BR TO PEGGY KISKADDEN, 14 JUNE 1945
BRACERS 54807. ALS. M. Adams Kiskadden. SLBR 2: #468
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell

Trinity College
Cambridge1
June 14, 1945

My dearest Peggy2

Your nice letter of Feb. 20 was a joy to get, and I have meant every day since to answer it, but always something urgent turned up. Now I am having a little holiday in London while Peter has a visit from her mother.

To begin with our news: John is not in the Far East, but in Washington — the Embassy knows his address, but I don’t, as when I heard he was looking for accommodation.a If anything takes you to Washington, I hope you will give him the pleasure of seeing you. Kate, who has been in the Ministry of Information, is no longer wanted there now that the German war is over and will probably in the autumn go back to Radcliffe, where she has been offered a fellowship. I imagine she will ultimately marry an American and settle in your country.3

Conrad goes to a co-educational day school in Cambridge, where he is very happy. But he can’t stay there much longer, as there will be no boys of his age. Peter hates Cambridge passionately, which is awkward, as we spent our last penny buying a house there at an exhorbitant price. But I am doing well — enjoying my university work, broadcasting for the B.B.C., writing articles, and taking part in the General Election. I don’t know how things will work out.

England is rather depressing. Everybody is utterly weary with years of overwork and suppressing fear. For 200 years we have been accustomed to be the dominant Power, and now victory has left us at the mercy of USA and USSR, likely to be ground to powder when they come to blows. Much that one loved is destroyed — some of the best churches, the Temple,4 which had remained just as in Lamb’s essay,5 and so on. Of my grandmother’s house in Dover Street not a trace remains. What has survived, I fear, has survived only for a few years, as another war, worse than this, seems almost certain before very long.

I take refuge in abstract work and long views. My big history of philosophy should be published in the autumn, and I have now embarked on a big System of Philosophy, to tell what I think about Man and the Universe.6 If this takes me 3 years, I shall then be ready to embark on an autobiography.7

I went to see H.G. Wells the other day, and found him apparently dying, without any vigour of either mind or body. It was sad.8

Don’t imagine from the above gloomy reflections that I am sunk in melancholy. If we met, you would find me full of laughter and jollity, apparently without a care in the world. My glands work so well that I can endure many pessimistic thoughts without ceasing to be cheerful. But all this I know you understand, as well as the underlying despair about a world gone astray.

Good bye, Peggy dear, with much much love.

Yours ever
B.

• 1

  [document] The letter was written in London, but Russell crossed out the letterhead address MOUNT ROYAL, | (HOTEL & RESTAURANT) | Marble Arch, | London, W.1

• 2

  envelope: Mrs. William T. Kiskadden | 9121 Alto Cedro Drive | Beverly Hills | Cal. | USA.

• 3

  I imagine she will ultimately marry an American and settle in your country. All these predictions proved accurate.

• 4

  some of the best churches, the Temple Buildings on Fleet Street belonging to the two Inns of Court.

• 5

  Lamb’s essay Charles Lamb, “The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple”, in The Essays of Elia (1823).

• 6

  what I think about Man and the UniverseHuman Knowledge, its Scope and Limits (1948). Russell originally intended to include in it the work on politics and ethics which he eventually published as Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954).

• 7

  ready to embark on an autobiography He did so in 1948.

• 8

  H.G. Wells … sad. He had liver cancer and died in August 1946.

Textual Notes

• aaccommodation misspelt as accomodation