BR TO KATHARINE TAIT, 15 APR. 1939
BRACERS 52567. ALS. McMaster. Russell 33 (2013–14): 101–42. SLBR 2: #436
Edited by M.D. Stevenson and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

HOTEL BELLEVUE, BOSTON1
April 15, 1939
Address: Leandro Cottage, San Leandro Lane,
Montecito, Santa Barbara, Cal., U.S.A.

My dearest Kate

Peter sent me your letter to her, with your “Fantasy”,2 which I thought very good indeed. I love the way in which you feel about things. Do you realize that I am reserved and shy just as you are, and that your ways of acting and thinking give me great happiness, and fill me with a profound affection over and above what I naturally feel as your father. I have wanted often to say this, but couldn’t get it out.

Your letter, though written March 5, only arrived a few days ago. I am amused by your vicarious sinfulness, and glad you are so much enjoying yourself.

I haven’t seen the cottage Peter has taken in California, but I know the neighbourhood, which is quite lovely — sea, woods, torrents, and great mountains completely without human inhabitants. If you and John come out for the summer, I am sure you will enjoy it. If you and John were living in America, I shouldn’t have a care in the world. The job I have at the University of California means that I shan’t be short of money for the next three years — after that they won’t keep me, as I shall be 70. But it seems fairly easy to pick up money in America.

Did Peter tell you that we crossed a river and I asked the attendant what it was, and he didn’t know, and it was the Mississippi? Otherwise, I am liking the Americans. And I admire the President more than any other politician.3

Americans have a great merit, from your point of view, that by being kind and uncritical they cure shyness. I found that when I first came here in 1896.4

I am touring the country lecturing. I have been in New Orleans, Nashville (Tennessee), Cleveland (where Rockefeller came from),5 Dayton (where cash registers and frigidaires are made), Baltimore (where I saw Joy’s6 mother), and a lot of other places. It is tiring and very boring, but it is nearly over now.

Perhaps, after all, there won’t be war. I feel happier about it than I did.

Conrad is 2 today.

Goodbye, dear Kate.

Your loving
Daddy

• 1

  [document] The letter was edited from ??. The letter was published in Michael D. Stevenson, ed., “‘In Solitude I Brood On War’: Bertrand Russell’s 1939 American Lecture Tour”, Russell 33 (2013–14): 101–42 (at 133–4).

• 2

  “Fantasy” Neither the letter nor the story are available.

• 3

  I admire the President more than any other politician On the day this letter was written, Roosevelt had made his first intervention in the European crisis, asking Hitler and Mussolini to guarantee a long list of nations against aggression. Hitler replied derisively in a speech to the Reichstag on 28 April.

• 4

  I first came here in 1896 BR visited the US in 1896 to meet the relatives of his first wife, Alys Pearsall Smith, and to lecture on non-Euclidean geometry.

• 5

  where Rockefeller came from John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870 and became the symbol of American oligopolistic capitalism — and a frequent target of BR’s pointed critiques of the corrosive power of business leaders in the US.

• 6

  Joy Probably Joy Corbett, one of the first pupils at Beacon Hill.