BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [28 SEPT. 1916]
BRACERS 19046. ALS. McMaster. Auto. 2: 74–5
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

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

My Darling Colette

This morning my brother3 came and interrupted me — he is a person who scatters one’s thoughts by his presence, so I couldn’t go on. Then I sent a man off the street with some flowers, not that they were as nice as I wished, but he had such a charming smile and such a sense of humour that I couldn’t resist him, though I had no guarantee that he would ever deliver them. — Then Miles4 came with your dear dear letter5 — I feel with you in every word. You can do much more for me than I can ever do for you. You are already where I have struggled to be, and without the weariness of long effort. I have hated many people in the past — the language of hate still comes to me easily, but I don’t really hate any one now. It is defeat that makes one hate people — and now I have no sense of defeat anywhere. No one need ever be defeated — it rests with oneself to make oneself invincible. Quite lately I have had a sense of freedom I never had before — it has come through the N.C.F.6 largely. I don’t like the spirit of Socialism — I think Allen7 has come to see that freedom is the basis of everything — I have immense hopes of him.

“The keys of an endless peace”8 — I am not so great as that, really not — I know where peace is — I have seen it, and felt it at times — but I can still imagine misfortunes that would rob me of peace. But there is a world of peace, and one can live in it — and yet be active still over all that is bad in the world. Do you know how sometimes all the barriers of personality fall away, and one is free for all the world to come in — the stars and the night and the wind, and all the passions and hopes of men, and all the slow centuries of growth — and even the cold abysses of space grow friendly — “e il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare.”9 And from that moment some quality of ultimate peace enters into all one feels — even what one feels most passionately. I felt it there by the river10 — I thought you were going to withdraw yourself — I felt that if you did I should lose the most wonderful thing that had ever come to me—and yet an ultimate fundamental peace remained — if it hadn’t, I believe I should have lost you then. I cannot bear the littleness and enclosing walls of purely personal things — I want to live always open to the world, I want personal love to be like a beacon fire lighting up the darkness, not a timid refuge from the cold as it is very often.

London under the stars is strangely moving. The momentariness of the separate lives seems so strange. In some way I can’t put into words, I feel that some of our thoughts and feelings are just of the moment, but others are part of the eternal world, like the stars — even if their actual existence is passing, something — some spirit or essence — seems to last on, to be part of the real history of the universe, not only of the separate person. Somehow, that is how I want to live — so that as much of life as possible may have that quality of eternity. I can’t explain what I mean — you will have to know. Of course I don’t succeed in living that way — but that is “the shining key of peace”. For me, a terrible amount of pain was necessary before I found out anything about peace — but that was only because I was stupid — pain is not necessary — it is not necessary for you. You start farther on than I did.

My dear one, I love you now with a love that I feel belongs with the things that have the quality of eternity — and I shall love you more and more as I know you more fully. Your beauty haunts me, like the most wonderful cadences of old songs — it moves me deeply, almost religiously. And I know it is the outer garment of an inward beauty — but I have not the courage to speak of that yet. You must guess at my love, for, my dear one, I cannot express the heart of it, only a few outer fringes.

Oh I am happy, happy, happy —

Your
B.

Notes