BR TO KATHARINE TAIT, 16 JULY 1950
BRACERS 52627. ALS. McMaster. B&R Hh2020.01
Edited by A.G. Bone. Reviewed by S. Turcon

<letterhead>1
Lennon’s Hotel
Brisbane
July 16, 1950

Dear Kate2

Your letter3 reached me when I was in the throes of preparing for Australia and I have not had time to answer it till now.

I am afraid nothing is to be made out of publishers. The only ones I know in USA are Simon & Schuster, 1230 6th Ave., and W.W.a Norton, who used to be 70 5th Ave.,b but I think has moved. But I am pretty sure there is nothing to be got from them. I think private translating is more possible, but very badly paid. I think you would do better to get a testimonial from Radcliffe than from me; I am still not in good odour in America. Is your French good? Any other languages besides German?

I devoutly hope Charlie won’t be axed.4 I wonder how the Korean trouble affects him.

As things stand, my last engagement in America is Columbia Nov. 16,5 so I could come to Washington6 for 2 or 3c nights 17th and 18th — I can stay at a hotel if it suits you better. I hope to make you a premature birthday present of part of my earnings, but I don’t know how much. I help John,7 and wish the law allowed me to help you equally.8 The questions you raise about democracy, Asia, etc. are just what I am lecturing on. It is too long for a letter but when I come I will bring my stuff. Read Robert Payne, The Revolt of Asia9— for facts, not for opinions. I would write more but am terribly busy.

Very much love.

Yrs aff
Diddy

• 1

  [document] The letter was edited from the signed original written in BR’s hand on the recto and verso of a twice-folded leaf of letterhead from Lennon’s Hotel, Brisbane.

• 2

  [recipient] BR’s daughter, Katharine Tait (1923–2021), first travelled to the United States with her older brother to visit their father in California in August 1939. The outbreak of war shortly afterwards extended this summer vacation indefinitely — somewhat to BR’s satisfaction as he had been trying (without success) to convince Dora that the education of their children should be completed in America. Kate, a brilliant and precocious student, enrolled first at UCLA before winning a prestigious scholarship at Radcliffe, from where she graduated, with the highest possible distinction, in 1944. An unhappy year of war work followed back in England, but Kate grasped the offer of a graduate scholarship from Radcliffe and returned there to study modern languages. Here she met her future husband, Charles Tait, a returning American serviceman, whom she married in 1948 and with whom she had five children. The couple divorced in the 1980s, and Kate ultimately returned to England to live in her Cornish childhood summer home, “Carn Voel”.

• 3

  Your letter In this embargoed correspondence, dated 25 May 1950 (BRACERS 112670), BR’s daughter clearly discussed her financial difficulties.

• 4

  I devoutly hope Charlie won’t be axed. BR’s son-in-law Charles William Tait (1923–2017) was an expert linguist whose language skills had been utilized by American military intelligence during World War II. After his discharge from the U.S. Army, Tait returned to Harvard (where he met Kate) and completed a degree in comparative philology before enrolling in graduate school. Earlier in 1950 he had joined the intelligence branch of the State Department and became an analyst of Czechoslovakia in the Eastern Europe section. He was not “axed”, for he continued in this role until entering a Virginia seminary in 1958 to train for the Episcopalian ministry. After he was ordained a priest three years later, he travelled with his family to Uganda to undertake missionary work.

• 5

  my last engagement in America is Columbia Nov. 16 When he delivered his third and final instalment of his Matchette Foundation lecture series, “The Impact of Science on Society”.

• 6

  I could come to Washington At the end of his penultimate lecture tour of the United States, BR seems to have spent three nights at the small Washington, D.C., apartment of Kate and Charlie Tait. On her father’s slightly awkward visit, see Kate’s memoir, My Father Bertrand Russell (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975), p. 175.

• 7

  I help John Kate was well aware of this, for BR had already told her that his oldest son, John Conrad Russell (4th Earl Russell, 1921–1987), “would be utterly sunk if I did not help him financially” (11 April 1950, BRACERS 52545). This “help” had recently extended to the provision of accommodation for John and his family at 41 Queen’s Rd, Richmond, the house where (from May 1950) they lived with BR. Although John had indicated to his father’s accountant that he would start paying a rent of £100 per annum, as well as two-thirds of the electricity bill and half the rates (L.P. Tylor to BR, 21 March 1950, RA2 760), it is unlikely that BR received any such monies, for his son had been without any income since leaving his clerical post at the Treasury early in 1949. John had gained control of a £4,000 trust fund when he turned 25 in 1946, but had already squandered most of this capital on costly psychoanalytic treatments for him and his wife and improvements to a previous home in St. John’s Wood (see Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: the Ghost of Madness [London: Cape, 2000], p. 316).

• 8

  wish the law allowed me to help you equally The free movement and exchange of sterling and foreign currency assets had been strictly limited during wartime by emergency powers perpetuated by the Exchange Control Act (1947). When Russell toured the United States in October and November 1950, the foreign currency allowance for British travellers abroad was pegged at £50 per annum. This modest entitlement had been withdrawn completely between October 1947 and May 1948, owing to the acute balance of payments crisis, but it was increased to £100 at the end of 1950. Although hamstrung by these constraints, BR was still able to provide his daughter a modicum of financial support by disbursing to her directly some American earnings — as promised here (see Papers 26: 169).

• 9

  Read Robert Payne, The Revolt of Asia Robert Payne (1911–1983) was a prolific English author who specialized in biography but also wrote poetry and fiction. His recent survey of Asian political developments (London: Victor Gollancz, 1948; Russell’s library) drew on first-hand acquaintance with India and China and was unabashedly sympathetic to the “revolt” which it chronicled. Kate accepted her father’s recommendation but (according to BR) considered Payne “naïve” for portraying Chinese communists as essentially agrarian reformers. In this subsequent letter to his daughter (15 Sept. 1950, BRACERS 112671), BR derided Payne as a “fool”. But he clearly found the book useful in preparing “Ferment in Asia” (5 in Papers 26) for his Australian lecture tour. Indeed, the two men occupied much of the same ground in their assessments of the war’s destabilizing effects on the region and the ensuing rejection of European colonial authority.

Textual Notes

• a

  W.W.] WW

• b

  Ave.] Ave

• c

  or 3 inserted