BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [23 DEC. 1916]
BRACERS 19097. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Manor House
Garsington
Oxford1, 2
Sat.3
 

My Darling

I got your long letter yesterday and your short one4 today.  I loved all you said in your long letter about the things that have come to life in you.5 I know it is all true.  I know too what you mean about the side you call “spiritual”.  I dare say it will grow in you with time — one can’t foretell those things.  If it does, it will come of itself, not with effort after it — Meantime we have so much that we must be patient.

I hope I shan’t “run away” from you,6 as you say you fear.  I would have made all kinds of protestations in former times, but now I know love is incalculable, and one can’t prophesy.  But I shall be most dreadfully unhappy if that ever happens.  I don’t see why it should.  Yes, I am really very simple, and I would tell you quite simply if love were to die.  If it did, it would be from a kind of fatigue leaving me incapable of passionate love for any one.

There are times with me now when only impersonal things are really vivid to me, and when the life of instinct stops for a while.  That comes of being tired — but one can’t rest while the war lasts.

Dear one, you make me most wonderfully happy whenever I am capable of happiness — it is only when I feel imprisoned that happiness grows impossible for the moment — Goodbye my loved one —

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200067.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 43 Bernard Str. | Russell Square | London W.C. Pmk: WHEATLEY | 23 DE | 16

• 3

  [date] Colette wrote “23 Dec. 1916” on the letter.

• 4

  long letter yesterday and your short one Because of her editing and loss of the originals, the transcriptions of Colette’s letters of 19 December 1916 are both short (BRACERS 112981, 112982).

• 5

  you said … things that have come to life in you This remark does not survive in her edited letter of 19 December (BRACERS 112981).

• 6

  “run away” from you In her letter of 19 December Colette wrote: “Yet I sometimes think that you may very likely want to cut adrift and run off” (BRACERS 112981).