BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 26 SEPT. 1918
BRACERS 19366. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #322
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

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Telegraph House,1^, 2
Chichester.
Sp. 26. 1918
 

My Dearest

I cannot clip your wings and put you in a cage. What we planned3 won’t do. Go back to Mitchell4 if that is what you feel right. Do everything that your impulse tells you is good. I will try for the next 6 months to grow used to it. If I can’t, we will consider things afresh. What we thought of is brutal, it comes of force, it is a sin against reverence. It would be better to part than do that. That would ruin the beauty of our love, the shining quality of morning dew — and without beauty love has little worth. I do not believe we shall be able long to avoid parting, but when it comes to that I should wish to have avoided sin by the way, and to have unsullied memories.

If you had felt for yourself that a quieter and less exciting life would be better for you (what I still believe) things would have been different, but I cannot force you into it against your own judgment.

I love you, and shall love you as long as I live. But I see no issue to our difficulties. I will struggle with myself but I have not much hope. However, the next 6 months will show.

I will not try the plan we had adopted, unless at some future date you come to it of your own accord. I cannot make myself your gaoler.

Deepest love, my Darling, now and for ever.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200358.

• 2

  Telegraph House Frank Russell’s country home. BR wrote to Ottoline Morrell (BRACERS 18696) that he was at 57 Gordon Square until Thursday [26 September 1918], when he would leave for Telegraph House for the weekend, returning on Monday.

• 3

  What we planned Their plan to live together wouldn’t work because of BR’s jealousy of Col. Mitchell.

• 4

  Mitchell BR had asked her to stop seeing Colonel J. Mitchell of the United States Army. Colette thought Mitchell may have been chief of staff for Major-General John Biddle, who commanded American troops in the U.K. in 1918 (After Ten Years [London: J. Cape, 1931], p. 127). Colette met him at her mother’s. Mitchell was married and also had a British girlfriend. Colette maintained that she and Mitchell were just friends but that she would stop seeing him. She had hoped that Mitchell could assist T.S. Eliot with his military status.