BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 9 FEB. 1931
BRACERS 19793. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Telegraph House
Harting, Petersfield.1
9.2.31

Dearest Colette

I am sending back your autobiography2 today. It is most interesting, particularly the early part. All the account of your childhood is fascinating. There are just two tiny changes I should be grateful if you would make. On p. 149 you say3 “Both B.R. and M. had quite sensible reasons for getting legally married. Particularly M.” would you very much mind cutting out the last two words? I never went into my reasons for marrying with you, but they were just as good as Miles’s. And on the last page (p. 290)4 I wonder whether you could word it so as not to make it evident that Dora5 was absent. I think that only requires that you should cut out one sentence: “There would be the two children and ourselves”. Forgive my being tiresome, but I want to be fair to Dora.

Perhaps there is not truth in my being “dead”;6 perhaps it is only fatigue. But that must wait till we meet. Love.

B.R.

• 1

  [document] Document 200799.

• 2

  your autobiography  After Ten Years (London: J. Cape, 1931).

• 3

  On p. 149 you say This passage, amended as BR requested, appears on p. 161 of the published book. The commentary in “Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969” notes: “She made the alteration, though not without astonishment that he could not see the differences between the two marriages: Malleson’s having involved no broken pledge, which his own [to Dora] had” (2, p. 24).

• 4

  the last page (p. 290) This sentence was removed. The text as published reads: “B.R. met me. The children were the children’s of one’s dreams: happy, fearless, free. We had the evenings together” (p. 311).

• 5

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

• 6

  being “dead” On 31 January 1931 (BRACERS 19792) BR had written that he was living an emotional “dual life”. The quality of his old feelings toward Colette seem to him “to be dead”.