BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [8–9 FEB. 1919]
BRACERS 19433. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<Garsington>
Sat. night1^, 2^, 3

Beloved

2 letters4 from you today! one of them a very dear letter. I am sorry Priscilla is ill. — Darling, I shall hate not to see you till Thursday — Can’t I come round and see you immediately after the show for a moment, and then later at 9:30 or 10 at the flat?

Victoria 1.36 is our train — better lunch there — it is quite a nice place — Please bring £5. Shall I call for you at 12? Or London Bridge 1.50 (same train) by Bus 17, which passes your door.

There is a house-party here5 — a couple named Sullivan6 — and a young lady whose name I can’t remember. It is rather a bore, tho’ the man is interesting. — On Tuesday, if you have time, do send a line to Gordon Sq.7 — not here, as I shouldn’t get it. But I should get a letter posted Monday before 5.30.

I hope Miles’s show tomorrow8 will be a success. Will finish tomorrow morning. Goodnight Beloved — 1000 kisses and all my love —

Sunday

No letter this morning but I know you are overwhelmed — Miss Petersen9 is the name of the young lady — Must finish — post going. All my love, my Cherub.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200423.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 34 Russell Chambers | Bury Street | London W.C.1. Pmk. OXFORD | 19

• 3

  [date] The date is inferred from BR’s letter of 6–7 Feb. (BRACERS 19432).

• 4

  2 letters Only one survives (in edited form), 7 February 1919 (BRACERS 113174).

• 5

  here Garsington Manor, the country home of Lady Ottoline and Philip Morrell.

• 6

  a couple named Sullivan Presumably J.W.N. (John) Sullivan (1886–1937), scientist and his wife Sylvia, Sullivan, a friend of Aldous Huxley, was already quite ill by 1919 and eventually succumbed to paralysis. In 1926 BR reviewed Sullivan’s Three Men Discuss Relativity (37 in Papers 9).

• 7

  Gordon Sq. BR’s brother’s home at 57 Gordon Square.

• 8

  Miles’s show tomorrow The Pioneer Players put on four one-act plays on Sunday, 9 February 1919, at the King’s Hall. One of them was The Artist, by Chekhov, which Miles had adapted; he also acted in the play. For a history of the Pioneer Players, see Katharine Cockin, Women and Theatre in the Age of Suffrage: The Pioneer Players, 1911–1925 (London: Palgrave, 1921). According to Cockin, Miles “was an acting member of the Pioneer Players for most of the war years” (p. 142).

• 9

  Miss Petersen Frances Peterson, a granddaughter of Patrick A. Wright Henderson, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, 1903–13. Peterson was a student at Oxford from 1915 to 1918; some of Aldous Huxley’s letters to her are published in Grover Smith, ed., The Letters of Aldous Huxley (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969).