BRACERS Record Detail for 19213
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"17 Sp. Monday". "My Darling I keep on wondering about you—what you are doing, how things are going with you, whether you feel yourself a success, and everything."
This is sheet one of a two-page letter written over two days. The second sheet is document .200194, record 19214. Only sheet one was published in SLBR because it was not seen that the single letter had been given two separate document numbers.
BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 17 SEPT. [1917]
BRACERS 19213. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #297
Edited by N. Griffin and S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell
<London>
17 Sp.
Monday1
My Darling
I keep on wondering about you — what you are doing, how things are going with you, whether you feel yourself a success, and everything.
I am living in a terrible anxiety myself — Our talk Saturday night left me with the impression (perhaps a wrong one) that your impulse to Maurice2 was so strong that you would almost certainly yield to it, and persuade yourself that there is no danger, though really there is a great deal — I cannot bear to think of your beauty destroyed, your health and happiness gone, and you shut out from the touch of love by a hideous misery.3 For me it would be the end of life — I should not even try to bear it. Miles4 is a better man than I am — he is a saint — I wish I were more like him.
B
Notes
- 1
[document] Document 200193.
- 2
Maurice Maurice Elvey (1887–1967), film director. For further information on him, see BRACERS 19056, n.5.
- 3
your beauty destroyed, your health and happiness … hideous misery These sentiments seem to indicate that Colette was going to have an affair with Maurice Elvey and that BR believed that he was infected with a sexually transmitted disease.
- 4
Miles Miles Malleson, Colette’s husband. For further information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.4.
