BR TO GAMEL BRENAN, 30 MAR. 1945
BRACERS 56407. ALS(X). New York Public Library. SLBR 2: #467
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell

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MOUNT ROYAL HOTEL,
Marble Arch,
London, W.1
Good Friday, 1945

My dear Gamel

Thank you for your nice letter. I am sorry you are not well, and sorry you sound rather depressed, and very sorry not to be seeing you. Yes, life is difficult. One has to eke out moments of actuality by months of memory and hope; and as one gets older it is difficult to prevent memory from overbalancing hope. I find memory a gradually increasing weight which I have to drag after me; I am only satisfactorily alive when I can occasionally slip it off. Almost every night before falling asleep I see the garden in which I passed my boyhood, which has since been destroyed; I mind its destruction quite as much as the deaths of people I have loved. But thank God I am still capable of passionate feeling about present things — in some ways, when I love now the quality of the feeling seems better than when I was younger, because, without losing intensity, it has acquired a more impersonal setting. I have no wish to become calm. Critics accuse me of lack of sophrosune,1 but it is a lack I am glad of. All the above is a long-winded way of saying that seeing you is important to me.

As to future plans: I have to be at the B.B.C. on April 23, May 14, and June 4.2 On April 23 Peter plans to come with me, and counts on seeing you and Gerald. I shall hope that you may be in London on May 14 and/or June 4. I shall (D.V.)3 be at this same hotel.

Goodbye, dear Gamel — with much love.

B

• 1

  sophrosune Sophrosune (often transliterated “sophrosyne”) was the Greek virtue (prized in Plato’s dialogues) of temperate wisdom. Justus Buchler had accused Russell of lacking it in an essay in P.A. Schilpp’s The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (p. 535). Russell replied to the accusation there (p. 725) in much the same terms.

• 2

  I have to be at the B.B.C. on April 23, May 14, and June 4. To record Brains Trust programmes. The one in May, however, was cancelled owing to VE Day. There is no record of Russell participating on 14 May and 4 June. The session of 14 May was postponed until 25 June. There is no indication in the BBC files that the sessions of 23 April and 4 June were not held. That of 25 June was. See App. I.6 in Collected Papers 24.

• 3

  (D.V.) (Deo volente).