BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 4 APR. 1943
BRACERS 19819. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #459
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

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Little Datchet Farm
Malvern, R. D. 1
Pennsylvania1
April 4, 1943

Dearest Colette

Your letter of March 12 reached me on April 1 — rather quickly. I was very glad to get it. I had had a cable3 saying you were worried for lack of news from me, and was just wondering what to do when your letter arrived. I have written to you regularly, but perhaps some of my letters have not arrived. If anything dramatic happened to me, you would see it in the papers.

What fun about your sister Clare and the Duke!4 I wonder if it will come to anything. I don’t know him, and of course disagree with all his opinions, but obviously he is an honest man — “which, as the world goes, is to be one among ten thousand”.5

The Barnes business6 is a nuisance, but not worse. I shall probably ultimately win my lawsuit against him, and meantime I am making enough to live on by the help of strict economy.

I did not know you planned to remember John7 in your will — it is very good of you. We have had only a cable from him telling of his safe arrival.8 I don’t know whether he has been accepted by the navy — his intention was not to get a “job” but to go in as a private. I am of course anxious. Kate9 is still at Radcliffe (in Cambridge Mass.), earning most of what the education costs by working as a servant in her spare time. Conrad10 flourishes exceedingly — he is very tall, very healthy, and very intelligent. John has his own money in England.

We let our house and moved across to a cottage which goes with it, and was intended for servants — but now no one can get servants. It has 2 rooms and kitchen and bath — I work in an outhouse11 which has a stove — Peter has a hard and lonely life,12 Conrad and housework and cooking taking up all her day, no society except occasional talk with our tenants, who are nice people, and have a little girl with whom Conrad is in love. My life is not unpleasant, as I go away to lecture once a week in New York,13 which gives me society, and work hard the rest of the week.

We have hopes of going home in the autumn, but cannot yet be sure. It depends on many things. My big book on History of Philosophy14 goes on — I must finish it by September — It is fun doing it. You ask about books I have read, but I have read no new books (except detective stories). I am glad you enjoy Gibbon15 — I love him. I have got pleasure from books by E.H. Carr: The Romantic Exiles, Bakunin, Dostoevsky16 — the first especially.

My head is full of books I want to write, but I don’t suppose I shall be able to afford to. It is sad about your books17 — both those you can’t get published and those that are mildewed. I do hope you and I will meet again in England — I want to know about your health and the possible operation18 you mention.

Goodbye for now. Much much love.

Your
B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200825.

• 2

  Your letter of March 1 (BRACERS 98445).

• 3

  a cable Not extant.

• 4

  your sister Clare and the Duke Clare Annesley (1893–1980), Colette’s sister. The 12th Duke of Bedford, Hastings William Sackville Russell (1888–1953), was unconventional for the peerage — an Evangelical Christian, pacifist, and social crusader with an interest in Social Credit — and he was generally regarded as something of a crank (The Times obituary, 12 Oct. 1953, p. 10). He married Louisa Jowitt, in 1914 and the couple had two sons and a daughter. At the time of his death from a gun accident he was still married. In her letter (BRACERS 98445), Colette had written that Clare had spent the whole month of Christmas with the Duke at his Scottish estate, adding: “It’d be comic if Clare became a duchess and you and I distant relatives.”

• 5

  “which, as the world goes, is to be one among ten thousand”Hamlet, II.ii.179.

• 6

  Barnes business Barnes, BR’s employer, with whom he had a five-year contract, had illegally terminated it on 28 December 1942. On 18 January 1943 BR sued Albert C. Barnes for the earnings owing under the contract. The trial was held on 12 August 1943; the judge’s ruling in BR’s favour was issued on 16 November 1943. A transcript of the trial proceedings is in RA Rec. Acq. 1138.

• 7

  John John Conrad Russell, born 16 November 1921 to BR and his wife Dora.

• 8

  his safe arrival John had graduated from Harvard and returned to England.

• 9

  Kate Katharine Jane Russell, born 29 December 1923 to BR and his wife Dora. Her surname changed to Tait upon her marriage.

• 10

  Conrad Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, born 15 April 1937 to BR and his wife Patricia.

• 11

  outhouse Probably the spring (pump) house.

• 12

  Peter has a hard and lonely life Patricia (“Peter”) Russell, née Spence (1910–2004). She and BR were married from 1936 until 1952. On 1 January 1943 (BRACERS 19818) BR had written that Conrad’s governess, Pamela Campbell, who had been with them for five years, had returned to England. From then on Peter had to “nurse and cook and housemaid and everything”.

• 13

  lecture once a week in New York BR’s New York lecture courses included “The Problems of Democracy” (1942), four on politics ending with “My Practical Philosophy” (1943) and “Philosophies in Practice” (1944), all at the Rand School of Social Science.

• 14

  big book on History of Philosophy  A History of Western Philosophy (B&R A79).

• 15

  you enjoy Gibbon Colette had written on 1 March (BRACERS 98445) that she was “in the middle of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols.)” and “was enchanted with it.”

• 16

  books by E.H. Carr: The Romantic Exiles, Bakunin, Dostoevsky. Edward Hallett Carr (1892–1982), Romantic Exiles: A Nineteenth Century Portrait Gallery (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1933); Michael Bakunin (London: Macmillan, 1937); Doestoevsky (1821–1881): A New Biography (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931). The latter book is in Russell’s library (0740).

• 17

  sad about your books In her letter of 1 March (BRACERS 98445), Colette had written that all her belongings, including her books, had been moved from Blagdon, Somerset (her former home), where they had been stored carelessly becoming damp and mildewed, to a dry warehouse. Her quest to publish a new book remained futile until 1946.

• 18

  possible operation Her letter of 1 March (BRACERS 98445) provide little detail, only saying that there was “a slight possibility of a surgical operation in the offing.”