BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 1 JUNE 1919
BRACERS 19487. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #327
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin

<Holmbury St. Mary>
Whitsunday 19191 ^, 2 ^, 3

My Darling

Your dear little letter4 was at Holmbury5 yesterday when Allen6 and I went for the letters — thank you for it. — C.A. has made progress with his lady,7 and is going away with her next week-end. He pretends to be rather indifferent, but is really terribly excited.

It is very beautiful down here — I do wish I had had any idea you would be at a loose end — I would not have arranged to be here. It is wretched to think of you all alone, boxed up in London this lovely weather. — I do long for you — I am very happy in my work, and in the general feeling of getting back in my place in the world, but my heart yearns to you, and keeps longing for old times again. The trouble over Mitchell8 seems to have killed something in your feeling towards me — I think what it killed was joy — Could I revive it, I wonder?

I live with great intensity in these days, chiefly in connection with my work. I could give you a great vital love, full of energy and passion, but I daren’t because I feel you want gentleness, not fire. So the swift fire is turned inward, where it hurts. 

I have written my next lecture, on Truth and Falsehood9 — very good I think! My mind has not been so fit since 1900.10 I see the world spread before me in a great map, all the outlines clear, the words for describing them springing into my thoughts as fast as I want them — I never get tired or discouraged — every night I sleep like a top, and wake up ready for new conquests. I do long for you to be triumphant too. I want to stand with you on the rim of the world,11 and look into immensity, and shout that thought and love are great and glorious. But you are sad and ill, and I cannot warm you into ecstasy. Yet if I could take you by the hand, and lead you gently to the hill-top in which I am living, I think some thrill of its splendour would course through your veins.

I have heard from Romain Rolland,12 who is back in Paris, where he went for his mother’s funeral. He is discouraged by criticism, and inclined to drop the whole project. I feel inclined to write and urge him to stick to it.

We shall be back about 12.30 Tuesday morning. I look forward to the evening. All love, my Heart’s Life.

B.

Could you manage a day in the country next Sunday?  Doa if you could.b

Notes

• 1

  [document] Document 200475.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 34 Russell Chambers | Bury Street | W.C.1. Pmk: HOLMBURY ST. MARY | DORKING | 10 AM | 9 JU | 19. This envelope does not belong with this letter.

• 3

  [Whitsunday] Whitsunday is the seventh Sunday after Easter which in 1919 was on 20 April. Thus Whitsunday fell on 1 June.

• 4

  dear little letter Not extant.

• 5

  Holmbury The home of his friends, Robert and Elizabeth Trevelyan, was located in Holmbury St. Mary, Dorking, Surrey.

• 6

  Allen (Reginald) Clifford Allen (1889–1939). For further information, see BRACERS 19046, n.7.

• 7

  with his lady Presumably the German physician whom he met in a Chinese restaurant in mid-May (BRACERS 19476); she is mentioned again c.22 May (BRACERS 19479). Nothing came of this relationship.

• 8

  Mitchell Colonel J. Mitchell of the United States Army. For information on him, see BRACERS 19366, n.3.

• 9

  my next lecture, on Truth and Falsehood For “The Analysis of Mind” lecture series; the first lecture was given on 6 May 1919 at Dr. Williams Library in London. The lecture series of eight concluded on 24 June. “Truth and Falsehood” was Lecture VI of this series but became Lecture XIII of the expanded series published as The Analysis of Mind (B&R A35).

• 10

  since 1900 [to come]

• 11

  I want to stand with you on the rim of the world This echoes his letter (BRACERS 19350) written in prison: “I want to stand with you with you at the rim of the world, and peer into the darkness beyond....”

• 12

  Romain Rolland (1866–1944), writer and pacifist. Rolland was drawing up a statement on postwar intellectual co-operation which he did go ahead with. The text is in his book, The Forerunners (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920). There are letters to BR from Rolland dated 5 and 23 June, but none of BR’s replies at the time (BRACERS 79679 and 79682). BR suggested a replacement for paragraph 3 of the Declaration of the Independence of the Mind, but it was not accepted (App. II in Papers 15).

Textual Notes

• a

  Do Underlined three times.

• b

  Could you … if you could. written in top right corner of first page