BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [6 DEC.? 1917]
BRACERS 19254. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
Thursday1^, 2

My dear

I am lonely and miserable beyond endurance — I hoped for some little line from you to make up for the disappointment of Tuesday3 but nothing has come — I keep wanting you so terribly — I want to feel near you and I never do now. The pain of it is awful.

I hear a bomb dropped near you last night4 and I am anxious.

I am free after dinner — 9.30 on — I had been going to see Smillie5 but that is off —

Dear Love, have mercy on me — I do ache for the companionship we used to have. Surely it can’t be lost for ever?

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200242.

• 2

  [date] Colette wrote on a piece of paper taped to an envelope filed here: “2 letters, both same day. Probably Thursday 6 Dec 1917.”

• 3

  disappointment of Tuesday They were unable to meet as planned. Colette in her reply of 7 December 1917, wrote: “it didn’t occur to me that you’d be so bitterly disappointed; and therefore I didn’t write you specially about it” (BRACERS 113100).

• 4

  a bomb dropped near you last night The air-raid took place at 5 a.m. on the morning of 6 December, after more than a month without any raids. Both incendiary and explosive bombs were dropped; there were casualties (“‘Cock-Crow’ Raid”, The Times, 7 Dec. 1917, p. 9).

• 5

  Smillie Robert Smillie (1857–1940), trade unionist and politician. Since 1912 he had been President of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, and was instrumental in getting many miners to switch their support from the Liberal to the Labour Party. In 1915 he became the president of the National Council against Conscription. The following year Smillie  delivered BR’s speech on “Political Ideals” in Glasgow when BR was prevented by the Government from travelling to any coastal area. Smillie declined the position of food controller in Prime Minister Lloyd George’s cabinet.