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British nobleman, barrister, and politician (1865–1931)

John Francis Stanley Russell, 2nd Earl Russell, known as Frank Russell (12 August 18653 March 1931), was a British nobleman, barrister and politician, the elder brother of the philosopher Bertrand Russell, and the grandson of John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, who was twice prime minister of Britain. The elder son of Viscount and Viscountess Amberley, Russell became well known for his marital woes, and was convicted of bigamy before the House of Lords in 1901, the last peer to be convicted of an offence in a trial by the Lords before that privilege of peerage was abolished in 1948. Russell was raised by his paternal grandparents after his unconventional parents both died young. He was discontented living with his grandparents, but enjoyed four happy years at Winchester College. His academic education came to a sudden end when he was sent down from Balliol College, Oxford, probably because authorities there had suspicions concerning the nature of his relationship with the future poet Lionel Johnson, and he always bitterly resented his treatment by Oxford. After spending time in the United States, he married the first of his three wives, Mabel Edith Scott, in 1890. The two quickly separated, and the next several years saw acrimonious litigation in the courts, but the restrictive English laws of the time meant there was no divorce. Russell was elected to the London County Council in 1895, and served there until 1904. In 1899, he accompanied the woman who would become his second wife, Mollie Somerville, to Nevada, where each obtained a divorce, and they married, then returned to Britain to live as husband and wife. Russell was the first celebrity to get a Nevada divorce, but it was not recognised by English law, and in June 1901, he was arrested for bigamy. He pleaded guilty before the House of Lords, and served three months in Holloway, afterwards marrying Mollie according to English law. He gained a free pardon for the offence in 1911. Beginning in 1902 Russell campaigned for divorce law reform, using his hereditary seat as a peer in the House of Lords to advocate this, but had little success. He was also a campaigner for motorists' rights, often taking briefs to defend them after being called to the bar in 1905, and at one time had the registration number plate A 1. His second marriage ended after he fell in love with the novelist Elizabeth von Arnim in 1914, and he married von Arnim in 1916. The couple soon separated, though they did not divorce, and Elizabeth caricatured him in her novel Vera, to his anger. Frank Russell aided his brother Bertrand when he was imprisoned for anti war activities in 1918. Increasingly aligned with the Labour Party, Russell was given junior office in the second MacDonald government in 1929, but his ministerial career was cut short by his death in 1931. Despite his achievements, Frank Russell is obscure compared to his brother and grandfather, and his marital difficulties led to his being dubbed the "Wicked Earl".

John Francis Stanley Russell was born on 12 August 1865 at Alderley Park in Cheshire. He was the first child of John Russell, Viscount Amberley, the eldest son of John Russell, 1st Earl Russell. The earl twice served as prime minister of Britain, and earlier in his career, had been an architect of the Reform Act 1832. In 1864, Amberley married Katherine Louisa Stanley, younger daughter of Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley, uniting two prominent Whig families. Alderley Park was the seat of the Stanley family. Unconventional for their time, the Amberleys believed in birth control, feminism, political reforms then considered radical (including votes for women and the working classes) and free love, and lived according to their ideals. For example, feeling it unfair that Douglas Spalding, the tutor of their son Frank, should remain celibate, the viscountess invited Spalding to share her bed, with the approval of her husband. The Amberleys had two children after Frank, Rachel (born 1868) and Bertrand (born 1872). The family lived at Rodborough house (near Stroud), which belonged to the viscount's father, and then at Ravenscroft Hall, near Trellech, where Frank was allowed to do much as he pleased, including roaming the countryside. His parents had lost religious faith and Frank was not called upon to attend church. By age eight, he had read, for pleasure, the complete works of Sir Walter Scott, and began a lifelong love of science and engineering by attending the Royal Society's lectures for children. In December 1873, the family journeyed to Italy; during the return the following May, Frank came down with diphtheria. He was nursed by his mother, and recovered, but in June both she and Rachel fell ill with the disease. The viscountess died on 28 June and her daughter five days later, dealing the viscount a blow from which he never really recovered. He died on 9 January 1876 from pneumonia. The viscount's will nominated T. J. Sanderson, a friend from his university days, and Spalding as co guardians of Frank and Bertrand. The earl and his wife, Frances Russell, Countess Russell (often referred to as Lady John Russell) might have accepted Sanderson, even though he was (like Spalding) an atheist, but Spalding was of a lower social class and was not acceptable, especially once they had the opportunity to read the Amberleys' surviving papers and learnt the nature of his relationship with the viscountess. The Earl Russell and Lady John brought suit in the Court of Chancery, and Sanderson and Spalding chose not to fight the suit. Frank and Bertrand were placed in the custody of their paternal grandparents, with two of the Russells' adult children, Rollo and Agatha, also co guardians. This took Frank from what he later called the "free air of Ravenscroft" where he could wander as he wished, to his grandparents' home at Pembroke House, where he was closely supervised and confined to the grounds. He found the atmosphere stiflingno subject considered vulgar could be mentioned, and he was required to go to church and have religious education. The earl was by then past 80, two decades older than his wife, and spent many of his waking hours reading: the house was dominated by Lady John, who employed a strict moral code in raising the boys. Frank was not allowed much time alone with Bertrand, as he was believed a bad influence on his younger brother, and Frank Russell wrote of Bertrand, "Till he went to Cambridge he was an unendurable little prig." Annabel Huth Jackson, a friend of both boys, deemed Pembroke House, "an unsuitable place for children to be brought up in." George Bernard Shaw, a half century later, wrote to Frank of his incredulity that the boy had not murdered his Uncle Rollo and burned the place down.

Frank was sent to Cheam as a boarder in 1876. He was happier at school than he had been at Pembroke Lodge. In his memoirs he remembered his indignation at being addressed by his father's courtesy title, Viscount Amberley, which was now his as heir apparent to the earldom. He was still at Cheam when in 1878, his grandfather died, making Frank the 2nd Earl Russell. Frank then attended Winchester College, from 1879 to 1883. Winchester became his spiritual home, and he expressed his reverence for the school in his autobiography. George Santayana, who would be a long time friend of Frank Russell, described Winchester as "the only place he loved and the only place he was loved". Frank briefly became pious while at Winchester, going so far as to be confirmed by the Bishop of Winchester in November 1880. The orphaned earl was taken under the wing of his housemaster, the Revd George Richardson, and his wife Sarah. It was Sarah Richardson that Santayana was thinking of in making his statement; she later defended Frank Russell as his marital problems filled the daily papers, and he was devastated by her death in 1909. At Winchester, Frank spent four of his happiest years and acquired many of the friends he would have in adult life. From about the time Frank began at Winchester, Frank and Bertrand began to spend time with their maternal grandmother, Henrietta Stanley, Baroness Stanley of Alderley, whom they came to like greatly as far less priggish than Lady John. Frank came to find Lady Stanley's London residence at 40Dover Street a refuge from Pembroke House. It was at Winchester that he befriended the future poet and critic Lionel Johnson, whom he would describe as "the greatest influence of my life at Winchester". They were friends in Russell's final term at Winchester, and Johnson visited Pembroke House, but the friendship did not truly blossom until Russell went up to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1883. The pair wrote long, earnest letters to each other in which they explored spiritual matters and questions of sin and morality. In 1919 Russell anonymously published Johnson's side of the correspondence as Some Winchester Letters of Lionel Johnson. At Balliol, Russell read classics. The scholar of classical Greek literature Benjamin Jowett was then Master of Balliol and also Vice Chancellor of Oxford. Russell found the university stimulating, welcoming the "untrammelled and unfettered discussions on everything in heaven and earth". He wrote to Johnson at Winchester, and after the correspondence was forbidden by Johnson's father, routed his letters through fellow undergraduate Charles Sayle. Russell joined university clubs and other groups, and made satisfactory academic progress through much of his first two years, but his Oxford career was dramatically cut short when in May 1885, as Russell related it in his memoirs, he was sent down by Jowett for supposedly writing a "scandalous" letter to another male undergraduate. Russell denied the charges but was refused a formal inquiry. Incensed at having been falsely accused, he lost his temper with Jowett, telling him he was no gentleman, and left the college. Even after a year, Jowett refused Russell re admission to Balliol, and refused the necessary recommendation to allow Russell to enter a Cambridge college. The veracity of Russell's account of his sending down is open to question; Santayana deemed it a fabrication, based on what Russell had privately told him, but at the core of it was the nature of Russell's relationship with Johnson. In April 1885, Johnson, who had recently turned 18 but appeared younger, stayed overnight in Russell's rooms after missing the last train to London, and, according to Santayana, the authorities had seen the two together and declared Johnson too young to be Russell's "natural friend". Nevertheless, Santayana wrote that the relations between Russell and Johnson had not been "in the least erotic or even playful". In July 1885, two months after Russell was sent down, Johnson's father enquired of Jowett whether Russell was a suitable companion for Lionel, and was told he was not, and that further acquaintance between the two should be forbidden. Russell and Jowett reconciled to some extent, and the master was present at the earl's first wedding in 1890. Russell, though, missed Jowett's funeral in 1893, alleging rheumatism, and remained bitter about the end of his Oxford career for the rest of his life. Santayana stated that any "unnatural desires" on Russell's part did not last, given that he turned out "a perfectly normal pronounced polygamous male".

After his sending down from Oxford, Russell took a year's leasehold on a small house in the village of Hampton, to which his guardians (he was not yet 21 years old, the age of majority at the time) reluctantly consented on condition a tutor of their choice live with him. Although the monotony of life in the London suburbs was varied by guests such as Oscar Wilde, Russell was resentful at how he had been treated at Oxford and in October 1885, took ship for the United States. He was generally impressed with America, but disliked New York City. On his trip, he first met Santayana, then an undergraduate at Harvard College; he was the first Englishman Santayana had ever met. Russell also met Walt Whitman on his trip across America and back, and visited the president, Grover Cleveland at the White House. Russell attained his majority in August 1886, and came into his inheritance, allowing him to live on a grander scale. He was not idle, involving himself with an electrical contracting company, a field he had experimented in since his boyhood. This was the first of many commercial enterprises in which he would participate. Like Russell's commercial career as a whole, it had mixed success, ceasing to trade within three years. An expensive lifestyle and fees from the many court actions he was involved in would lead him to describe himself as bankrupt by 1921, and when Frank died ten years later, Bertrand said he had inherited a title from his brother but little else.

Although Russell was not wealthy by the standards of British nobility, what he did have, including his title, was enough to make him the target of parents seeking suitable matches for their daughters. Among these were Maria Selina (Lina) Elizabeth, Lady Scott, who sought a suitable match for her daughter, Mabel Edith Scott, and called on Russell in 1889. Santayana recalled that Russell was at first more interested in Selina Scott, a divorcée, than her daughter and theorised that the fact that Russell's mother died when he was a child allowed Lady Scott to overwhelm Russell and persuade him that the way to perpetuate their friendship was for him to marry her daughter. Frank and Mabel Russell married on 6 February 1890. Three months later, the two separated, Mabel alleging physical and mental cruelty. Santayana later wrote, "Russell as a husband, Russell in the domestic sphere, was simply impossible: excessively virtuous and incredibly tyrannical. He didn't allow her enough money or enough liberty. He was punctilious and unforgiving about hours, about truth telling, about debts. He objected to her friends, her clothes, and borrowed jewels. Moreover, in their intimate relations he was exacting and annoying. She soon hated and feared him." Late in 1890, Mabel sued unsuccessfully to judicially separate from him, accusing him in the process of "immoral behaviour" with another university friend, Herbert Roberts, head mathematics tutor at Bath College. The allegations of the trial filled the newspapers. and a jury found in Frank Russell's favour. At the time, the only valid ground for divorce was adultery, although a woman alleging it would also have to show some other offence, such as desertion. With the approval of their families, Frank and Mabel Russell continued to live apart, a tacitly agreed relationship that meant Mabel was unlikely to be able to show desertion. Although there were fitful efforts at reconciliation thereafter, the parties remained apart. In 1892, Russell opened his own firm of electrical engineers, Russell & Co. He began to be seen more in the House of Lords, in September 1893 being one of forty peers who supported the unsuccessful Irish Home Rule bill. Despite the lull in the Russell matrimonial litigation, detectives were active for both sides, hoping to find evidence of adultery which would allow their employer advantage in the courts. By 1894, Frank Russell, as he told his brother Bertrand, was three years into an affair with Mary Morris, a clerk at his electrical works. Having failed to convince the jury, Mabel subsequently attempted to obtain a separation by indirect means, suing for restitution of conjugal rights in 1894. Under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1884, failure to comply with an order of restitution of conjugal rights served to establish desertion, which gave the other spouse the right to an immediate decree of judicial separation, and, if coupled with the husband's adultery, allowed the wife to obtain a divorce. Such an action also allowed a petitioning wife to seek an allowance. In general, at the time in England, divorces were available only when the petitioning spouse had not offended against the marriage and the other spouse had. The earl countersued on the ground that her accusations since 1891 amounted to legal cruelty. A jury found for Frank Russell in both cases in 1895, but Mabel appealed and the verdict was overturned in the Court of Appeal. The case went all the way to the House of Lords, and the Law Lords affirmed the appeals court decision. This denied them both satisfaction, binding the definition of legal cruelty to physical violence and making Russell v. Russell a case of legal significance for the next seventy years, until divorce law reform eliminated cruelty as a statutory ground for divorce. Another trial took place in 1897 after Lady Scott published accusations against Russell; she was convicted of criminal libel and sentenced to eight months in prison, but Russell was hissed at by the crowds surrounding the Old Bailey after the sentencing, and called the "Wicked Earl". The Local Government Act 1894 created district and parish councils. In December of that year Russell successfully stood for Cookham Parish Council, and was made chairman, and ex officio a guardian of the poor. He worked to change outdated practices in the workhouse, and to see that roads and rights of way were maintained. In February 1895, he was elected to London County Council (LCC) for Newington West as a Progressive. He aligned himself with the left, joining the Reform Club in 1894, a bastion of Liberalism. He stood unsuccessfully for Hammersmith at the next election, in March 1898, but was made an alderman, continuing him on the LCC, where he remained through 1904.

Russell became infatuated with Marion (known as Mollie) Somerville, who was at that time married to George Somerville, with whom Russell had become friendly during the campaign in Hammersmith. The twice married daughter of a master shoemaker from Ireland, Mollie Somerville had three children and was secretary of the Hammersmith Women's Liberal Association. She campaigned for Russell; the two became close and were seen together at several events. When she fell ill early in 1899, Russell let her use one of his residences, and the two went away together, travelling via France to America. Russell planned to use laxer American divorce laws to end his marriage to Mabel Russell. Russell and Mollie Somerville journeyed to Chicago, but learned that local laws had recently been tightened, and required a year's residence, with other restrictive provisions. North Dakota and Arizona Territory were also considered, and in the latter case visited, but also required living there a year. Nevada, with only a six month requirement, was more practical. They settled in Glenbrook, on Lake Tahoe, for the winter of 1899–1900. On 14 April 1900 both Russell and Somerville were granted divorces. Their marriage ceremony in Reno before Judge Benjamin Franklin Curler took place on 15 April. They honeymooned on the way to America's East Coast, including at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel, where Russell told a reporter that a charge of bigamy would never stick. The couple returned to Britain the following month. Russell knew such a divorce was invalid under English law, which refused to recognise foreign divorces obtained by British subjects; his intent was to allow Mabel Russell to obtain a divorce on the grounds of bigamy following adultery, which would also free him to marry again: he deposited £5,000 that would go to her upon a divorce to ensure her cooperation. Beginning when Russell wired news of his Nevada marriage to appear as a notice in The Times, there was considerable press interest on both sides of the Atlantic in what had occurred. Both Mabel Russell and George Somerville filed for divorce, and each gained them uncontested, subject to the usual waiting period before the decrees became absolute. Russell, on his return, took his seat on the LCC as if nothing had occurred. There was, initially, no other official reaction, society accepted them as a married couple, and Mollie appeared on the 1901 census as "Mollie Russell".

Russell was arrested on a charge of bigamy as he stepped from a train at Waterloo Station on 17 June 1901. Why an action was brought for this rarely prosecuted crime is uncertain. Russell believed that he was prosecuted when, as he related, another nobleman who had acted similarly but was a favourite at Court was not, because he was "an unbeliever and a radical". The Russell family always believed that the earl was prosecuted at the behest of the new king, Edward VII, who had a chequered past and several mistresses while on the throne, to boost his own reputation for morality. Russell was bailed, and following a hearing at Bow Street Magistrates' Court on 22 June, he was indicted for bigamy by a grand jury and committed for trial. Until the privilege was abolished in 1948, peers and peeresses indicted for treason or felony were tried before the House of Lords, a majority vote deciding the matter. Russell could not have waived trial there had he wanted to, and the verdict of the House of Lords could not be appealed. Such trials were rare: Russell's trial was the first since that of Lord Cardigan, who was acquitted on a charge of duelling in 1841, the previous trial having been in 1776, and only one trial, resulting in the acquittal of Lord de Clifford for manslaughter in 1935, followed before the abolition. Russell's trial before the House of Lords took place in the Royal Gallery of the Houses of Parliament on 18 July 1901, with some two hundred peers present, including Lord Salisbury, the prime minister. The lords spiritual who were among Russell's judges were William Maclagan, the Archbishop of York and Randall Davidson, the Bishop of Winchester (later Archbishop of Canterbury). Lord Halsbury, the lord chancellor, presided under the king's commission as lord high steward. Also present were Mollie Russell, Judge Curler, and the English clergyman who had performed Russell's first marriage. The assembled peers and judges in their robes were deemed "most picturesque" by The New York Times, which described a "magnificent blaze of color" from the robes of the assembled peers and judges. All the Lords of Appeal were present to advise the peers on any legal questions that arose, as were eleven other judges. This required the suspension of the courts over which they would have presided that day, and some newspapers questioned the cost of the spectacle, which included the expense of bringing over Curler from Nevada and housing him for two months. When Russell's trial began on 18 July, he was called upon to plead guilty or not guilty, but his counsel interposed, and argued that because the wedding had taken place in America, Russell had not violated the bigamy statute. Lord Halsbury dismissed the point without even requiring the prosecution to respond. Russell then pleaded guilty, and made a statement defending his conduct and stating that no one had been injured thereby, and the lords retired to consider their verdict. Russell was still a member of the LCC, and awarded the registration to himself. The number plate made him a target for the police, and after five speeding tickets and threats to suspend his licence from magistrates, he sold car and plate in 1906. He continued working for motorists' rights as a barrister, taking large numbers of briefs for motoring offences. The marriage with Mollie was generally a success in its early years; according to Russell's biographer, Ruth Derham, she "genuinely loved him, understood that he must be master in his own house her outside interests provided them both with a degree of independence." High among these was women's suffrage: both spouses spoke at public meetings in favour of votes for women, and Mollie challenged Asquith to provide more than just a "vague promise" of the vote. Russell disapproved of militant suffragists such as Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, but conceded that their tactics were effective.

In 1909 Russell met the woman who would become his third wife, the novelist Elizabeth von Arnim ( Mary Annette Beauchamp), widow of Count Henning August von Arnim Schlagenthin, by whom she had five children. The widowed von Arnim had an affair with H. G. Wells, and ended her relationship with Wells after learning that he had another lover. At the same time, Frank and Mollie Russell had quarrelled and were growing apart, and he and Elizabeth von Arnim moved in the same literary circles. They fell in love in a visit he paid her, without Mollie, over the New Year of 1914. Mollie Russell petitioned for restoration of conjugal rights but once convinced Frank would not return, accepted an allowance for life, which Bertrand continued to pay after Frank's death in 1931, permitting her to live a life of leisure. In exchange, she sued for divorce on the grounds of desertion and adultery, and the suit was not contested. Frank and Elizabeth Russell married on 11 February 1916. The marriage failed quickly and acrimoniously, and she fled for America after only six months of marriage, Frank's temper being a major factor. Like each of Frank Russell's marriages, there were no children born of it. It has been suggested that the earl was addicted to cocaine, though Derham found this to be unlikely and contended that the addiction which helped destroy the marriage was Frank's love of gambling at bridge. Two weeks before his death in 1931 Frank Russell wrote to Santayana that he had received two great shocks in his life, when Jowett sent him down from Oxford, and "when Elizabeth left me I went completely dead and have never come alive again." An attempted reconciliation failed in 1919. They never divorced. Von Arnim famously caricatured Russell in her 1921 novel Vera, a depiction that greatly angered him, and when Elizabeth heard of her husband's death in 1931 she said she was "never happier in her life". Russell had continued to take liberal stances in the House of Lords, strongly supporting the Parliament Act 1911, which diminished its powers, and in December 1912 joined the Fabian Society, the first peer to do so. Nevertheless, he did not align himself with the fledgling Labour Party, and in January 1913, decried the "dangerous immunity" of trade unions. Russell supported British involvement in the First World War once it started, but sympathised with his brother Bertrand's anti war views. Both opposed conscription, and Frank was one of only two peers to speak in opposition in the Lords when Asquith brought in conscription in 1916. Bertrand's anti war activities were considerable, despite Frank urging caution on him; he was successfully prosecuted under the Defence of the Realm Act, banned from areas of the country, sacked from his position as lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, and denied a passport to go to America to take up a position at Harvard. By late 1917, though, Bertrand had become disillusioned with his cause and Frank met with General George Cockerill of the War Office, resulting in agreement within the government on 17 January 1918 that the banning order should be lifted. The same day, though, Bertrand published an article, "The German Peace Offer" in The Tribunal, causing the government to rescind the agreement, and in February he was prosecuted and sentenced to six months in prison, a sentence he began in May after an appeal failed. He was allowed, though, to serve his sentence at Brixton Prison, with greater privileges than the magistrate would have given him. In a 1959 BBC interview Bertrand attributed this to Frank's influence over the home secretary, Sir George Cave, though Bertrand's biographer, Ray Monk, believed that Bertrand was confusing the efforts to get him these privileges with Frank's later efforts to secure a remission, which bore fruit when Bertrand was released six weeks early. While Bertrand was in prison, Frank visited him, and with Bertrand limited to one outgoing letter per week, received lengthy letters from his brother containing messages to be given to other people.