BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [C.25 JULY 1917]
BRACERS 19189. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

My Darling1^, 2^, 3

This is a purely practical letter. I want to know which you would prefer, to stay at Shrewsbury Sunday night, or to push on to Knighton.4 Here are the facts:

Pad. depart 10.20 a.m.
Shrewsbury arrive 3.10 or
depart 5.20                               depart 10.40 Monday morning
Craven Arms arrive 5.58       Knighton arrive 11.50 Monday morning
thence motor, 13 miles

Perhaps you would find such a long journey tiring? We have 2 hours at Shrewsbury if we travel through. I don’t know if it is a nice place or not. If it wouldn’t tire you, I should mildly prefer pushing through; but I have no strong feeling about it. — I enclose 2 tickets for a U.D.C. party5 Thurs. night at which I shall be. Perhaps Miles6 would like to go; I hardly dare hope that you would. It will be the regular U.D.C. crowd.

My Heart’s Love, I keep thinking of Sunday and longing for it — Goodnight Beloved.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200169.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson. Unfranked.

• 3

  [date] Colette wrote “last letter written before Ashford-Shropshire”. This is not correct. They left on Sunday, 29 July. 25 July was a Wednesday.

• 4

  to stay at Shrewsbury Sunday night, or to push on to Knighton. They stayed at the Norton Arms in Knighton on Sunday night, at the Feathers Inn in Ludlow, Shropshire, on the second night, and the remainder of their vacation near Ashford Carbonel, in a house, The Avenue, owned by Mrs. Agnes Woodhouse. They nicknamed the house “Boismaison”.

• 5

  U.D.C. party Union of Democratic Control. Colette and Miles had already made plans to dine with Francis Meynell that evening, Thursday, 26 July 1917.

• 6

  Miles Miles Malleson, Colette’s husband. For information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.4.