H. P. Grice, "Definite descriptions in Russell and in the vernacular"

Russell started out being a Hegelian. 

A tidy system it was. Like its child, Communism, it gave answers to all the questions about life and society. 

In 1898 (how long ago that was!), well, almost everyone seemed to be a Hegelian. Moore was the first to climb down. I simply followed him. It was mathematics that took me to logic, and it was logic that led me away from Hegel. Once we applied rigorous logic to Hegel, he became fragmentary and puerile." I asked if he had based his system of mathematical logic on the belief that language had a structure. "No, it is not so much that I believe language has a structure," he said. "I simply think that language is often a rather messy way of expressing things. Take a statement like ‘Every man is mortal.' Now, that has an unnecessary implicature (fortunately cancellable) when stated in words; that is, that there is at least a man, that at least a man exists. But if you translate this statement into mathematical symbols, you can do away with any unnecessary conversational implicature, as my friend H. P. Grice, of Oxford, will agree! About Moore — the thing I remember most was his Irish smile. One had only to see it to melt. He was such an Irish gentleman. With him, manners were everything, and now you know what I mean by 'Irish gentleman.' To be Left, for example, in politics just wasn't done.' That was to take something too seriously. I suppose present-day Oxford philosophy is gentlemanly in that sense — it takes nothing seriously. You know the best remark Moore ever made? I asked him one time who his best pupil was, and he said 'Vitters.’ I said 'Why?' 'Because, Bertrand, he is my only pupil who always looks puzzled in a furrin way.' " Lord Russell chuckled. "That was such a good remark, such a good remark. It was also, incidentally, very characteristic of both Moore and Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein was always puzzled. After Wittgenstein had been my pupil for five terms, he came to me and said, 'Tell me, sir, am I a fool or a wise man?' I said, 'Vitters, why do you want to know?' — perhaps not the kindest thing to say. He said, 'If I am a fool, I shall become an aeronaut — if I am a wise man, a philosopher.' I told him to do a piece of work for me over the vacation, and when he came back I read the first sentence and said, 'Vitters, you shall be a philosopher.' I had to read just a sentence to know it. Vitters became one. When his 'Tractatus' came out, I was wildly excited. I think less well of it now. At that time, his theory that a proposition was a picture of the world was so engaging and original. Vitters was really a Tolstoy and a Pascal rolled into one. You know how fierce Tolstoy was; he hated competitors. If another novelist was held to be better than he, Tolstoy would immediately challenge him to a duel. He did precisely this to Turgenev, and when Tolstoy became a pacifist he was just as fierce about his pacifism. And you know how Pascal became discontented with mathematics and science and became a mystic; it was the same with Vitters. He was a mathematical mystic. But after 'Tractatus' he became more and more remote from me, just like the Oxford philosophers. I have stopped reaing Oxford philosophy. I have gone on to other things. It has become so trivial. I don't like most Oxford philosophers. Don't like them. They have made trivial something very great. Don't think much of their apostle Ryle. He's just another clever man. In any case, you have to admit he behaved impetuously in publicly refusing a review of the book. He should have held it over for two years and then printed a short critical review with Gellner's name misspelled. To be a philosopher now, one needs only to be clever. They are all embarrassed when pressed for information, and I am still old-fashioned and like information. Once, I was dining at Oxford — Exeter High Table — and asked the assembled Fellows what the difference between liberals and conservatives was in their local politics. Well, each of the dons produced brilliant epigrams and it was all very amusing, but after half an hour's recitation I knew no more about liberals and conservatives in the college than I had at the beginning. Oxford philosophy is like that. I have respect for Ayer; he likes information, and he has a first-class style." Lord Russell explained that he had two models for his pwn style — Milton's prose and Baedeker's guidebooks. The Puritan never wrote without passion, he said, and the cicerone used only a few words in recommending sights, hotels, and restaurants. Passion was the voice of reason, economy the signature of brilliance. As a young man, Russell wrote with difficulty. Sometimes Milton and Baedeker remained buried in his prose until it had been redone ten times. But then he was consoled by Flaubert's troubles and achievements. Now, for many years past, he had learned to write in his mind, turning phrases, constructing sentences, until in his memory they grew into paragraphs and chapters. Now he seldom changed a word in his dictated manuscript except to slip in a synonym for a word repeated absent-mindedly. "When I was an undergraduate," he said, sucking his pipe, "there were many boys cleverer than I, but I surpassed them, because, while they were degage, I had passion and fed on controversy. I still thrive on opposition. My grandmother was a woman of caustic and biting wit. When she was eighty-three, she became kind and gentle. I had never found her so reasonable. She noticed the change in herself, and, reading the handwriting on the wall, she said to me, 'Bertie, I'll soon be dead.' And she soon was." After tea, Lord Russell came to the door with me. I told him about my intention of pressing on with my researches at Oxford. He wrung my hand and chuckled. "Most Oxford philosophers know nothing about science/' he said. "Oxbridge is the last medieval island — all right for first-class people. But their security is harmful to second-class people — it makes them insular and gaga. This is why English academic life is creative for some but sterile for many."