BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 25 JULY 1949
BRACERS 115501. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon
Proofread by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Pentrallgoch
Llan Ffestiniog
Merioneth
25.7.49

Dearest Colette

Conrad’s arrival1 is a little postponed so I have time for a short note, just to thank you for the typed extracts.2 Bits of the same letters are in the bundle you sent me to Peking,3 but less full than in what you have now sent. There is no hurry, as my autobiography won’t be finished for ages.

All my love, dearest Colette.

B.

• 1

  Conrad’s arrival Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, born 15 April 1937, to Russell and his wife Patricia. Colette and Russell had agreed not to correspond during those periods when Conrad was visiting. Despite this agreement, Conrad felt the need to write to Colette in early August forbidding her to communicate with his father (document .104972, record 118751). Colette, in turn, sent this letter to Russell.

• 2

  the typed extracts It is not clear what typed extracts she sent him at this time. Later on in 1949 she sent him more letters. On 5 August 1949 (document .111274I) she sent him a copy of letters he wrote in the summer of 1919 when he was at Lulworth as well as the memoir of it she wrote much later. She began wondering about that summer after reading the part of his Autobiography that dealt with that summer when she was at the Pengwern Inn in 1948. It did not match her memory. In his letter of 26 October 1949 (document 200891, record 19883) he acknowledges receipt of the prison letters she had sent him. Some of the letters that he did use in his Autobiography are taken from typed copies in his possession and they differ from his original letters.

• 3

  bundle you sent me to Peking In his letter of 11 July 1949 (record 19879), he wrote that he was reading through “a bundle of old letters (typed)” Colette  had sent to him when he was in Peking in 1920. These were edited letters, changed from the originals, as a literary project for publication which never took place.