Old Buxton Turnpike Road: The poet and the philosopher’s love nest scandal at Cat and Fiddle

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If only the walls of the Cat and Fiddle on the old Buxton Turnpike road could speak. Ninety years ago, the inn was the unlikely love nest of philosopher Bertrand Russell and one of his mistresses, actress Colette O’Neil. But, at the time, Russell was also bedding the wife of his close friend and another of the country’s most distinguished minds – poet T S Eliot, as Bygones contributor Roger Betteridge, (right in the 1950s) of Shardlow, recounts.

T S Eliot

LOVE NEST: Philosopher Bertrand Russell spent passionate weekends with his mistress Colette O’Neil at the Cat and Fiddle near Buxton (pictured early last century)

NINETY years ago, high and remote on the old Buxton Turnpike, the Cat and Fiddle became the unlikely setting of conspiracy and lust, involving two of the finest and most famous minds in England – an unwritten Agatha Christie novel of Derbyshire’s High Peak.

One mind belonged to the third Earl Russell, grandson of Lord John Russell. Educated at Cambridge, Harvard and Paris, the author of Principia Mathematica, he was already well on the way to becoming perhaps the greatest philosopher of his time.

The other belonged to Thomas Stearns Eliot. Already the talk of his native America and his adopted England, T S Eliot was on the cusp of poetic genius. No 20th century poet in the English language would be better known.

Bertrand Russell had a fatal flaw. Within his company, no woman was safe. In spite of his physical shortcomings – immense head on narrow, sloping shoulders, mincing gait, nervous whinnying laughter – the queue of eager conquests ran into adoring scores.

He was 22 when he married the first of his four wives. He quickly announced the relationship over and, between the next three weddings, a blatant succession of mistresses began.

T S Eliot was something altogether else. Shy, afraid of women, introspective, obsessively neat and, above all, doubtful of his sexuality. Long after his poetry became known to the world, he retained the cut of a provincial banker.

Sitting behind his publisher’s desk, avoiding the turmoil of literary life, cowering behind piles of manuscripts long unread. Any woman attempting to break through his self-regarding shell was doomed.

The Cat and Fiddle scandal began when these two unlikely lives collided. Already friends, Russell was delighted when Eliot announced his reluctant wedding. The naïve, volatile bride, Vivienne Haigh-Wood, besotted by the “thrilling, slow drawl of her American Prince”, agreed to a marriage her friends insisted could never last.

Within months, doubtful of his new wife’s sanity, Eliot knew he had made a catastrophic error.

Eliot saw Russell as an escape. He encouraged his rich and libidinous friend to become the lover of his new, unwanted wife.

Russell eagerly agreed and, indeed, paid the penniless poet substantial money for the pleasure. Eliot insisted that a relationship with Russell would have great therapeutic benefit for an increasingly unbalanced and bewildered Vivienne. But, of course, Russell soon tired of his agreement.

Within months, he had a new and secret mistress. At 20, the statuesque Constance Malleson was less than half his age. An aspiring actress with the stage name, Colette O’Neil, she already had a husband complaisant to the point of public ridicule.

A besotted Russell came to a characteristic and fateful decision. Vivienne and Colette deserved to share his affection. And, of course, T S Eliot need never know.

Colette suggested the Cat and Fiddle for their consummation. From her Manchester days, she remained attracted to these high moorland slopes where the untamed elements reminded her of Wuthering Heights. There was no better place to celebrate their new and thrilling relationship.

Russell was enchanted by her choice. Such remote and misty horizons were a world away from London and the prying eyes of Mr and Mrs Eliot. He wrote Colette a mischievous note: “The Cat and Fiddle sounds too delicious. But of course I want to be the Dish.”

And so, in mid-November 1916, this unlikely pair arrived. The slender, youthful, fashionable Colette, towering over her elderly dishevelled lover whose excited, whinnying ricocheted through the startled silence of an empty inn.

Russell wrote of the delirious cocoon of ice and wind, bleak moors, water frozen in the morning jug, the melting warmth of fireside hours: “We spent our days in long walks and our nights in an emotion that holds all the pain of the world in solution, distilling an ecstasy that seems more than human.”

Colette was no less excited. “The days are wonderful beyond mortal words. The evenings by the fire, the wonder and joy of the nights, the untellable joy of sleeping in your arms. Bertie my dear, dear love, heart’s comrade, forsake all others...”

For days they walked the cold, misty trails of lonely Derbyshire moors and, as the third Earl Russell handed Lady Malleson across clear, bubbling streams or into the shadows of the saloon bar of the Cat and Fiddle, he promised her his constant, undivided and undying love.

But, within a week, at her husband’s urgent plea, he was back in bed with Mrs Eliot.

Incredibly, Colette accepted his ludicrous excuses.

“Darling I had to spend a night with her. It was utter hell. There was a quality of loathsomeness about it which I can’t describe. Apart from you, life has no colour and no joy. I have to break Mrs Eliot’s heart, but it mustn’t be done all of a sudden.”

She wrote back by return: “My darling Bertie, tomorrow I will be in your arms. Our big Derbyshire moon will look down through the window and will be glad to see me there. I love you, love you, love you.”

Incredibly, for more than a year, with Colette’s connivance and to Eliot’s great relief, the third and most noble Earl contrived to keep both mistresses blissfully content.

This fragile edifice of lust finally collapsed at the Cat and Fiddle. Russell had published an article suggesting that American troops were to be used to intimidate striking British workers.

An outraged government charged him under the Defence of the Realm Act. Found guilty, he was sentenced to six months in Brixton. Awaiting the outcome of his appeal, he suggested to Colette a week of passion in distant Derbyshire.

That early spring of 1918, they returned to the very room of their first tryst. Assuming again the Wuthering Heights roles of Cathy and Heathcliff, they wandered the hills, arm-in-arm, gathering flowers, spent twilit hours by blazing logs and occupied again their original familiar bed. But, this time, the besotted Earl, caught in the political spotlight, had gone too far. Somehow, Vivienne Eliot heard of Russell’s clandestine Derbyshire days – learning, indeed, that this visit to the Cat and Fiddle was a blatant celebration of the start of a long and passionate relationship with Lady Constance Malleson.

Russell implored her understanding, pleading that he would be more than happy to accommodate both and promising the utmost discretion in future assignations.

To the chagrin of her husband, Vivienne refused his offer. Eliot knew that the end of Russell would have a profound impact on his marriage. By now his tepid, but alarmed, affection for an unstable wife had turned to a scarcely concealed hatred. Her relationship with Russell over, Vivienne declined through eccentricity into slow insanity and a drift to inevitable asylum.

The poetic consequences were profound. With his estranged wife little more than a passing stranger, T S Eliot’s muse was released into some of the most potent verse the English language has.

Next time you visit the Cat and Fiddle, listen for the echo of the third Earl’s whinnying laugh and open a copy of Eliot's Four Quartets.

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