Brixton Letter 49
BR to Constance Malleson
July 26, 1918
- AL/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-49
BRACERS 19336
<Brixton Prison>1
Friday July 26.
Beloved, your letter2 has made such a difference to me — it has made me much happier. I feel now that I am not losing touch with the movement of your life and your growth. What you say about combined vitality and will is most true. It is the quality that makes people remarkable as characters, as individuals — without it people may be remarkable through what they achieve, like Newton3 or Darwin,4 but not in themselves. — My Darling your little tiny scrap <page cut, removing words> brought you so visibly before me that it nearly broke me down. Little things that are you mean so much to me. When <torn page ends>
One needs such cast-iron disciplinea at this time that when it is over one will be utterly bouleversé. I feel you so precious I can’t believe you will last till then. I feel as if you would burst, like the only toy balloon5 I had as a child, which burst on a holly prickle, and I thought my heart would break. O my Dear, my Dear, I love you so infinitely.
When I come out, if you are not busy, let us go to Ashford — not the sea then, because we want to be more completely together than we can be except at Ashford. I keep seeing pictures of it. It is almost exactly a year since we first went there — you can tell from your little green book, I can’t as I haven’t got mine.6 — O my love, you cannot imagine how divine it is when you say nice things about me — “heroic and humble”7 — am I really that? I don’t think so, <page cut, removing words>b make me happy that you do. — I feel I shall break down when I am first with you. I shall only be able to cling to you and sob for a <torn page ends>
- 1
[document] The letter was extracted from two documents in the Malleson papers in the Russell Archives. Document 200323 is an unsigned, fragmentary manuscript in BR’s hand with a small part of it cut out. The text of paragraph one is taken from this document. The second paragraph was extracted from document 201124, a typed transcription made by Colette at an unknown date. It presents the text of what is surely two letters, the present one and Letter 55. (The first few words of paragraph two are omitted here since they appear in the third paragraph.) The third paragraph is also taken from document 200323. The second paragraph is not present in the fragmentary manuscript but is found in a typed version of it obviously made before the letter was mutilated. There was probably more to the original, now lost. The paragraph about “cast-iron discipline” is typed in 201124 to follow the mention of Ashford, but that does not accord with the manuscript version of the Ashford paragraph.
- 2
Your letter Presumably her letter of 22 July 1918 (BRACERS 113144) because it contains the phrase “heroic and humble”, which appears later in this letter. But it does not mention “vitality and will”; this omission could be due to Colette’s later rewriting of a letter that she had already sent.
- 3
Newton Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), English mathematician and scientist, on whom BR wrote several times, although always briefly. It is hard to think BR thought Newton lacked vitality. He exercised an iron will over the Royal Society.
- 4
Darwin BR had been reading about Darwin in W. von Bechterew, Objektive Psychologie (1913), and quoted a sentence on Darwin from that book in the letter of [20 July 1918] (Letter 42). BR also had Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1901) on an unpublished prison reading list (RA 210.006572).
- 5
toy balloon BR told this story nowhere else in his writings.
- 6
I haven’t got mine BR’s Cambridge Pocket Diary has no entries during his imprisonment.
- 7
“heroic and humble” Colette anticipated taking him in her arms and telling him that he was “great among men, heroic and humble, and my most adored beloved” (her letter of 22 July 1918, BRACERS 113144).
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.
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.