Brixton Letter 104
BR to Constance Malleson
September 13, 1918
- AL
- McMaster
- Edited by
Kenneth Blackwell
Andrew G. Bone
Nicholas Griffin
Sheila Turcon
Cite The Collected Letters of Bertrand Russell, https://russell-letters.mcmaster.ca/brixton-letter-104
BRACERS 19362
<Brixton Prison>1
Friday 13 Sep. ’18.
My dearest Darling, you wrote me such a lovely letter this week2 — thank you my Beloved. Yes, Ludlow Bridge3 with you! And when we have our meals in that room, there will be nothing to stop me when I want to jump up and kiss you. I have no existence now except just waiting for the moment — when I give you this4 it will be a fortnight. Oh I am so happy. At first, the lack of liberty was so galling that I dreaded being led into some folly — assaulting the Governor or something of that kind. Insane rage5 was always very near at hand. The time I wrote you a beastly letter6 was a mild form of it. Now all that danger is safely past. It was a real danger — blind fury is a thing I am capable of.
I cannot tell you how my whole soul is concentrated into love of you. You are to me the gateway to all the rest of the world. I do worship you.
O my dear, I feel so unworthy of all the love and affection that comes to me from so many people. I feel I can never do enough to justify it — I get so much more than my share. I don’t know why, because I don’t seem to do anything to bring it. I find it does more than anything else to make me feel I must be decent, and especially must work. I am working now quite well. I read every day at least 100 pages of philosophy in English or 50 in German, unless I am out of books. I shall have read a great deal of philosophy when I come out. I should have read more if I hadn’t been about 6 weeks with nothing to read. When I come out, I shall no longer have to read enormously — I shall be chiefly writing, or walking up and down trying to think. The most tedious part of the work for my next book I have done in here. I look forward to the work to be done when I am out — it will be delicious. It is lovely to be doing creative things again, instead of ploughing the sands. — It is all associated in my mind with that day at the Cat and Fiddle in April when we stood on a bridge and I talked about my new work.7
Yes, the visits are trying — they would be much worse but for the letters. It is good to see whether you seem well or ill, and I can more or less gather your mood — but all the barriers are dreadful. If I had been 2nd Division we could not have written8 — that would have been too ghastly.
Very soon now, dear Love, this awful time will be over.9 And I shall hold you in my arms and kiss you — lips, eyes, hair, all of you — and I shall see the love in your eyes and feel it in your arms — and we shall go to sleep in each other’s arms and have peace from all the hunger of these months. My dear Love, my dear Love, my dear Love. I long for the divine beauty of you — your beauty is radiant with life and love, and joy dancing over a great abyss of sadness. I long for it — and I long for the peace you bring. Goodnight for today, Beloved.
- 1
[document] The letter was edited from the unsigned, thrice-folded, single-sheet original in BR’s hand in the Malleson papers in the Russell Archives. The letter was finished half-way down the verso of the sheet. That left the exterior of the sheet blank when folded.
- 2
lovely letter this week Colette’s letter of c.12 Sept. 1918 (BRACERS 113159).
- 3
Ludlow Bridge There is no mention of Ludlow Bridge in Colette’s letters of this time. Earlier in the year, however, in a “literary” letter (part of a later project to fictionalize their correspondence but based very much on its text) dated “9 February 1918”, she wrote: “Let us stand close together on Ludford Bridge, while the river flows peacefully beneath the Bridge, and beyond the mill” (BRACERS 99837). The town of Ludlow, Shropshire, has two bridges: Ludford and Dinham — BR was presumably referring to the Ludford Bridge, which is at the south end of Ludlow on the road leading to Ashford, where they vacationed. See S. Turcon, “Then and Now: Bertie and Colette’s Escapes to the Peak District and Welsh Borderlands”, Russell 34 (2014): 117–30.
- 4
when I give you this BR must have been anticipating another prison visit from Colette on 18 September, but he was released on the 14th.
- 5
Insane rage BR struggled from an early age to contain his flashes of rage (noted especially by Monk, 2: 36, 536). He came to hate a classmate at the crammer’s he was sent to in preparation for Cambridge: “On one occasion, in an access of fury, I got my hands on his throat and started to strangle him” (Auto. 1: 44). This, however, is the only known occasion when BR became physically violent. He wrote a short paper on rage at this time (“On ‘Bad Passions’”, Cambridge Magazine 8 [1 Feb. 1919]: 359; 19 in Papers 8), which he sent first to Colette (Letter 79).
- 6
time I wrote you a beastly letter This must be Letter 71, which is editorially dated 15 August 1918. BR blamed the week-long unhappiness he then expected on Colette’s “wretched scrap” of a letter (there were two “scraps”; see BRACERS 113148 and 113149). Letters 72 and 79 refer to this “black” time.
- 7
Cat and Fiddle in April … I talked about my new work He talked about “emphatic particulars” during their vacation at the Cat and Fiddle in the Peak District in April 1918, before he entered prison (see S. Turcon, “Then and Now: Bertie and Colette’s Escapes to the Peak District and Welsh Borderlands”, Russell 34 [2014]: 117–30). The “particulars” reappear as “egocentric particulars” in BR’s An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (New York: Norton; London: Allen & Unwin, 1940), Chap. 7.
- 8
2nd Division we could not have written Only a small fraction of local prison inmates benefitted from the first-division classification obtained by BR from the otherwise unsuccessful appeal of his conviction. The proportion of prisoners in the second division was, in fact, only slightly larger, but these inmates were subject to most of the same rigours and rules as those in the third. For example, BR was shocked at how physically broken was his dissenting colleague E.D. Morel by six months’ imprisonment in the second division of Pentonville (see Papers 14: xlix). The regimen for second-division prisoners (and third) included a prison uniform (albeit distinguishable from that worn by third-division inmates) and compulsory industrial or manufacturing work — although not the most punitive and unproductive forms of labour eradicated by the Prison Act (1898) along with such other harsh features of the English penal system as corporal punishment. The main distinction between the second- and third-division prisoners was that the former (like their first-division counterparts) were isolated from one another as well as from the rest of the prison population. Contrary to BR’s fears, inmates in the second division at least enjoyed some mail privileges and could send and receive one letter per month. In addition, they were permitted a monthly visit. Both entitlements recurred fortnightly in the first division, and BR succeeded in obtaining them on a weekly basis (see Letter 5).
- 9
this awful time will be over It was over the very next day when he was let out of prison early, his expected date of release with remission for good behaviour and industry having been 2 October.
Boismaison
Colette and BR vacationed at a house, The Avenue, owned by Mrs. Agnes Woodhouse and her husband, in the countryside near Ashford Carbonel, Shropshire, in August 1917. They nicknamed the house “Boismaison”. Agnes Woodhouse took in paying guests. Their first visit was idyllic. They returned for other vacations — in 1918 before he entered prison and in April 1919. Their plan to go soon after he got out of prison failed because their relationship faltered for a time. They discussed returning in the summer of 1919 — a booking was even made for 12–19 July — but in the end they didn’t go. See S. Turcon, “Then and Now: Bertie and Colette’s Escapes to the Peak District and Welsh Borderlands”, Russell 34 (2014): 117–30.
Brixton Prison
Located in southwest London Brixton is the capital’s oldest prison. It opened in 1820 as the Surrey House of Correction for minor offenders of both sexes, but became a women-only convict prison in the 1850s. Brixton was a military prison from 1882 until 1898, after which it served as a “local” prison for male offenders sentenced to two years or less, and as London’s main remand centre for those in custody awaiting trial. The prison could hold up to 800 inmates. Originally under local authority jurisdiction, local prisons were transferred to Home Office control in 1878 in an attempt to establish uniform conditions of confinement. These facilities were distinct from “convict” prisons reserved for more serious or repeat offenders sentenced to longer terms of penal servitude.
First Division
As part of a major reform of the English penal system, the Prison Act (1898) had created three distinct categories of confinement for offenders sentenced to two years or less (without hard labour) in a “local” prison. (A separate tripartite system of classification applied to prisoners serving longer terms of penal servitude in Britain’s “convict” prisons.) For less serious crimes, the courts were to consider the “nature of the offence” and the “antecedents” of the guilty party before deciding in which division the sentence would be served. But in practice such direction was rarely given, and the overwhelming majority of offenders was therefore assigned third-division status by default and automatically subjected to the harshest (local) prison discipline (see Victor Bailey, “English Prisons, Penal Culture, and the Abatement of Imprisonment, 1895–1922”, Journal of British Studies 36 [1997]: 294). Yet prisoners in the second division, to which BR was originally sentenced, were subject to many of the same rigours and rules as those in the third. Debtors, of whom there were more than 5,000 in local prisons in 1920, constituted a special class of inmate, whose less punitive conditions of confinement were stipulated in law rather than left to the courts’ discretion.
The exceptional nature of the first-division classification that BR obtained from the unsuccessful appeal of his conviction should not be underestimated. The tiny minority of first-division inmates was exempt from performing prison work, eating prison food and wearing prison clothes. They could send and receive a letter and see visitors once a fortnight (more frequently than other inmates could do), furnish their cells, order food from outside, and hire another prisoner as a servant. As BR’s dealings with the Brixton and Home Office authorities illustrate, prison officials determined the nature and scope of these and other privileges (for some of which payment was required). “The first division offenders are the aristocrats of the prison world”, concluded the detailed inquiry of two prison reformers who had been incarcerated as conscientious objectors: “The rules affecting them have a class flavour … and are evidently intended to apply to persons of some means” (Stephen Hobhouse and A. Fenner Brockway, eds., English Prisons To-day [London: Longmans, Green, 1922], p. 221). BR’s brother described his experience in the first division at Holloway prison, where he spent three months for bigamy in 1901, in My Life and Adventures (London: Cassell, 1923), pp. 286–90. Frank Russell paid for his “lodgings”, catered meals were served by “magnificent attendants in the King’s uniform”, and visitors came three times a week. In addition, the governor spent a half-hour in conversation with him daily. At this time there were seven first-class misdemeanants, who exercised (or sat about) by themselves. Frank concluded that he had “a fairly happy time”, and “I more or less ran the prison as St. Paul did after they had got used to him.” BR’s privileges were not quite so splendid as Frank’s, but he too secured a variety of special entitlements (see Letter 5).
Constance Malleson
Lady Constance Malleson (1895–1975), actress and author, was the daughter of Hugh Annesley, 5th Earl Annesley, and his second wife, Priscilla. “Colette” (as she was known to BR) was raised at the family home, Castlewellan Castle, County Down, Northern Ireland. Becoming an actress was an unusual path for a woman of her class. She studied at Tree’s (later the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), debuting in 1914 with the stage name of Colette O’Niel at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London, in a student production. She married fellow actor Miles Malleson (1888–1969) in 1915 because her family would not allow them to live together. In 1916 Colette met BR through the No-Conscription Fellowship and began a love affair with him that lasted until 1920. The affair was rekindled twice, in 1929 and 1948; they remained friends for the rest of his life. She had a great talent for making and keeping friends. Colette acted in London and the provinces. She toured South Africa in 1928–29 and the Middle East, Greece and Italy in 1932 in Lewis Casson and Sybil Thorndike’s company. She acted in two films, both in 1918, Hindle Wakes and The Admirable Crichton, each now lost. With BR’s encouragement she began a writing career, publishing a short story in The English Review in 1919. She published other short stories as well as hundreds of articles and book reviews. Colette wrote two novels — The Coming Back (1933) and Fear in the Heart (1936) — as well as two autobiographies — After Ten Years (1931) and In the North (1946). She was a fierce defender of Finland, where she had lived before the outbreak of World War II. Letters from her appeared in The Times and The Manchester Guardian. Another of her causes was mental health. She died five years after BR in Lavenham, Suffolk, where she spent her final years. See S. Turcon, “A Bibliography of Constance Malleson”, Russell 32 (2012): 175–90.