BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [late OCT. 1940]
BRACERS 115505. TS(CAR). In the North (B&R H34), p. 184
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<Cambridge, MA>1^, 2

It is impossible to say how overjoyed I was to get a letter from you today.3 I had been wondering in a worried way what had become of you. In these days one never knows whether people are alive or dead. I have been offered a five years’ job,4 … one lecture a week, on philosophy in relation to culture, from Pythagoras to Dewey.… Pythagoras said5 “There are Gods and men and Pythagoras.” He used mathematics mystically as a means of salvation, by liberation from the lusts of the flesh, especially beans, which he forbade. A queer fish: Einstein and Mrs. Eddy6 combined. I should like to see England again before I die, but God knows whether I shall, or whether it will be at all like the England I loved. I should like to see you again, and I know you will still be the Colette I loved. You have an unconquerable spirit — which one values more and more in these days when almost everything is shattered. Work remains. I plan a big book,7 a sort of history of philosophy, irreverent, showing up Plato, dealing with the problem of reconciling individuality with cohesion. One writes now-a-days for a distant future, say 1,000 years hence, when the new shackles will have worn thin and the human spirit will again face the world unafraid. I feel it is worth while, and would rather not be dead. I am lecturing my book,8 which will be called, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. I have heard nothing from Desmond 9 or Littlewood:10 Desmond still writes in the New Statesman, so is still alive, or was lately. I heard from Bessie Trevelyan11 this morning.… Bob12 is still going strong, translating the classics. His translation of Lucretius13 was excellent.

Goodbye Colette dear. If this reaches you, write again soon.

Love from 
B.

• 1

  [document] Document 052526. A typed carbon titled “Letters from Bertrand Russell" and paginated 285–89. The original letter is not extant. In her letter of 7 July 1942 on the last page of which, p. 289, she wrote that she “came across the airmail copy of the last chapter of my book (the top copy of these pages were the ones I sent to Jonathan Cape instructing him to airmail you for your approval).” The book was In the North published in 1946 by Gollancz. (The published version omits text.) The ellipses in this version are Colette’s.

• 2

  [date] The letter was sent from Harvard on an unknown date in late October.

• 3

  letter from you today Because of mail delays it is impossible to say which letter this is. Probably it is her letter of 16 September 1940 (BRACERS 98427) in which she tells him that she moved at the end of March from Helsinki to the parish of Vehmersalmi in the Southern Central Lake district of Finland. She notes that it is as far north as Umeå in Swedish Lapland.

• 4

  offered a five years’ job Teaching at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, PA near Philadelphia.

• 5

  Pythagoras said BR used this quotation in A History of Western Philosophy (B&R A79), p. 32. The quotation is: “There are men and gods, and beings like Pythagoras.”

• 6

  Mrs. Eddy For information on her, see BRACERS 19049, n.3.

• 7

  I plan a big book  AHistory of Western Philosophy (B&R A79).

• 8

  I am lecturing my book  An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (B&R A73) was being given as the public William James Lectures at Harvard with more of it in a seminar.

• 9

  Desmond Desmond MaCarthy (1877–1952), literary critic and friend of BR’s. Their correspondence begins in 1903.

• 10

  Littlewood J.E. Littlewood (1885–1977), mathematician. He and BR had rented a farmhouse near Lulworth during the summer of 1918.

• 11

  Bessie Trevelyan Elizabeth Trevelyan, wife of Robert Trevelyan.

• 12

  Bob Robert Caverley Trevelyan (1872–1951), poet and translater, a friend of BR’s from their student days at Trinity College.

• 13

  translation of Lucretius Roman poet and philosopher (c.94–53 BC), author of De Rerum Natura [The Nature of Things]. Robert Trevelyan’s translation of selections from it were published in 1920 by Allen & Unwin as Translations from Lucretius.