BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 31 JULY 1919
BRACERS 19514. 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^, 3
Thursday evg.
31.7.19

My Heart’s Life

I have made your corrections and am sending the MS registered to the English Review4 tomorrow — I can’t tell you how much it moves me. I long to love and cherish you always, to keep you warm from the hurts of the world — I believe in your love as I have not done since Blackpool5 — I know its depth and force, and I know that mine is its equal. Dear, I will understand in future when you are unhappy and your love cannot find utterance — I will wait, and make you know that a world of tenderness is there for you when you can find comfort in it. I don’t know whether you feel as I do, but for me there is a wholly new bond, indissoluble in a way it never was before. I feel now that though we may still hurt each other from time to time, we shall know that there can be no parting short of death — life without you is become to me a thing unimaginable in its lonely terror — No other human being, I know, will ever enter that region in me in which you live — it is sacred to you, apart from all possibility of violation by others. Others may fill in the times when we cannot be together, to make me not too impatient — but the real life of my spirit is eternally bound up in you.

This is not just words, or a passing mood. The power of expressing it may pass, but not the thing itself. I feel as if our real life together had only nowa begun. And what I feel now is too deep a thing for demands or claims — it is the very stuff of my being.

Friday I have sent off your MS and written to Sassoon.6 Darling, how wonderful it must have been at the ballet.7 Tell Conrad I envy him being allowed to live with you,8 and I wish I had the same privilege. Yesterday was a heavenly day — we went to the post and bathed in the afternoon, otherwise worked — I did long for you. — My Beloved, I am sorry your love gives you pain — I do love you most absolutely — I give you the utmost love of which my nature is capable (unless there were children and a common life) — I am trying to think of some way by which I would escape to town for 2 nights towards the end of August or very early in Sept. It would want some business in London, to make it decent to leave my guests. So far I haven’t succeeded, but I dare say I shall.

Littlewood9 is going early to send a telegram so this must stop. Goodbye my Darling. I love you with my very life’s blood, most absolutely and boundlessly.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200502.

• 2

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

• 3

  <letterhead> Colette crossed out the letterhead and wrote“Lulworth” above it.

• 4

  sending the MS registered to the English Review A short story, “The End”, written by Colette  using the pseudonym Christine Harte, was published in The English Review, 29 (Sept. 1919): 235–8. The character, called only “the girl”, has been reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom BR had recommended to Colette earlier in the summer. The girl lives in a flat near the British Museum and comes to realize that she has been abandoned by her lover. “The End” was reprinted in Russell, o.s. no. 25 (1976): 25–7. BR had already published twice in the journal, and he was the go-between for the acceptance of “The End”. After publication the editor, Austin Harrison, wrote BR that Colette’s stories were “quite good, though a little bit neurotic” (24 Nov. 1919).

• 5

  since Blackpool Part of the film Hindle Wakes was shot in and near Blackpool in September 1917. BR became very jealous of Colette’s relationship with her director, Maurice Elvey, and this jealousy caused a serious rift with her.

• 6

  written to Sassoon Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), poet who published poetry in the English Review at this time. BR’s letter is not known to be exant. For information on Sassoon, see BRACERS 19182, n.12.

• 7

  at the ballet Perhaps Colette had attended a performance of Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet company at the Alhambra Theatre.

• 8

  Tell Conrad ... live with you This must be a reference to a brooch recently given to Colette by BR. It was a small diamond arrow which she named “Conrad” after his novel, Arrow of Gold, published in the United States on 12 April and in Britain on 6 August. It was purchased at S.J. Phillips Ltd. on New Bond Street; when not wearing it Colette kept it in its blue Phillips case. She gave it to her sister Mabel in 1925 and did not get it back until after Mabel’s death in June 1959 (letter to Phyllis Urch, 19 Oct. 1959). The couple did refer to inanimate objects owned by Colette as if they were animate. Her sunshade and dressing gown were both given names (Nellie and the Yellow Peril).

• 9

  Littlewood John Edensor Littlewood (1885–1977), mathematician, was renting Newlands Farm with BR.

Textual Notes

• a

  now written over illegible word