BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 6 MAY 1917
BRACERS 19163. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #291
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
6 May 1917
Sunday night1

My dearest Darling

I can’t tell you (and I couldn’t hint over the phone) how terriblya disappointed I am about today.2 I made sure that either you were away or you didn’t want to see me — and I felt I couldn’t do nothing all day — so I walked and walked and walked — very beautiful — but I would a hundred million times rather have been with you — A thought came to me: will you come to Russia with me when the war is over? We could get to know all the leading revolutionaries — no one there cares about respectability — it would be amazingly interesting — and a real refreshment to the spirit. Dob make up your mind to come, my Darling, I do want you.

I am creeping back into life, but not N.C.F.3 life — scientific rather — I am reading Freud on dreams, most exciting — I see in my mind’s eye a great work on how people come to have the opinions they have — interesting scientifically, and undermining ferocity at the base [unmasking I ought to have said] — because it is always hidden behind a veil of morality. The psychology of opinion, especially political opinion, is an almost untouched field — and there is room for really great work in it — I am quite excited about it.

My dear one, I get so troubled — ever since that day we had tea in Knightsbridge —  wondering how your ambitions and mine are ever going to fit in with each other — It is a fearful problem. But if it is not solved somehow everything will go wrong — It is the 6 months after the war that are the difficulty.

I half think of becoming Russian after the war. Will you join me?

I long to share a life of adventure with you — high adventure — and great enterprises — I feel together we could do great things — greater and more exciting than anything on the stage — If I could believe you could be fired by the thought! You don’t know how I long for you and love you and want you. I become dead without you, and the future loses all savour. I want you to be great and glorious,c and I think I can help you to be. I think you have had too modest an ambition, and a greater one is easier of achievement. You are made to be a Madame Roland4 — You should be an inspirer of strong men — you should buckle on Allen’s5 armour — you should catch the fire from Tcheidze6 and Lenin,7 and bear the torch here in years to come. The world needs women like you — and there are not many so fearless, so really believing in liberty — You can live more greatly than you have ever lived yet — your despair is really because you are not living greatly enough — You have no limitations, if you would only believe it — I can imagine such a life for you and me — after the war — as shall make every moment glow with the fire of great things nobly done — You could be an orator to move thousands and sway the destinies of the world —

Tell me what you think of it my Heart’s Comrade8— I love you, and my spirit calls out to you to come and seek the mountain tops.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200139.

• 2

  how terribly disappointed I am about today Colette expected him to call at her flat that afternoon — she had recently moved to 6 Mecklenburgh Square. After staying in all afternoon she sent round a note wondering if he was well. Presumably he had found it on returning from his walk. It is not clear how the misunderstanding had arose.

• 3

  N.C.F. No-Conscription Fellowship.

• 4

  Madame Roland Jeanne Manon Roland (1754–1793), French Girondin revolutionary. During the revolution her house became the intellectual centre for the Girondins, on whose policy she exerted considerable influence. She was executed when the Jacobins came to power.

• 5

  Allen (Reginald) Clifford Allen (1889–1939). For further information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.7.

• 6

  Tcheidze Nikolai Chkheidze (1864–1926), the Menshevik president of the Petrograd Soviet in 1917. Before that, as a member of the Duma, he had established a reputation as a politician of the far left. He had always opposed Russia’s participation in the war.

• 7

  Lenin “Lenin” was the pseudonym of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924), creator of the Bolshevik Party, moving force behind the coup of November 1917, founder of the Third International in 1919 and leader of the Soviet Communist state until invalided by a stroke in 1922. On 16 April Lenin had arrived from exile at the Finland station in Petrograd, where he had been welcomed by Chkheidze.

• 8

  Heart’s Comrade For usage of this term, see BRACERS 19145, n.12.

Textual Notes

• a

  terribly Underlined three times in a continuous stroke.

• b

  Do Underlined five times in a continuous stroke.

• c

  glorious Underlined seven times in a continuous stroke.