BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 23 JULY 1920
BRACERS 19672. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #337
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

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70, Overstrand Mansions,
Prince of Wales Road,
Battersea, S.W.1
23 July 1920.

My Heart’s Life

Your letter2 this morning gives me such great great happiness — you are wonderful — I don’t really suppose I shall break with Miss Black3 about Russia4 — As for C.A.,5 I feel he is engaged in self-deception, because he can’t face the despair that comes of turning against Bolshevik methods. Self-deception in one’s work is very bad, and eats into the whole character. He hated Russia as much as I did, but is forgetting that because it is convenient. However the truth may be, the fact is that I have lost all affection for him and can’t bear to be with him. You can’t imagine the depth and intensity of the impression Russia made on me — it was equal to the impression of 1914.

Yesterday I had a curious experience. You may remember that the young Labour Research people (Cole’s crowd)6 came to talk with me about Russia. They wouldn’t believe my criticisms, and they seemed to me to have been not worth talking to. Yesterday morning on the phone a woman’s voice7 said she had been one of them and she wanted to see me — So she came round, said she had begun to think I must be right, and presently turned out to be a Russian — her father was a well-known Social Revolutionary exile. She felt the thing in the way I do, which I find so hard to explain in England — the way that seems unnecessarily tragic and a little mad, but that is just Russian — I made myself sensitive and receptive there, and so I reacted in a Russian way. It comforted me to find some one who took it the same way — She was upset about her work, which began to seem futile — I spent almost the whole day and evening with her — today she is gone to Cornwall and I don’t suppose I shall ever see her again, but I don’t very much want to: a complete, important thing happened in that short time, and it would be spoilt by attempting anything more — I was interested to see how exactly Russian my way of feeling Russia is. And I can’t explain it.

I have heard nothing from Miss Black, but today I have to decide about Pekin,8 and I have decided to accept. I must digest this Bolshevik business, and get it sane and analysed and in its place. It will take a long time, and anything I say meanwhile will be unbalanced. Besides, I do want to see China.

My dear dear Love, I can’t tell you the thousandth part of what your love is to me — it is the fundamental thing in my life — the pearl of great price9 that I have found amid all the sand — It illumines the world for me, and makes me know that dreams and hopes can be realized — Bless you, my Heart’s Comrade.10 —

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200676.

• 2

  Your letter 22 July 1920 (BRACERS 113210).

• 3

  Miss Black Dora Black (1894–1986). She and BR were married from 1921 until 1935. For information on her, see BRACERS 19506, n.3.

• 4

  about Russia Dora and BR disagreed about the Bolsheviks, but the issue did not break their relationship.

• 5

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

• 6

  Cole’s crowd George Douglas Howard (G.D.H.) Cole (1889–1959), economist and guild socialist. He was the head of the Labour Research Department.

• 7

  a woman’s voice Vera Volkovsky (1881–1966), the daughter of Feliks Volkovksy (1846–1914), who had been the editor of the anti-Tsarist paper, Free Russia. See John Slater, “Bertrand Russell and the Volkhovsky Letters, 1920–26”, Russell, 2, no. 2 (winter 1982): 7–20.

• 8

  Pekin BR had been offered a job teaching at the University of Bejing beginning later that year.

• 9

  the pearl of great price Matt., 13:46.

• 10

  Heart’s Comrade For information on the use of the term, see BRACERS 19145, n.12.