BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [14 DEC. 1916]
BRACERS 19092. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
Thursday night1^, 2

My Darling

I was glad of your little letter3 this morning. I feel less unhappy about the world; the German proposals4 have lightened the horizon, though they won’t lead to anything immediate. I am glad you wrote to Allen.5 I am very busy as I have undertaken to do an article for the Ploughshare;6 and I am having my pupils7 the whole of every afternoon. My Darling I wish I did not feel so old — I seem to lose the capacity for happiness at times — I hate it. When the spring comes I shall feel better — and of course if there were peace everything would be different. Meantime I feel weighed down.

Goodnight my loved one — my thoughts are with you always.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200061.

• 2

  [date] Colette wrote “14 Dec. 1916” on the letter.

• 3

  your little letter Presumably that of 14 December 1916 (BRACERS 112979).

• 4

  the German proposals Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg offered on 12 December to begin peace negotiations. The negotiations, however, were to be based on the assumption that Germany and its allies — Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey — could not be defeated. The olive branch was being extended because the war was regarded as a “catastrophe to civilization” (The Times, 13 Dec. 1916, p. 10).

• 5

  Allen (Reginald) Clifford Allen (1889–1939). For further information on him, see BRACERS 19046.

• 6

  an article for the Ploughshare “The Logic of Armaments”, January 1917 (B&R C17.02; 5 in Papers 14).

• 7

  my pupils During the autumn of 1916, four students met  weekly with BR at Gordon Square, the home of his brother Frank, to study Principia Mathematica. They were Dorothy Wrinch, Jean Nicod, Victor F. Lenzen, and Wallace Armstrong, according to Lenzen (BRACERS 19053, n.4). An annotation to Letter no. 41 (BRACERS 112973, document 104579AO) in the typescript “Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969”, in RA, indicates that Raphael Demos was also part of the group; that, however was a year later.