BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 28 JAN. 1919
BRACERS 19422. AL. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<Garsington>
28.1.19.1 ^, 2

My Beloved

Your dear little note3 has just come — I feel an unmitigated brute for having been so horrid to you — please forgive me. My heart is very full of love to you.

I am feeling very happy because I have just done a really good piece of work4 — the best piece since the war began — I have hit on a satisfactory theory of “belief”, which has been my main problem for a long time past. It is the first time since I came out of prison5 that I have got hold of any positive idea that seemed to me important — hitherto my work had been tentative and provisional — It makes me all un-prickly, genial and expansive instead of critical — So God be praised —

Philip6 is back, having found it warm and sunny at Torquay. O.7 is still away — I haven’t heard from her.a

Notes

• 1

  [document] Document 200412.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 34 Russell Chambers | Bury Street | LONDON W.C.1. Pmk. CUDDESTON | 29 JA | 19

• 3

  dear little note Possibly her letter of the same date (BRACERS 113169).

• 4

  really good piece of work Colette describes it as “the sudden coming clear of the whole plan for The Analysis of Mind” (“Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969”, p. 313; ts. in RA).

• 5

  prison BR had been in Brixton Prison from May to September 1918.

• 6

  Philip Philip Morrell (1870–1943), a Liberal Member of Parliament and Ottoline’s husband.

• 7

  O. Lady Ottoline Morrell, née Cavendish-Bentinck (1873–1938). For information on her, see BRACERS 19077, n.5.

Textual Notes

• a

  I haven’t heard from her. The bottom of the letter has been cut off, removing the valediction and signature.