BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 6 AUG. 1921
BRACERS 19740. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
The Canadian Pacific Ocean Services. Limited
R.M.S. “Empress of “Asia”1
6 Aug. 21

My Darling

I hardly know if this letter will arrive before I do, but I think it should, just. I sail from Montreal Aug. 17, by Canadian Pacific. I never got your letter of June 8,2 which you cabled about, but at Yokohama I got 2 cables forwarded3 from Peking, which it was a great joy to get. Thank you for them —

This journey is worrying, as Dora4 is near the end of her fifth month, and is made ill by the travelling — and I am not fit enough to be much help, thought I get better every day and can now walk quite decently. Miss Power,5 a Girton don, is with us, and is a great help. We were 13 days in Japan — the scenery is exquisite, as lovely as I have ever seen, and the temples are very fine, but the people are odious. I have decided that on the balance I like the Chinese very much, and could live among them happily, but the Japs have no courtesy, no mercy, no real culture, nothing but hard drive and will-power. The newspaper men persecuted the lives out of us, demanding interviews, sitting next us in the train to overhear our conversation, photographing us whenever we tried to rest or sleep, greeting us at the end of a long journey with 21 flash-lights for photos after dark, inventing blank lies of a malicious kind when we didn’t tell them enough. The Hearst Press6 in America are angels by comparison. When Tagore7 went they tore the clothes off his back and very nearly killed him. I did my best to keep my movements secret, but they found them out from the police.

I don’t know our plans when we arrive (about Aug. 28) but Sanger8 does. Until the child9 is born I shall of course be rather tied — but if you are in town when we arrive I shall see you then, shan’t I?

Goodbye till then, my dear one —

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200746.

• 2

  your letter of June 8 She had sent him a cable: “ignore letters posted June 8”. That cable and the 8 June letter are not extant; BR mentions them in his letter of 8 July (BRACERS 19739).

• 3

  2 cables forwarded Not extant.

• 4

  Dora Dora Russell, née Black (1894–1986). She and BR were married from 1921 until 1935. For information on her, see BRACERS 19506, n.3.

• 5

  Miss Power Eileen Power (1889–1940). For information on her, see BRACERS 19737, n.4.

• 6

  Hearst Press The newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst. In the 1930s BR would become a contributor to the literary page of the chain, which included the New York American. The articles have been collected by Harry Ruja in Mortals and Others in two volumes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1975; London and New York: Routledge, 1998).

• 7

  Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), Indian philosopher and poet. BR learned of Tagore’s treatment in Japan in 1916 from Robert Young, editor of the Japan Chronicle.

• 8

  Sanger Charles Percy Sanger (1871–1930), an old friend of BR’s from Cambridge undergraduate days. Sanger was a lawyer who taught occasionally at the London School of Economics.

• 9

  the child John Conrad Russell, born 16 November 1921.