BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 25 NOV. 1936
BRACERS 19799. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Telegraph House
Harting, Petersfield.1
25.11.36

Dearest Colette

Ever since your nice letter in Sep.2 I have meant to write to you, but I am now as busy as in old N.C.F.3 days — first writing on Peace,4 now defending my book5 and speaking.6 This morning Peter has received the lace7 — we neither of us in the least wished you to send it back, but she is writing about that. It is very nice of you to send it but please don’t imagine we had any wish you should do so.

It is exciting abut Lapland.8 The only other person I ever knew who chose the Arctic for the winter was Wittgenstein.9 It was there he got the ideas for the book he wrote in the trenches.

No, I didn’t realize your Hilary was impotent.10 I see now that I was stupid not to.

Spain is awful. I knowa intimately so many of the places where they have been fighting, and was staying this spring with a friend, Gerald Brenan,11 near Malaga, who won’t hear of pacifism because he so hates the rebels. I find it very difficult myself —

I have been reading about Luther,12 who was a source of much in Nazidom — he is very interesting.

Goodbye with much love always.

Your
B —

• 1

  [document] Document 200805.

• 2

  your nice letter in Sep. Colette wrote to him on 13 September 1936 (BRACERS 98486) in response to his letter of 7 September 1936 (BRACERS 19800).

• 3

  N.C.F. No-Conscription Fellowship. BR was very active in this organization during World War I.

• 4

  writing on PeaceWhich Way to Peace? (B&R A69) which was published on 19 October 1936.

• 5

  defending my book BR published several rejoinders of reviews. See 89 in Papers 21.

• 6

  speaking BR had signed the Rev. Dick Sheppard’s peace pledge in early November and had begun to speak at peace meetings in London and vicinity. Hugh Richard Lawrie Sheppard (1880–1937) was the founder of the Peace Pledge Union in 1936. See the Chronology in Papers 21 for a listing of most of BR’s speeches.

• 7

  Peter has received the lace Colette had enclosed it with her letter of 22 November [1936; misdated 1934] (BRACERS 98485). Why she returned the family lace to BR’s wife Peter at this time is unknown. She did keep one strip which she had put on a dress she had planned on wearing when BR returned from China. This was not returned. She also did not return a “petticote flounce”, which she had stored in her theatre basket.

• 8

  Lapland Colette had written in her 13 September 1936 (BRACERS 98408) letter that she was going to spend the winter in Lapland. She was working on a travel book and the Swedish State Railways had given her a free pass.

• 9

  Wittgenstein Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), philosopher. Originally from Austria, he spent the winter of 1913–14 in Skjolden, Norway for the solitude. See Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York: Free Press, 1990). Skjolden is not quite in the Arctic.

• 10

  didn’t realize your Hilary was impotent Hilary is a character in her novel Fear in the Heart (London: Collins, 1936). In her letter of 13 September 1936 (BRACERS 98486) she asked BR if he had picked up on this fact.

• 11

  Gerald Brenan Edward FitzGerald (“Gerald”) Brenan (1894–1987), writer and Hispanic scholar. Brenan had left England, settling in Spain after World War I. BR met Brenan in the early 1930s (Auto. 2: 190).

• 12

  reading about Luther The book that BR was reading was Roy Pascal, The Social Basis of the German Reformation: Martin Luther and His Times (London: Watts, 1933). The book, still in Russell’s Library, has a receipt made out to BR from the London Library dated 26 Nov. 1936 tucked into it (RL 1251).

Textual Notes

• a

  know written over indecipherable word