BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 28 FEB. 1919
BRACERS 19440. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<Garsington>
28 Feb. ’19.1^, 2

My dear Love

Your letter has just come — Yes, great happiness is a very wonderful thing — I never get away from the longing for it. You and I have had it — at the Cat and Fiddle,3 the first two times4 at Ashford, and many other times. I have been very very unhappy lately, feeling that the possibility of real happiness between us was fading away. We must not let that happen if it can possibly be prevented. I know I have failed you in kindness and patience and tenderness; I have been grasping and tyrannical, and I cannot wonder if your love is chilled. But O my dear, I do love you, most truly and deeply. Life without the joy of your love is a very barren thing to me. And I do want to be a help and not a gaoler to you in every way. I seem to have lost the power of giving you any sort of happiness, and the pain of that has made me harsh. You have been quite wonderfully kind and considerate; all the criticisms I used to make don’t seem applicable now. I respect you far more than I did. But that is not the real thing. The real thing is that in your arms, when you are loving me, I find peace and rest and joy. And when you are not loving me, the world is bleak. My work prospers amazingly, but it is dust and ashes without you. I feel such a lost ghost wondering homeless through the world, unable to get any real or lasting intimacy with any one. I dream of a life which is not all struggle against hopeless longings, and I wear myself out with the anguish of loneliness. With you, I have known the whole of what I dreamt of: it has all come true, and then faded away into common day. Tell me, my Love, whether there is anything I can do to win back your love — whether mere waiting, restoring the liberty you surrendered at Lynton,5 or even a harder thing, if there is one. Help me, if you can, to be what will give me back the joy that seems dead. I have fought, because I have been foolish. I will fight no more. But if there is not to be any wonder and glory between us in the future, let us cherish memories, and not obscure them by trivial times. I have had from you the greatest thing in life, and for that I am eternally thankful; but I value it too much to let the image of it be dimmed.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200430.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 34 Russell Chambers | Bury Street | London W.C.1. Pmk. GARSINGTON | 26 | 19 | OXFORD. The envelope must belong to another unidentified letter.

• 3

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

• 4

  the first two times The first time was the summer of 1917, and the second was the spring of 1918 before BR entered prison. For more information, see BRACERS 19217, n.4.

• 5

  the liberty you surrendered at Lynton It is not clear what this remark means. She had agreed to give up seeing Colonel Mitchell shortly after BR got out of Brixton Prison in September 1918. At Lynton, Devon, December 1918–January 1919, they spent an idyllic holiday with Clifford Allen.