BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 22 NOV. 1919
BRACERS 19585. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<Battersea?>
Sat. night 22 Nov. 1919.1

My Heart’s Comrade,2 O my Dear, my Colette, my Soul, I do love you so deathlessly — I have been reading the 2 unposted letters3 — they are wonderfully moving — they have all your strange intensity. How the pain of the world4 has gripped you! What has been happening to you, my dear Treasure? Something dark and terrible5 has happened to you, and you haven’t told me of it — you feared my jealousy — you needn’t have, all that is over, and I love you differently now — warmly, tenderly, longing to see you happy and fruitful — or at any rate fruitful — eating my heart out over your sorrows.

I can’t tell you what a joy it is to me when you speak the way you do about your writing, and wanting to do something worth doing. Your writing has a very real quality, and I hope with all my soul that you will stick to it. I have absolutely nothing to criticize in your “unposted” (beyond putting “as” for “like” in one place, where I have written it in in pencil). I think you might have gone on and written more letters — yet there was no need.

Do you think you and I could write each other a series of letters?6  (Elizabeth’s abandoned scheme.)7 I believe we might do something rather wonderful.

Colette, my loved one, do you realize that there really is new quality in my love for you?  Ever since that day after Lulworth8 when you told me I had been cruel, I have felt such an infinite tenderness towards you — You have been aloof, and in former times I should have been hurt and angry, but I have only felt you were unhappy, and I must stand by and wait till you were ready to turn to me. My heart’s Love, my arms are aching for you — I want to hold you to my heart and warm you and make some happiness creep back into your chilled soul — Goodnight Beloved —

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200574.

• 2

  Heart’s Comrade For use of this term, see BRACERS 19145, n.12.

• 3

  2 unposted letters This must be a reference to her “Letters Posted and Unposted”. For information on them, see BRACERS 19580, n.3.

• 4

  the pain of the world BR had used this phrase at the beginning of their relationship; see BRACERS 19042.

• 5

  Something dark and terrible Colette had become involved with Lewis Casson. Naturally she was reluctant to discuss the situation with BR, whom she feared, based on what had happened in the past, would become extremely jealous. Casson’s wife, Sybil Thorndike, had been having an affair with another actor, Stanley Logan, with whom she acted in The Great Day. The play opened in mid-September at the Drury Lane and ran until 6 December 1919. Casson took up with Colette but before long told her that he still loved his wife, which Colette said hurt terribly. It was not until late January 1920 that she was able to tell BR.

• 6

  write each other a series of letters This proposed book of letters was never published. The book letters began to be typed in early1920 with BR receiving them in installments. On 2 March 1920 Russell wrote comments about three of them (BRACERS 19630). The letters used pseudonym initials and fictional addresses. When BR was in China in 1920–21, Colette re-cast many of the letters that they had already written to one another, giving them a more literary bent and sometimes a different date. She sent the “book of letters” typescript to him in China; while there he ended up deciding against publication of any of the more personal letters. BR did write one “book” letter when he was in China (BRACERS 19721). In addition, both of them wrote “Russian” literary letters. BR’s were written as if he had written them in Russia, but in fact they were written after his return in May 1920. His were published in his Autobiography (2: 104–7). Colette also wrote four literary letters to BR. See BRACERS 99931 and 99949 and her Mummer’s “Journal”, a reference to actors. She told BR in her letter of 10 October 1920 (BRACERS 116420) that she had started one. The first entry in the “Mummers Journal” is dated 30 April [1920] describing their parting at the train station before he left for Russia. The last entry in the Mummers Journal is 30 December 1920. Part of the material consists of various versions of her four letters that together with BR’s four created their “Russia Letters”. The Journal is extant in her papers, RA box 6.74.

• 7

  Elizabeth’s abandoned scheme It was earlier that year that according to BR his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Russell, who was a novelist, “suggested that she and I should jointly produce a novel by writing each other letters assuming fictitious characters [Ellen Wemyss and L.H. Arbuthnot]. Unfortunately I supposed her ‘Ellen Wemyss’ more imaginary than Elizabeth intended her to be. I said she seemed a very silly girl; Elizabeth was hurt, and the plan collapsed” (BRACERS 80400). Elizabeth tells a different story. In a letter of 10 March 1919, she wrote that the project had paralyzed her and she could not continue. “I was overcome by a dreadful feeling of you and so could not burble out in the natural way which would be essential” (BRACERS 80195). Three letters from this project are extant in RA.

• 8

  that day after Lulworth The first time they went to Lulworth was in October 1918. In March 1919 BR decided to rent a place for the summer there; Colette accompanied him in searching for accommodation late that month. She visited him at Lulworth during the summer he was in residence there. The first time she went down was in June, and their relationship was restored after being on rocky ground since his release from prison; this is the most likely candidate for “that day”.