BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 9 FEB. 1918
BRACERS 19287. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<London>
9 Feb. 1918.1

My dear dear Love

Your beautiful letter2 was waiting for me when I got back from N.C.F.3 Comee. — bless you for it, my Beloved — Yes, this next time can be wonderful, and will be — You ought not to be “bowed down with shame and humility”.4 There is no reason why you should be. Feelings of that sort belong to aa world of ideas that we have done with — the world where there are Sin and Punishment and all those musty horrors. I fall into those ideas when I am angry or hurt, but that is a mere relapse into tradition. I don’t feel any shadow between us now. I have learnt to accept the fact of your two natures, and to live with the one I love, and not think too much about the other — I was afraid the one I love would vanish away, but now I don’t think it will.

My heart’s Love, I long to be with you just as much as we can possibly manage during this coming time.5 Perhaps we could go to Ashford6 for a week quite soon?  I have a right now to some holiday — and we can’t go when we had planned. What do you say? — Your love is my joy and my strength — I have felt it upholding me in this time. I am so thankful all this has not come while things were gone awry between us. You have an amazing power of love; and it was monstrous of me to wish to confine it.

Goodnight my Beloved — My heart yearns to you — I long to feel your arms round me —

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200274.

• 2

  Your beautiful letter Possibly her letter of the same day (BRACERS 113126).

• 3

  N.C.F. No-Conscription Fellowship. Presumably it was a meeting of the National Committee.

• 4

  “bowed down with shame and humility” Colette’s letter with this phrase is not extant. The closest remark is a letter she wrote on the same day as this letter: “I’m so ashamed — because I’d have wished you to take into prison nothing but the pure nugget of love unalloyed” (BRACERS 113126).

• 5

  this coming time The time remaining to them before he expected to be sent to prison.

• 6

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

Textual Notes

• a

  a editorially emended from an