BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 7 OCT. 1920
BRACERS 19705. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

Near Hong Kong1
7 Oct. 1920.

My Darling

This morning I got a radio2 from you sent from Liverpool the 28th — thank you my loved one — it is good to get a word from you since I started — the letters from you3 are a joy but don’t tell whether you are still alive, because they are old — We reach Hong Kong very early tomorrow morning — then Shanghai is the next port — I shall be glad when the journey is done —

Saigon is a nightmare — a large French town with boulevards and Parisian shops, as many motor cars as in Piccadilly, and every woman gorgeously dressed. But all the whites are cruel and ill and half mad, after the manner of the Heart of Darkness.4 This is the cool season, yet the heat was absolutely awful especially at night. The town is in the middle of flat swamps which grow rice and mosquitoes. The beastly boat5 stopped there four nights because it is the capital of Cochinchina,6 an important French colony. Most of the French on the boat got off there, including the Sullys (the man who is like Captain Anthony*,7 and his adorable children). The boat is now quite dull, except for Professor Liang,8 who grows increasingly interesting. He gave us a Chinese feast, very interesting, of which I wrote a long account to Elizabeth,9 which you should get from her — I can’t write it again.

I wonder which letter it was you acknowledged in your wireless — probably the one from Port Said. I hate the Tropics, what I have seen of them. We are almost done with them now. I still haven’t enough energy (owing to heat) to write the sort of letters10 I had thought of — But I will from Peking. Goodbye Beloved — you are in my thoughts always — I love you, my dear dear Love —

B

*He has become naval governor of the port of Saigon.

• 1

  [document] Document 200706.

• 2

  a radio A radio-telegram; it is not extant.

• 3

  letters from you Colette wrote six letters on 14 August. One letter was supposed to await BR at each port of call between Marseilles and Shanghai. See BRACERS 113221 to 113229.

• 4

  Heart of Darkness See BRACERS 19703, n.12.

• 5

  beastly boat The S.S. Porthos, sailing from Marseilles to China.

• 6

  Cochinchina I.e., Vietnam.

• 7

  Captain Anthony Captain Anthony was a character in the novel Chance (London: Methuen, 1913) by Joseph Conrad.

• 8

  Professor Liang K.T.J. Liang, professor of commercial law at the Government University of Peking. BR describes him at length in a letter of 11 October 1920 to Ottoline Morrell, BRACERS 18781.

• 9

  long account to Elizabeth Elizabeth Russell (1866–1941), novelist. This letter is not extant. For information on Elizabeth, see BRACERS 19080, n.7.

• 10

  the sort of letters For their literary book of letters which BR had first proposed on 22 November 1919. For information, see BRACERS 19584, n.6. Document 200701 (BRACERS 19700) is one.