Letter 93
BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 3 SEPT. 1918
BRACERS 19357. AL. McMaster
Previous Brixton letter, BRACERS 19356; next letter, BRACERS 18691
Edited by K. Blackwell, A. Bone, N. Griffin and S. Turcon

<Brixton Prison>1
Tuesday Sp. 3. ’18.

Tomorrow, blessed day when I see2 my Darling. How I long to see you on your pillow, with your hair all round you — lovely moments when I sit by the fire and talk to you in your bed, and behind the talk is the thought of joy to come — and you look so lovely, innocent sometimes and childlike so that my heart is wrung. And there are the times when you are sad, and in those times I love you beyond all words. O Colette, Love, I feel in my hands the feeling of your neck, so soft and lovely — half my love goes out through my hands, and they want you my soft one. I love all sorts of funny little characteristic things in you — the way you will be talking and go to sleep in the middle of a sentence quite suddenly — your way of running upstairs — your way of saying “oh Dee oh Dee” — “fudd” — all kinds of tiny things, because they are you. And Infant Samuel.3 I love you the way one loves a child as well as the way one loves a woman: that is why jealousy does not conquer. And that is the most passionate part of my love, because it is helpless and has no outlet: it wants to be protective, and it can’t be.

Our love must grow as we grow: if it became fixed at any point, you would soon have passed beyond it. I will grow towards freedom more and more. And the rough impulses will diminish steadily. And whatever new wisdom time may bring to either of us we must share, so as to grow together, not apart.

O my dearest Darling, how I shall want tomorrow to take you in my arms, to feel your lips, to hear words of love. But perhaps there will be moments when love can look out of the eyes — and you will be there, I shall see you, I shall hear your dear voice, and I shall know the love that can’t be told yet. Four weeks more — and then I shall feel your arms about me. O my Dear, O my Heart’s Comrade, I love you.

Notes

• 1

  [document] The letter was edited from the unsigned, twice-folded, single-sheet original in BR’s hand in the Malleson papers in the Russell Archives.

• 2

  when I see She would be visiting him at Brixton.

• 3

  Infant Samuel Possibly an allusion to Infant Samuel, the painting done in 1776 by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) and housed in the Tate Gallery. Another painting, called The Infant Samuel, by James Sant (1820–1916), was done in 1853 and was popularized through an engraving; its original is in the Bury Art Gallery and Museum, Lancs. Or a nickname for something else.