BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 15 MAY 1919
BRACERS 19474. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

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70, Overstrand Mansions,
Prince of Wales Road,
Battersea, S.W.1^, 2
15 May 1919

My Darling Love

Your dear little letter came at luncheon time. Thank you for it. I am sitting out in Battersea Park with Keats’s Letters3 — there seems to be joy in the air and in the lime-leaves in the wind — but I am sad — sad because I can see generous and fine ways of living and feeling, and cannot live and feel so — because I love you and drive you away and dry up the expression of your love — because I think always of Self, not of you —

Since you disappeared yesterday there has not been a moment that my thoughts have been away from you — all through my work, the thread of you, you, you goes on. Pictures rise and fade. The moon in the old attic in the very early days — sunset at the Cat and Fiddle4 — our walk along the stream5 the first night at Knighton6 — the Epipsychidion evening at Ashford7 — which was the summit for me — And then all the times when you were so dear and lovely before I went to prison8 — and the last night before it, and your tense face in Court — I remember too the moon on the Cove the first night at Lulworth9 —

My Dearest, we were right to part for this time. It is not good to fight — We will be together again when the wonder of the world can shimmer between us — when we can shoot into the heavens and learn the joy that makes the sun shine and the tree-tops quiver in the blue — And when that is no longer possible I will slip out of the world — there is nothing else that holds me to life. I pretend that work does, but I am weary of it.

What is the good of dragging on a pathetic or tired existence? The thing is to be full of fire and life as long as possible, and then cease — I have known the great things of the world, and the rest is of no value in comparison —

My lovely Dear, you were so gentle and kind and loving yesterday — You have not lived so long as I have with despair in the depths — You do not know the fierceness and hunger that it brings — You do not know the wildness and the longing for oblivion —

I love you for your gentleness and your power of not fighting. I love you for your beauty — I love you because for me you can unlock the gates of heaven or hell — The Spirit of Man has struggled slowly out the slime and horror of the beginning — gradually towards the world of beauty and love — the Spirit of Man lives in me and drives me on to seek — and through you I have sometimes found what the Spirit of Man is craving —

But it is a scorching fire, a great flame into the night, that burns in my love for you — I cannot make tame and good — it is passion, all the concentrated passion of the tigerish search — and that cannot be made quiet and reasonable without being killed — You would not wish it if you understood — but how could you? Heaven bless you — you are my gateway to heaven and I can know no other.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200462.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 34 Russell Chambers | Bury Street | W.C.1. Pmk: BATTERSEA S.W.11 | 5 45 PM | 15 MAY 19

• 3

  Keats’s Letters Presumably Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends (London: Macmillan, 1891); Russ Lib 913 (a gift from Lady Ottoline to BR in May 1911).

• 4

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

• 5

  the stream The River Teme.

• 6

  Knighton They stayed at the Norton Arms in Knighton on the first night of their idyllic vacation in the summer of 1917. Most of the vacation was spent at Ashford Carbonel in Shropshire.

• 7

  the Epipsychidion evening at Ashford BR had read Shelley’s poem Epipsychidion (1821) to Colette at Ashford Carbonel, where they vacationed in the summer of 1917.

• 8

  to prison Brixton Prison.

• 9

  Lulworth BR and Colette were together at Lulworth Cove, Dorset, 16–19 October 1918.