BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [10 JAN. 1918]
BRACERS 19270. AL. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
Thursday1^, 2^, 3

Your letter has come as a thunderbolt4 I don’t know what to do or how to live —

You say I can’t love where I don’t respect — I should have said so too — perhaps I do respect you — for I certainly love you.

Colette, you have no conception of my love. You say even now that I have been a wonderful lover — only because of a wonderful love — I have known no other like it.

Colette, we must must not break with each other. Don’t you know that the deep thing in our love is indestructible, eternal — infinitely rare — Don’t you know that if we part we drag on a sort of death-in-life through the years to come, with all that is best decaying and poisoning our souls — Don’t you know that I was only exhorting you to your best, not wanting to push you away.

It seems always strange to me that you do not feel the value of our love enough to be willing to make sacrifices to preserve it — But you are young, and many other loves lie before you — I am old, and you are the end of my life of passion —

It was not a mirage — It was the truest thing in my life. The love I felt for you at the Cat and Fiddle5 and at Ashford6 is alive now, quite as strong as then.

O Colette it is no use talking and talking I just can’t bear it — I must musta have you or life is Hell.

• 1

  [document] Document 200257.

• 2

  [envelope] The envelope is torn. Miss Colette O | Royal Hote | Falmou . Written across the top is “To be called for”, apparently in BR’s hand.

• 3

  [date] Colette wrote “10 Jan. 1918.” on the letter.

• 4

  Your letter has come as a thunderbolt Her letter of 8 January 1918, written in reaction to his Sunday letter (6 Jan., BRACERS 19265), in which she finds “everything … completely hopeless” and ends with “goodbye” (BRACERS 113116). This is the first letter he wrote in reaction to her letter; in a second one (BRACERS 19269) he formulated the plan of going to Falmouth where she was staying, despite the fact that he was banned from visiting the sea-coast. He also sent her three telegrams (BRACERS 19272, 19273, 19274) that day.

• 5

  Cat and Fiddle An isolated pub on the moors near Buxton, Derbyshire where he and Colette had stayed from 14 to 17 November 1916. For further information on it, see BRACERS 19065, n.5.

• 6

  Ashford Colette and BR vacationed in a house, The Avenue, near Ashford Carbonel, Shrops. For more information on this house, see BRACERS 19217, n.4.

Textual Notes

• a

  must Underlined four times in a continuous stroke.