BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 31 JAN. 1939
BRACERS 19803. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
The Plaisance
On the Midway at Jackson Park—Chicago1
Jan. 31, 1939

Dearest Colette

I was very very glad to get a letter from you.2 Let me know when your “bloody time”3 is decided one way or other.

What you have written about me for your autobiography4 seems to me most generous, and I have no changes whatever to suggest in it — except that I think your self-blame is excessive. We both failed to live up to our code — people do when they love — and I don’t think one can blame oneself much for that sort of thing. It is not comparable to telling lies for money, like the Archbishop of York5 on the resurrection of the body.6 I am very glad of all you say about the day you came to Oxford.7

I do not want to lose touch with you again. You will always be important in my thoughts. And as war creeps nearer and nearer, I think more and more often of the strange beauty amid horror of those times — I shall mind the next time even more, because of having children. I suppose John8 will spend the whole time in prison. I often wish I could die before it happens; and yet, underneath, I know that I must, if possible, be alive when it ends — alive in spirit as well as in body. And it will matter to me whether you also are alive.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200809.

• 2

  a letter from you Most of her original letters sent to BR from this time (roughly 1939–44) survived in BR’s care. He did not return them to her as he did other letters. She must have kept carbons, however, and used those carbons to create the typed letters found in “Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969”. Both content and dates of the typed letters vary from the originals.

• 3

  your “bloody time” Colette had written from Sweden where she was sharing a cottage with Dorothy Mallows : “I’ve had a bloody time (to use a mild word), which may or may not end — at this moment I can’t say — in my getting married. I don’t like marriage any more than I ever did; but the architect — Ralph Edwards — who wants me to marry him, has two children and his job to consider: says he can’t go along any road other than marriage. So I daresay it’ll end in marriage” (4 Jan. 1939; BRACERS 98411). Ralph Edwards was very important to Colette. As “Lewis” he dominates much of In the North (London: Gollancz, 1946), where he first appears on page 42; the final reference to him is on page 102. Despite giving him a pseudonym, Colette reveals little biographical information about him in the book. John Ralph Edwards (1891–1972) was a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. There is only an undated letter from Colette to Edwards in her papers, written from Sweden. It ends: “My Ralph Beloved, can you feel me sometimes in your arms in the night? Fold me and keep me there: beside you: against you; and in your heart, too” (box 6.71). The fact that the letter remained with Colette means that she either did not mail it or that it was a letter he returned to her (In the North, p. 77). No letters from him are in her papers; she does, however, quote from a letter of his (as Lewis) in In the North; he describes himself as an “obscure provincial” (p. 55). In the end they did not marry.

• 4

  written about me for your autobiography She enclosed 3 pages of typescript, numbered 45–7. The enclosed pages mainly concern their day together at BR’s home in Oxford in July 1938, as BR prepared to leave for the United States and she for Sweden. The first account of this day appears in a letter Colette wrote to her mother (“Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969”, 2, pp. 31–5). Back in September 1936 Colette had written that she was working on a travel book called “Rust Red”. A typed carbon with this title is in her archive, but is not a travel book as such, but a draft of what became Part II of In the North (London: Gollancz, 1946). It was typed by Alex. McLachlan, Literary Typing Specialist, St. Leonards on Sea. The pages that she sent BR match this typescript in content, but not in appearance or pagination, with one exception, a handwritten addition to the BR pages which is typed in the McLachlan text. The published version (pp. 75–6) varies somewhat from these typescripts. “Rust Red” is dedicated to Lavinia and Lewis, that is to Dorothy Mallows and Ralph Edwards, while In the North is dedicated to “my friends in the north”.

• 5

  Archbishop of York William Temple (1881–1944) was Archbishop of York from 1929 to 1942 when he became Archbishop of Canterbury.

• 6

  resurrection of the body Temple’s doubts about both the virgin birth and bodily resurrection denied him ordination in 1906. By late 1908, these doubts were believed to have been overcome, and Temple was ordained as a priest in December 1909. As Temple wrote then, he had learned from his father “to reverence the Bible; but from him I learnt, too, to use my wits in reading it” (Joseph Fletcher, William Temple: Twentieth-Century Christian [New York: Seabury Press, 1963], p. 249, taken from Foundations: A Statement of Christian Belief in Terms of Modern Thought, p. x).

• 7

  day you came to Oxford She wrote about her time with BR, his wife Patricia, and the three children as well as describing Amberley House where they were living in 1936. See note 4 above (“written about me for your autobiography”) for textual details.

• 8

  John John Conrad Russell, born 16 November 1921, to BR and his wife Dora. John did not, in fact, spend the coming war in prison. BR supported World War II and John served in the British Navy.