BR TO DORA RUSSELL, 7 MAY 1924
BRACERS 19956. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #360
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell

1607 23rd STREET
WASHINGTON D.C.
Between Washn. and New York
7 May 1924.

My Darling Treasure1 —

I have escaped once more from Circe,2 who was less Circean than ever. I was speaking last night to the W.I.L. — all the same crowd as at Lauenstein.3 Also Gladys.4 Think of crossing the ocean to see her! Elizabeth B took me a long motor drive in Virginia — it was looking lovely in the spring. Debate with Hillquit (well-known Socialist) in Carnegie Hall (N.Y.) night before — 3000 people, $350. I got the best of it till the last five minutes, when I felt it intolerable to criticize our Labour Party and deliberately gave him points (subject: Is the Labour Govt. revolutionary?).

Letter of Apr. 23 came just before I left N.Y. telling of your visit to Easton.5 No sweetheart, I never feel you and the children a burden6 — all I do is bound up with you and them, and I shouldn’t know what to live for otherwise. Anything I do for you and them is delightful, like what you would feel about the labour of dressing for a dance.

Much amused about ideology and the Marxians.7

Sweetest Love, you must come to Liverpool as Kate is weaned. I shall look for you on the dock, and we will spend a night in London — at the Paddington Hotel? And see Joan8 if possible. And hug each other and be happy, happy, HAPPY.

We needn’t mind a little expense after all this profitable time. And I want to be with you first without the children — otherwise we can’t give our whole minds to each other.

We are going through wooded country which is looking lovely with spring green and flowers. If I lived in America I should live in the South — it always soothes me.

Tonight I speak for Miss Lowndes9 (author of book on Montaigne) at her school. Then I go to Harvard and beard Pres. Lowell in his den.10 Great fun!

Met last night Senator Shipsted11 from Minnesota, representing Farmer–Labour. — A most sincere and delightful man — he confirmed my good opinion of that movement. He was speaking to the W.I.L.

Goodbye my Treasure. Try to get rested — you sound dreadfully overworked. I am not. Feakins says he has never known a lecturer stand the fatigue so well, and that it is because I don’t worry. — The reason I don’t worry is that I am happy in the thought ofa you and John and Kate. All my heart and 1000 kisses.

B

• 1

  envelope: Hon Mrs B. Russell | 31 Sydney Street | London SW3 | England. Pmk: NEW YORK, N.Y. 3 MAY 7 5³⁰ PM 1924.

• 2

  Circe Princess Bibesco.

• 3

  Lauenstein In 1922 Russell and Dora had attended the Women’s International League summer school at Lauenstein in Switzerland.

• 4

  Gladys Gladys Rinder.

• 5

  Easton Easton Glebe, H.G. Wells’s home, where Dora had spent Easter.

• 6

  I never feel you and the children a burden Dora had written: “Don’t we make life a burden to you? Don’t you wish you could go heart free?”

• 7

  idealogy and the Marxians Dora had reported that one of the writers in the communist journal Pleb had admitted that ideology might be an independent causal factor and not determined by underlying economic forces.

• 8

  JoanShaw’s Saint Joan had opened in London with Sybil Thorndike in the lead. Dora had seen it and reported on it ecstatically to Bertie.

• 9

  Miss Lowndes Mary Elizabeth Lowndes (1864–1947). Educated at Girton, she moved to America in 1909 where she was headmistress of Rosemary Hall, Greenwich, Connecticut. Her Michel de Montaigne appeared in 1897.

• 10

  Pres. Lowell in his den Soon after his arrival Russell had tangled with Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard. In an interview in the Harvard Crimson Russell had protested that Scott Nearing, a communist, had been prevented from speaking at Harvard. Russell blamed such actions on the fact that Harvard was run by a board of trustees and claimed such a thing would have been impossible at Oxford or Cambridge — forgetting, apparently, that in 1915 Trinity had banned UDC meetings even in private rooms in college. Lowell replied in a letter to the Crimson, pointing out that it was the Harvard Union, not the university, that had banned Nearing.

• 11

  Senator Shipsted Dr. Henrik Shipstead (1881–1960), who served four terms in the Senate (1923–47). The Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party was an alliance of farmers and unionized labour opposed to the power of the large capitalist combines. Russell had met its leader, William Mahoney, in Minnesota the previous month. Russell saw the party as a hopeful alternative to both capitalism and Bolshevism.

Textual Notes

• a

  of editorially corrected from and