BR TO RUPERT CRAWSHAY-WILLIAMS, 14 AUG. 1950
BRACERS 56064. ALS. McMaster. B&R Hh2020.01
Edited by A.G. Bone. Reviewed by S. Turcon

<letterhead>1
Hotel Esplanade
Perth W.A.
14 August 1950

Dear Rupert2

Your letter talking of the failure to buy Penralltgoch3 reached me today. I am most grateful to you for the trouble you have taken, and sorry it has not borne fruit. But now that world war does not seem immediately imminent I am not altogether sorry. There will be time to look for something else, and I am glad not to have to deal with Peter. I shall hope to come to Wales soon after my return4 for a short time, but in the main work will keep me at Richmond till I go to America. I hope Susan has not given people trouble. She has fallen in love with N. Wales and is determined to find something there.5

My row with the Archbishop came to an abrupt end. I telegraphed to him6 demanding a public apology, which he promptly made. I had hoped to sue him for libel.

I have little of interest to tell about Australia. It is not an exciting country. I am so anxious to get home that I can’t think of much else. Love to you both.

Yrs ever
B.R.

• 1

  [document] The letter was edited from the signed original written in BR’s hand on the recto and verso of a single leaf of letterhead from the Hotel Esplanade, Perth.

• 2

  [recipient] See BRACERS 56058, n. 2.

• 3

  letter talking of the failure to buy Penralltgoch Crawshay-Williams related this “very disappointing news” in a letter dated 5 August 1950 (BRACERS 56061), along with his inkling that Peter, suspecting her estranged husband of bidding for the property by proxy, had refused to entertain any offers for the cottage other than that put in by the “Cambridge man” to whom it was sold (economic historian Michael Postan). On BR’s interest in repurchasing a home he had first bought in 1946 then extensively refurbished, see BRACERS 56056, n. 7. Although they failed in this quest, the Crawshay-Williamses had discovered the property for BR and Peter four years previously (see Russell Remembered [London: Oxford. U.P., 1970], p. 16). In 1955 the couple found another North Wales home for him — Plas Penrhyn, the Regency manor that soon became BR and Edith’s principal residence and was located only a short walking distance from the Portmeirion cottage of the Crawshay-Williamses.

• 4

  I shall hope to come to Wales soon after my return BR had made the same declaration of intent to Elizabeth Crawshay-Williams three days previously (BRACERS 56063: see n. 6). He withdrew it in a letter to her dated 8 September (BRACERS 56066), but eventually redeemed it by visiting the couple at their Portmeirion home for a long weekend from 6–9 October (see BRACERS 56070).

• 5

  She has … determined to find something there In a letter to his father dated 7 July, John Russell reported that his wife was in Harlech, possibly with a lover. But Susan had also been seeing the Crawshay-Williamses in nearby Portmeirion and was staying with them “for a week or so” when Rupert wrote to BR on 5 August (BRACERS 56061). By that time she had been joined by John (and their children) to look for a suitable home — in accordance, perhaps, with BR’s desire to move his family out of London (see BRACERS 56060, n. 6). Susan was interested in renting a house in the vicinity owned by the architect Clough Williams-Ellis, but nothing came of these plans in the short term — although BR’s daughter-in-law did end up living in North Wales (with the writer Christopher Wordsworth).

• 6

  My row with the Archbishop …. I telegraphed to him I.e. Daniel Mannix, Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne. BR’s telegram is BRACERS 2132.