BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 31 OCT. 1918
BRACERS 19381. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
Studio.
31. 10. 18, 9 p.m.1

My Beloved

You were wonderful to me today, so full of love and tenderness — you seemed to understand that I was sore from shame, and when I left you all the soreness was gone — It was a lovely thought to telephone — when I was expecting Miss King!2

Dear Heart’s Love, this is only a little word of love, to tell you the song my heart is singing to you — You are dear and good and lovely with me, and I am such a horrid wretch — I talk of kindness but you practise it — Everything about you is electric and alive to me — you have spoilt me for all other lips than yours — and it is only in your arms that I can feel peace. You have two personalities, one hard and glittering, the other soft — and full of love. When you are glittering I become terrified and all the shy delicate thoughts scurrya away like rabbits into their burrows, but when you are soft they pop up their heads again. When I am terrified I become critical and inclined to treat everything with a rather mocking smile, though I am not at all amused. — Love is to me the beginning and end of happiness; that is what made me suddenly say yesterday in Tottenham Ct Rd that I feel so different from other people, for they have their happiest time (as you were saying) before they have known love. To me those years were just a time of waiting for love. And for the fulness of love as I had imagined it I had to wait for you. There have been moments with you — particularly the Epipsychidion evening the first time at Ashford3 — when I have seemed to realize the whole of my dreams, and to have found the goal of my search. From a personal point of view, it seems almost foolish to have lived beyond that evening; I know that life can have nothing better in store for me in the future.

Dear Love my spirit is with you — my spirit is a little weary with the long labours of past years, but in you it finds rest — you are my “home of love”. While your love comes to me I have a resting place — when that is lost I shall become again an unquiet ghost wandering lost among the alien race of men. Your beauty haunts me like half-forgotten music from another world — the world of dreams, beyond the strife and trouble of this mortal life. Goodnight my lovely Darling. If I were God I would send my very kindest and loveliest angels to watch over you — but as it is I can send only all the aspiration and tenderness of a lonely and passionate seeker who has found at last the fragile image of his dreams.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200371.

• 2

  Miss King Beatrice L. King, Hon. Secretary, Leicester and District Branch, Union of Democratic Control.

• 3

  the Epipsychidion evening the first time at Ashford BR had read Shelley’s poem “Epipsychidion” (1821) to Colette at Ashford Carbonel, where they vacationed in early August 1917.

Textual Notes

• a

  scurry misspelt as skurry