BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [20 JULY 1917]
BRACERS 19186. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

Friday1^, 2

My Darling

It is dreadful that you are so unhappy about work. You are quite right not to try going away with me Sunday when you feel so miserable. I dare say you won’t want to go to Wales.  There is one thing in which you always seem to me gravely wrong, and that is in not doing other work while you are waiting for a job. If you made enough effort of will you could, and it would be better for you as well as for the world. One ought not to let despair reduce one to inaction — work is a great help in getting over despair. Forgive me for saying this, but I know it is right. I remember a fit of despair I had the first Xmas of the war. I had lost interest in abstract things, and there was no peace-work to do. After sitting still for a fortnight wishing for death, I took to visiting destitute Germans for a society,3 and it was a real cure.

My dear one, it makes me dreadfully unhappy when you are so miserable — it blots out the sun in heaven. I can only say again that you must learn to live less personally, to live more for the world and less for success. It is a cold doctrine, but it is the only one by which one can live through the bad times. There is always work to be done for the world if one is willing to do it.  You will not be happy until you have faced once for all the possibility of absolute failure on the stage, and made up in your mind an existence which you could face on that basis. Then, if success comes, it will be all to the good; if it does not, you will still have a life that you have made yourself tolerate. It is the only way to be independent of Fate, which one must be if one is to be strong. You can be strong, and I know you cannot respect yourself if you are weak. And if you do not respect yourself, your life will be a hell.

Dearest, don’t be angry with me for writing like this. Nothing else would be quite sincere, or quite what I feel you need.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200165.

• 2

  [date] Colette wrote on a separate sheet of paper: “This is Letter No 1 written Friday 20 July 1917.”

• 3

  visiting destitute Germans for a society BR writes of this work in Auto. 2: 19: “I took to visiting destitute German on behalf of a charitable committee to investigate their circumstances and to relieve their distress if they deserved it.”