father’s death. Bertie [End Page 86] was three. Frank knew his parents well enough to remember them as persons, not just exemplars of family tradition. Frank thought his taste for technical inquiry and experiment was stimulated by the natural environment of Ravenscroft, not just by the happy accident of his having two freethinking parents.2 “I think I must always have had an engineering kind of mind because, although I was only eleven when I left the place, for twenty years afterwards I could have drawn accurately every part of the house and every path and landmark in the grounds…. Chemistry I think I must have almost entirely taught myself [as a boy] from a text-book called “Harcourt and Madan”… although of course we did have science lectures of a sort both at Cheam and at Winchester” (My Life, pp. 2, 330). With the death of his parents, original plans for Frank and Bertie’s education went out the window. Now Frank’s (and Bertie’s) grandparents took on parental duties. The reduced family moved in 1876 from Ravenscroft near Trelleck to Pembroke Lodge in Richmond, London. After the death in 1878 of Frank’s grandfather, Lord John, Frank was sent (1878) to Cheam preparatory school and then to Winchester (1879–83). Derham writes that “[t]he structure and hierarchy within [Winchester] was logical to Frank. The warden was responsible for business and the prefects for discipline, leaving the masters free to teach without the additional burden of having to police the boys” (Derham, p. 42). Under the prefect system, junior boys were fagged, “ordered to do chores for seniors and … punished for not doing them.” School activities typically occurred in communal fashion. The school did its best to dominate the mental and social lives (all Winchester boys were boarders). It was paradoxical that Frank’s beloved Winchester, his permanent spiritual home, should simultaneously embody deep structure and intellectual freedom. The paradox suited him. Derham presents the paradox well but doesn’t entirely explain it. Derham argues, as did Frank, that he was shaped by the structure of Winchester School (the prefecture) and, even more, by friendships he made while there. Of those friends, Lionel Johnson (1867–1902) was likely the most influential. Frank was impressed by Johnson’s achievement but even more by Johnson’s “purity of mind” and purpose. Then as now, Winchester was an elite destination for boys from great British families and the higher reaches of the...

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