Nalle says of Peter (Patricia Russell): "I don't know Peter at all, except from not very friendly descriptions, not that I doubt their accuracy!"

Nalle describes her opinion of Dora: "... I am too deeply rooted in la bourgeoisie to accept marriage with offspring from several fathers to be practicable and at all attractive, it is too untidy too!"

Nalle's husband is "... extremely jealous of B" and she feels that she must burn their letters, so she burnt their letters from yesterday. "B. is not a substitute for medicine! I always have 'boyfriends'! I like him very much, but I think I can look at him objectively...." (S. Turcon note)

On Conrad, Nalle says: "I think you are right about Conrad, when you say he seems irrevocably lost to his mother for the time being. One day he will liberate himself. After all he must have some of his father's stamina. Otherwise his father can't be his father!"

Conrad orders his father to break with Malleson and no longer see her or write to her, but BR "... refuses to be dictated to and to break with you—both things equally impossible. So B. certainly has a horrid situation to handle...."

Nalle's husband is "insanely jealous of B." Nalle wishes she could see BR faultlessly. "B. does not put his troubles in so many words to me. But he says he has worries and difficulties and that he is depressed and weary." (S. Turcon note)

"The Sunday I had dinner with B. my boy was up from Cambridge to be with me, and I had to invent some unknown person who had invited me...." Nalle found BR in high spirits. 

Nalle finds Peter's behaviour "detestable" as she uses Conrad "as a weapon". Nalle thinks Peter should keep Conrad out of their issues as much as possible. (S. Turcon note)

Nalle has had a short note from BR. BR seems "worried and out of sorts". Nalle thinks that BR is having an awful time with Peter and that he is very worried about Conrad. (S. Turcon note)

Nalle laughed at the "frightful" picture of BR that Colette (Constance Malleson) sent her. "I am glad I only met him in his white and unbearded days!"

Nalle describes how children bring out the best of BR and that all his best sides came out at Beacon Hill. (S. Turcon note)

Malleson has dated the year of the letter to either 1950 or 1951. "I can never stop wondering at the sadness of this, that you did not marry B. and give him children. To have children by a woman with a lovable character would have made a lot of difference to him...." (S. Turcon note)

Nalle thinks that no one was ever really important to BR. One thing BR has made clear to her is that "... brilliant people don't know how to live their lives. Of course I don't mean that in every sense, but many of the things that meant most to him became unhinged, because he did not devote enough real attention to them. ... Because you and Ottoline did not want to marry him, he made these awful matches, and begot children with impossible specimens...." (S. Turcon note)

Nalle says BR needs to be loved. "We all do, for that matter. I think P.H. needs it particularly, though. And probably always has." (S. Turcon note)

Nalle and Malleson often use "P.H." to stand for BR. Perhaps it was a way of hiding his name as Nalle was secretive of her letters because of her husband's jealousy of BR.

Nalle encloses newspaper cuttings from Australia which she very much enjoyed. She finds it amusing how BR and Stalin were made to resemble each other, "not only the pipe!"

Nalle thinks it must be awful for BR to live so close to Pembroke Lodge where he grew up, the café brimming with day trippers. (S. Turcon note)

BR thinks Christians are tyrants because his grandmother, BR's guardian, was Christian and a tyrant, according to Nalle.

Fragment of a letter.

"I read with absorption about you and Ottoline. B. has so many women in his life, but as far as I can see not as many have been important to him personally—his last two wives being rather enigmatic sources of offspring. ... he has irresistible spots of the 'Unverdorben' in him, and those spots are the ones I love beyond measure—they are not my spots, I only love them—it is different to love at 50 from love at 20!"

Malleson dated the letter 1951 or 1952. 

"B. always says your nature is so generous and I certainly agree, from what I know of you."

"Have you seen the picture of him in the American edition of the Vogue for, I think, May 15th? ... You see how noble??! ... It is also funny ... that Dora goes with sympathizers to Russia while he writes articles in The Vogue, and gets his picture in it over the whole page!!" (S. Turcon note)

Nalle feels like she belongs to their more rational days. "Though I do think if we were to live such rational lives as B. preaches (not as he lived!!) it would be such a boring world!"

Nalle thinks that "B. loved children with heart and mind. Though it might seem so, he did not seem very experimental with children." BR and the teachers and Dora took endless pains and interest. (S. Turcon note)

Letter is dated by Malleson, 1950 or 1951. Fragment of a letter.

Re BR as a human being: "I love his little human weaknesses which at first perhaps seem a blow! Because of his wisdom, reading and vast knowledge, one does not at the very first realize these little things, but after a while they are endearing! They make him alive and real. If anyone wrote about all of that, I should be absorbed and fascinated. But alas, that will be only when he is dead, I fear." (S. Turcon note)

Colette and Nalle finally meet. "It always embarrasses me when you use such Irish exaggerations! I am more like the British in their understatements!"

Nalle on her relationship with BR: "I want to tell you that there is no regular relation between myself and P.H. [BR] I like him and and love him and adore him and all that but it just does not work in with my other life and I am passed the age where I get carried away—and my Goodness—I should think he is too! Though I think his vitality amazing and I am sure he still is very interested in the females of the species!"

Nalle writes of her concern with John and Susan. (S. Turcon note)

Re her visit to BR at Richmond Street—BR has his own servant to look after him and John and his family have their ménage apart. "Oh, dear Colette—when I arrived someone was playing the accordion at the back of the house ... I said something about it to B. and he told me that is all John does—all day, and for ages he has been behaving like that." Nalle says John is strange but not fit for an asylum. Susan, his wife, is grey pale.

With John's children BR "... becomes gay and full of fun and joy, he gets patient and kind and understanding and helpful without for a moment being sloppy or sentimental...." 

Nalle has hardly ever seen BR except in a "jolly mood". They laugh together so much and Nalle says "... there is no one else on Earth I laugh so much with as with B." (S. Turcon note)

Re BR's title. John does not want his title. "To be a father was his keenest wish but he did not want to pay the price it requires to be any good at it. It has to be paid in blood, sweat and tears and a lot of sacrifice. But perhaps it was impossible because of Dora." (S. Turcon note)

"I don't think B's children are hateful to him—except Conrad—and Conrad's attitude may change as he grows away from his mother, which he should do naturally, no matter what she is like. But then, B's children do not develop and react in usual natural ways. With John at a distance, I certainly feel he is far from 'the normal', which doesn't mean that I think him an idiot. On the contrary, perhaps that is what makes the wrong balance, that he has too much intellect. I think that is what is wrong with B. himself. He involves intellect and reason with everything in a matter which makes it a bit chilly about him!" (S. Turcon note)

Nalle wonders if her and Colette and others will be involved in BR's divorce with Peter. "'Peter' once wrote me an extraordinary letter, and I always wonder how on earth she got my name, address etc.—though it can hardly have been through anyone but her spouse! She has also complained to her spouse that I have been rude to her. Having seen her once in my life, at the school, for about one minute, 20 years ago, it seems very unlikely!"

On BR's upcoming 80th birthday: "Isn't it incredible that our sweetheart is soon 80? How unfair that a man can still be sexy at 80, whereas I suppose we shall need bibs and sit in bath chairs if not in coffins!"

Colette sent a picture of John and Nalle thanks her for it. "If John's children get such a turbulent childhood as John had himself, they may well get upset too. There is a line to be drawn about liberty, unattractive as the thought may be—when responsibility for offspring comes in for example, I don't think that the parents are free to do what they may happen to desire all the time."

"B. writes that nothing much happens in his life!! ... Doesn't mention the divorce at all." (S. Turcon note)

"I think that Kate was jealous of her brother—this is according to B. and it seems very likely. But those children did not have a chance, really. ... Gracious when I think of him [BR] getting into the snares of a new wife! He can't be fool enough to do that, can he??" (S. Turcon note)

Re BR and Leopardi: "It always intrigues me that B. should so love him because, as you say, greater contrasts cannot be imagined in wildest dreams!"

BR's "... words have influenced public opinion so that there is a little less narrowness in matters of sex and marriage and divorce and so on."

"I also had a short letter from B.—not mentioning divorce, but upset about you and giving the impression of general depression."

When "Mike" (?) was in Ireland she stayed some time with a relative who knew BR's mother well. The relative that knew BR's mother said that BR "... was unable to stick to anything or anybody—I think the word used was 'inconsistent'. The family are like that she said! I imagine B. would like to feel he stuck to some affections." (S. Turcon note)

Nalle wants to read the book about Frank Russell by his former wife, Elizabeth von Arnim. Nalle has read her book Elizabeth and her German Garden a long time ago.

BR asked for Colette's address. Nalle thinks that BR is devoted to her. (S. Turcon note)

Nalle cannot see any resemblance between BR and "Everard". "Thank heavens, I have never had him for a spouse and never wanted to...." (S. Turcon note)

Colette gave BR her father's cuff links. BR has now given them to John. "I wonder if he thought it OK! And if he told John where they came from or if John is going to pawn them one day...." (S. Turcon note)

Nalle had two letters from BR awaiting her in New York. "Miss Edith Finch....Isn't it a scream! What publicity it will give the book! Our Darling is incurable! Really—at 80 and number 4!" (S. Turcon note)

"Time of December 22—they are always in advance about 1 week! informs that B. and 'Edith' are now wed—my Dear, after your description of manly Edith I think it is sadly ridiculous."

Nalle had BR's handwriting analysed "for fun" and the woman who analysed his handwriting said that BR had no strength of character among other things.

"I must confess I like 'wife Edith's' face. Lively and awake—gay and natural. She might have been Scandinavian. I hope she is very balanced and sensible and kind...." Nalle hopes their marriage will be a success.

Nalle likes Edith: "... better than II and III !! Number I must have been an angel!! The energy and vitality of number IV must have enticed B. absolutely!"

Nalle describes her secret visit to Richmond. "Edith was charming—she is entirely different from what pictures show in one way—she is petite, like him in size. Quiet, shy, gentle, softvoiced and very lovable. I adored her at once and am not worried about him, only pray he will be good to her." (S. Turcon note)

Re Nalle's secret visit to Richmond and meeting Edith. "I liked her tremendously; she has that characteristic—one feels one would love to be nice to her, to be her friend, perhaps she seems vulnerable, being shy, I don't know what it is, but I found her adorable and how I wish B. will be good to her." (S. Turcon note)

Nalle has had no letter from BR for awhile. "I didn't say anything about his book, or hardly, when I thanked for it—because, damn it all, Colette, I did not know what to say. I did not care for it. If it had been well reviewed, that did not matter. But as it was rather slaughtered, I hear, well, why should his friends do so too?" Re Satan in the Suburbs.

"... B. makes fun of royalty, still he is quite happy about it when he is asked to take the Queen around the place at BBC. The request came through when I was there in February, and he made fun of how comme il faut and respectable he had become—and I think it is quite funny too—but I am sure he made an effort and gave her a jolly good time—and he loved it when he got his Nobel Prize and the Swedish King sent for him and asked his opinions on this that and the other—politics only to be sure! The King would be careful not to provoke anything!!"

Re BR at Beacon Hill with all the women "like a cock in the chickenyard". He was surrounded by his teachers who were mostly girls, "... who all but one, adored him and—as I know now—slept with him whenever he felt like it!" (S. Turcon note)

Nalle had a letter from BR a long time ago which upset her: "... he had been a long time in hospital for an operation, not saying which one, so I guessed at a rather ordinary one for old boys, sad, it often deteriorates them in every way."

"Sunday. After lunch and dishwashing!"

"Look at B. and all his wives and not wives! Even if one lives to be 80—how is it possible to really feel that loneliness is overcome by the assistance of all these changes in emotional ties? ... Nothing can stress this terrific loneliness that B. talks about than all the little pleasures in love affairs of the minute." (S. Turcon note)

BR spent all the time during the coronation in hospital. (S. Turcon note)

Nalle has received a letter from BR. BR is writing "... more grim stories and adores doing it, my Dear, isn't it awful!" BR told her that he is sick of writing about politics.

"He used to tell me he wanted to write a book of history, how things really were, how kings and generals etc. really behaved and why—well I am sure he would have done that very amusingly, and it would have given him fun." Nalle jokes that BR wrote some of his best works (popular works) while he was with Patricia Russell (Peter): "...he wrote his best stuff during the reign of Peter!!" (S. Turcon note)

"We are all failures, none of us manage to live up to all there is in us?? Look at a success like B.—like Shaw, like any example—if we look closely, they all fall short."

Nalle says that age has calmed BR's views in most things: "... on education, completely; subdued his ardeur politique and probably his belief in mankind. ... I don't know when sincere fire, passionate hope and belief left B. He is a typical exponent of the split spirit of our time just as much as Koestler is."

Nalle visited BR and Edith Russell at Richmond. "... they were sweet, but B. looks frighteningly thin and frail and I am terrified by the idea that pending operation (prostate) mid-January is going to kill him, he seems so frail. But so gay and affectionate and amusing, as always." Edith looks after the house well and the three grandchildren were visiting on holidays, calling Edith "grandma".

BR had put his operation (prostate) off in order to speak at a Women's Meeting. "Though he mellows with the years, he still gets fits of boyish stone-throwing spirit and he loves to throw at religion."

Nalle asked BR about his son Conrad: "He knows very little about him, except school reports. They are good. His subject is history and his aim to be an Oxford Don."

BR has had his prostate operation (Colette sent Nalle a newspaper clipping about his operation).

"Dagens Nyheter follow up things much better than do the Norweigan papers, they hardly ever mention B. at all, I think it has something to do with his trend in Philosophy...." 

Nalle describes her lunch with BR. "He looks very old now, deep creases in his face, but fun as always to talk to." Nalle likes Edith Russell. "She gives one excellent food and everything looks tidy and there are heaps of flowers about, so different from any house of B's I have ever seen." BR told Nalle that they have bought a "biggish" house in Wales. BR asked much about Colette and was worried that she was cross with him. "B. has seen a lot of Russians during this atomic period of his and made a lot of fun about that." (S. Turcon note)

Nalle congratulates Colette on her article "Ottoline". Nalle says that BR has told her about Ottoline, outside of his Autobiography.

On Edith Russell: "It is probably the first time B. has married a perfectly normal everyday kind of person!" (S. Turcon note)

"I wonder about news of B. Do you have any? I feel very far away from him, never hearing BBC and so on. French papers ignore him completely." Nalle worries BR, his children and the grandchildren.

Nalle thanks Colette for the picture of BR that she sent her. "He seems in his skinny way to have gotten fat, if you see what I mean!"

Nalle used to tease BR about his indifference to food: "... he would politely pretend that he cared but I knew he did not—one can tell!"

"B. used to say he was a bit sceptical about the haunts of the idle rich, but he had to confess he liked the so-called Cote d'Azur."

Nalle saw that BR got a Danish prize the other day and she will write to congratulate him. "I often miss him. But in many ways he is an enigma to me—is he to you?" (S. Turcon note)

"All the result of B.'s demonstration will probably be that he catches pneumonia and dies. It isn't constructive enough. I feel profound gloom about our world." (S. Turcon note)

"I must say it is a bit extraordinary to know B. in prison—for making and threatening to make traffic—chaos. One paper said he was in the prison hospital, whereas Edith was denied this privilege."

Nalle thanks Colette for the press cuttings. "I think it is bloody awful to use a polite and rather covering expression, of the press to attack B.'s private life like that, however provoking he has always been."

Nalle is interested in BR's children as she had her own at Beacon Hill.

Nalle thanks Colette for the cutting about the concert for BR.

Nalle read somewhere that BR suffered from shingles.

"How wonderful for B. and us all that the Times writes an eloge like that! I am glad he is well."

BR sent Colette cheques to help as she is ill in the hospital.

"Poor B. died, what we all must. And he lived a long and most interesting life. How lucky that he did not seem to suffer. And that mentally he seemed not to lose his powers."

ER writes to Colette about BR's death. Also about Christopher Farley and BR's relationship with Ralph Schoenman.

For the original ALS of this letter, see record 120311.

"I have never known B. when he was young; always white haired and not young looking in spite of his young spirit and appetite for women! It is no malice on my part but I quite often giggle at the idea that he seemed really to find practically any female bedworthy! Matron at Beacon Hill certainly was a lovely creature, but not the other teachers, worse luck, but I think he did not find lack of attractiveness an obstacle to bed!" (S. Turcon note)

Colette had a photo of BR that he had done for her in about 1916 by Hugh Cecil. "But Howard Coster has done a lovely 'sage' one quite recently when his hair is quite white and all wild. ... But the little Roger Fry one you saw is really good: caught his sceptical satiric side." 

Colette describes her relationship with BR: "I should like to try to explain that with BR and me it was a case of 'like to like': two lines so infinitely parallel can never meet." (S. Turcon note)

"Quakers are the best folk on earth; only (as BR used to say) he 'suffered from their lack of beauty in their houses'."

Colette has a strong-box full of BR's letters, "... and when I let my mind wander it always composes the image of some tiny room somewhere in Sweden and me making into tidy type those letters ready for publication as they'll have to be some day when we're both dead. They're nearly all as good as the ones and sayings in the Autobiography. He wrote very nearly every day for about three or four years." (S. Turcon note)

"It warmed my heart to get your nice letter about BR: your letter had a kind of glow in it." (S. Turcon note)

Colette has given up weeping over BR. (S. Turcon note)

Colette received a nice letter from BR "out of the blue". "My sending him Tuker's book to review had embarrassed him he said." This must be Mildred A.R. Tuker's book Past and Future of Ethics (1938). There is a letter from Tuker to Malleson in File 4, Box 6.72.

BR said that it would be nice to see her. Colette suggests visiting him at his new house at Kidlington, near Oxford, before she sails on July 25th. (S. Turcon note)

"It is now settled I go to see BR and family on 25th probably for lunch and tea...." All BR's children will be there and Peter. John is 18, Kate is 16 and Conrad is 1. BR will come to Oxford to meet her, "I hope alone". (S. Turcon note)

"Enclosed from BR—destroy. He meets me 11.55 and I leave again 4.50." BR was going to meet her at Oxford. Enclosed letter from BR not present.

Dora is writing her autobiography and has tried to have the embargo that BR put on the family broken.

"B. did find Clough Williams-Ellis charming, but I don't think that they were ever great friends—certainly not intimate—and never saw much of each other. The Knighthood would amuse B. mightily, especially in view of Amabel's good Socialist jeers."

On the newspaper articles about BR's Collected Stories. "The article by Michael Burn is the only one I liked. Did you like it? Oh, and Conrad's piece about his father."

Colette wants Edith to have the lace that belonged to BR's mother and then to BR. "I treasure it, and always shall...."

"It is good news that someone wrote a business letter to The Times about a stamp for Bertie. I missed seeing it. I wish I had seen the review of 1929 by Dean Inge. Have you a copy of it? And have you any caricatures of Bertie? Kenneth Coates has begun a collection of them."

Ronald Clark came to see Edith about the biography he is writing on BR.

"Have you seen Ronald Jager's book about Bertie's philosophy? It seems to me excellent...."

Julie Medlock wrote to Edith about Professor J.C. Bhaskar Abraham in connection with Indian Government's stamp of Bertie and said that Abraham was instrumental in having it published. "I am glad to read that he is 'immersed in Russelliana'—is he writing a book about Bertie?"

Though Colette has never met Dora, she never could like what BR told her of Dora. She shudders at the thought of Dora writing a book about BR. 

Colette remembers that BR always spoke well of Clough Williams-Ellis.

"Mr. Blackwell seems to be chasing after B.'s letters to Wittgenstein. ... I think Mr. Blackwell is very good at his own job."

Colette has crossed out that BR never told her the name of Peter's London lover, but she always thought it was one of the Astors (if not David from The Observer then perhaps J.J.).

"You may send me anything you like for my Birthday as long as it is not books. A pair of field-glasses is what I would like best, if you please."

"I want you to know that your message to Bertrand Russell is the one which will be worth all the others put together. It will make him happier than anything to come of these celebrations and, for my part, it fulfils what I am seeking for him on this elemental occasion—his reaching ninety years. I value your message to him and I am moved by it."

"I have spoken to the BBC who are very anxious to include you in the television programme."

"The Anthology of Tributes to Lord Russell is in the hands of the publishers and should be printed in the very near future."

Malleson asks for Shaw's permission to print in her book the little note Shaw sent her when she was collecting funds for a sacked stage carpenter. Shaw's reply is handwritten at the foot of the letter (see record 129315).

Shaw replies to Malleson's letter on the same page (see record 129314). Shaw will buy her book.

She has heard so much about Colette from BR. "I remember your writing that you took BR's letters with you everywhere. ... I will let you into a secret (please don't divulge it) but 'Okel' in my letters refers to a woodhouse found by my little daughter! I hope it will puzzle the scholars!"

Swinnerton was looking for a place to stay in London. "The late Lady MacCarthy (then Mrs. Desmond MacCarthy) very kindly offered to try to find me something. Her quest took her into the neighbourhood of Fitzroy Square, where she met Bertrand Russell. He said 'What are you doing here?' She said 'Looking for lodgings for a single man.' His reply was 'He can have my studio'. In consequence I rented from him a furnished studio in No. 5 Fitzroy Street. I occupied this studio from December 2nd, 1918 until November or December 1919, when, the landlord having sold the house, I was forced to remove. Bertrand Russell again came to the rescue, allowing me to rent a flat at 34 Russell Chambers ... until (I think) 1923...."

An outline of Malleson's relations with Patricia Russell between 1930 and 1949. "I first met plaintiff during the summer vacation of 1930. She was then Miss Marjorie Spence, an Oxford student I think."

Malleson described her visit to BR and Peter at Oxford in her book In the North.

"On 11th March, 1949, Mrs Z. packed off her husband to spend a week with me, saying to him as he left home, 'If you feel like making love to C., I shall ask no questions, and I shall not mind'."

Malleson describes her relationship with BR.