BRACERS Record Detail for 115506
To access the original letter, email the Russell Archives.
"Your Xmas letter with nice photograph."
The letter is on pp. 287-8 of a ts. carbon titled "Letters from Bertrand Russell", the ribbon copy of which was sent by Colette to her then publisher Jonathan Cape. This carbon was sent to Russell with her covering letter of 7 July 1942 on p. 289, same document number, record 98441.
There is also a typescript of this letter (different typing) sent to BR by Veronica Wedgwood of Jonathan Cape, 20 November 1941 (document .052548, record 116460).
The original version of this letter is not extant.
BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [18 JAN. 1941]
BRACERS 115506. TS(CAR)
Proofread by K. Blackwell
Your Xmas letter3 with nice photograph,4 which was to have taken five days by air, reached me yesterday, having taken exactly a month. It is curious that I had just had a very vivid dream about you, in which your troubles had made you completely bald. I am glad to see this is not true, though your photograph makes you look very sad. I have been thinking a great deal about you: hoping you are as safe as one can be in these days, and wondering how you fill your time in the Arctic winter.5 I hear sometimes from Gilbert Murray.6 Since I wrote to you last I have had three months at Harvard giving the William James Lectures.7 Now I have this five years’ job 8 at Philadelphia. We have taken a 200-year old farm hous 9 in lovely hilly wooded country, about 25 miles from Philadelphia. I have grown more and more and more interested in history, especially of ideas. At last I am making use of Burnet10 in my work. I have no plans for after the war — I do not dare to think of such a time. In any case I shall probably be unable to earn a living in England.
Write again soon and give me your news.
- 1
[document] Document 05256. The published version omits some text.
- 2
[date] The date is taken from the context of the letter. She dated BR’s letter as “January 1941.”
- 3
Your Xmas letter Colette’s Christmas letter was dated 17 Dec. 1940 (BRACERS 98429).
- 4
nice photograph Not extant.
- 5
the Arctic winter Colette was living in Vehmersalmi, Finland in the north but not the Arctic.
- 6
Gilbert Murray (1866–1957), classical scholar. For information on him, see BRACERS 19121, n.4.
- 7
William James Lectures These lectures had been previously delivered as “Words and Facts” at Oxford University and also at UCLA. They were published as An Inquiry into Truth (B&R A73).
- 8
this five years’ job Teaching at the Barnes Foundation.
- 9
farm house Little Datchet Farm.
- 10
Burnet John Burnet (1863–1928). BR quotes him in A History of Western Philosophy.
