BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 4 MAR. 1919
BRACERS 19442. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<Garsington>
4.3.19.1^, 2

My dearest Love

I can’t tell you how grateful I am for your letter3 which reached me this morning. We had lost mental intimacy, and now I feel your letter restores it. I understand from your letter much better than I did the anti-sex feeling you have; before, I could not help feeling it was personal to me. You may really trust me not to trouble you in that way again. Of course, if your present mood lasts, it means a great change in our relation, but not necessarily a loss of what is really best. Dear one, you can have comradeship from me in this time. I do feel for your loneliness — I long to pierce it and be beside you in spirit, and let you know that my thoughts to you are tender and gentle, no longer grasping and ruthless. I see how terrible your loneliness must be. O my love, trust me once more if you can. I do want to feel that there is between us a helpful love, a comradeship in all troubles — I don’t want to fight, and I hate myself when I do. The thing I hoped for, a common life, is I see, impossible. That means that my life cannot be a happy one day by day, and it has been hard for me to accept that. But I have now accepted it, and what I seek in our relation is something different from that, and much more akin to what you seek. Having made this change in my inner feeling, I no longer have any wish to interfere with your freedom. I may perhaps in time get from some one else the daily companionship that my nature craves and that you cannot give, but if that happens, it shall not interfere with what you and I have — at least, I hope not. I suffer to the very depths of my being from the loss of your passionate love — but I will not make it worse by losing also the sort of love you still can give. And I do want terribly to feel that you can speak to me of what passes inside you.

The spring has come — thrushes sing divinely in every tree, and the sun is hot. But to me the world is still cold. I am not to have rest form pain in this life, and that is a hard thing to accept. I would wish for death, but that I am held to the suffering world.

If you can spare the time, let us have a day’s walk — you must come to High Wycombe by the 9 o’clock train — not on a Sunday. I want a talk. My dear, I love you, and will make you feel that I can give you comradeship even now. Goodbye — and blessings on you for all that you have given me.

B.

I am terribly worried by what Gladys4 says of C.A.5

• 1

  [document] Document 200432.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 34 Russell Chambers | Bury Street | W.C.1. Pmk: | OXFORD

• 3

  your letter In her undated letter (BRACERS 113178) to which BR is replying, Colette writes that she has “fallen into a monastic mood”. It is possible this monastic mood may have been caused by her abortion in December. In June 1919 he asked her when she would allow him to show passionate love once again (BRACERS 19488). They resumed sex when she went to Newlands Farm at the end of June 1919.

• 4

  Gladys Gladys W. Rinder (1882–1965). For more information on her, see BRACERS 19044, n.5.

• 5

  Gladys says of C.A. Gladys Rinder had telephoned Colette to tell her that Clifford Allen had been hospitalized because he was dangerously ill. For more information on Allen, see BRACERS 19046, n.7.