BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [14 JUNE 1917]
BRACERS 19174. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

Thurs.1^, 2

My Dearest Dear

Thank you thank you for your letter this morning. I won’t talk about you — it will be lovely to be quiet together and read — and then sleep — Yes, let it be 7 at my flat3 — I shall go straight there from our meeting at Mrs Manus’s.4 Whichever of us arrives first can wait for the other. If you arrive first, and Mrs Saich5 is there, make friends with her if you feel so disposed.

Today I lunch with Ottoline6 and then go on to Mrs Manus’s. Yesterday I took a new memorandum (for publication) to Mrs Hobhouse,7 who was just going to Downing Street. I place great hopes in her. In the evening I dined with Littlewood8 and a Doctor he lives with9 — the Dr. had just become aware of the imprisonment of CO’s, through Shaw’s letter in the M.G.10 — he was so horrified he could hardly bear it — he at once protested to an M.P. who is a patient of his — the M.P. was equally horrified and equally astonished.

Let us be early tonight — I long to be quiet and rest with you — I can only really rest with you — My dear dear love, my heart is with you in every moment.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200150.

• 2

  [date] After writing “7 June 1917” on the letter, Colette wrote on a separate piece of paper: “Correct date of this must be 13 or 14 June 1917.” 14 June was a Thursday.

• 3

  my flat 34 Russell Chambers, Bury Street (later renamed Bury Place), London WC1. This is the first mention that he had access to his flat since Helen Dudley returned as his tenant in February.

• 4

  Mrs Manus’s Marjorie Manus who was with the National Council for Civil Liberties. See her letter to Catherine Marshall of 17 June 1916 (BRACERS 78193).

• 5

  Mrs Saich BR’s cleaning lady at his Bury Street flat.

• 6

  Ottoline Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938). For further information on her, see BRACERS 19077, n.5.

• 7

  new memorandum … Mrs Hobhouse Margaret Heyworth Hobhouse (1854–1921), wife of Henry Hobhouse (1854–1937), M.P. Mrs. Hobhouse was trying to gain release for the absolutists — she and BR worked together in this endeavour. A letter written by BR was published in the New Statesman under her name on 9 June 1917 (B&R C17.33; 42 in Papers 14). The “new memorandum” may be the first chapter of her pamphlet “I Appeal unto Caesar”, first published in July 1917 (B&R B7; 52 in Papers 14).

• 8

  Littlewood John Edensor Littlewood (1885–1977), mathematician. He and BR rented a farmhouse near Lulworth during the summer of 1919. Littlewood had two children with the wife of Dr. Raymond Streatfeild.

• 9

  a Doctor he lives with Dr. Raymond Streatfeild. He was BR’s physician in the 1930s and wrote a testimonial on BR’s relationship with his children during BR’s custody battles with his second wife, Dora Russell. Colette wrote “[Streatfield]” in pencil on the letter.

• 10

  Shaw’s letter in the M.G. “C.O.’s and Perpetual Hard Labour”, Manchester Guardian, 12 June 1917, p. 4. The letter discusses the cases of Clifford Allen and Stephen Hobhouse, the son of Henry and Margaret Hobhouse.