Brixton Letter 47
BR to Constance Malleson
July 24, 1918
- TL(TC)
- 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-47
BRACERS 116361
<Brixton Prison>1
Wednesday evening2, a
My dear lovely Darling,
It was dreadful seeing you so sad3 — I did want to put my arms round you and kiss your eyes and say words of love, and let your tears come. It is dreadful when you suffer. I will do so much, so much, to make up to you when I come out. Beloved, I am grateful for your letter — I have hated not knowing what was happening to you. The first thing that strikes me is how extraordinarily you keep growing. When I think what you were when I first knew you4 — but again now, quite lately, you have grown in knowledge and wisdom. O my Dear I love you love you — I feel so deeply intimate. As you grow I become more intimate, more at home with you. I seem to live in the depths of your instincts. All that you say in your letter5 is so natural to me. There are times when I feel like your little child, and want your arms to keep me warm and safe against the night — and there are other times when I feel I have just managed to leap across a fearful chasm that you too must cross, and I want to tell you where and how to leap. I feel such misery when I think of all the pain you have ahead of you — in our earliest days I hardly dared to touch you because I knew if I did I must introduce you to the Pain of the World. Goodnight Beloved — my arms are round you, my lips are on your dear eyesb — I am murmuring “my lovely one, my Darling, my Heart’s Joy.” O love me my Heart for all my being is yours.
- 1
[document] The letter was edited from document 201122, a typescript dated only “WEDNESDAY EVENING” in Colette’s hand, in the Malleson papers in the Russell Archives. There is a retyped version at RA1 710.052420, which is verbally identical. Variant readings from document 200322, which appears to be a later composite letter, were rejected. See also note 1 to Letter 46.
- 2
[date] A typed note that came to McMaster with a related composite letter (BRACERS 19325) indicates that although the original letter is missing, it was written on a “‘Wed. evg.’, probably on or abt 24 July 1918.”
- 3
dreadful seeing you so sad Colette had visited him on 23 July 1918 (BRACERS 113144).
- 4
when I first knew you BR and Colette were brought together through their work at the No-Conscription Fellowship. They met for the first time on 31 July 1916 at the Lavender Hill police station, where Clifford Allen was surrendering to the authorities. They met again at a political dinner on 13 September that year. She and BR became lovers in the early hours of 24 September, after attending a convention of the NCF’s London Division. BR wrote his first letter to her later that same day (BRACERS 19041).
- 5
your letter Possibly her letter of 22 July 1918 (BRACERS 113144).
Textual Notes
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.
Clifford Allen
(Reginald) Clifford Allen (1889–1939; Baron Allen of Hurtwood, 1932) was a socialist politician and publicist who joined the Cambridge University Fabian Society while studying at Peterhouse College (1908–11). After graduating he became active in the Independent Labour Party in London and helped establish a short-lived labour newspaper, the Daily Citizen. During the war Allen was an inspiring and effective leader of the C.O. movement as chairman of the No-Conscription Fellowship, which he co-founded with Fenner Brockway in November 1914. Court-martialled and imprisoned three times after his claim for absolute exemption from war service was rejected, Allen became desperately ill during his last spell of incarceration. He was finally released from the second division of Winchester Prison on health grounds in December 1917, but not before contracting the tuberculosis with which he was finally diagnosed in September 1918. He was dogged by ill health for the rest of his life. BR had enormous affection and admiration for Allen (e.g., 68 in Papers 13, 46 in Papers 14), a trusted wartime political associate. From February 1919 until March 1920 he even shared Allen’s Battersea apartment. A close friendship was soured, however, by Allen’s rejection of BR’s unforgiving critique of the Bolshevik regime, which both men witnessed at first hand with the British Labour Delegation to Russia in May 1920 (see Papers 15: 507). Yet Allen was far from revolutionary himself and did not even identify with the left wing of the ILP (which he chaired in the early 1920s). He was elevated to the peerage as a supporter of Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government, an administration despised by virtually the entire labour movement. Although Allen’s old intimacy with BR was never restored after the Russia trip, any lingering estrangement did not inhibit him from enrolling his daughter, Joan Colette (“Polly”) at the Russells’ Beacon Hill School.
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.