BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 2 NOV. 1917
BRACERS 19237. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
Nov. 2. 1917.1

My Beloved

All the world is transformed for me by having found you again — I cannot think, or puzzle over the past or the future — I can only feel the great sea of happiness all round me — I lost the power of finding peace in your arms, and now it has come back — in full measure, with all the wonder it ever had. Now I can look forward to the Cat and Fiddle,2 and feel that it will have the enchantment, the feeling of light breaking through from another world, that it had before; and also a new depth of experience, a new intensity of communion. Colette, my heart’s joy, I feel you still all about me — it has been an aching time, and it is over.

We shall have many things to talk about — I didn’t want to talk at first — I just wanted to make you know it is all right — I don’t feel there is anything that must be talked about — only many things that it will be a relief or a joy to say and hear.

Monday: Leave Waterloo at 9 (can you manage that?) for Guilford. Leave Dorking 5.40, arrive Victoria 6.45. Is that too late? The train before is much earlier. But we could walk to Leatherhead instead. Anyhow, Wat. 9.

Elizabeth3 is anxious to make your acquaintance — I thought she might in time help Miles’s4 theatrical plans — Would you care to come to tea here Thursday after our house-hunting?5 If you wouldn’t, don’t. She knows I care for you — she surprised it out of me by saying she had seen you at the Mansion House6 when my case was on, and been struck by your amazing beauty. I long to find a place — it will be easy, because raids have driven people away. Goodnight my Angel, my lovely Darling.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200225.

• 2

  Cat and Fiddle An isolated pub on the moors near Buxton, Derbyshire. For further information on this pub, see BRACERS 19065, n.5.

• 3

  Elizabeth Mary Annette Russell (1866–1941), novelist. For further information on her, see BRACERS 19080, n.7.

• 4

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

• 5

  our house-hunting On the evening of 1 November 1917 they had decided to get a place together. BR no longer had access his Bury Street flat as his tenant, Helen Dudley, had resumed her residence there. And Colette was still living with her husband. They found the Studio, see BRACERS 19240, n.9.

• 6

  Mansion House The official home of the Lord Mayor of London, the building also contained at that time its own court of justice where BR was convicted on 5 June 1916 of hindering the recruitment of military forces through his leaflet Two Years' Hard Labour for Refusing to Disobey the Dictates of Conscience (1916); 49 in Papers 13. BR and Colette’s affair had not yet begun at the time of his trial.