BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 15 DEC. 1920
BRACERS 19716. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

2 Sui an Po Hutung, Peking1
15 Dec. 1920

My Darling Love

I got yesterday a dear letter from you, written on your birthday, or rather the day after, at Ipswich.2 I wish I could have got a birthday letter to you, but on the voyage I didn’t know at all how long my letters would take, so it was impossible. I was glad to get news of C.A.3 from you — I haven’t had one line from him and knew absolutely nothing of him. I hope you will be able to get out to him4 for Xmas — I find myself thinking so much of Lynton5 as the time draws near — I can almost feel the sea-wind on my cheeks as one walks up to Countisbury, and hear the gulls and the sea — I get very very homesick often, and, my Dear, I long to be with you, often and often, in spite of being very happy here in every personal way. — What good news about Priscilla!6 How nice to hear of any one with such a long memory. — I am glad the Journal7 prospers, and I long to see as much of it as you will let me see. I do believe in your writing, quite immensely.

I am doing 3 courses of lectures,8 as well as odd papers and newspaper articles. The result is I have very little spare time, except for an afternoon walk, either to buy furniture for the house, or along the City Walls, which go all round Peking (14 miles), with lovely views of the Western Hills. The weather is bright and frosty, very delicious and healthy. I am full of beans. But China is depressing; it is decaying and rotten, like the late Roman Empire. The students returned from Europe and America are apparently what is best, but even they, for the most part, seem not up to much. The newspapers depress one, because England seems to have grown so unbearably ferocious. The Irish news,9 the treatment of communists,10 the emergency legislation about strikes11 — it is all very bad — What is to happen to the world?

Bless you, my loved one. My heart is yours unalterably. I send you a thousand kisses, and tender thoughts to hover round you — It will be joy to be together once more.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200717.

• 2

  dear letter ... at Ipswich Colette was staying at the Great White Horse Inn in Ipswich. About her birthday she wrote: “I was 25 yesterday, which is the age when horses die” (25 Oct. 1920; BRACERS 116422).

• 3

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

• 4

  to get out to him Colette had written that she wanted to go out to join Allen if she was not working and could afford it. She could not read his writing and thus did not know where in France he planned to go (25 Oct. 1920; BRACERS 116422). It turned out to be Cannes, but Colette did not join him; instead she went to Lynton on her own.

• 5

  Lynton Lynton, Devon. BR and Colette spent Christmas at the Cottage Hotel there in 1918 and 1919 with Clifford Allen.

• 6

  good news about Priscilla Colette’s mother had left for Holland where she was to meet her lover, Prince Henry of Prussia (1862–1929). They had been separated since 1914 because of World War I. For information on Priscilla, see BRACERS 19426, n.13.

• 7

  the Journal Colette called this journal the “Mummers Journal”, a reference to actors; she told BR in her letter of 10 October 1920 (BRACERS 116420) that she had started one. The first entry in the “Mummers Journal” is dated 30 April [1920] describing their parting at the train station before he left for Russia. The last entry in the Mummers Journal is 30 December 1920. Part of the material consists of various versions of her four letters that together with BR’s four created their “Russia Letters”. The Journal is extant in her papers, RA box 6.74.

• 8

  3 courses of lectures BR added “Science of Social Structure” to “The Problems of Philosophy” and “The Analysis of Mind” he had started earlier. See Royden Harrison, “‘Science of Social Structure’: Bertrand Russell as Communist and Marxist”, Russell, 9 (1989): 5–11.

• 9

  The Irish news The Irish War of Independence (1919–21) was underway. BR would have read of the violence, including what came to be known as Bloody Sunday, in Dublin on 21 November 1920. Earlier, on 1 October 1920, Colette had written: “They’re razing Ireland to the ground, killing and shooting, burning towns, destroying industries” (BRACERS 116419).

• 10

  the treatment of communists Communists had not been well treated in the United States throughout 1920. Under the fear of a “Red Scare” Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer jailed and deported suspected Communists. In the United Kingdom Sylvia Pankhurst, the publisher of Workers’ Dreadnaught,  had been arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act on 20 October, charged with causing sedition in the Navy (The Times, 21 Oct. 1920, p. 7). She was a supporter of Soviet Russia and met with Lenin in August.

• 11

  the emergency legislation about strikes  Lloyd George, in anticipation of labour troubles, introduced legislation that would become the Emergency Powers Act on 22 October 1920. It was passed into law seven days later. (James W. Miller, “Foreign Government and Politics: Emergency Legislation in Great Britain”, American Political Science Review 33 [Dec. 1939]: 1075).