BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 8 AUG. 1944
BRACERS 19822. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.1
Aug. 8, 1944.

My dearest Colette

I have just got your letter of June 252, with a cheque in repayment of $75, which you really shouldn’t have troubled about. I am sorry your typewriter is bust, but I really prefer your handwriting because it is more personal and has more vivid associations. Yes, I got your hopeful letter3 — I am sorry the mood couldn’t last with you.

I wrote about E.H. Carr before.4 He is now a bad bad man, but used to write very amusing books about Russians, e.g. The Romantic Exiles. Ratcliffe5 is an old dear, not important; he used to lecture in America a great deal, but the demand is now dead. He was thought more of in America than here. Colonel House in his memoirs6 says “Saw Sir E. Grey and S.K. Ratcliffe.” Voigt7 I know nothing about. Metternich was the leader of the reaction in 1815,8 trying to make everything as it had been before the French Revolution.

It is pleasant and peaceful being here again; everybody is most cordial. I do hope that when the war is over you will come to England, at least for a time — I don’t like the thought of never seeing you again.

Your
B.

From Bertrand Russell, Trin. Coll. Cambridge.

• 1

  [document] Document 200828.

• 2

  letter of June 25 Not extant.

• 3

  your hopeful letter Not extant.

• 4

  wrote about E.H. Carr before BR did so in his letters of 4 April 1943 (BRACERS 19819) and 21 July 1944 (BRACERS 19821). Edward Hallett Carr (1892–1982), historian. From 1941 to 1946 Carr served as an assistant editor with The Times.

• 5

  Radcliffe Samuel Kerkham Ratcliffe (1868–1958), journalist and writer on Indian and American affairs.

• 6

  Colonel House in his memoirs Colonel Edward M. House (1858–1938), close adviser to President Wilson during the First World War, but not a “colonel”. His memoirs were titled The Intimate Papers of Colonel House (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1926) and were arranged as a narrative by Charles Seymour.

• 7

  Voigt Colette’s letter in which she asks about Voigt is not extant. She possibly asked about Frederick Augustus Voigt (1892–1957), a British journalist of German descent. In 1944 he was editing the periodical The Nineteenth Century and After.

• 8

  Metternich … reaction in 1815 Count Metternich (1773–1959), arch-conservative Chancellor of the Habsburg Empire, 1809–1848. The defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo took place in 1815.