BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [5 AUG. 1919]
BRACERS 19518. 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
Tuesday3

My Heart’s Life

I cannot tell you what a joy it was this morning to get your dear dear letter of Sunday4 and Monday — It is lovely about Helen5 — I am so glad — I think you can really make something wonderful of it — the stage direction you quote is you to the very life — you have a “strange absence of wrath” — it is one of the most extraordinary things about you —

I hope Young Heaven6 will come off. I will write to Cardiff on Friday and Saturday, not on Sunday, as you probably wouldn’t get it. Darling, could you find a moment before you go to Cardiff to buy me a new tie (or 2 while you are about it), thin, like my brown one, so as to go with my soft collars, and of some colour you can stand? The brown one is so dilapidated that I can hardly tie it.

Allen7 is such a dear — it is a great joy having him. Littlewood8 seems to get no fun out of his 2 ladies9 — he is foolish. There are no new events here —

My Beloved, your letter is so wonderful — I feel so absolutely and boundlessly one with you — it goes on day after day, always I feel your spirit dwelling in my heart, always bringing love and deep comradeship — It fills all my days with a still joy, almost awe — it is the most perfect thing that has ever come to me — It has grown and grown, especially during time you were here — but something of it began in that first moment in your arms in the dusk when you arrived in your motor10 — I dwell in the world of our love, morning, noon and night — it is bound up with all the deepest and greatest things, infinite, holy —

Your
B

• 1

  [document] Document 200505.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 6 Mecklenburgh Square | London W.C.1. Pmk: WEST LULWORTH | 5 AU | 19

• 3

  [date] Colette wrote“5 Aug 1919” on the envelope.

• 4

  dear dear letter of Sunday Not extant.

• 5

  about Helen Colette was to play Helen in Euripides’ The Trojan Women.

• 6

  Young Heaven A play by her husband, Miles Malleson. Colette played the role of Daphne when it was staged by Lewis Casson in Oxford on 8 September 1919.

• 7

  Allen (Reginald) Clifford Allen (1889–1939). For information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.7.

• 8

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

• 9

  2 ladies Mrs. Streatfeild and Littlefield’s cousin, Miss Budden. Littlefield never married but did have two children, Philip and Ann Streatfeild, with the wife of Dr. Raymond Streatfeild.

• 10

  dusk when you arrived in your motor Colette described the scene retrospectively: “He turned suddenly and saw her standing on the footboard of the car, her bare arm holding back the open door. In a moment she was beside him, her hair brushing his cheek, her arms round him. Never, never as long as she lived would she forget that moment” (BRACERS 98479).