BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 1 FEB. 1920
BRACERS 19610. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
70, Overstrand Mansions,
Prince of Wales Road,
Battersea, S.W.1^, 2
Sunday 1.2.20

My Beloved

I was glad to find your little note when I got back from Camb.3 Camb. went off all right — it is exactly like Ceylon’s spicy isle in the hymn.4 I shall loathe living there. 5

My Cherub, I am longing for tomorrow — Will you please do your utmost to manage several more nights at the flat6 before you go? I will put it to you from the point of view of thrift: I have sacrificed 12 guineas and Mrs Wand’s7 wages to get the flat for Feb., and it seems extravagant for one night!

Sweetheart I am so glad you are going on tour.8 I believe you will be happier than you have been for a long time. — I am very weary and for some reason very sad. I wish you loved me sexually9 — it makes me feel old and solitary that you don’t — And preventing myself from minding passionately has diminished my fire and vitality, so that my work has become no good — I wonder whether with patience there is a chance that your passionate love may revive, or whether it is dead for ever —

Goodbye till tomorrow my lovely Darling — All my heart Beloved.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200603.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 6 Mecklenburgh Square | W.C.1. Pmk: | 11.45 PM | 1 FEB 20

• 3

  Camb. Cambridge. BR gave a paper on “Philosophy and Physics” at a meeting of the Moral Sciences Club on 30 January.

• 4

  Ceylon’s spicy isle in the hymn “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains” by Reginald Herber (1783–1826). In the hymn, although the landscape is lovely, man is vile.

• 5

  loathe living there BR had accepted reappointment to his Trinity College lectureship by 17 January 1920.

• 6

  the flat 34 Russell Chambers, which he had held on to even though Colette had moved out. Frank Swinnerton wanted to move in. BR was sharing a flat with Clifford Allen in Battersea.

• 7

  Mrs Wand A cleaning lady.

• 8

  on tour Colette had secured a job with a touring theatre company headed by Frank Forbes Robertson. For further information, see BRACERS 19599, n.6.

• 9

  wish you loved me sexually BR and Colette had resumed their love affair at Newlands Farm in Lulworth at the end of June 1919 for the first time since his release from prison. In a letter written on 3 March 1920, BR indicates that “active love” between them had only occurred at Lulworth for two months during the summer of 1919 (BRACERS 19627).