The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (97 page)

About 1901, however, Russell fell in love with Evelyn Whitehead, gifted wife of his collaborator Alfred North Whitehead. This relationship, though never physical, came as an “awakening” to Russell, who underwent an almost mystical “change of heart” in many of his feelings and views. Suddenly realizing—during a solitary bicycle ride—that he no longer loved Alys, he quite promptly told her so. “I had no wish to be unkind,” he wrote, “but I believed in those days (what experience has taught me to think possibly open to doubt) that in intimate relations one should speak the truth.” For nine more years Russell and Alys maintained the facade, but occupied separate bedrooms and were thoroughly miserable. “About twice a year,” Russell wrote, “I would attempt sex relations with her, in the hope of alleviating her misery, but she no longer attracted me, and the attempt was futile.”

One of his first tentative flings involved a young secretary with a matchless Victorian name, Miss Ivy Pretious. In 1910 he met Lady Ottoline Morrell, wife of Liberal M.P. Philip Morrell. Russell described Lady Ottoline as “very tall, with a long thin face something like a horse, and very beautiful hair.” Their sexual relationship was furtive since Ottoline had no desire to leave or embarrass her husband. Philip appreciated their discretion. Russell left Alys that spring and did not see her again until 1950, when they met as “friendly acquaintances.”

Lady Ottoline “made me much less of a Puritan,” he wrote, but he resented not being her sole interest. They had stormy quarrels but remained lovers until 1916

and close friends until her death in 1938.

Russell stopped being “a Puritan” with a vengeance. After 1910—though married three more times—he was never again monogamous until extreme old age.

His private life was a chaos of serious affairs, secret trysts, and emotional tightwire acts that constantly threatened, if never quite exploded into, ruinous scandal. In his letters to Ottoline and other lovers, his conscience drove him to confess, even though he “made little of,” his escapades with other women. More surprising is that most of his lovers tolerated his wanderings and each other so well.

During his first American lecture tour in 1914, a new Russell, turned on by any pretty woman within earshot, emerged full-force. He became intimate with Helen Dudley, daughter of a Chicago surgeon, and invited her to England, “My Darling,” he wrote to Ottoline, “please do not think that this means
any
lessening of my love for you.” When Helen actually arrived, however, Russell felt “an absolute blank indifference to her.” By this time he had taken up with Irene Cooper Willis, a talented beauty whom he hired as a research helper. But she feared scandal and Russell hated caution. “I wish to goodness I had not made love to her,” he told Ottoline.

In 1916 Russell met Lady Constance Malleson, a 21-year-old auburnhaired actress who used the stage name “Colette O’Niel.” Her marriage to actor Miles Malleson was “open” by mutual agreement, and Russell remained her lover until 1920, often spending holidays with the couple. They renewed their affair three times over the next 30 years, and Colette always sent him roses on his birthday.

But his affections for Colette “could never make a
shadow
of a difference to what I feel for you,” he wrote to Ottoline.

Russell desperately wanted children. In 1919 he met Dora Black, a suffragist who was also interested in having children without the fetters of marriage and monogamy. Still in love with Colette, and regularly pouring out his heart to Ottoline, Russell went to China to take a post at Peking University, and Dora went with him. She was eight months pregnant when they returned to England in August of 1921. “From the first we used no precautions,” said Russell. Having agreed on a marriage “compatible with minor affairs,” and with their baby due in one month, they were wed. After a second child was born, the Russells established the experimental Beacon Hill School. Its liberal policies included advocacy of free love for those on the staff, and Russell enjoyed several affairs with young female teachers. While he was philandering at school and during lecture tours in the U.S., Dora had an affair with American journalist Griffin Barry and bore him two children. Russell clearly resented this particular application of his free-love theories. Moreover, he had said in their marriage contract, “If she should have a child that was not mine there would be a divorce.” Strained beyond endurance, the marriage ended in 1935.

Russell felt that he didn’t know any woman until he had slept with her. In
Marriage and Morals
he advocated both trial and open marriage, exceedingly radical proposals for 1929. He did not think he could “remain physically fond of any woman for more than seven or eight years.” Dora wanted another child by him, but he “found it impossible.” His affair with 21-year-old Joan Follwell was typical. “My only fear,” he told her, “is lest you may find me inadequate sexually, as I am no longer young … but I think there are ways in which I can make up for it.” She reported years later, “I had dinner with him and the third time I slept [with him] … this lasted over three years. But the sleeping wasn’t a success so I gave him up.” For all his galloping satyriasis, Russell apparently suffered frequently from impotence.

In 1930 he began a long affair with Patricia “Peter” Spence, the young governess of his children. He was determined to marry her, and finally did in 1936.

A son was born the next year.

The family spent the war years in the U.S., where “Peter” Spence became increasingly unhappy. Russell’s daughter recalled their unpleasant domestic life.

“She had found marriage to the great man something of a disappointment. His passion cooled and was replaced by kindly courtesy and a show of affection thinly unsatisfying to a romantic young woman.” By 1946, now in his 70s, Russell took up with the young wife of a Cambridge lecturer; their relationship lasted

three years. Colette, whom he saw for the last time in 1949, wrote him bitterly,

“I see everything quite clear now, and it seems a dreary end to all our years….

Three times I’ve been drawn into [your life] and three times thrown aside.”

“Peter” Spence divorced Russell in 1952. Later that year he married his old friend Edith Finch, an American teacher and author. Russell, cooled at last from his self-declared inability to damp his “abnormally strong sexual urges,” finally enjoyed a successful marriage. And Colette sent him red roses on his last birthday.

HIS THOUGHTS:
“It is better to control a restrictive and hostile emotion such as jealousy, rather than a generous and expansive emotion such as love.

Conventional morality has erred, not in demanding self-control, but in demanding it in the wrong place.”

“It is clear that the Divine purpose in the [Bible] text ‘it is better to marry than to burn’ is to make us all feel how
very
dreadful the torments of Hell must be.”

—J.E.

An Open “Marriage”

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (June 21, 1905–Apr. 15, 1980)

HIS FAME:

French existentialist

philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre produced

nine plays, four novels, five major

philosophical works, and countless

articles on every conceivable subject. As

a major proponent of existentialism, a

philosophy that holds that people are

responsible for their actions, even in a

random, absurd universe, Sartre had an

international influence on the post—

WWII generations.

HIS PERSON:
Born the son of a French

naval officer who died a year after Sartre’s

birth, the philosopher was raised by his

mother, Anne-Marie Schweitzer (a first

Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

cousin of Albert Schweitzer’s), in his

grandparents’ Parisian home. A timid, ugly child, Sartre had virtually no childhood friends and retreated into fantasy, especially after he discovered books at the age of four. Reading, writing, and studying occupied Sartre’s youth. Even

though he was overprotected by his mother and dominated by his authoritarian grandfather, he developed a strongly assertive personality.

After he entered the École Normale Supérieure, Sartre rejected his mother’s and her parents’ influence and middle-class way of life. After graduating, he became a leftist schoolteacher and writer. While serving in the French Army as a weatherman in 1940, he was captured by the German invaders and put in jail. Six months later he was released and joined the Resistance as a propagandist. After WWII, Sartre’s genius flowered and his reputation—based on plays like
No Exit
and novels such as
Nausea
—became international.

Politically, Sartre was associated with communism and advocated proletarian revolution. He wrote political pamphlets, demonstrated, and even rioted. After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he broke with the Stalinists and later drifted toward Maoism. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, but refused it because he felt it was being offered by the forces of conservatism.

A man who had renounced materialism for the world of ideas, Sartre, who chainsmoked and constantly took amphetamines, died of pulmonary congestion after a heart attack in 1980 at the age of 74.

SEX LIFE:
At 19, Sartre met named Camille at a public gathering. The 22-year-old Camille had been seduced by a family friend as a child and had worked in brothels since the age of 18. For four days and nights the young lovers stayed in bed, until relatives finally forced them apart. Their relationship lasted on and off for over five years, until Camille tired of Sartre’s poverty and found a wealthy older lover.

In 1929, while in college, Sartre met Simone de Beauvoir, an intelligent and attractive fellow student who was to become a famous feminist writer.

Sartre was infatuated, and Simone was overwhelmed by the 5-ft. 4-in, walleyed man with the tremendous intellect. They quickly became lovers and began a relationship that would last over 50 years. However, Sartre hated what he called “bourgeois marriage” and renounced the institution along with parenthood. During the early years of their romance, Sartre and Simone discussed extensively their ideas about love, commitment, marriage, and sex. They agreed that their relationship would be an open one in which they would support each other in times of need, but also allow each other “contingent loves.”

In 1934, while studying in Berlin, Sartre exercised his rights for the first time and had an affair with Marie, the young wife of another student. Back in Paris for Christmas, Sartre informed Simone of the affair. By February, Simone told the supervisor where she was teaching that she was having a nervous breakdown and needed a leave of absence. Heading directly for Berlin, she met Marie, and her fears were removed when Marie and Sartre explained that theirs was only a temporary relationship which did not threaten Sartre’s commitment to Simone.

Back in Paris, Simone took one of her students under her wing, tutoring her and allowing her to live in her apartment. When Sartre returned to Paris, he also took a liking to this Russian emigrant teenager named Olga Kosakiewicz. At this time Sartre experimented with mescaline and for months after had temporary hallucinations. Olga would accompany Sartre on walks during which he would vividly describe giant lobsters that were following them.

This nurse-patient relationship developed into a sexual relationship and a subsequent living arrangement that included Simone. In her autobiographical novel,
She Came to Stay
, Simone tells how the younger woman usurped her lover and states, “There is something absolutely valid and true in jealousy.”

Finally, after four years, Olga found another lover and left Sartre. However, Simone and Sartre continued to support Olga, emotionally and financially, for the next 30 years.

During the second half of the 1940s, Simone had an affair with American writer Nelson Algren. This affair seems to have rid her of jealousy and also rejuvenated her sexually. She wrote, “His lust transfigured me; I who for so long had had no taste, no form, I again possessed breasts, a belly, a sex; flesh.” At the same time Sartre, who never seems to have been afflicted with any jealousy, had an affair with a New York woman identified only as Dolores.

Although they had their “contingent loves,” Sartre and Simone always nurtured their own relationship. But during the 1950s the couple moved farther apart then they had ever been before. Simone developed a relationship with Claude Lanzmann, a journalist who was 17 years younger than she. Although de Beauvoir and Sartre still traveled together, Simone lived with Lanzmann.

Sartre, who constantly sought female companions, explained his behavior by stating, “But the main reason I surround myself with women is simply that I prefer their company to that of men. As a rule I find men boring.”

Therefore, while Simone was cohabiting with Lanzmann, Sartre chose as his companion a 17-year-old Jewish Algerian girl named Arlette Elkaim. When Sartre almost married Arlette to protect her from deportation and because he thought her pregnant, the relationship between Sartre and Simone was nearly destroyed. However, Sartre did not marry the girl but instead adopted her, which improved communications with Simone.