BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [19 AUG. 1919]
BRACERS 19534. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

<West Lulworth>
<letterhead>
70, Overstrand Mansions,
Prince of Wales Road,
Battersea, S.W.1^, 2
Tuesday3

My Darling Love

Your telegram4 came this morning and I don’t know what to answer — If there is any important reason, I will arrive Friday 6.30. But if not I don’t think I ought to leave either my guests or my work. C.A.5 has made his arrangements with his lady6 so that he must travel by the early train Sat., arriving at 1.10. I should like to travel with him, both for his company and to save expense, if there is no real reason to come Friday. In any case, I won’t come late on Saturday. I will come either

Friday 6.30, or Saturday 1.10

as you choose. I do hope you will manage to avoid having a lot of things to do — I long to be with you again — and I am coming in spite of strong reasons for not coming (work, and host’s duties), so do manage to keep your time free. If you can’t, I had better put off coming till you can. — Bob Trevy7 comes down8 with me Monday, also C.A., leaving Waterloo 2.30. This can’t be changed easily.

My Darling I hate to feel you are troubled and I don’t know what about — It upsets me terribly. Please try to tell me — you don’t know how worried I am about it.

Beloved, please wire when you get this. If you say come Friday, I will come. If not, I will come Sat. 1.10, and go to my flat9 and wait for you — I won’t come late Sat. because of Allen. Don’t think me tiresome, but changing plans involves a lot of arrangements and takes up working time. And I dread getting to London and finding you so immersed in business that I might as well have stayed away.

My lovely Darling, my heart’s Joy, I love you and love you — I long to come Friday — so if you can, do wire again to tell me to come then — but I ought not to come then unless there is some real reason.

C.A.’s flat is shut up.10

All my heart, Darling, and all my tenderest thoughts in whatever your trouble may be —

B

• 1

  [document] Document 200521.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 6 Mecklenburgh Square | London W.C.1. Pmk: LULWORTH | 19 AU | 19

• 3

  [date] The date is taken from the envelope’s postmark.

• 4

  Your telegram Colette’s telegrams are extant from the summer of 1919. This one reads: “Could you come Friday same train as last time” (BRACERS 107487). BR did reply by telegram (BRACERS 19532).

• 5

  C.A. (Reginald) Clifford Allen (1889–1939). For information on him, see BRACERS 19046, n.7.

• 6

  his lady Presumably the German physician whom he met in a Chinese restaurant in mid-May (BRACERS 19476); she is mentioned again in BR’s letter of 1 June 1919 (BRACERS 19487), and she did go to Newlands Farm, Lulworth, in the summer of 1919. Nothing came of this relationship.

• 7

  Bob Trevy Robert Calverley Trevelyan (1872–1951), poet and translator, a friend of BR’s from their undergraduate time at Trinity College.

• 8

  comes down I.e., to West Lulworth.

• 9

  my flat  34 Russell Chambers, Bury Street (later renamed Bury Place), London WC1.

• 10

  C.A.’s flat is shut up. Presumably he means Allen’s flat in Overstrand Mansions, which he shared with BR.