BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 5 DEC. 1949
BRACERS 19886. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #496
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
Baldwin’s Hotel.1
Dec. 5, 1949

My dearest Colette

Your letter was a terrible shock2 to me and a complete surprise. My feelings about you are just what they were, and I had been looking forward most eagerly to seeing you tomorrow. There has been a chapter of accidents3 which I haven’t been able to unravel.

I wrote at once in answer to your letter suggesting tea on Dec. 6.4 I can remember quite well what I said. I said I had a lecture in the morning and the people I was lecturing for would probably want me to stay for lunch, but that from 2.30 to bed time I was free, and I hoped you would stay with me all that time. I was surprised when I got no answer. I did not know where I should be in London until I telegraphed — the telegram was discreet because the hotel people saw it.

When I heard you were going to Russia5 I was terribly worried, thinking you might never get out again. I still don’t know why you went. I did not know how long you meant to stay there.

My affairs are still more or less unsettled, and my relations with Conrad6 are very difficult. This has taken up my thoughts and my emotions during the summer and autumn. I suppose this may have made me seem cold towards you, but the truth was only worry and failure of energy.

It would be a profound sorrow to me if you and I no longer saw each other. Sheer old age is gradually making me less and less capable of passionate love, such as I used to feel constantly, and still feel in moments of physical vigour. But there remains always a profound affection, and the feeling that you have been the most important person in my life,7 and that something of immense value would go dead if we were to part.

With love always,

Your
B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200894.

• 2

  letter was a terrible shock Her letter of 29 November 1949 in which she cancelled their plans for 6 December 1949. The original letter is not extant. What is extant is a typed copy she made for Phyllis Urch (document 200884A, BRACERS 107297), and the edited version which appears in the “Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969”, BRACERS 113297 and is dated a day later). Colette had agreed to this meeting on 31 October (“Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969”, BRACERS 113296) and then heard nothing from him until a telegram he sent a month later, on 29 November, telling her he was at Baldwins Hotel. That telegram (BRACERS 19884) was sent to Carrie Webster in York where Colette had led BR to believe she was staying. Webster, in turn, telegraphed the information to Colette (BRACERS 19885).

• 3

  chapter of accidents A cascade of events that began in Taormina, Sicily, in April 1949 when Peter saw a letter that Colette had written to BR.

• 4

  I wrote at once … December 6. Colette wrote “Not true” against this.

• 5

  you were going to Russia In a previous letter (26 Oct., BRACERS 19883), BR said that the Crawshay-Williams’s told him this. Colette never visited Russia. There is no sign that she admired the USSR or had friends there.

• 6

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

• 7

  the most important person in my life There had been no indication that this was the case for many years, if ever. Colette’s response to it, a fifteen-page letter in which she tells him that her farewell letter must stand, is: “Would you also perhaps say that your Persian bowl had been (and is) your most important objet d’art? If that were so, you would hardly consign it to a very remote corner of your surroundings where you could look at it ‘occasionally’. To me, of course, it seems that you have not only done that with me, but have thrown a living creature of flesh and blood from a very high window to smash on the pavement below, penalty for the crime of loving you with the same passion with which you loved her. This, of course, is grossly unjust to you — you cannot help it that your love is extinct” (3 Jan. 1950; BRACERS 98449); there is also a much worked over draft of this letter (BRACERS 107296) and notes for and fragments of this letter in RA box 6.63, file E.