BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 17 MAY 1966
BRACERS 19918. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Plas Penrhyn,
Penrhyndeudraeth,
Merioneth.1^, 2
17 May 1966

My Darling Colette

A thousand thanks for the “sweet lovely roses”,3 which are very lovely indeed. And also for your dear letter.4 It seems hardly credible that it is 50 years since the original “sweet lovely roses”.

I am glad your arm and hand5 are not so bad as they were at first. Is there hope of their recovering completely? Leaving Sundborn6 must cause you sorrow after so long.

I know nothing of either Bernal7 or Kapitza8 beyond what I have seen in the papers.

Very much love, my dear one.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200922. There is a typed transcription by Colette, made on an envelope, of this letter, marked “COPY”.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | Ponder’s Cottage | Lavenham | Suffolk. Pmk: PM | 19 MY | MERIONETH

• 3

  “sweet lovely roses” See BRACERS 19235, n.10.

• 4

  your dear letter Dated May 1966 (BRACERS 113313).

• 5

  your arm and hand In her letter which accompanied the roses, Colette wrote that although her left arm and hand were still partly paralysed from the stroke, she planned on going to Sundborn, Sweden for the summer to wind up her affairs there.

• 6

  Leaving Sundborn She had spent her summers at the same cottage there for decades.

• 7

  Bernal (John) Desmond Bernal (1901–1971), physicist (crystallography), had suffered strokes in 1963 and again in 1965, forcing him to curtail his activities. He had been active in the Pugwash movement; in 1965 he resigned as chair of the World Council of Peace.

• 8

  Kapitza At the time this letter was written, Peter Kapitza (1894–1984), physicist, had returned for a three-week visit to Britain from the Soviet Union where he had lived since 1934. He had won the Rutherford Medal and Prize for 1966, which was the reason for his visit.