BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 10 JAN. 1928
BRACERS 19757. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Telegraph House
Harting, Petersfield.1
10.1.28

My dear Colette

It was nice to get a letter2 from you, but I am sorry you are being turned out of your cottage.3 Yes, thank you very much, John4 got both birthday and Xmas presents, and was very happy with them. You ought to have been written to, but Dora5 was very busy in my absence, and then had to have a tumour cut out of her breast,6 and then we got snowed up, which entailed labour from morning till night to get food for the children, of whom there were still seven during the holidays. So letter-writing got difficult.

Nothing but the most imperative need of money would induce any sane person to go to America to lecture7 — it is HELL.

I do want some day to come to see you in Blagdon, if you would like it; but I don’t know when it will be. This school8 is a terrible job. Love from John and his father.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200764.

• 2

  a letter Written on 8 January 1928 (BRACERS 98475).

• 3

  cottage Walnut Tree Cottage in Blagdon, Somerset, where Colette had lived with the Lyons family since 1925 as a lodger. She had to move with them to a house then under construction on the main street of the village because the railway porter who owned the cottage wanted to live in it (After Ten Years [London: Gollancz, 1931], p. 256). The village house was called Glen Shean. In either 1932 or 1933 the Lyons family was able to buy Walnut Tree Cottage and Colette returned to the cottage with them.

• 4

  John John Conrad Russell, born 16 November 1921.

• 5

  Dora Dora Russell, née Black (1894–1986). She and BR were married from 1921 until 1935.

• 6

  a tumour cut out of her breast This was a small fibroid tumour which turned out to be not malignant.

• 7

  America to lecture Colette had written that she had refused a lecture tour in America (8 Jan. 1928; BRACERS 98475).

• 8

  This school Beacon Hill School founded in September 1927.