BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 15 JULY 1919
BRACERS 19508. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<West Lulworth>
<letterhead>
70, Overstrand Mansions,
Prince of Wales Road,
Battersea, S.W.1^, 2
15 July 1919.

My dearest Darling

I found your telegram just arrived at the Post Office when I went down to post my letter to you last night. I can’t tell you how loathsome I think it of the film people to be so treacherous.3 They are intolerable blackguards. My poor love, it is miserable having to start all over again looking for work. It is hateful.

Your dear dear letter4 came at breakfast this morning. I feel wonderfully near to you, my loved one — There are great and rare things in you, which draw my heart out to you — when they are obscured the light of my world goes out, but now they are shining and I am flooded with joy.

After posting my letter I walked along the coast — there were dark clouds, and brilliant streaks of gold on the sea — the sea was very living, passionate and deep, terrible and glittering — the more I looked at it the more I felt the power of the love between us — the deep eternal restless passion of the sea is like it.

This morning we all bathed, and swam through the little hole beyond the pillar — then we came home and ate an enormous lunch — now Littlewood5 and Miss Black6 are sleeping it off — She is nice, but I am very doubtful whether I shall have an affair with her — It is difficult to take any real interest in people who do not touch the flame in one. Most people have no wildness, and people don’t seem quite real or alive to me without some wildness —

I hear Roads to Freedom7 has sold four thousand copies in U.S.A. which is good.

Beloved, if you feel you can spare even a week-end, come, I long to be with you in this beauty — it is incomplete without you, like exquisite music stopped short in the middle. But don’t fancy I shall be vexed or hurt if you don’t come — I feel as if I should never be hurt with you again (though I know that isn’t really true). You have made me feel your love so much that I can rest in it and feed my spirit on the joy of it. My heart’s Life, I love you, with all my being — your kiss is my heaven, and in your arms my eternal longing is at rest. Goodnight my precious treasure, my lovely Darling.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200496.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 6 Mecklenburgh Square | London W.C.1. Pmk: WEST LULWORTH | 15 JY | 19

• 3

  film people to be so treacherous Because Colette’s correspondence is not extant for this period, it is not known what this refers to. She had already made two films, Hindle Wakes and The Admirable Crichton. In a letter of 16 May, BR had written that it was “a dreadful blow about the film” (BRACERS 19475).

• 4

  dear dear letter Not extant.

• 5

  Littlewood John Edensor Littlewood (1885–1977), mathematician. He and BR shared a farmhouse near Lulworth during the summer of 1919.

• 6

  Miss Black Dora Black (1894–1986). For information on her, see BRACERS 19506, n.3.

• 7

  Roads to Freedom Had been published in the United States in March 1919 by Henry Holt and Co. (B&R A29).