- Patricia née Spence Russell (1910 – 2004) a significant contributor to Russell's highly popular book A History of Western Philosophy (1945).
”Men like explaining things to women because it makes them feel how much they know, and women like having things explained to them because they know that they please men by appearing to listen.”
— Bertrand Russell, What Makes People Likeable (1933)
Image: Patricia Helen (née Spence), Countess Russell (29 June 1937).
Patricia Russell (1910 – 2004) was the third wife of philosopher Bertrand Russell and a significant contributor to his book A History of Western Philosophy. Lady Russell was born Marjorie Helen Spence in 1910. As her parents had always wanted a boy, she was known as 'Peter', a nickname she retained throughout her life. She met Bertrand Russell in 1930 when she was a 21-year-old undergraduate at the University of Oxford, hired by Russell's second wife Dora Black as a governess. They had an affair and were married at the Midhurst register office on 18 January 1936. They had one son, Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, 5th Earl Russell, who became a prominent historian and one of the leading figures in the Liberal Democrat party. They had an acrimonious separation in 1949.
Like her husband, she smoked a pipe.
Bertrand Russell was married four times. Edith Finch (1952 - 1970), Patricia Russell, Countess Russell (1936 - 1952), Dora Russell (1921 - 1935) and Alys Pearsall Smith (1894 - 1921). Bertrand Russell was in relationships with Vivienne Haigh-Wood, Lady Constance Malleson, Gamel Woolsey and especially Lady Ottoline Morrell.
“A few days ago in a taxi in New York, the driver turned around (to the risk of our lives) and said: ‘Excuse me, are you Bertrand Russell?’
I saw that denial would be useless, so I admitted the fact. He then went on to say that in former days he had heard me lecture, but that belonged to his intellectual past. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘I am a married man and have ceased to be a person.’
This seemed a painful result of matrimony and naturally set me reflecting. Why should marriage, which ought to be the fulfilment of personality, be felt as quite the opposite?
There was no suggestion that his marriage was unhappy; it was to marriage as such that he attributed this dire result. I never myself experienced any such result of being married, but I know that the taxi driver was putting into words what a great many people feel.”
— Bertrand Russell, Marriage (13 November 1931)
