BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 7 MAY 1921
BRACERS 19732. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

German Hospital Peking1
7 May 1921

Colette my Darling just after I wrote you my last little line I got your long letter of March 162 which was a great comfort as it told me something of what you were feeling.3 But things are not quite as you imagine and I wouldn’t stay in China for any consideration. Before I fell ill I had grown terribly home-sick — for English green country, for the smell of rain, for a population that seemed human, but still more for friends, and above all for you. This feeling is increased since my illness — I don’t think Dora4 and I will be, as you think, “fearfully married”.5 She is not that sort of person, even if I were. We will preserve mutual freedom and each our own friendships.

My loved one your letter is very unhappy. Try to feel my spirit near you, and my hand stroking your hair — I love you, and will not lose you —

Tell C.A.6 my nurse asked me “Do you know a man named Allen?” I said I did, and she said that in my delirium I had constantly talked of him and to him with the very greatest affection. She is proper, and won’t tell me anything I said about women.

I am nearly able to get up, and hope to be out of the hospital in a few days. Too tired for more. All my heart Beloved, and the comradeship of my inmost thoughts —

B —

• 1

  [document] Document 200737.

• 2

  your long letter of March 16 See BRACERS 116444.

• 3

  something of what you were feeling Her edited letter of 16 March (BRACERS 116444) contains not much of her own feelings but she did write in some frustration: “There is such a lot that is entirely contradictory in your letters, that it’s exceeding difficult to arrive at any understanding of how you are placed. As Allen wrote you on the back of my Rome letter: ‘You do not disclose much of your mind.’ ”

• 4

  Dora Dora Black (1894–1986). She and BR were married from 1921 until 1935. For further information on her, see BRACERS 19506, n.3.

• 5

  “fearfully married” This description came not from Colette but from Logan Pearsall Smith (BR’s brother-in-law), who sat next to Colette’s mother, Priscilla, at a dinner party. He told everyone that BR and Dora Black were to marry, as soon as BR’s divorce from his sister Alys became final.

• 6

  C.A. (Reginald) Clifford Allen (1889–1939). For information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.7.