BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, [3 SEPT. 1919]
BRACERS 19548. 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
Wednesday3

My Darling Love

Thank you for your little letter today — I read the poems by your friend4 — “The End”5 was good — it was a curious coincidence with yours. I am glad you have written another story. Will you let me see it as soon as it is typed? You haven’t told me your address in Oxford6 — please let me know it — I shall be thankful when Trojan Women is over.

Our party7 is shaking down — Madame Nicod8 is not unattractive — It is wet, so we do a tremendous lot of work.

My lovely Darling, I am aching to be with you — I want to take you in my arms and warm your heart with love —Goodbye my dearest loved one —

Your
B

• 1

  [document] Document 200535.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Constance Malleson | 6 Mecklenburgh Square | London W.C.1. Pmk: WEST LULWORTH | 3 SP | 19

• 3

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

• 4

  poems by your friend “Four Poems” by Ion Swinley, which were published in the same issue of The English Review as “The End” — the poems are on pp. 193–5. They concern being alone and one is even titled “The End”. Ion Swinley (1891–1937) was a stage actor who graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Arts four years before Colette. His obituary is in The Times, 17 Sept. 1937, p. 14. Colette’s husband, Miles, introduced her to Swinley (letter to Carrie Webster, 30 May 1933; RA3 Rec. Acq. 1620 [BRACERS 122745]).

• 5

  “The End” The title of Colette’s story published in The English Review 29 (Sept. 1919): 235–8 using the pseudonym “Christine Harte”. The character, called only “the girl”, has been reading Jean Jacques Rousseau whom BR had recommended to Colette earlier in the summer. The girl lives in a flat near the British Museum and comes to realize that she has been abandoned by her lover.

• 6

  your address in Oxford Colette was going to Oxford to act in The Trojan Women, although her telegram (BRACERS 107492), sent the next day, indicated that she was only going to Oxford for the day of 5 September and would return to London that evening.

• 7

  Our party Gathered at Newlands farm were Clifford Allen, the Nicods, and Dorothy Wrinch in addition to BR and J.E. Littlewood, who were there for the entire summer.

• 8

  Madame Nicod Thérèse Nicod, the wife of Jean Nicod (1893–1924), mathematician and logician.