BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 31 MAR. 1920
BRACERS 19641. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

Hotel Oriente, Barcelona.1
31 March, 1920.

My Heart’s Love

Today at last I have news of you — a telegram, and a letter2 forwarded from Battersea. The telegram was not there when I last went, nor anything else. Thank you for it, and for sending me your last unposted letters. You sent me 38 and 40 (not 39),3 which I return — I find not a syllable to criticize — they are very good ...a

My lectures here go well — I am treated as rather a swell — the papers are full of me,4 and the natives entertain me to meals. It is a large town, the size of Glasgow, without much Spanish character; but the flowers sold in the streets are wonderful and the Cathedral5 is very fine. Tomorrow I have no lecture so I go to Tarragona6 for the day — it is said to be almost unchanged Roman. Sunday I go to Majorca for 2 or 3 nights — they say it is lovely — then home, breaking the journey at Cahors, in the South of France, where Nicod7 is. I shall get home on the 12th or 13th — Would you tell C.A.?8

When I get home I must see you — and not simply in your mother’s house, but really. I do hunger for you so — I know now that my love is hopeless, that you will never again give me passion. I must make up my mind whether to try and forget you (which I never can) or to go on putting up with the crumbs you spare me from time to time. I feel in all my instincts the approach of some black horror from which I shall find no escape. The old happy days with you live in my thoughts day and night — I see the streets of Ludlow in sunshine, the dew on the grass at the Avenue — the moon on Lulworth cove — the Cat and Fiddle sunset9 — and I know those joys cannot come again, and I wonder why I live. Superficially I am happy, but in my heart there is an aching loneliness, a feeling of old age, of vivid life ended — There is work to be done, but my ambition flags — the life that counts seems like a distant sunny island seen across a stormy sea, from a ship that will not leave the storm.

Forgive this unhappy letter — I cannot write anything else sincerely. I love you as long as my life lasts — and nothing else in life can take your place.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200634.

• 2

  a telegram, and a letter The telegram (BRACERS 107499) welcomed him to Barcelona. On the same day as this letter, Colette wrote (BRACERS 113203) that his letter of 21 March (BRACERS 19637) had frozen her and she had been unable to write to him since. What letter BR is referring to here is thus unclear.

• 3

  unposted letters ... sent me 38 and 40 (not 39) These were letters being prepared for a literary collection of their letters. See BRACERS 19585, n.6. Number 39 had been sent to BR earlier; he commented on it on 2 March 1920 (BRACERS 19630): “The beginning of 39 is splendid — and the end is absolutely right.” He had also seen numbers 34 and 37 (“most admirable”). Number 38 is document .052384 (BRACERS 99487). This reference to unposted letters does not refer to her series published in the English Review. There are no numbers to match these in the published series although there are 56 letters in total. For information on the English Review letters, see BRACERS 19580, n.3.

• 4

  papers are full of me Only one newspaper article is known, and it is later than the current letter: Jose Artis, “Hablando con Bertrand Russell: Un Filosofo pacifista”, El dia grafico, 8 April 1920, p. 9 (B&R E20.02).

• 5

  Cathedral The Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia constructed in the Catalon Gothic style from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.

• 6

  Tarragona Located on the coast, southwest of Barcelona.

• 7

  Nicod Jean Nicod (1893–1924), philosopher and logician, one of BR’s logic students in the autumn of 1916.

• 8

  C.A. (Reginald) Clifford Allen (1889–1939). For information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.7.

• 9

  streets of Ludlow in sunshine, the dew on the grass at the Avenue — the moon on Lulworth cove — the Cat and Fiddle sunset These are all places at which they had spent idyllic times together. See S. Turcon, “Then and Now: Bertie and Colette’s Escapes to the Peak District and Welsh Borderlands”, Russell 34 (2014): 117–30. Turcon does not include Lulworth, where they vacationed in October 1918 and March 1919 at The Cove Hotel.

Textual Notes

• a

  good ... editorially altered from four dots