BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, APR. 1918
BRACERS 19303. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #311
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

April 1918.1 ^, 2

My Darling

I find when I am with you that I can’t say the things that are in my heart, but when these days are over3 I want you to know as much as I can tell you of what you have given me. I want to tell you very quietly, very simply, so that you will know it is the exact truth.

Ever since Falmouth,4 there has been something new and more wonderful between us. You have made me feel your love as I never felt it before — a protecting love, which seems to have made you really understand the dark terror of loneliness, so that you have dispelled it altogether. I have always wanted to be loved as you love me, and I have never been loved in that way before. I go about all day with the sense of your spirit enfolding me — I say to myself “nothing matters, because Colette loves you” — and that will stay with me through prison,5 and keep me fundamentally happy through it all. The need of love is the greatest need I have — more even than for work. It is a need to give, just as much as a need to get — and with you I am happy in both, because you don’t mind my giving you a very great deal of love.

I should like to tell you all the things I love in you, but they are so many that a lifetime would not be long enough. You have sometimes a look of an innocent child, which catches at my heart, and makes me long that you should be happy, and kept from hurt, and not turned cynical. It rouses such tenderness that it makes me at moments almost afraid to touch you — and desperately afraid of how the world may touch you. Then you have a look of sad wisdom, like one seeing suddenly deep into the hidden pain of the world; that look makes me believe in your destiny, and that you cannot let your life be wasted. Then there is the look I live for — when your eyes shine from sheer joy. It is rare, but worth waiting and waiting for. Perhaps I shall see it when we are together again after prison — But most wonderful of all is the look of love ...

What first drew me to you was your beauty and your vitality, and I love both as much as I ever did, though there is so much besides now. It is almost strange that I am as much “in love” with you as I have ever been — creeping into your arms after a time away from them is still a thing of holiness and wonder — I never even begin to get used to you — the joy of you, and the sense of peace that you give me, are still a miracle to me every time. The feeling of your arms round me is such a happiness that it makes all the world stand still.

I have a great tenderness to you now, and a real care for you that I used not to have. I used to love you almost entirely selfishly, for the happiness you brought me. Through the Maurice6 trouble, and through what your deep love has called out, I do now love you in other ways besides. I feel I could live through fifty Maurices now, if you still wanted me — the only thing that would bring despair would be if I became nothing to you, and my love grew useless to you — or if I felt that what you call the prayer in you had grown dead. But it won’t.

Through you I have grown young again. I have infinite energy and endless new ideas, and if the law allows I shall do mountains of new work. I have been strangely slow in realizing all that your love is. But I do realize now. It is my life — everything else is built on it, and it makes everything else easy. Your love is the most wonderful thing that has ever come to me, and makes me thankful to have lived till now.

The time of separation will not be really long. Do not sink into despair, my Heart’s Comrade.7 Remember that my spirit will be with you always, enfolding you in love and tender thoughts. And our love is a living, growing thing, with a soul of its own, and with most of its life still to be lived. I shall count the hours, but I shall know that we shall live again with new life when the time of separation is over. All blessings on you, my beautiful, my tender love.

Notes

• 1

  [document] Document 200292. There is no signature.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 6 Mecklenburgh Square | W.C.1. Not franked.

• 3

  when these days are over BR and Colette were at the Cat and Fiddle pub near Buxton. For information on it, see BRACERS 19065, n.5.

• 4

  Falmouth Colette had been in Falmouth, Cornwall in early January to film The Admirable Crichton. While there, a letter from her dated 8 January 1918 (BRACERS 113167) set off a panic attack in BR. He nearly travelled there to see her despite being banned from coastal areas.

• 5

  through prison BR had been sentenced on 9 February 1918 to six months in prison for the writing of  “The German Peace Offer” (B&R C18.01; 92 in Papers 14).

• 6

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

• 7

  Heart’s Comrade  For a history of the use of this term, see BRACERS 19145, n.12.