BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 26 DEC. [1916]
BRACERS 19098. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
The Manor House
Garsington
Oxford1
Boxing Day.2

My Beloved

Two letters from you came this morning — unhappy letters3 — I wish you were not unhappy.  My loved one, I long to be back with you — I long for your lips and your arms — the joy of you, the wonderful, wonderful joy.  I have been living a strange life here — the life of a spectator — entering in imagination into the souls of all the different people — some poignant and lovable, some horrible and rather obscene. I have been unhappy all the time — my own life in suspense — except for the newspapers.  At times I fly away right outside my own skin, and cease to be a separate person at all — that has been happening to me here.4 I shall come back to you with the most intense happiness — it is pain when one’s own life stops, but one can’t help it. I can’t tell you more definitely what has been happening to me — I really don’t know. I shall probably come home tomorrow late. I am out to dinner Thursday with a friend home from France5 on leave. But I long to see you — could I come to lunch Thursday? or tea?

Peace is coming, I am convinced. Switzerland6 probably preludes the other neutrals. We shall get peace during the summer I expect.

My love, my Angel, I long for you.

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200068.

• 2

  [date] Colette wrote “Tuesday 26 Dec 1916” on the letter.

• 3

  unhappy letters Colette wrote that Christmas this year is “hellish” (BRACERS 112986). Her unsent “literary” letter of the same date is much more dramatic: “Hell is let loose on earth this Christmas” (BRACERS 99811). The other letter is not extant.

• 4

  here BR was staying at Garsington Manor, Lady Ottoline Morrell’s country home.

• 5

  a friend home from France Capt. H.A. Hollond (1884–1974), a Trinity College legal scholar who had enlisted and was at British headquarters in France. BR told Ottoline Morrell on 29 December 1916 that he dined with Hollond and J.E. Littlewood on the Thursday in question (BRACERS 18626).

• 6

  Switzerland The Swiss Federal Council, on 23 December 1916, addressed a note to the belligerent powers supporting President Wilson’s peace note of 18 December. The Swiss text was given in The Times, 26 Dec. 1916, p. 7; “further interventions may be expected” (ibid.).