BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [5 FEB. 1920]
BRACERS 19611. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
70, Overstrand Mansions,
Prince of Wales Road,
Battersea, S.W.1^, 2
Thursday3

Beloved

I will come to Priscilla’s4 tomorrow at 8.15, if you will tell me the address which I don’t know. Please let me know about Bury Str.5 before then. I suppose you wouldn’t have time to get me a black scarf of a sort you would approve?

I don’t know exactly what I owe you but probably £5 is about right —

My shoulder is worse6 and I can’t sleep for the discomfort — It is a bore —

All my love darling.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200604.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 6 Mecklenburgh Square | W.C.1. Pmk: BATTERSEA S.W.11 | 1.[?] PM | 5 FEB 20

• 3

  [date] The date is taken from the envelope’s postmark.

• 4

  Priscilla Priscilla, Lady Annesley (1870–1941), the second wife of Hugh Annesley, 5th Earl of Annesley (1831–1908). Colette describes her mother as “among the most beautiful women of her day” with a love of bright colours and walking (After Ten Years [London: J. Cape, 1931], pp. 12–14).

• 5

  know about Bury Str. On 1 February BR wrote to Colette, asking her to spend several more nights at his flat (34 Russell Chambers) before she left on tour, as he had secured the flat for the entire month (BRACERS 19610).

• 6

  My shoulder is worse BR had broken his collarbone sometime in January. To Stanley Unwin, however, he said he had broken his shoulder (2 Feb. 1920; BRACERS 47495), although the same day he told Wittgenstein it was the collarbone and that he had to dictate the letter. He told Wittgenstein that breaking it “made me stupid” (BRACERS 53512). That is why, he wrote, it took BR a long time to write the Introduction to the Tractatus.