Brixton Letter 42
BR to Constance Malleson
July 20, 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-42
BRACERS 19320
<Brixton Prison>1
Saturday.2
My Darling
In a learned work I was reading I came upon this passage: “Darwin giebt an, dass Australier, Papuaneger, Fidschiinsulaner, Maoris, Taiti- und Somalineger, Eskimos und die alten Japaner keinen Kuss kennen.”3 So you see we have something to be thankful for — we might have been Papuans or Fiji Islanders, and then we should have had to suffer that really frightful ignorance. This nonsense is only because I didn’t want to plunge at once into what rather disquieted me in your last:4 the inquisitive emissary from Ireland Cubitt5 (whom in future I shall call Mr. Cubitt). I hope you had a good story ready. Did you provide beforehand (or in time) for verification? Did you remember an anniversary on May 18? Birthdays are so easily verified at Somerset Ho. that I presume May 18 was not a birthday6 but the anniversary of 1st meeting. I wish you could have told me more. I read between the lines that you were a good deal upset, and so was I at first. For 2 days I could think of nothing else. It would be too horrible if you got into trouble, particularly if it was through your kindness to me, and not on a matter of principle. Of course if you were prepared it is sure to be all right, but if you made any mistake it would be fatal perhaps. The truth, of course, would be worse for you than complete silence. If you still have any apprehensions, I should strongly advise you to put the whole matter before your lawyer Macdonald7 or some wise person, and follow advice: it is so necessary to think out details, and make sure that further inquiries would make your story more acceptable. But perhaps I am worrying needlessly, and you satisfied Mr. Cubitt at his first visit. When my next letter comes, let me know somehow what you expect, and what has happened (if anything).
I shall not venture henceforth to send you anything through the post.8
About my flat: Unless you will take it,a I will inhabit it from the time I come out, and you can come there. That is much the pleasantest plan — it was only expense that made me hesitate, but that will be all right. Have you done anything about getting shelves put up?9 Here is another thing, which is more important than you would think: While your sister is in my flat10 please get her to make the porter acquainted with you as her sister, and ask him if he knows of any flat on my staircase likely to be vacant. Tell him you will give him 10/– if through his information you get a flat there, (He is very avaricious) and give him your address. You will think all this the sort of thing to put off and neglect, but it isn’t. Please don’t neglect it — it is important. It would take too long to go into all the reasons. This letter is only business — there is another elsewhere11 for other things.
Saturday (2nd sheet).
Still more about plans! You did not answer all my questions, and on some points I am a little in the dark. I want to suggest reasons why you should give up the Attic before I come out, and let it furnished, and take my flat from me till you can get another in R.C. The reasons are complicated, and come under 3 heads (1) finance (2) the best way of effecting the move to R.C. (3) the best way of ceasing to live in the same house with Miles. I will begin with (1), finance. If you go to R.C. and let the Attic furnished, I can get a cheap lodging anywhere, and that will be the whole of the extra expense incurred; whereas if I go back to my flat myself the loss is two guineas a week. Or I could go to the Studio, which we can’t hope to be always able to let. Also in case my brother relents I can come back to G. S.12 without fuss and without having my flat eating its head off. (2). If you start in my flat as my tenant (or, for a few weeks, in combination with your sister, which would be still cheaper), you make the move in a much more respectable way. And, as we were agreeing before I came here, you ought to make the move while I am here, not after. And if you are in my flat, you are much more likely to hear of another flat in R.C.b And it is very easy for me to visit my own flat when you are there, and if you are my tenant, your being there is natural. You said, when I spoke of it 2 weeks ago, that you would have no reason to give for the move. But that applies whenever you move, and you do mean to move some day. You can say now that you are letting the Attic and joining Clairc for economy — it is an ideal opportunity. (3). You mean, don’t you, to cease living in the same house with Miles soon? You ought, from every reason, to make the break before I come out — it is much better than when I am about. It is bad for both you and Miles being together. And people will talk less unkindly if you leave him while I am in than if you do it later. Remember our discussion before I came in.
All this is dry and dull, but while I am here is the time to get things started as they are to go ultimately. So long as no flat on my staircase is to let, the nearest approach is what I suggest. Don’t think me horrid about separating from Miles. I feel it is the sort of thing one decides to do some day, and then drifts about, and it needs outside encouragement to bring one to the point. I stayed far too long with my wife,13 and I don’t want you to repeat the mistake. You will pay all your life long in loss of vitality and force if you do, and every month you stay makes it harder for Miles to make a real new start. I feel sure what I say about this is wise. Do reply to it — if you disagree, I won’t press it — because you must act as you feel. But be sure it is a real disagreement, and not only fear and inertia. I long to know your thoughts and feelings about hosts of things.
Just heard the order about prohibited areas is withdrawn. So we can see the sea together!
All I say in this letter is rather thought than felt. I should so love to be back in my flat and to receive you there that I only desire the other plan with my reason. Do as you like best. As long as we are together I shall be happy. Nothing else matters.
Later On reflection I am full of doubts as to what I say on this sheet, but I should like to know your opinion. I should love being in my flat again myself, and having you come there.d
- 1
[document] The letter was edited from the unsigned, handwritten original in the Malleson papers in the Russell Archives. It is written on both sides but only half-way down the verso of each of the two sheets of thin, laid paper, ruled on one side and folded twice, so that there was no writing on the exposed quarter-sheets.
- 2
[date] Colette pinned the following note to the first sheet of this letter: “This letter is probably Sat. 20 July 1918. C.M.” She was probably correct.
- 3
learned work … “Darwin giebt an, dass Australier … keinen Kuss kennen.” W. von Bechterew, Objektive Psychologie: oder Psychoreflexologie die Lehre von den Assoziationsreflexen (Leipzig and Berlin: B.G. Teubner, 1913), p. 375. BR wrote “giebt” rather than “gibt” as in the source quoted. [Translation: “Darwin admits that Australians, Papuans, Fiji islanders, Maoris, Tahitians and Somalis, Eskimos and the ancient Japanese do not know how to kiss.”] Von Bechterew is referring to a passage in Darwin’s book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals: “We Europeans are so accustomed to kissing as a mark of affection, that it might be thought to be innate in mankind; but this is not the case. Steele was mistaken when he said ‘Nature was its author, and it began with the first courtship.’ Jemmy Button, the Fuegian, told me that this practice was unknown in his land. It is equally unknown with New Zealanders, Tahitians, Papuans, Australians, Somals of Africa, and the Esquimaux” (2nd ed. [London: John Murray, 1901], pp. 225–6). Darwin footnoted the Steele quotation: “Sir J. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, 2nd edn., 1869, p. 552, gives full authorities for these statements. The quotation from Steele is taken from this work.” Russell’s library has the 1901 edition of Darwin’s book.
- 4
your last Colette’s letter of 15 July 1918 (BRACERS 113141).
- 5
inquisitive emissary from Ireland Cubitt BR was making an oblique reference to an unnamed Scotland Yard detective who visited Colette on 16 July 1918 to ask about the Personals placed by G.J. in The Times. “Ireland” evokes “Scotland”, and a “cubit” is a length (that of a forearm) not too unlike a “yard”, which explains the name BR chose as a substitute for “Scotland Yard”. There were eight such secret messages, the first printed on 7 May, the last on 27 June. This method of communication was abandoned once the method of smuggling letters in the uncut pages of books was seen to be successful. Colette dismissed the inquiry, writing that “that sort of thing is quite usual nowadays” and that she expected “no further bother”. She even joked that, “If he expected to find Lenin and Co. in Attic <as they nicknamed her flat>, he must have been surprised to find only me” (BRACERS 113141). Either Colette toned down her reaction when editing the typescript, or a message from her about the incident was lost, or both parties were over- or underreacting. Cubitt is not as unusual a name as it might seem. William Cubitt (1765–1861) devised the infamous prisoner treadmill at Brixton, c.1820.
- 6
May 18 was not a birthday It was BR’s birthday. G.J.’s message of “many happy returns today” appeared in The Times that day (BRACERS 96081). BR hoped Colette had told Scotland Yard that it was an anniversary so the date would not be linked to him.
- 7
Macdonald Colette’s otherwise unidentified lawyer.
- 8
to send you anything through the post This remark indicates that BR’s visitors took the letters out of the books and mailed them, at least some of the time, instead of conveying the books in their entirety — probably because the books would have contained letters for more than one person. The letters were put into wrappers to identify recipients (Letter 56). BR decided to abandon the post because Colette may have been under surveillance by Scotland Yard.
- 9
shelves put up? In Letter 35, BR mentioned that he had 1,500 books and asked Colette to find a place in his flat for them.
- 10
your sister is in my flat The artist Clare Annesley (1893–1980) had sublet BR’s Bury Street flat from Helen Dudley at the end of May 1918.
- 11
another elsewhere In the same book that contained this letter or another one.
- 12
G. S. BR’s brother’s London home at 57 Gordon Square, W.C.1.
- 13
stayed far too long with my wife Alys Russell, née Pearsall Smith (1867–1951), an American Quaker. She and BR had married in 1894. Their marriage foundered in 1901–02, but they did not formally separate until ten years later. They did not divorce until 1921. Alys did not visit BR in prison, but before his appeal she made contact with their acquaintance, former President of the Aristotelian Society and Secretary of State for War 1905–12, Lord (Richard Burton) Haldane (1856–1928), in support of giving BR first-division status (see BRACERS 57341).
57 Gordon Square
The London home of BR’s brother, Frank, 57 Gordon Square is in Bloomsbury. BR lived there, when he was in London, from August 1916 to April 1918, with the exception of January and part of February 1917.
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).
Frank Russell
John Francis (“Frank”) Stanley Russell (1865–1931; 2nd Earl Russell from 1878), BR’s older brother. Author of Lay Sermons (1902), Divorce (1912), and My Life and Adventures (1923). BR remembered Frank bullying him as a child and as having the character and appearance of a Stanley, but also as giving him his first geometry lessons (Auto. 1: 26, 36). He was accomplished in many fields: sailor, electrician, house builder, pioneer motorist, local politician, lawyer, businessman and company director, and (later) constructive junior member of the second Labour Government. Frank was married three times. The first marriage involved serious legal actions by and against his wife and her mother, but a previous scandal, which ended his career at Oxford, had an overshadowing effect on his life (see Ruth Derham, “‘A Very Improper Friend’: the Influence of Jowett and Oxford on Frank Russell”, Russell 37 [2017]: 271–87). The second marriage was to Mollie Sommerville (see Ian Watson, “Mollie, Countess Russell”, Russell 23 [2003]: 65–8). The third was to Elizabeth, Countess von Arnim. Despite difficulties with him, BR declared from prison: “No prisoner can ever have had such a helpful brother” (Letter 20).
Miles Malleson
Miles Malleson (1888–1969), actor and playwright, was born in Croydon, Surrey, the son of Edmund and Myrrha Malleson. He married his first wife, a fellow actor, Lady Constance Annesley (stage name, Colette O’Niel), in 1915. They had met at Tree’s (later the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts). Their marriage was an “open” one. In 1914 Miles enlisted in the City of London Fusiliers and was sent to Malta. He became ill and was discharged, unfit for further service. He became active in the No-Conscription Fellowship and wrote anti-war stage plays as well as a pamphlet, Cranks and Commonsense (1916). In the 1930s he began to write for the screen and act in films, in which he became a very well-known character actor, as well as continuing his stage career at the Old Vic in London. He married three times: his second marriage was to Joan Billson, a physician (married 1923, divorced 1940), with whom he had two children; his third wife was Tatiana Lieven, an actress (married 1946). He died in London in March 1969.
Ottoline Morrell
Lady Ottoline Morrell, née Cavendish-Bentinck (1873–1938). Ottoline, who was the half-sister of the 6th Duke of Portland and grew up in the politically involved aristocracy, studied at St. Andrews and Oxford. She married, in 1902, Philip Morrell (1870–1943), who became a Liberal M.P. in 1910. She is best known as a Bloomsbury literary and artistic hostess. BR and she had a passionate but non-exclusive love affair from 1911 to 1916. They remained friends for life. She published no books of her own but kept voluminous diaries (now in the British Library) and was an avid photographer of her guests at Garsington Manor, near Oxford. (The photos are published in Lady Ottoline’s Album [1976] and mounted at the website of the National Portrait Gallery.) In the 1930s she had a large selection of BR’s letters to her typed, omitting sensitive passages. BR’s letters to her are with the bulk of her papers at the University of Texas, Austin.
Prohibited areas
On 17 July 1918 (BRACERS 75814) General George Cockerill, Director of Special Intelligence at the War Office, notified Frank Russell that constraints on BR’s freedom of movement, imposed almost two years before, had been lifted as of 11 July. Since 1 September 1916, BR had been banned under Defence of the Realm Regulation 14 from visiting any of Britain’s “prohibited areas” without the express permission of a “competent military authority”. The extra-judicial action was taken partly in lieu of prosecuting BR for a second time under the Defence of the Realm Act, on this occasion over an anti-war speech delivered in Cardiff on 6 July 1916 (63 in Papers 13). (Britain’s Director of Public Prosecutions was confident that a conviction could be secured but concerned lest BR should again exploit the trial proceedings for propaganda effect and thereby create “a remedy … worse than the disease” [HO 45/11012/314760/6, National Archives, UK].) Since the exclusion zone covered many centres of war production, BR would be prevented (according to the head of MI5) from spreading “his vicious tenets amongst dockers, miners and transport workers” (quoted in Papers 13: lxiv). But the order also applied to military and naval installations and almost the entire coastline. As a lover of the sea and the seaside, BR chafed under the latter restriction: “I can’t tell you how I long for the SEA”, he told Colette (Letter 75).
Russell Chambers
34 Russell Chambers, Bury Street (since renamed Bury Place), London WC1, BR’s flat since 1911. Helen Dudley rented the flat in late 1916 or early 1917. In May 1918 she sublet it to Clare Annesley. Colette moved in on 9 September 1918 and stayed until June 1919. BR did not give up the lease until December 1923. See S. Turcon, “Russell Chambers, Other London Flats, and Country Homes, 1911–1923”, Bertrand Russell Society Bulletin, no. 150 (Fall 2014): 30–4. “Russell Chambers, Other London Flats, and Country Homes, 1911–1923”, Bertrand Russell Society Bulletin, no. 150 (Fall 2014): 30–4.
The Attic
The Attic was the nickname of the flat at 6 Mecklenburgh Square, London WC1, rented by Colette and her husband, Miles Malleson. The house which contained this flat is no longer standing. “The spacious and elegant facades of Mecklenburgh Square began to be demolished in 1950. The houses on the north side were banged into dust in 1958. The New Attic was entirely demolished” (“Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969”, p. 109; typescript in RA).
The Studio
The accommodation BR and Colette rented on the ground floor at 5 Fitzroy Street, just off Howland Street, London W1. “It had a top light, a gas fire and ring. A water tap and lavatory in the outside passage were shared with a cobbler whose workshop adjoined” (Colette’s annotation at BRACERS 113087). It was ready to occupy in November 1917.
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.