BR TO EDITH RUSSELL, 25 OCT. 1951
BRACERS 20258. ALS. McMaster
Edited by A.G. Bone. Reviewed by S. Turcon

<letterhead>1
The Waldorf-Astoria
<New York>
25 Oct. 1951

My Darling Edith2

It was delightful to get your letter today3 — the one in which you tell of the visitation of John and Susan.4 I didn’t mean to let you in for quite so much! If you can do so tactfully, will you keep him up to the mark about Eton.5 It is the kind of thing he is remiss about. I don’t know John’s “Summer and Winter”. The only thing of Susan’s I think really good is “Whiskey City”6 which you know already. The BOAC seem to have lied to you. All Saturday we sat disconsolate in Labrador.

I am hating the time here. I have much too much to do; the people, especially the big-wigs, seem to me boring and stupid; I find the Medlock7 very hard to bear, and I can only count the minutes till it is over. I have done Herald Forum,8 Columbia, six broadcasts;9 tonight I have a big dinner and reception,10 tomorrow a lecture at MIT,11 returning here afterwards; next day a lecture to Jews,12 then Washington and points South.13 It all bores me unutterably. The Medlock keeps explaining that one must get one’s ideas over, and it never occurs to her that one must have them first, and that in her world there is no time to have them.

I am expected to be pleased to have so much success, but except for the cash it is not the sort of success I care about. Don’t worry about me — I keep quite fit. I return by flight 514 leaving New York at 5 p.m. on Nov. 10. I hope it won’t go by way of Labrador and Iceland.

My Beloved, my heart is yours most completely. I think of you whenever there is a moment of leisure and I long to be with you again. All my deepest love, my dear heart.

B

• 1

  [document] The letter was edited from a photocopy of the signed original written in BR’s hand on the recto and verso of a single leaf of letterhead from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York.

• 2

  [recipient] See BRACERS 20255, n. 2.

• 3

  your letter today BRACERS 120256.

• 4

  visitation of John and Susan Edith’s letter of 22 October (BRACERS 120256) recounted a somewhat chaotic afternoon and evening spent with BR’s son and daughter-in-law the day before (see also Monk 2: 343). After a long restaurant lunch, the three of them adjourned to Edith’s apartment where John proceeded to read his literary work in progress into her tape recorder (including the story with which BR was not familiar and which Edith judged “admirable”). After cocktails and an improvised dinner, the couple eventually left “foggily and groggily” by taxi for Richmond around midnight. John was in “splendid form”, Susan “charming” and “[i]t was all great fun”, Edith told BR — but he does not appear convinced.

• 5

  will you keep him up to the mark about Eton During his absence BR wanted John to see his younger brother at the school where he was boarding. Edith had reported that “John expects to see Conrad next Sunday or the one following”, but in a subsequent letter (BRACERS 120261, 5 Nov. 1951) she indicated to BR that his older son had postponed this planned visit until 18 November — by which time he would have returned from America.

• 6

  “Whiskey City” This unpublished poem, extant on eight typescript leaves in RA, opens as follows: “Whiskey city, / with rose and fire and gin in it, / where are your voices and your lights gone?”

• 7

  the Medlock See BRACERS 20255, n. 3.

• 8

  I have done Herald Forum On 22 October BR presented an address entitled “New Hopes for a Changing World” (31 in Papers 26) to close the first session of a three-day New York Herald Tribune Forum about “Balancing Moral Responsibility and Scientific Progress” (see also BRACERS 20257, n. 6).

• 9

  Columbia, six broadcasts BR had recorded five conversations with Dwight Cooke, host of CBS radio programme You and the World. All were loosely based on different chapters of New Hopes for a Changing World (1951). They aired on successive evenings beginning 14 January 1952 — the book’s American publication date. No audio of these broadcasts is extant, but Appendix XV in Papers 26 comprises transcribed excerpts from the first three, which were circulated in mimeograph form to CBS affiliates in an attempt by the network to drum up publicity for the series. The sixth CBS broadcast (recorded for Invitation to Learning on 22 October and airing for the first time six days later) was BR’s discussion with Robert MacIvor and Lyman Lloyd Bryson of Mill’s On Liberty (62 in Papers 11).

• 10

  tonight I have a big dinner and reception BR was to be guest of honour of the New York Cosmopolitan Club. Months earlier Julie Medlock notified BR that she had intimated to this women’s organization that he would address the gathering for “half an hour to forty-five minutes” (29 May 1951, BRACERS 84668). From the present letter, however, it does not appear that BR was scheduled to speak, and even if he did so there is no known record of his address.

• 11

  tomorrow a lecture at MIT This unscheduled stop on BR’s last lecture tour of the United States was made after he succumbed to the entreaties of students there who desperately wanted to hear him speak. Although reluctant to expand his itinerary, BR enjoyed himself after flying to Boston at short notice with Julie Medlock on the day of his speech (26 October). Her unpublished memoir recalls the “scintillating and humorous mood” in which BR, using a different title (“Human Nature in Politics”), reprised his Nobel laureate’s address (19 in Papers 26) to over a thousand students in a large lecture theatre. A recording later issued as a long-playing disc entitled Bertrand Russell Speaks may have been made when BR visited MIT (see Papers 26: 145–6).

• 12

  next day a lecture to Jews On 27 October BR delivered an address entitled “Life without Fear: A View of Poetry” to the Poetry Centre of the Young Men and Young Women’s Hebrew Association on 92nd Street, New York. This talk, which was followed by a short question and answer session (33a and 33b in Papers 26), considered the injuriousness of fear generally, rather than its particularly corrosive effects on the arts and letters. It draws on several chapters (17 and 19–21) of BR’s recently published (in Britain) New Hopes for a Changing World (1951) but also includes a short introduction and conclusion tailored to the “literary” forum he had been invited to address.

• 13

  then Washington and points South BR neglected to mention the midwestern leg of his tour. After visiting his daughter and her family in Washington, DC, he flew to Indiana to lecture at Purdue on 1 November (“The Physical Conditions of Thinking” [35 in Papers 11]). He next embarked upon a highly circuitous journey (on account of some prematurely wintry weather: see BRACERS 20261) to Oberlin College, Ohio, where (3 November) he repeated his lecture on happiness (32 in Papers 26) for a third time before flying to North Carolina via Washington.