BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 4 JAN. 1918
BRACERS 19264. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #304
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
4.1.181^, 2

My sweetest dearest Love

I feel so full of love and tenderness that I must write once more before you go3 — a letter to go with you in the train and make you feel my spirit travelling with you —

I think I have at last come to a real understanding of the whole situation, and it has made me happier. Tell me if you think I have got it right. I have to understand things in order to acquiesce in them.

It seems to me that your nature has two sides which are very separate. One is the side that has made me love you, the side that made you a pacifist, that made you love Carpenter,4 and give him up with anguish, that admires Allen5 and hates prisons and cruelty, that sees visions of a happier world and loves the beauty of sunsets and the sea, and is moved to terrible pain in moments of passion. It is all this that makes me love you with a love that your beauty and vitality could not call forth of themselves.

Then there is another side: the side that goes into your work, and into your more boisterous pleasures, the only side that you show to most people, aiming at personal success, rather harsh and ruthless, fond of enjoyment and full of vigorous youth. This side is partly indifferent to me, partly disagreeable. Owing to the fact that it includes your work, it is a very important side of you. As I do not care about it, I was bound to leave you unsatisfied, and your instinct naturally led you to Maurice,6 who likes in you just what I like least — or so I imagine.

I respect people’s work when I feel that it is rooted in something impersonal, like love of man or truth or art. But though I have tried hard, I have not succeeded in believing that your work is rooted in any feeling of that sort, though those feelings come in as controlling it, but not inspiring it. I may be wrong about this, very likely I am. It is largely because I feel this that I fail to satisfy you, and you need Maurice. If it were not him, it would be somebody else.

I had felt that the side I do not care for was growing stronger, and the side I love was growing weaker; but the night before last you made me feel that what I love in you is as much alive as ever. I fear that it will grow weaker with time, because your work will bring out the opposite more and more. But I hope I am wrong.

I realize now why it was such a long time before I felt sure of the depth of my love for you — I did not feel sure till last summer, because I was aware of the other side, and it made me a little uncertain as to the reality of the side I cared for.

It is a failure of perfect love that I do not love the whole of you, and I deserve Maurice as my punishment. But there is a curious difficulty: all that I really profoundly believe about what is best in you, and about what is less good, and about how to try to be of use to your morally, has got mixed up with jealously, so that I no longer have the pure heart that one needs for such things. This is a misfortune.

I wonder whether all this is true. I long to know whether you think it is or not.

Forgive me for having said you were lacking in tendernessa and affection. There are times when you have both to a wonderful degree. But there are other times when you want to go your way, and I appear oppressive — It is my fault. I must try not to have any views as to what you ought to do and be.

My Beloved, I have an immense tenderness towards you, and a feeling of something infinitely precious in you, which I want to watch over and keep from extinction. Perhaps I ought to have more faith, and not fear such a possibility. But I see horrible visions of your being driven to desperation by desire for work and worries over money, gradually compromising with your instinct as to what is decent, and gradually losing the straightforward simple determination to live according to your own beliefs. I cannot think of you twenty years hence without apprehension. Vanity and extravagance are what I chiefly fear; in the long run, they may lead far. Forgive me for saying this.

This is not the letter I meant to write. I am such a miserable failure myself morally that I do not know how I dare to speak of moral things to you.

I only meant to say I love you, and I understand about Maurice. If my love were larger and more full of sympathetic understanding, I should satisfy you more fully. — I was happy in your arms the last two nights, and I felt all that sense of infinite rest and peace that I used to feel. Goodnight my dearest Darling. I love you, love you, love you.

B.

<written at the top> Many thanks for £57

• 1

  [document] Document 200251.

• 2

  [envelope] Miss Colette O’Niel | Royal Hotel | Falmouth | Cornwall. Pmk: LONDON W.C. | 1.15 PM | JAN 5 18B

• 3

  before you go Colette was going to Falmouth, Cornwall to continued filming The Admirable Crichton. Her husband, Miles, also had a part in the film, but neither of them appear in its credits released in 1918. It was based on a play by James M. Barrie, was directed by G.B. Samuelson and Basil Gill was the lead actor. In her letter of 28 December 1917, Colette wrote: “mine is the most deadly part anybody could imagine. Miles will soon be finished with his, but mine will go on a bit longer” (BRACERS 113105).

• 4

  Carpenter Edward Carpenter (1844–1929), author, socialist, and moral reformer. Openly homosexual, he advocated the reform of sexual relations in a number of pamphlets.

• 5

  Allen (Reginald) Clifford Allen (1889–1939). For information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.5.

• 6

  Maurice Maurice Elvey (1887–1967), film director. For information on him, see BRACERS 19056, n.5.

• 7

  Many thanks for £5 Colette was repaying a loan from BR in instalments.

Textual Notes

• a

  tenderness written over gentleness