BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [1 OCT. 1916]
BRACERS 19042. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
57 Gordon Square
W.C.1 ^,2

Colette, my soul and my life —

I love you every day with a deeper love — I feel you the embodied hope of the world — the youth and life with new promise, like the first flowers of the spring. I have fought and battled for hope, and have grown a little weary in the struggle. There is often more of will than anything else in the faith I live by — but in you I feel it full of vigour and strength — able to conquer without the sternness of long effort. Things like that brutal cheer last night3 make me feel an alien among people to whom I cannot speak in a language they can understand — but you seem to me free from ultimate doubt. There is absolutely no limit to what you can give me, my dear one. And what can I give you in return? An infinite tenderness — a love that surrounds you like a warm air in summer — perhaps some day (though I hope not) help in the kind of strength that pulls one through things that try one’s faith — but I think you would always have that without me. O Darling, go on loving me if you can — your caress is absolute heaven — it fills me with joy into the inmost fibres. Your tenderness is divine — it melts all the chill out of me. When you stroke my hair, I feel ready to die with sheer happiness — I can’t say anything — My dear one, the love I give you is great with all the pain of the world — I have lived with the pain of the world, and with all the cruelty of it. I have felt I must know and understand, and not live softly with comfortable lies — and it has hurt — and out of it all my soul goes out to yours. I am yours, my Beloved — you hold me — you can fill me with a greatness I have never known. And I can give you love and more love and still more love — more and more always — the love of the passionate seeker whose treasure is found at last.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200005. There are two typed copies of this letter, document 201108 and a literary condensed version, document 052353, pp. 6–7.

• 2

  [date] The date on this letter, “Sunday 24 Sept 1916”, was added by Colette much later. The typed version, document .201008, has no date but is placed at number 8 in the sequence. The literary version has a date of 1 Oct. 1916. Since the letter begins “I love you every day with a deeper love” which implies time passing and since his first letter was written to her on 24 September, the date added by Colette is suspect. Combined with the date of the Zeppelin downing, it appears that this letter was written on 1 October.

• 3

  brutal cheer last night A Zeppelin was brought down in the early morning hours at Potters Bar, Herts., 1 October 1916. Potters Bar is thirteen miles north of London. In his Autobiography, BR wrote: “... we heard suddenly a shout of bestial triumph in the street. I leapt out of bed and saw a Zeppelin falling in flames” (Auto. 2: 26). The report in The Times, “A Zeppelin Destroyed”, 2 Oct. 1916, p. 9, does not give the exact location of the downing.