BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [11 DEC. 1919]
BRACERS 19595. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<The Hague>
Hotel Twee Steden.1^, 2
Thursday.3

My Beloved

No letter from you yesterday — I think the post from England is only 4 times a week. I still haven’t heard what Trinity decided.4 — I shall get home Sunday 21st, probably about 2 o’clock, will you tell C.A.5 — and we will all go off to Lynton6 next morning — O my Love how divine it will be — I do love you my Heart’s Comrade7 — I hope the new prescription does you good — I had a shocking dream that Claire8 had taken to acting and you took me to see her and she was very bad, and you were so unhappy that you went away and shut yourself up and wouldn’t let me see you —

Today I am off to Amsterdam for the day — All my heart, my Cherub, my precious treasure, My Life —

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200585.

• 2

  [envelope] The La[dy] | 6 Mecklen[burgh] [S]quare | London W.C.1 | England. Part of the envelope has been torn off, removing most of Colette’s name, the stamp and its franking.

• 3

  [date] The letter is dated based on “Thursday” and the mention of Trinity.

• 4

  what Trinity decided It was only a day later, 12 December 1919, that a formal offer came from Trinity College, for a five-year lectureship in Logic and the Principles of Mathematics, to begin in July 1920. At that time BR requested and was granted a one-year leave of absence in order to take up a one-year lectureship at Government University in Bejing, China. While in China, he decided to not take up Trinity’s offer after all — his withdrawal was accepted by Trinity on 14 January 1921 when he was still in China. It is an indication he had decided to live openly with Dora Black and wished to save his college from embarrassment; see G.H. Hardy, Bertrand Russell and Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1942), p. 37.

• 5

  C.A. (Reginald) Clifford Allen (1889–1939). For information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.7.

• 6

  Lynton They were spending Christmas there with Clifford Allen as they had the previous year.

• 7

  Heart’s Comrade For information on the use of this term, see BRACERS 19145, n.12.

• 8

  Claire Actually Clare Annesley (1893–1980), Colette’s sister.