BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [17 NOV. 1916]
BRACERS 19078. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
57 Gordon Square1
W.C.
In the train.2
Friday3

My Life, my Soul

I can’t yet tell you the thousandth part of what you have brought me during these days.4 It has been all so beautiful, so wonderful, so great. Sometimes after days on the lonely sea I have seen a great bird come out of the horizon — at first one hardly knows if he is real — then he wheels and circles and one fears he is going away into the dimness again — then gradually his white wings and the free smooth sweeps of his flight grow more distinct, and at last he sails along with the ship and all his beauty is with one. So our love has come to me. All the joy of our days wraps me round — I live in it. I hardly dare yet to think of the nights. Dear one you have taken hold of my life and swept it out in a great current to the sea — the free, deep, wild sea — And it is there that I feel we are one, absolutely one — the sense of union that I have is beyond all words. Your love is the love I have dreamed of and never found before. Dear one I have only begun to show you the love I have for you — a lifetime is too short to show it all — I feel my life before these last days was a poor dream, and now the waking glory has begun. I am yours, yours, yours, in body soul and spirit — utterly and without measure yours.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200046.

• 2

  In the train BR was en route to Garsington, the country home of Lady Ottoline and Philip Morrell.

• 3

  [date] Colette wrote “17 Nov. 1916” on the letter.

• 4

  these days 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, n.5.