BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 7 SEPT. 1936
BRACERS 19800. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Telegraph House
Harting, Petersfield.1
Sep. 7, 19362

Dearest Colette

I have just finished your book3 — I couldn’t read it sooner as I had to write one4 in a hurry.

I think it is certainly the best thing of yours that I have read. The theme — fear in the heart — is a good one; so many people suffer from it, from Shaw5 downwards. I think perhaps you have not yet quite got the art of conversations in books; your people are a little too cultured, especially when they are falling in love. But perhaps I am wrong, and people really are like that.

I liked Scandinavia;6 it seemed to me the sanest part of the world I know. Increasingly, sanity is what I value most — The world, meantime, gets madder every day.

Let me know your news.

With love,
B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200806. A typed instruction by Colette at the head of the letter: “Please return next time you are writing — C.” It is not known from whom she wanted BR’s letter returned.

• 2

  Sep. 7, 1936 This is the first extant letter from BR since 30 December 1931 (BRACERS 19798). Colette did write to him on 16 September 1935 (BRACERS 98486) asking him to sign a joint letter on mental health issues. He agreed (F35.05; App. IX, Papers 21). BR’s letter of agreement is not extant. This letter appears to be a reply to a letter from her which must have mentioned Scandinavia but that letter is not extant in any form. It is thus not known when their correspondence resumed after the break at the end of 1931. The commentary in “Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969” (2, p. 28) indicates that many other letters followed over several months after his letter of agreement. None of these letters survive. Colette visited Sweden in the summer of 1936. She was possibly describing her visit there to BR. Her archives contain a letter to Kat and Mina (last name(s) not  known), 9 July 1936 written from Stockholm. Her letters to BR are not extant for this period.

• 3

  your book  Fear in the Heart (London: Collins, 1936). This was Colette’s second novel. The Coming Back had been published by Jonathan Cape in 1931.

• 4

  to write one  Which Way to Peace? (B&R A69), published in October 1936.

• 5

  Shaw Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), playwright. BR first met Shaw in 1896 and includes him in his 1956 Portraits from Memory (B&R A102), p. 75 where he describes him as “completely fearless”, p. 75.

• 6

  liked Scandinavia BR had spent October 1935 on a lecture tour; see Michael Stevenson “No Poverty, Much Comfort, Little Wealth: Bertrand Russell’s 1935 Scandinavian Tour”, Russell 31 (Winter 2011–12): 101–40. Colette had visited Sweden in the summer of 1936. She described this trip in a letter to Kat and Mina (surnames unknown) on 9 July 1936. She possibly told BR about this visit in a letter that has not survived.