Attached to this letter is a list of items with their offered prices, titled "Received from the Lady Constance Malleson, 24 Aug. 1970".

Blackwell had visited her for tea on that day. The list includes a lacquer-box and a tea cup and saucer. The box in the Russell Archives is square, not round as described in Colette's letter of 1 August 1970.

"The cup and saucer are Wedgewood; and the only one of its kind in the world."

"The real name of the man who is called Paul in my 2 vols was Maurice. When you get BR's letters to me, you'll find many mentions of Maurice. BR was more jealous of him than of any other man. In one of BR's (1949) letters to me you'll find the phrase 'I shall never again live with any woman. I don't seem able to make a success of it.' Hardly had he written so, than he married Edith Finch. BR never liked to speak of the man who fathered Dora's baby in the Russell marriage. He never told me his name and I still don't know it."

Colette describes her last meetings with BR: shortly after Easter 1949.

"I was rather disappointed in the Crawshay-Williams book. His wife, a very determined person, went to all lengths to keep B.R. on their doorstep, in order to pick his brains, to advance her husband's career; though B.R. told me that he found the Crawshay's sympathies had very decided limits. As you can see, I like her even less than him. I was very glad Crossman gave 5 pages to B.R.'s memo. Warmest good wishes to you and to Dr. Slater."

[The "memo" was the "Memorandum concerning Ralph Schoenman".]

"My 2nd vol of 'Letters to B.R.' is now being professionally typed."

"I thought the Spokesman review of Crawshay Williams book rather mild." "The precious B.R. 1920 Russian icon is now in my strong-box at Rubinstein's Bank to go to you when his original letters do." The latter sentence is written on the envelope.

Colette does not want a public announcement of the sale of the letters to the Russell Archives for several reasons. "I'd not like Lady Russell [Edith] to risk having her feelings hurt by a McM[aster]. announcement. I'd not like to expose myself to scathing remarks from Dora Russell in the public press, where she is so fond of posing as the only defender of B.R. Still less do I want furious private letters to myself from the ever-furious P.H. Spence."

Re libel considerations of her volumes of letters to B.R.:

"B.R. protected himself against actions for libel by telling his readers nothing of his troubles with Dora R. and with P.H. Spence; and his volumes were the poorer for it—as several reviewers [of the Autobiography] wrote."

"I fear I cld not, now, write anything worth having abt Mrs Eliot, whom I never met. The 'therapeutic element' was 1/2 genuine and 1/2 an excuse BR made to himself, I think."

[She frequently discusses documents in her letters.]

"B.R., when in Brixton Prison, summer 1918, asked me to be kind to Wrinch; so I was. I'd a lot of nice garments in those days, which I lent her to wear when she stayed at Garsington. I never kept the letters she wrote me: the last one was dated 1964."

"Nicod was B.R.'s favourite: a gentle creature."

"B.R. didn't tell me he had taken up with Dora and that they were living a 'completely married life' at Newlands. Wrinch was very useful to B.R.: he sometimes used her a messenger to me. She brought him books he needed from Cambridge." "I found the enclosed letter from Wrinch to me" which she didn't think she had. Demos worked for the Greek ambassador.

On the enveloped she states that she is sending a letter from Wrinch.

"When B.R. returned from China he had nowhere in the country to take the pregnant Dora, and Wrinch came to the rescue by lending him the cottage she then had at Winchelsea, Sussex. Rubinsteins are cutting huge chunks of my book as being open to libel. It is already 3 months late in going to publishers."

Colette never met Whitehead.

"If my memory is accurate, B.R. told me Utley was so anti-Russian that she'd become almost pro Hitler."

"I'm as certain and sure as one can be of anything in this world that Nalle Kielland burnt all B.R.'s letters directly she'd read them. She didn't even allow him to write to her own address; but only c/o a friend. I think she'd very upset if she knew he'd sold any of her letters to McM[aster], especially without embargo." Colette thinks that Kielland's "relations" with BR "only happened when she visited Dorset House once or more after B.R.'s Trondheim air crash." She strongly advises against writing to Kielland.

Colette never met Katharine Mansfield. "When I die and you get B.R.'s letters to me, you'll find amongst them one to him signed K.M.; from which you can draw your own conclusions as to B.R.'s relations with her."

She offers to send a clipping from The Times that day of a letter from Edith Russell and 12 others on Czechoslovakia.

Colette has decided against the publication of her letters to BR.

She finds the truncated version overwhelmingly distasteful. She will sent the complete typescript to the Russell Archives.

"It was so very interesting to hear in your letter of 27 August that Texas has 1775 Lady Ottoline letters from B.R."

Blackwell has acquired from a bookseller The Coming Back inscribed to Elizabeth Russell from Colette.

Colette sent this copy of a letter to the Russell Archives. She attempts to answer Alpers' questions about Katherine Mansfield.

"The only merit of your copy of The Coming Back is that it belonged to Elizabeth Russell. Yes, it is the book I 'wanted forgotten'. Sir Shane Leslie, Sir Winston Churchill's cousin (and just very lately dead), reviewed it very well, but few others did. The best said of it was that all the characters were full of life and vitality. It is vilely constructed book: my 1st effort at a novel."

"I once asked B.R. if he thought Dora's actions worse than Peter's. He replied 'both equally bad'—which was not true; as, by his own credo, Peter taking a lover ('X') was quite o.k., while Dora's bastards in marriage to B.R. were not included in his credo at all. He once said to me: 'If I could live by my beliefs, we cld be happy.' That was perfectly true. But he could not."

"BR.'s early draft of his Autobiog (upon which my 2 vols are based) gives his considered opinion of why his 3 first marriages crashed: because he cld not care for any woman—with his whole being—for more than 7 years. He cut that out of his final version."

Jean Nicod was Swiss: "I don't know if B.R. ever grasped that." She says there exists a letter from BR to Mrs. C. Bernard (with address) about Nicod "showing how little he knew of Nicod". BR disliked Nicod's wife.

[BRACERS has records of 4 letters between BR and Christie Bernard.]

In Nalle Kielland's letters "P.H." stands for "Peter's husband" in order "to disguise B.R., for safety." ["P.H." could also stand for Patricia Helen.]

BR lacks the time to study her paper, and he returns it.

BR would be happy to see the Ratners in North Wales.

BR thanks Davies for the photographs at the Aberystwyth anti-nuclear meeting.

On the FBI and Hans Thirring.

"No" to an unspecified request.

BR and Edith will be happy to see Foges and Mrs. Sargent on June 14. They will stay at Portmeirion.

"The only thing that I remember about Wittgenstein's notes on logic is that he dictated them to a German male stenographer...."

He tells the "A is A" anecdote.

A statement on Women's Caravan for Peace.

The Russells cannot attend the dinner on June 5. BR is glad Lord John Russell's work on removing Jewish disabilities is still remembered.

BR is willing in principle to write a blurb for No More War, but wants to see the typescript.

BR recommends 3 of his books. He no longer "altogether" agrees with his 2 education books.

On the view of the American Federalists that only democracies may join a world federation. BR is Hon. President of the Oxford Federalists and is willing to become that of the Cambridge Federalists.

BR is shocked that Eaton is being attacked by the Committee on Un-American Activities.

A copy of the original letter sent to Eaton was also sent to Joseph Rotblat and is available at record 132211.

On Eaton and the Committee on Un-American Activities. Aberystwyth was a pleasant and useful occasion.

BR has "absolutely no scientific knowledge about cancer" and returns the writer's manuscript.

On Harriet possibly altering her name by deed poll.

BR cannot attend the September meeting in Paris.

BR encloses (not present) "a brief synopsis" of "The Expanding Mental Universe".

"How glad BR would have been to know that Larissa Daniel is at last out of Siberia."

Colette does not want any of the photographs that she will be sending to the Archives to get into Dora Russell's hands. Edith Russell had feared that Dora might be writing a book about BR. Hopefully her autobiography will be "less objectionable".

Colette writes that Carrington and her sister Clare were best friends at the Slade School. Colette knew Carrington only a little. "Carrington on Garsington" had just arrived in her post.

Garsington "is a difficult house to depict with justice. Wheeler-Bennett (historian) owns it now."

"I'm glad that the Conrad R. letter I sent was of use. But he left out the climax of the episode: that BR only got his ration book by pulling strings: complaining to the minister in charge: John Strachey." (This was an episode in the mid-1940s.)

"Madame Nicod must of course know Jean's nationality. My information (that he was Swiss) came from her stepson. As you say 'it is a minor point' whether BR and the first Mrs Eliot had sexual relations. I always took it for granted that they had; and when I wrote so to BR he never contradicted me, but said that she'd be an important part of his life for a considerable time to come. I was therefore very surprised when, in his Autobiog, he made it appear that none of his women overlapped with each other; which, as far as I know, they all did."

"Of course BR was an expert in 'making little' of his sexual relations when he wished so to do. Also at the date of his letter to Sencourt (1968) his memory was no longer very good. He once appeared in my bedroom wearing black pyjamas saying that 'Mrs E. likes them.'"

"Ottoline furnished" BR's Bury Street flat "in the first place, as a place where he and she cld be together."

"My heart sinks to my boots at the Dora R. and Kate Tait writings. Kate once gave an interview to an English journalist in wh she said 'I prefer to be known as my husband's wife rather than as my father's daughter'. (Quote from memory.)"

Blackwell saw Ralph Schoenman at a Russell centenary conference (at Indiana).

"When I was listing BR's library in May, 1967, I remarked to him on how much I admired 'Forstice', which I'd read in typescript. (He had the ms boxed in the library.) He said he didn't like the last part, and that he didn't want the story to be printed. I said I thought the last part was the best of all. He said (immediately) that well, it could be printed, then but not until he was dead. What surprises me about this, in retrospect, is that it took only a couple of words of praise from a nobody to Russell to change his mind."

"In reply to yr questions abt Philip Toynbee, I do not regard him as a 'true Russell lover'."

Blackwell writes of his impressions of the Centenary Conference at McMaster including the people that were there: Edith Russell, Conrad Russell, Kate Tait, David Tait, Alfred Ayer, and Cyrus Eaton.

He is glad Colette liked the telegram, which was John Slater's idea and was also signed by Edith Russell.

"'Hilary', in Fear in the Heart has nothing whatever to do with B.R." "I have destroyed all my copies of 'The Coming Back' otherwise I'd be glad to have sent you one. It was a very feeble first effort."

Edith Russell "told me that in 1924 she went to a meeting or a concert (something like that); she heard a loud but attractive laugh; was told it was Bertrand Russell; and was in love with him since."

"I've always felt that Angus Wilson's Hemlock and After was based on B.R. (disguised as a homosexual)." "I don't for a moment believe there is any B.R. Autobiog. apart from the published one".

Regarding a letter from BR on 16 Dec. 1968: "I'd be surprised if he ever—even in his later days—bothered to make a draft of a letter to me." Colette cannot confirm if she has the letter or not as it is at her lawyer's.

In fact there are three versions of this letter; see record 19926, record 19931 and record 98520.

The journal that Colette kept and that is mentioned in the Urch-Malleson typescript "was accidentally destroyed with all my letters in Sweden."

Prof. Tungsten, who edited Dagens Nyheter, "did not much care for the little he knew of B.R."

"I think the little mystery of BR's draft letter to 16 Dec. 1968 has been cleared away. As ER [Edith Russell] says in her Feb. 1970 letter to you, his eyesight deteriorated in the last year or two, and what appears to be incoherence is probably due to that."

Colette has found one "of the 3 or 4 sheets of Louise Labe's sonnets which I wrote out for him and sent to Paris when he was on his way to Peking. It is written in my 1920 handwriting on paper die-stamped 6 Mecklenburgh Square (the 'New Attic'). How this one sheet has survived the Swedish destruction of all my papers is a mystery."

This sheet is found in her papers, Rec. Acq. 596, Box 6.74.

"Gladys Rinder ... I can only say that she seemed abt 40 in 1916-18. She was a completely nondescript person, but efficient, and kind." "I'd the habit of writing several drafts of my letters to B.R. and that it was then just a toss up as to which one in fact got posted to him."

"Alas! I'm still in the throes of poison, so forgive if this line is rather mixed up please." (She refers to rhustoxicodendron poisoning: "It stays with one till one dies.") "I'm rather doubtful whether I'll send you my letter quoting BR's 1919 chunks on Wittgenstein. They are more valuable to me than to you." "I'm glad for B.R.'s own sake that he didn't live to be 101."
 

Colette is "not well enough to write a long letter." With regard to Katharine Mansfield's story, "The Escape", 9 July 1920: By this time "B.R. had come to take my view of K.M., at least more or less, and more than previously."

Colette has been in hospital "with a broken hip and leg since end of July". "I was 4 days and nights helpless on my back without food or drink when the police broke in and brought me to hospital".

"I chose name of 'Konradine' [in The Coming Back] because of my great admiration for Joseph Conrad."

"I don't remember BR telling me anything abt "I Appeal unto Caesar"; and when Voigt wrote a book entitled 'Render Unto Caesar'—and I mentioned it to BR., he said he knew nothing of—that book or its author".

This note is written at the foot of a letter written by K. Blackwell, 14 August 1974.

"In Aug. 1920 BR brought a suitcase to me full of my letters to him to keep safe for him and to bring empty to the Rembrandt Hotel where I was to stay with him to provide evidence for the Alys divorce; but the Rembrandt was too respectable; and when the detective came there the Hotel refused all information; so BR had to repeat the performance at the Charing Cross Hotel with, I think, Dora."

"I had numbers of abortions in my youth; but I'm also certain B.R. did not pay for any of them. I remember B.R. coming to visit me in my nursing home, after an abortion (almost certainly Dec. 1917). I remember being surprised that he didn't seem upset by my (very painful) abortion. Abortions need not be secret."

Archival note: Colette was in a nursing home in Dec. 1918, presumably for the abortion she mentions in this letter. The word "abortion" is not used in the correspondence.

"The BR manuscript which has been found [in my south attic] is 'Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy': 225 quarto pages (handwritten). The other pages with it is a typescript of 42 pages titled 'Professor Dewey's Essays in Experimental Logic'. Didn't BR do this in Brixton Prison?"

"I don't consider Gollancz a good enough publisher for Kate's BR book: my best wishes to her for it." "I'd be most grateful to know whether Kate ever got Kate Amberley's ivory hairbrush which BR gave me in 1916 and I gave back to him to give to Kate T. when we were both a Ffestiniog and Peter intercepted it—so Peter may still have it."

"I've read Dora's autobiog; but my distaste for her makes any criticism from me of little value; it is far too long; one is not interested in her 'outside' men; she is, as always, far too pleased with herself; seems even to think she is 'good looking'. B.R. was not cold blooded abt. the women he left: his letter to me, about Mrs. T.S. Eliot proves that."

Re Constance Malleson: "She adored Fox's glacier mints—she read a great deal, kept her logic to the end, read The Times newspaper. A very brave person, extremely sweet to those who cared for her and she had her favourites."

Urch lists the Colette items in her possession up until 1920. She is about to sort the next grouping, 1920-30. Among the items listed (most of which are now with Colette's papers in the Russell Archives) is "a very good charcoal drawing of Colette in 1916 by R.G. Eves: a life-size head with portrays well her character." It does not appear this drawing was acquired.

BR approves sending his article to any newspaper in Norway.

BR writes at length in appreciation of Le Ghait's work, Pour une Stratégie Nouvelle.

BR thanks the Council of the Royal Society for congratulations on his semi-centenary as a Fellow.

Re reprinting "Philosophy and Politics".

Re a mortgage on 2 Old Palace Terrace.

BR wants permission to make the basement of 2 Old Palace Terrace suitable for caretakers.

Lorda's tragi-comedy is returned with the suggestion that it be sent to Peggy Duff.

BR asks for reports of the Free Trade Hall anti-nuclear meeting in Manchester on May 21.

Because of McKinney's letter in The Listener of May 18, BR requests an offprint of his Hibbert Journal article of April 1957.

BR does not think a World Party would be effective when voters are more concerned about the Rent Act as in the recent by-elections.

BR sends Duff a document concerning Nagasaki.

BR declines Lovejoy's invitation to Duke University.

Pancer is referred to the New Leader of April or May.

BR apparently sends Rotblat letters from the Home Secretary and the Royal Society.

BR encloses (not present) his address to the Basel Conference Against Nuclear Weapons.

BR can no longer consider buying 2 Old Palace Terrace and asks about another house on the same street.

The invitation to an H-bomb exhibition did not reach BR in time.

BR has no time to write an article on "mind", which he does not know how to define.

BR feels disinclined to write the article, due to Thruelsen's uncertainty.

BR thinks there is nothing more to be done by Britons, though he supported Steele's attempt last year.

"Group action always involves delay and agreement might be difficult."

BR has become too old for such enterprises and does not expect to return to the U.S.

BR will likely introduce Hughes' pamphlet but send the typescript anyway.

BR declines a London invitation but looks forward to his visit with the Sargents.

The treasurer is sent £1 re University settlement.