BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 9 MAR. 1931
BRACERS 19794. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Telegraph House
Harting, Petersfield.1
9.3.31

Dearest Colette

Thank you very much for your telegram to Marseilles.2 I had a strange and rather painful time there. Frank’s3 death was a great shock to me,4 as I didn’t know he was ill.5 He was alone when he died: he was found dead on the floor of the bathroom of his hotel bedroom. I found two heart-broken women6 mourning him, but neither had thought of staying with him in his last moments, though they knew he might die any minute. One of them inherits all his property.

I don’t know when you and I will meet. I still have my book to finish,7 and my brother’s death has put it out of my head. Also Dora8 is far from well, and I shall have to see to her during the Easter holidays probably. But at the moment I am emotionally used up; everything may look better soon. How is your health? I do most awfully want to know.

With love as always —

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200800.

• 2

  your telegram to Marseilles Not extant.

• 3

  Frank John Francis (“Frank”) Stanley Russell (1865–1931), BR’s older brother. For information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.3.

• 4

  a great shock to me BR found out about the death from a telegram sent by Frank’s secretary, Mrs. South, on 3 March: “Lord Russell died suddenly today” (BRACERS 70903). About the death BR wrote to Ottoline Morrell on 9 March noting that: “It was a pity we quarrelled, as we were always very fond of each other. We had more or less made it up, but I had always intended to make it up more completely” (BRACERS 18907). Dora Russell relates a quarrel about a telescope with Frank suing for damage; the case went as far at the County Court in Midhurst in 1929 (Tamarisk Tree, 1975, p. 209). Frank was BR’s only brother; their parents and sister had died when they were both children.

• 5

  I didn’t know he was ill Frank had spent three weeks on the French Riviera recovering from influenza. He had stopped at the Hotel de Noailles in Marseilles, still feeling fatigued, and it was there he died.

• 6

  two heart-broken women One was Amy E. Otter who inherited Frank’s assets, including Telegraph House, but not the debt of a £400 annual payment to Frank’s former second wife, Mollie, which was taken on by BR. The complicated story of this inheritance is unraveled by Sheila Turcon in “Telegraph House” (russell-homes.mcmaster.ca/home/telegraph-house). The other woman, Mrs. South, had been Frank’s secretary for four years. In a letter of 8 March to Frank’s lawyer, R.W.B. Buckland, BR describes her as “completely collapsed, part of the time sick, and the rest in a dead faint” (BRACERS 70906).

• 7

  my book to finish  The Scientific Outlook (B&R A61) published later in 1931 in September.

• 8

  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. Her illness at this time is unknown.