BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [3 DEC. 1916]
BRACERS 19083. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London?>
Sunday night1^, 2^, 3

My Beloved

It was HELL saying goodbye to you today — I hardly knew how to get away. I was very unhappy on my own account and very unhappy also on yours. My Heart, please know, now and always that I love you with all my heart and with all my soul, absolutely and immeasurably, from the very depths of my being. If I could pass my life with you I should be absolutely happy, and I should be always inspired, and my work would be great and full of joy. — But that is impossible — and we have to make the best of this very bad world — I should not be worthy of your love if I sacrificed work for the happiness of being with you. I know what I can manage — once a week as we planned, and then holidays — times of real freedom like the Cat and Fiddle4 — they will come, not very rarely — and of course after the war they can be for long times. — My dear one, I do love and admire your Spartan quality — it is very splendid. Dearest, don’t get frozen up, so that when the time comes you can’t let yourself go into happiness — I shall be counting the hours, longing for you, hungry for you. You must think of me as if I were a soldier waiting for his leave — I want to fly to you now and tell you passionately how I love you and love you and love you — But then the ghosts from the Somme and the Dardanelles and the blood-drenched plains of Poland5 come and call to me not to forget them — and I think of Allen6 and Fenner7 and the rest of them — and I feel ashamed — I was worn out when you and I first came together — thanks to you I am not worn out now — I am full of new life — and I must use it — I don’t yet know how, but I shall soon.

I have finished my article for America8 and written a letter to Massingham.9

Goodnight my Dearest, my loved one.  I am yours more utterly than ever before — in every fibre of my being I love you and worship you and long for your happiness, my sweetest dearest loved one — Goodnight, Goodnight.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200051.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 43 Bernard Street | Russell Square | W.C. Pmk: LONDON. W.C. | 1.15 AM | DEC 4 16A

• 3

  [date] Colette wrote “3 Dec. 1916” on the letter.

• 4

  Cat and Fiddle BR and Colette had been together at the Cat and Fiddle, an isolated pub on the moors near Buxton, Derbyshire from 14 to 17 November 1916. For further information on the pub, see BRACERS 19065.

• 5

  ghosts from the Somme and the Dardanelles and the blood-drenched plains of Poland Battlegrounds of the First World War where a great many lost their lives.

• 6

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

• 7

  Fenner (Archibald) Fenner Brockway (1888–1988). For information on him, see BRACERS 19053, n.6.

• 8

  my article for America Presumably “For Conscience Sake”, The Independent, New York (B&R C17.03; 6 in Papers 14).

• 9

  Massingham Henry William Massingham (1860–1924), journalist. He was editor of The Nation from 1907 to 1923. The letter was not published and may have been personal.