BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 24 JUNE 1919
BRACERS 19490. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
70, Overstrand Mansions,
Prince of Wales Road,
Battersea, S.W.1^, 2
24 June 1919.

My Beloved

Your letter3 has come.4 I had hoped against hope that you would find a way out — I know my own mind: the only thing that really moves me to break is the feeling that your love has grown dim. Without you, life will be empty, cold and gray — I shall say farewell to passion and colour and joy — it is the end of that whole world —

I bless you, my Dear, for the wonderful beauty you brought into my life — I had not known before such heights and depths of joy as you have brought me — and they will remain in memory my most cherished treasure — It is the feeling of Deirdre5 that makes me end: I cannot bear that the glory should be dimmed — I hope for no new joy, and I renounce the search — I shall not find such a shining world as the one in which you and I lived together for a while. I have not ceased to love you, and I think I never shall —

Goodbye, my Dear, my lovely Darling — You were my heart’s Joy — and if you had wished it so, you could have been my heart’s Joy to the end of life — But your life takes you along other roads — Bless you, my Beloved. May good angels guard you —

B —

• 1

  [document] Document 200478.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 34 Russell Chambers | Bury Street | W.C.1. Not franked.

• 3

  Your letter Colette’s response to BR’s letter of 23 June (BRACERS 19489)  is extant only in a fragment included in “Letters to Bertrand Russell from Constance Malleson, 1916–1969”, ts. in RA, p. 327. “He was not to write again; any business could be done through Allen”. She then changed her mind, telegraphing him that she would travel with Clifford Allen to Lulworth where BR was spending the summer (BRACERS 113269).

• 4

  has come Not extant.

• 5

  Deirdre A legendary Irish figure  with a tragic love affair, she was written about by both J.M. Synge and W.B. Yeats, most famously in the former’s Deirdre of the Sorrows of which BR was fond in letters to Lady Ottoline Morrell in 1911.