BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 5 MAR. 1920
BRACERS 19627. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #335
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
70, Overstrand Mansions,
Prince of Wales Road,
Battersea, S.W.1^, 2
5.3.20

My Darling

I was glad to see you yesterday — I hoped you were a little better, though I didn’t feel sure — Dear, I don’t think you really want me at Bury St. Edmund’s,3 and if you don’t feel that it will be some real comfort or happiness to see me there, I had better not come. I am in love with you, and you are not with me, so that being with you is infinitely painful (not being with you is equally so) — but if I thought it gave you the slightest happiness I should wish to bea with you — only I can’t see that it does. I have made things up with Miss Black,4 not because of what I feel for her, but because of what you don’t feel for me — I am hoping that in time I shall come to feel more for Miss Black.

Since I came out of prison — now a year and a half — there have been just 2 months during which you have given me active love, the two after you first came to Lulworth.5 I see no reason to suppose you will give more in future. It has gone very near to breaking my heart and has made me feel that if I could begin again in another country it would be a good thing. I should like to forget all my failures here — If the Russians welcome me at all kindly, I may settle there and never come back to England. My chief reason for wanting this is your coldness. I know you can’t help it — I know you have a great love for me, but not a passionate love — You are adorably kind — My love for you goes deep, deep into the roots of me — it is the strongest thing in me except my wish to be of some use in the world — And I feel that you grow in yourself more and more lovable and wonderful. But your physical presence and your physical aloofness make a torture which I find it hard to bear, and which does much to destroy the self-confidence I need for my work. I feel about you something of what you have felt about Louis,6 with differences — I do not think you have ever realized the hell that I suffer through you.

Part of my idea in proposing to you that we should make a joint book of letters7 was that, if we only corresponded without meeting, the difference in our physical feelings would not matter, and the mental things we have in common might have freer play. And if at any time your physical mood towards me were to change, I should wish to take advantage of the change, however temporary it might be.

This letter is so quiet in tone that I am afraid you won’t realize how much feeling there is behind it — but it is tired feeling, the residue of much anguish and despair, which I did not express fully because you were unhappy.

Goodbye my Love —

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200620.

• 2

  [envelope] Miss Colette O’Niel | c/o Forbes-Robertson Esq | “Mice and Men” Co. | March. Pmk: BATTERSEA S.W.11 | 1.15 PM | 15 MAR 20

• 3

  want me at Bury St. Edmunds Colette had invited him to visit her there; she was touring with the Frank Forbes-Robertson theatre company.

• 4

  Miss Black Dora Black (1894–1986). She and BR were married from 1921 until 1935. For further information on her, see BRACERS 19056, n.3.

• 5

  you first came to Lulworth BR is referring to her first visit to Newlands Farm, East Lulworth, on 28 June 1919 after BR and Littlewood had moved in for the summer.

• 6

  what you have felt about Louis Lewis Casson, with whom Colette had been romantically involved, while Casson’s wife, Sybil Thorndike, was having an affair with Stanley Logan.

• 7

  we should make a joint book of letters BR first proposed this on 22 November 1919 (BRACERS 19585). For more information on this project, see BRACERS 19585, n.4.

Textual Notes

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