BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [25 OCT. 1916]
BRACERS 19064. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
57 Gordon Square,1
London. W.C.
Wednesday2

My Beloved

What a happy time it was yesterday3 — only too too short. I long to be with you in the country my Dearest Darling.  I long to be happy with you and away from work and worries — living, not merely a machine grinding things out. I wonder what direction your thoughts will take in Norfolk4 — I wonder if you will find the sort of things you want to do. It was a very good talk we had — I believe what you need is more scope for your will — and that you will get that through finding work for your mind.  Do you think so? Besides Cole’s World of Labour5 you might try Westermarck’s Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas6 — a stodgy book, in which one has to skip, but a book that gives one a background — showing what men have developed from, what they still are in the uncivilized portion of each of them — for hardly any one is civilized all through, and those who are are generally odious.

If I can be in the country with you, I shall be really alive, — full of fire and love — Goodbye my Dearest, my loved one. My loving thoughts are with you every moment.

B —

Later. My loved one, your dear dear letter7 has just come — it gives me such intense joy. You fill me with life and faith and delight in everything, Colette, my soul. I grudge the times given over to business, when I long to dream of you.

• 1

  [document] Document 200030.

• 2

  [date] Colette wrote “25 Oct. 1916” on the letter.

• 3

  a happy time it was yesterday Her 21st birthday which they spent in Richmond Park.

• 4

  in Norfolk It is not known why Colette went to Norfolk or for how long.

• 5

  Cole’s World of Labour G.D.H. Cole, The World of Labour: a Discussion of the Present and Future of Trade Unionism (London: Bell, 1913).

• 6

  Westermarck’s Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas By Edvard Westermarck, 2 vols., (1906–08).

• 7

  your dear dear letter Of 25 October 1916, BRACERS 112952.