BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [8 SEPT. 1919]
BRACERS 19553. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
70, Overstrand Mansions,
Prince of Wales Road,
Battersea, S.W.1^, 2
Lulworth
Monday mg.3

My heart’s Life

Your letter of Friday night with the new story only arrived this morning. I am glad Helen4 was such a success — it will give you confidence for today. It is good that Murray5 saw and liked you. — Today is of course a bigger part6 — I feel certain you will do it well.

I am returning your story,7 which doesn’t seem to need any corrections — I think it is admirable. But I shouldn’t send it to Harrison8 just yet, because it is a little too like the previous one in tone and style — let him forget a little. I wrote to him to dun him for £5 he owes me, and at the same time told him to pay me for “The End”9 — I ought to get an answer from him in a few days, which may show what he thinks of Christine Hart.10 If he seems to think well of her, we will send this story at once; if not, we had better wait a little. Your punctuation, grammar etc. are faultless —

We are still reading Tchehov — he seems to me far the best writer of short stories that I know of — He is such a poet. Do read a very short story called “Happiness” in the volume called The Witch — 2 shepherds on the Steppe talking through the night till the dawn comes —

Terrible invasion — Fiske Warren,11 an American Single Taxer (disciple of Henry George)12 has turned up to convert me and I must submit to the process —

Goodbye my dear heart’s comrade13 — I yearn for you and long to be with you more than I can say — infinitely — I am hungry for your arms about me — Blessings on you my dear dear love.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200540.

• 2

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

• 3

  [date] The date has been assigned because it follows BRACERS 19553 in the sequence and was written on Monday.

• 4

  Helen Colette’s role of Helen of Troy in The Trojan Women.

• 5

  Murray (George) Gilbert Aimé Murray (1866–1957), translator of The Trojan Women. For more information on him, see BRACERS 19121, n.4.

• 6

  Today is of course a bigger part Her role as Daphne in Young Heaven. The role of Helen in The Trojan Women, although smaller, is still a very important role.

• 7

  returning your story See note above.

• 8

  Harrison Austin Frederic Harrison (1873–1928), journalist and editor. He became editor of The English Review in 1909, purchased it in 1915, and sold it in 1923.

• 9

  “The End” The title of her story published in The English Review, 29 (Sept. 1919): 235–8.

• 10

  Christine Hart Actually “Christine Harte” — the pseudonym used by Colette to publish in The English Review. The title of her second story is unknown.

• 11

  Fiske Warren Frederick Fiske Warren (1862–1938) was a wealthy American businessman and philanthropist. BR turns this visit into a humorous anecdote in his Autobiography, 2: 97–8. BR first met Fiske Warren’s wife, Gretchen (1868–1961) — “rich, beautiful and intellectual”, when he was living at Bagley Wood and Mrs. Warren was at Oxford. BR later stayed at her country home in Massachusetts in 1914 but until this occasion had never met her husband. BR carried on a considerable correspondence with Gretchen.

• 12

  Henry George Henry George (1839–1897) was the controversial American economist and reformer whose advocacy in Progress and Poverty (1879) of a “single tax” on land had an significant influence on BR and other British and European Radicals, especially before the First World War. See “The Single Tax”, 101 in Papers 14. He wrote the short essay for Colette the previous year.

• 13

  heart’s comrade For use of this term, see BRACERS 19145, n.12.