BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 1 JAN. 1918
BRACERS 19260. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
1 January 19181 ^, 2

My Darling

I am very sorry such a difficult conversation started last night, when we couldn’t finish it. I expect it worried you — it kept me awake most of the night, and I feel no happier now.

As it is so difficult to get time to talk while you are so busy, I am going to write out all I can say in this letter — Please read it carefully. I do not want to drift apart, if it can be helped — and I do want you to do what you can to prevent it.

To begin with small things. I don’t know what I said at dinner to freeze you up. I suppose it was that I am going to Marlow3 tonight — But I don’t know why that should. Tuesday is an evening which I always hope to spend with you, but your letter showed no signs of being willing to give me Tuesday. I have grown unwilling to expose myself (as I have done so often these last months) to the humiliation of begging for a moment of your time and being refused, so I would not ask if you had meant to refuse Tuesday. I thought you had, and felt hurt, and acted on that thought and feeling.

At the time when we first went to the Studio,4 all might have easily come right between us, if you had told me then what had made you unhappy with regard to Maurice,5 and if you had been happy in the Studio or had shown any sign of passion. But none of this happened; and I thought you would not have had such an attack of nerves if you had been happy with me. I had placed all my reliance on the Studio, and it was a bitter bitter disappointment when that first time went wrong. And after that, tho’ you did not definitely refuse to go back, you always made excuses and managed to keep away. So I got more and more humiliated and miserable, more and more trying, out of pride, to hide what I was feeling. I found that your behaviour was destroying my love; that is why, at last, I begged you so emphatically to come, and told you it was more important than you knew. Until then, since you have been working, you had given all your real free time to Maurice (Sundays), and had only allowed me to see you at times when you were too tired for it to count. During Xmas I felt fairly happy, because I thought Maurice was away and you couldn’t be with him. When it turned out he was not away, I felt you had probably been fulfilling a painful duty in being with me, and I decided to beg you never to see me except at times when Maurice can’t be got at. I can’t bear the suspicion that when you are with me you are wishing you were with him. And for the same reason I can’t seem eager to be with you.

When you took up with Maurice, you made it clear that you had never desired or imagined the sort of relation between two people which I had been hoping to build up between you and me, the sort that made me call you “heart’s comrade”6 (which I shall never be able to do again). That sort requires a certain tenderness, a certain care not to inflict pain, even if not inflicting it involves sacrifices.  Successful love requires sacrifices just as much as successful work does.  It requires also a great deal of actual physical companionship, and some power of counting on the other person at times of misfortune. For instance: the first time at Southgate Brotherhood Church,7 you were with me, and you took me away next day,8 and the wound more or less healed. The second time, you were at Ventnor,9 and I was left lonely because you preferred your own pleasure, at no matter what cost to others. One occasion of that sort, where the other person fails one at a crisis, makes the deepest sort of companionship impossible. That is why,^a in choosing to live with several men at once, you are choosing to forego what is best in human relations. It is this, rather than ordinary jealousy, that is at the bottom of my despair. I quite believe you love me seriously, but it seems to me that your love has too little tenderness or affection — your own pleasure always remains paramount to you. So long as that remains the case, you will never have really satisfactory or profound human relations.

There is another thing: it is very difficult to fit you in with my work, because you are uncertain and upsetting. If I were to begin to count on you, I should again have to go through what I went through while you were at Blackpool10 — at least that is what I believe.

All those things make it impossible for me to do my work and yet go on caring for you as intensely as I did. This is not said as a criticism of you, but merely as a quite inevitable fact. You want incompatible things out of life, and it is unavoidable that sooner or later you should discover that they are incompatible.

I come now to another matter: Mrs Eliot.11 I am not in love with her, and I do not care whether I have a physical relation with her or not. But I am happy in talking with her and going about with her. She has a very unselfish affection for me, and but for her I don’t know how I should have lived through the unhappiness of these last months. I am intensely grateful to her, and I expect that she will be an essential part of my life for some time to come. But I don’t know yet whether that will be so.

This letter is really a last despairing appeal to you. Remember that you have hurt my pride almost intolerably, and that if things are to come right, all advances must come from you. It is unavoidable that I should pretend to an indifference that I do not feel. And I cannot bear a competition with Maurice for your odd moments — I would rather only see you when it would make you really unhappy not to see me, if there are such times. It is still possible for you to revive my love, if you think it worth while — at least I think it is. But I don’t think it can ever be again what it was before Blackpool.

B.

Notes

• 1

  [document] Document 200248.

• 2

  [envelope] Immediate. | The Lady Constance Malleson

• 3

  Marlow The Eliots rented a cottage at 31 West Street in the village of Marlow, Bucks. on 5 December 1917. BR did have some financial obligation with regard to the rental, and he contributed furniture as well. The lease was terminated on 15 November 1920.

• 4

  the Studio The name given to the place that they had rented on the ground floor at 5 Fitzroy Street, Soho. For further information on it, see BRACERS 19240, n.9.

• 5

  Maurice Maurice Elvey (1887–1967), film director. For further information on him, see BRACERS 19056, n.5.

• 6

  “heart’s comrade” For a history of its use see BRACERS 19145, n.12.

• 7

  Brotherhood Church BR and Colette attended a meeting on 28 July 1917 at the church in Southgate Road, Hackney, organized by the London and Home Counties District to found a Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, inspired by events in Russia. It was broken up by an angry mob before the Council could be created. BR was attacked by “two drunken viragos … with their boards full of nails” (Auto. 2: 32).

• 8

  you took me away next day They had left on their planned vacation to the Welsh border country, spending the first night at the Norton Arms in Knighton, the second night at the Feathers Inn in Ludlow, Shrops., and the rest of the vacation in a house (The Avenue, owned by Mrs. Agnes Woodhouse) near Ashford Carbonel. They were together from 29 July to 17 August 1917.

• 9

  second time, you were at Ventnor If by the “second time”, BR is referring to the next time he was prevented from speaking at the Brotherhood Church, the date was 7 October 1917. In her letter of 5 October 1917 (BRACERS 113073), Colette writes: “I’ll be away until Tuesday. Miles will have my address.” There is no mention of where she was going or why. BR did not write to her while she was away, and as she says, there was no letter waiting for her when she returned.

• 10

  Blackpool Part of the movie Hindle Wakes was shot in and near Blackpool in September 1917. BR became very jealous of Colette’s relationship with her director, Maurice Elvey, and this jealousy caused a serious rift with her.

• 11

  Mrs Eliot Vivienne Eliot (1888–1947), the wife of poet T.S. Eliot. For information on her, see BRACERS 19062, n.5.

• a

  why, followed by a deleted &