BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 2 NOV. 1920
BRACERS 19711. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

Peking,1
Tues. 2 Nov. 1920.

Beloved

I arrived here the day before yesterday, and got my letters yesterday (because the university is closed on Sundays). I got a letter from you written Sp. 11,2 and a bundle of typescript.3 I was glad of both. Except your marconigram,4 it was the first news later than my departure. I have read through the typescript, but I will keep it some time and think it over. There seems to me to be a lot of good stuff in it. But I don’t think you have put in enough of your letters. You ought to have put in your first,5 about your thoughts being Pagan, and quoting “glücklich allein ist die Seele die liebt.” I am sure there are many things in your letters that ought to go in. Then as to prison letters: the first in French was in a public letter to Gladys;6 you ought to get it and put it in. The letter “Mirabeau to Sophie” is later than the ones “Buzot to Madame Roland”. Moreover I sent out two things from prison7 which were not specially for you, but were both good. Probably Gladys has them. You ought to try to get them. If she hasn’t got them, she could get them from Ottoline8 or Elizabeth.9 They were really rather good and ought not to be lost — one about early memories, the other about pacifism and the littleness of man. — I am glad you had a nice letter from Elizabeth — give my love to her and C.A.10 What will C.A. do in the winter? How loathsome Mrs Snowden’s book11 sounds. I am very much interested by your news but it is no use writing about it as you will have forgotten it by the time you get this letter.

We are staying in a hotel for the present, looking for a house, but there are difficulties and we may stay where we are. I have not yet begun lecturing here. Peking is beautiful, with many wide spaces, trees, temples, gates and ancient walls. The weather is Indian summer, very delicious, crisp with bright sun. The people polite, but too formal for pleasure. And their English is very bad, so that talk is slow and difficult. I have told everybody since we landed that Dora12 is not my wife but I wish her treated as if she were. Everybody agrees to do so, including the Deweys,13 whom we met at Changsha. The only rebuff was a missionary girls’ school which cancelled an arrangement for her to speak to the girls when it learnt the truth.

Probably we shall be here till March, then make a tour lecturing in other places, then go to Japan for August, and lecture there, and get home the end of September. The thirst for lectures here is astonishing.

I am too hard worked for general impressions, except of the beauty of the scenery on the Yiangtse and near Changsha. I don’t yet quite know what I think of the people, except that they are gay and light-hearted and very anxious for guidance from Westerners.

Chinese names are terrible. I know half a dozen people called Wang, as many called respectively Fu, Hu, Wu, Liang, Yang, Chang, Chow. How is one to keep them apart?

The death of the Mayor of Cork14 was quite terrible. It makes one hate the authorities. I wonder what is happening about the coal strike.15 News is slow here.

Goodbye my Beloved. My thoughts are always with you. Bless you, my Heart’s Comrade.16

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200712.

• 2

  a letter from you written Sp. 11 BRACERS 116415.

• 3

  bundle of typescript Colette had mailed this typescript of their edited letters on 11 September. In “Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969” the typescript is described as being 80 pages long, containing 37 of his letters and only nine of hers, with one footnote. It was a “stunted travesty of her original letters”  (p. 413).

• 4

  marconigram Colette sent it from Liverpool on 28 September 1920 and BR received it near Hong Kong on 7 October; it is not extant.

• 5

  your first Her letter, written on 25 September 1916 (BRACERS 112930), does contain the sentiment that her thoughts are “a brightly coloured hoard of pagan things”. It exists only in edited form and the German quotation is not extant in it. The quotation is from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play Egmont (Leipzig, 1788) and translates as: “The soul that loves is happy alone.” BR quoted it in a Brixton Prison letter to Frank Russell, 6 May 1918 (BRACERS 46911).

• 6

  the first in French was a public letter to Gladys The letter BR must be referring to is his official letter to Gladys Rinder written on 21 May 1918 which contains a message in French to Colette disguised as a letter from Buzot the Girondin to Madame Roland (BRACERS 19307).

• 7

  sent out two things from prison The pacifism letter is addressed to “all and sundry” and was written on 30 July 1918. The original is not extant, but there are several typed copies, including BRACERS 19332, 19333, 93482. The other letter, on early memories, is headed “For any one whom it may interest” and was sent to Ottoline on 31 August 1918 (Brixton Letter 90; BRACERS 131572; Auto. 2: 93–4).

• 8

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

• 9

  Elizabeth Elizabeth Russell (1866–1941). For information on her, see BRACERS 19080, n.7.

• 10

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

• 11

  Mrs Snowden’s book On 11 September 1920 (BRACERS 116415) Colette had written about the book, Through Bolshevik Russia (London: Cassell, 1920), that it was being hailed as a “literary masterpiece, Did you ever. I’ve seen some quotations from it: pitiful stuff: barley-water laced with treacle. And oh! self-righteous to a degree.” Ethel Snowden (1881–1951) was married to Philip Snowden, a Labour party leader.

• 12

  Dora Dora Russell, neé Black (1894–1986). She and BR were married from 1921 until 1935. For further information on her, see BRACERS 19056, n.3.

• 13

  Deweys John Dewey (1859–1952), American philosopher and educator. Dewey and his wife, the former Harriet Alice Chipman, had been in China since May 1919.

• 14

  death of the Mayor of Cork Terence McSwiney had been arrested and convicted in August 1920 for possession of secret ciphers and documents that “would cause disaffection to His Majesty” (The Times, 26 Oct. 1920, p. 10). He began a hunger strike immediately upon arrest and died in Brixton Prison on 25 October 1920.

• 15

  coal strike The end of the coal strike was announced on 4 November 1920; by then the miners had been out on strike for 17 days (Times, 4 Nov. 1920, p. 12).

• 16

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