BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [16 DEC. 1919]
BRACERS 19598. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<The Hague>
Tuesday1^,2

My Beloved

Wittgenstein3 kept me so busy that I couldn’t write yesterday — We have now gone through his whole book point by point — he is glorious and wonderful, with a passionate purity I have never seen equalled — I think even better of his book4 than I did before, and have undertaken to try and get it published in England, as no one will publish it in Austria.

I keep thinking of you, my Heart’s Comrade,5 longing for Lynton6 — Oh I do love you, my lovely Darling, my precious treasure — Images of you are always with me —

I have not yet heard from Cambridge.7 Also I don’t know whether I return Friday or Sunday, but C.A.8 will know if you ask him. I suppose it will be Sunday as you are acting Saturday9 (which I had forgotten) so that sooner is useless —

What wonderful joy Lynton will be. Goodbye my Cherub —

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200588.

• 2

  [date] Colette much later wrote “16 Dec 1919” on the letter.

• 3

  Wittgenstein Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), eminent philosopher and former student of BR’s.

• 4

  his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, published first in Leipzig in Annalen der Naturphilosophie, 14 (Dec. 1921): 186–98, and in London by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. with an Introduction by BR that helped to secure its publication. BR seconded Dorothy Wrinch to the task of finding a publisher while he was in China.

• 5

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

• 6

  Lynton They were  going to spend Christmas there with Clifford Allen.

• 7

  not yet heard from Cambridge A formal offer, dated 12 December 1919, was made by Trinity College, for a five-year lectureship in Logic and the Principles of Mathematics, to begin in July 1920. At that time BR was granted a one-year leave of absence in order to take up a one-year lectureship at Government University in Beijing, 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.

• 8

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

• 9

  acting Saturday The last performance of The Trojan Women at the Holborn Empire on 20 December 1919.