(from Philosophy for Everyone)



Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)



    Mathematician and philosopher, Russell was Powys's almost exact contemporary and perhaps perfect antagonist. Although they were at Cambridge the same two years, the first time they met was in New York for a debate — Is Modern Marriage A Failure? — which took place on the 13th of December, 1929 in Mecca Temple, New York. They were both deemed wonderful speakers, but the debate proved detrimental to Powys because of Russell's superior skills in argument. Powys did not believe in the value of argument whereas Russell was a redoubtable debater.
    As noted by Anthony Head "....The two men were to meet again in later old age after Russell had also moved to North Wales. Some of Powys's later letters refer to enjoyable visits by his erstwhile adversary." (Powys to Sea Eagle, editor A. Head).
In a manner that is neither as casual as in his private correspondence nor as premeditated as in his books and scholarly lectures, each man reveals therein a facet of his complex nature... Essentially, Russell derived his zeal here and elsewhere from a conviction that the human condition is susceptible to amelioration through social change. Powys was never an advocate of public reform because he considered the attainment of happiness to be the result of an entirely personal quest for fulfilment.
(Is Modern Marriage A Failure? Introduction by Margaret Moran, Warren House Press, 1983)
In his diary, John Cowper briefly notes:
We all liked Mr Russell very much but thought nothing of his arguments! He kept the topic down to a humorous level. It was not really exciting.
A film was made by the Fox film studios in order to promote the debate. It lasts about seven minutes and in it we see Powys, filmed at the Fox Studios a few days before they met, pretending to debate, and we hear the only recording, so far, of his voice. He was very much ill-at-ease, probably because of the cameras, and it shows. This is how he relates the event, in his Diary:
Then I went to the Studio of Fox Movie & Talkie Film and in that atmosphere of greenish malign grotesquerie & gross crudity & peculiar brutality of a boyish sort I had to make an imaginary speech & gesticulate like a Mandarin in favour of Marriage. (The Diary of John Cowper Powys for 1929)
The film was found and presented by Anthony Head at the 1993 Powys Conference, held at Kingston Maurward, Dorset.