BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 6 JULY 1919
BRACERS 19501. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 2: #329
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<West Lulworth>
Sunday night — 6 July 191

My Heart’s Comrade

Your letter2 which I got this morning touched my heart so deeply, I long to give you the sort of love that will help you. I do understand your despair about work, but I have felt helpless about it, as it made you hide away from me and refuse the love I wanted to give — Help me, Dearest, to know how I can help you — I do want to, but I don’t know what would help — I want to give you the sort of love you would value — but people’s ways of loving are so different, and difference makes understanding so difficult. When I love, I want to be with the person I love, and times of absence are a constant pain the whole time. I know that my nature makes it impossible for me, however hard I try, to go on long giving active love to a person I don’t see a great deal of and have easy sex relations with. Unless we can be a great deal completely together, things will never long be satisfactory. It is as necessary to me as other men are to you, and it is no use to try to get round it.

There will be other people here3 later on, probably from about August 9 until I leave — and now there is a suggestion on my going to America for Oct. and Nov.4 So unless we can be together now, it is put off very likely till Christmas — and by that time, if it is put off till then, all the new love will have evaporated, and it may be impossible to make a new beginning. I am not saying this to try to force you, but because I have come to know my nature, what I can manage and what I can’t, and you ought to know what is at stake.

You ask me to tell you what we have been doing. There is nothing to tell — we work in the morning, walk and bathe between lunch and tea, work again, talk or read after dinner. I have been merely existing till we could be together, listless and unsettled, finding work difficult, and rathera unhappy since I realized that you had not gone back to the plan of a month together which we had made before our troubles. I never cancelled Ashford July 12–19,5 because I had a hope we might come together again. But I would just as soon have you here if you would often come out for the day with me — only I think you would feel that rude to Littlewood6 —

Dear One, only being with you can reassure me. Till we are together, old impressions will linger. The time since I came out of prison7 has been long, and your one night here was brief — You must, please, be patient with me and understand that I have lived in hell these last months, and that I am a little wary of being tempted to unbuckle my armour, for fear of having all the pain over again. If you are kind and patient, and if we are a good deal together, the fear will fade — but it can’t fade in a moment. Don’t please think I don’t sympathize with all you feel about work — I really do — but if going on loving you is to mean long times of misery with only brief moments of happiness, you cannot wonder that I hesitate, and sometimes feel it would be better to kill feeling by a great effort. If you can come to understand what are the important things to me, I think all will be well — but I must tell you what they are, and when I do it always annoys you —

O my heart’s Life I do love you so desperately — Please understand how I feel — my life would be an empty shell without you — the core gone — but I want so much more of you than you do of me — and it makes things difficult —

My dearest Love, it is dreadful that you are in such despair — Do tell me how to make it easier for you — and try to think how you can make it easier for me —

You are so dear, my lovely Darling — the bath crystals are delicious and bring you near every time I use them — Oh I do want you so much — more than you could ever possibly understand — Bless you my Beloved — You hold my inmost heart — Goodnight my dear, my dear — I want you in my arms —

B

Yes, read Rousseau’s Confessions.b^, 8

• 1

  [document] Document 200489.

• 2

  Your letter Not extant.

• 3

  here Newlands Farm in West Lulworth, which BR was renting for the summer with J.E. Littlewood.

• 4

  going to America for Oct. and Nov. B.N. Langdon Davies had written BR suggesting the trip. See BRACERS 19502.

• 5

  Ashford July 12–19 Colette and BR had vacationed there. For information, see BRACERS 19217, n.4.

• 6

  Littlewood John Edensor Littlewood (1885–1977), mathematician.

• 7

  prison BR was in Brixton Prison from May to September 1918.

• 8

  Rousseau’s ConfessionsThe famous autobiography of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778).

Textual Notes

• a

  rather written over very

• b

  Yes, read Rousseau’s Confessions. written at top