BRACERS Record Detail for 99939
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"On the Volga. Our boat travels on, day after day, through an unknown and mysterious land."
This typed carbon copy is paginated 17-19. It is initialled "L", BR's pseudonym. The number "8" is typed on it. This was number 8 in a sequence of eight Russia letters. In the Autobiography it became number 4 as the letters that Colette wrote are not published there.
This letter was not written from the Volga or on the date written on the letter. It was written after BR's return from Russia at the end of June.
The original letter is number 1565 in the letters to Ottoline Morrell (document .001565, record 18772). It somehow ended up in her possession. In the Autobiography Russell writes that this and the other letters were "antedated letters to Colette".
There are four other transcriptions of the letter: document .200651, record 99939 (ribbon copy of this letter); document .052469, record 99955 (ribbon copy); document .200652, record 19657 (carbon copy of .052469); Autobiography chapter "Russia", document .007050f2, pp. 151-2, record 116403.
There is also a handwritten version of the letter with the tense changed in The Problem of China at the end of Chapter 1 (ms., Rec. Acq. 1027, box 7, pp. 13-16; record 116404).