BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [4 JAN. 1918]
BRACERS 19262. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
Friday mg.1^, 2^, 3

My Beloved

I have just been seeing Allen off to Scarborough.4 He seems very much better. What a great and important figure he is in one’s world. When I am a brute, there is always a little voice inside me saying “Allen wouldn’t behave like that”. But that is too simple: I don’t think he would ever feel passionate love very strongly, and perhaps one can’t if one is perfect — if so, I don’t want to be perfect.

My Colette, the love between you and me is too deep and strong and vital to be destroyed.  It seems to me that if I didn’t see you for 10 years5 and then found myself again in your arms, the intervening time would be wiped out and I should feel real life had just begun again. It is quite useless for us to play with the idea of being merely friends — it is love that holds us together. I want to feel absolutely near you in spirit, and then to creep into your arms — without that, everything else becomes impossible.

There are 2 sides to my life, the well-regulated methodical work side, and the wild passionate side. I could have given you both, but as things are I can only give you the wild side — I give that wholly and exclusively to you. The only real problem is how much time I can allow to that without spoiling my work, and whether you can endure the fact that part of my instinct is full of rage on account of Maurice,6 and will insist on hurting you from time to time, as I did the night before last —

It is odd that you don’t understand the rage about Maurice. When I propose one night a week, you are miserable; when you propose 3, you think I ought to be quite content. Don’t you see that when I am happy with you, and long to be with you always, it is very painful to know that you insist on turning me out to make room for some one else? The thing is so simple and obvious that I can’t understand your not seeing it. You often begin to say you would like to be with me always, and then in the middle you realize that that is a lie. The result is that I have always to keep passion in check, and never quite let myself go.

But in spite of everything, we can have very wonderful times — as we did these last two nights. They will never again be as wonderful as they have been, but perhaps in any case that would have been impossible. I am afraid that to get the best that is possible now it is necessary that I should not be too self-controlled, or too anxious to avoid hurting you. If I am, unspoken thoughts make a barrier, and we drift apart — That is what had been happening lately. When I have uttered them, they don’t trouble me so much.

I want to keep in touch with what you call the “prayer” in you — the Lichtgebet.7  It is that that I really love most profoundly. I had thought it was dead, and that you were only after success and material things and a kind of happiness that I don’t much respect — But I was wrong, and knowing that I was wrong has restored the sense of nearness — Goodbye my dear Heart —

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200250.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 6 Mecklenburgh Square | W.C.1. Pmk: LONDON W.C. | 1.15 PM | 4 JAN 18

• 3

  [date] Colette wrote “4 Jan 1918” on the letter.

• 4

  seeing Allen off to Scarborough (Reginald) Clifford Allen (1889–1939). Allen had been at a nursing home at 10 Rosslyn Hill near Hampstead Heath after his release from prison because of his poor health. For further information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.7. He may have gone to Scarborough to continue his recovery.

• 5

  if I didn’t see you for 10 years Colette titled her autobiography After Ten Years which was published in 1931, after a lengthy estrangement from BR. In her reply of 5 January 1918, she writes: “all that you wrote about how you’d feel if we parted and then met again — even after ten years — is so exactly what I feel and would write you if I had your winged words” (BRACERS 113111).

• 6

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

• 7

  the Lichtgebet Prayer to the Light. A painting with that name is associated with the German Youth Movement. See the Brixton letter re Lichtgebet (BRACERS 19348, n.25.)