BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [12 AUG. 1919]
BRACERS 19526. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<West Lulworth>
Tuesday1^, 2

My Beloved

It was a joy to get a letter3 from you this morning — I had had none since Friday, which is a long time. Yes, you would see Lynton from Porthcawl4 if it was clear — I enclose proofs,5 which came this morning, with nothing but enclosed formal request for their return. I have made whatever corrections seemed necessary. You should keep the duplicate proof and the type-script, as one can’t yet be sure that the English Review means to publish it. If you are busy you can post the envelope with its corrected proof without even bothering to read it, as there are certainly no important mistakes, and if you altered the punctuation you might alter it wrong! [Don’t tease I.] It is a good omen that it has been set up, but by no means makes it certain that it has been accepted.

Tintern Abbey is close to where I was born:6 I lived near there till I was 3½. All that region is lovely — or was, but perhaps the war has spoilt it.

Saturday week — my Life’s Joy, it will be divine — I ache for you — you have a quality of intensity and depth and the strange pain of loving, that I have never known in any one else, and that makes every one else pale beside you. All that part of me — which is the very root of my being — has found its home with you, forever if your love lasts — and I believe it will, for I will not tear at you as I have done.

I am very glad about Young Heaven.7 Tell my more about it — Are you producing it, or who? — I long a to hear your part as Helen8 — O my Soul, I love you —

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200513.

• 2

  [date] In 1919 this Tuesday was 12 August. This letter was found with Monday’s letter, document 200512, BRACERS 19525. An envelope large enough for proofs is not extant.

• 3

  get a letter Not extant.

• 4

  see Lynton from Porthcawl BR, Colette, and Clifford Allen had spent the Christmas holidays in Lynton, Devon in 1918. It is not known why Colette was going to Porthcawl in Wales.

• 5

  enclose proofs Of her short story, “The End”, using the pseudonym Christine Harte. It was published in The English Review, 29 (Sept. 1919): 235–8.

• 6

  where I was born BR was born at Ravenscroft (now called Cleddon Hall), his parents’ home near Trelleck, Monmouthshire on 18 May 1872.

• 7

  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.

• 8

  Helen Colette played Helen in Euripides’, The Trojan Women, translated by Gilbert Murray. Its first performance was in Oxford on 5 September 1919.

Textual Notes

• a

  long Underlined three times.