BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [10 JAN. 1918]
BRACERS 19269. AL. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

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

From your letter4 I gather you no longer love me — You put me in the past with Miles.5

If so, tell me definitely.

If so, my work in the world is done and I can say Goodbye to its horrors and tortures — It will be a relief in a way to give up —

But I will not give up without one more effort — Unless you relent before then, I will go to Falmouth — I have N.C.F. Comee.6 Sat. so I will arrive 7.4 Sunday morning. You must be at the station to meet me, though it is early. Remember my life depends on it — If it seems hopeless, I will come straight back — If there is hope, I will stay the night perhaps —

You would not have written as you did if you had known how I love you —

God help me — I suffer — I simply don’t know how to bear the pain.

I thought there were things in you that were less good than some other things, and that I would make you better — But if that is impossible, I want you as you are —

Or else I want death —  Perhaps that is best —

Black night surrounds me — I struggle in a lonely waste of waters, knowing I must sink soon unless you give me a helping hand —

You no longer love me — the light of the sun is gone dark — the wind can no longer speak to me of you — the stars cannot remind me of you with their steely brightness — It is all over —

O what am I to do?  Surely you can’t be quite indifferent all of a sudden — Decency, morals — all that now seems just talk — Oh I want you a — If I could, I would have come today, but I couldn’t — It is all hell — O my dear, if only you will love me again, I will never hurt you again or say cruel things — I will be gentle and kind and always full of tender love — Oh Come back to me, Colette — O don’t kill me — Be patient — the quality things had between us is not dead — the very last time we had together it was as alive as it had ever been.

Your work and my work must be separate, but we both have a life apart from work. In that we are at one. We must meet in that, and keep our work-life apart. Try once more, O please do.

• 1

  [document] Document 200256.

• 2

  [envelope] Miss Colette O’Niel | Royal Hotel | Falmouth | Cornwall. Pmk: LONDON ? | 1.15 PM | 10 JAN 18

• 3

  [date] The date is taken from the postmark.

• 4

  From your letter Her letter of 8 January 1918, written in reaction to his Sunday letter (BRACERS 19265), in which she finds “everything … completely hopeless” and ends with “goodbye” (BRACERS 113116). This is the second letter he wrote in reaction to her letter; the first is document 200257 (BRACERS 19270). He also sent her three telegrams (documents 200259, 200260, 200261; BRACERS 19271, 19273, 19274) that day. In his letter the following day (BRACERS 19275), he describes this letter as melodramatic.

• 5

  Miles Miles Malleson (1888–1969), Colette’s husband. For information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.4.

• 6

  N.C.F. Comee. The No-Conscription Fellowship National Committee; BR was Acting Chair during 1917 but had given it up by the end of year (Vellacott, Conscientious Objection, pp. 221–2).

Textual Notes

• a

  you Underlined seven times in a continuous stroke.