BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [20 DEC. 1916]
BRACERS 19095. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
Wed. mg.1^, 2

My Darling

I was glad to get your little letter this morning — I have been most terribly busy since I saw you.  The J.A.C. Comee.3 was more important than I expected and I undertook to write a long document for them.4

Darling, I am sorry you feel as if I forget you when I am away from you — it isn’t that, it is that I am busy and you are not — if you were rehearsing you would be more like me in that —

But there is some truth I admit, in what you feel. I have worked in spite of emotion so often and so long that nothing any longer quite absorbs me — when I was younger I was different.  I wish I were more all that a lover should be — but I can’t make myself different.

I was divinely happy on Sunday,5 and I felt the most intense and absolute devotion — Monday night too. But when one goes away, the world seizes one, and the people I meet, too, absorb me for the time. But always, all day and night, I feel your spirit with me, and I think of you underneath all other thoughts — with love and a great tenderness — I feel so poignantly that I shan’t bring you happiness — I wish I could, more.  Goodbye my dear dear love — my spirit is with you always.

B.

I couldn’t get one moment for the watch6 — I will see to it when I get back.

• 1

  [document] Document 200064.

• 2

  [date] Colette wrote “20 Dec. 1916” on the letter.

• 3

  J.A.C. Comee. Joint Advisory Council, made up of three organizations: the No-Conscription Fellowship, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Friends Service Committee.

• 4

  long document for them “Universal National Service”; published as a leaflet, Memorandum on Universal National Service (B&R A26a; 13a in Papers 14).

• 5

  Sunday The day they spent together in the country at her cottage, Nimmy Not, near Bellingdon, Bucks.

• 6

  watch BR wanted to buy Colette a wristwatch. He was not able to until September 1917 (BRACERS 19517).