BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [9 APR.] 1917
BRACERS 19145. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

Easter Monday 1917.1 ^,2

My Beloved —

Your Good Friday letter3 arrived today — it was a very great joy to get it. You wouldn’t believe how I have been longing for you, and how endless the time has seemed. I suppose you are coming back4 tomorrow —  I am free tomorrow evening if you are, also Wed. evening — not Thurs. or Friday.  Thursday I go to Garsington5 for the night. — I found the time at Leeds6 very dreary — it is a horrid place, and we stayed in a very dirty hotel, and CEM7 makes me miserable now-a-days. We had a meeting of Branch Delegates of Yorks and made speeches to them — I made them an optimistic speech, and Salter8 followed with vigorous pessimism, but he said it didn’t matter because we must remember God was on our side and therefore we must win in the end — he might have been the Kaiser9 or King George.10 I am quite sure that God, if he exists, must be on the side of his officials — Chairmen always are.  Salter hasn’t thought of this.

CEM says she has got the recurrent solitary confinement abolished.  This is a very great boon.

Tonight I dine with my friend Holland,11 home on leave for a short time.

Dearest, I keep on thinking about you day and night, intermittently — I want you most terribly — I love you more and more every moment, my heart’s comrade12 — the world goes flat without you. — Dear one, I love you with all my heart and with all my strength — you hold my life in your hands.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200121.

• 2

  [date] Colette wrote the date “9 April” on this letter.

• 3

  Your Good Friday letter Her letter of 6 April (BRACERS 113004).

• 4

  coming back From her cottage in Bellingdon, near Chesham, Bucks.

• 5

  Garsington Garsington Manor, near Oxford, the county home of Lady Ottoline and Philip Morrell.

• 6

  time at Leeds BR attended an NCF National Committee meeting there on 6–7 April 1917. See “National Committee Meeting”, The Tribunal, no. 57 (3 May 1917): 2. Salter and BR’s speeches are mentioned but not described in any detail.

• 7

  CEM Catherine Marshall (1880–1961). For further information on her, see BRACERS 19043, n.5.

• 8

  Salter Dr. Alfred Salter (1873–1945), a Quaker physician and one of the leaders of the NCF.

• 9

  Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941) was King of Prussia and German Emperor from 1888 to 1918.

• 10

  King George George V (1865–1936), acceded to the crown on the death of his father, Edward VII, on 6 May 1910.

• 11

  Holland H.A. (Henry Arthur) Holland (1884–1974); he had studied classics and law at Cambridge and was a Fellow at Trinity from 1909 until his death. He was Dean of the college from 1922 to 1950 and then Vice-Master until 1955.

• 12

  heart’s comrade  Colette first called BR her “heart’s comrade” in her letter of 17 November 1916 (BRACERS 112964). On 9 December (BRACERS 112977) she explains: “I want you as comrade as well as lover.” On 9 April 1917 (BRACERS 19145), he reciprocates the sentiment for the first time. In a letter of 1 January 1918 (BRACERS 19260), BR was so upset with their relationship that he wrote that he can no longer call her “heart’s comrade”. After their relationship is patched up, he wrote on 16 February 1918 (BRACERS 19290): “I do really feel you now again my Heart’s Comrade.” The last time that BR uses the term in a letter to her is 26 August 1921 (BRACERS 19742).