BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 6 SEPT. 1920
BRACERS 19699. AL. McMaster. SLBR 2: #339
Edited by S. Turcon and N. Griffin. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

SS Porthos1
Sp. 6. 1920

My Darling

I found four letters from you here, all written a long time ago — dear letters — thank you for them. I feel you have been very unhappy and I have been horrid — writing such scrappy letters with nothing in them. Now at last I have leisure. This last month has been a strange time. As I expected, Dora2 and I met as practically strangers, and I found that her love for me was almost extinct — at the same time I felt Russia had awakened something very good in her, and I loved her much more than I had done. After a few days during which things trembled in the balance, her love for me revived and is now greater than ever. But she has become a very adventurous person who will never settle down to be domestic — I feel she will leave me from time to time for some queer enterprise — but I do not expect that we shall ever part for good — Adjusting things, in London, in the middle of a mad rush of business, was difficult — Both there and in Paris there was an immense amount of shopping to do, and in both places I was writing my book3 on Russia. It only got finished at two yesterday morning, and at 8 in the morning we had to leave for Marseilles — We were both so tired that we lost most of our luggage, and had to spend the morning in a wild search through underground purlieus in Marseilles station, but at last we found it all — We got onto the boat more dead than alive with fatigue but I have been reviving every hour since — It is now midnight — The air is deliciously warm, the Milky Way extraordinarily bright — I feel it will be a voyage full of beauty and interest. There are a number of Chinese on board, whom I like.

Coming to an agreement about the Bolsheviks was the most difficult part of the personal adjustment, because we both felt them so fearfully important. We more or less managed it — you will see the result in the book. She did not like the Bolsheviks, but woke up to the possibilities of communism and was profoundly stirred by what could be done.

How extraordinary about Lee Abbey.4 I wish we were rich and could buy it.

My Dear, you don’t know how often my heart aches for you. Though I am happy, I feel the longing for your tenderness — your beautiful gentle ways — your dear arms that I miss.

Different loves have different qualities, and belong to different parts of my nature — they live side by side, neither lessened by the other. What there is between you and me is something which I shall not ever find elsewhere.5

It is interesting what you say about our first year’s letters6 — I undervalued you in those days. I believe I cannot love people deeply till I find they love something else better than me. When I found you valued liberty more than me, my love for you became married to pain, and then I began to feel a deeper love. The same thing has happened with Dora — when she came back from Russia, I found she cared more about creating a better world through communism than about me, and that altered the quality of my feeling for her — It is an odd trait in me, partly a morbid love of pain, partly a sense of my own littleness, partly a belief in the littleness of everything that is merely personal.

Yes, I thought of The Arrow of Gold7 in Marseilles, in spite of the mad search for luggage.

I hope you won’t hate my writing so much about Dora. I must let you know how things are. And nothing lessens my love for you, Beloved.

• 1

  [document] Document 200700.

• 2

  Dora Dora Russell, neé Black (1894–1986). She and BR were married from 1921 until 1935. For further information on her, see BRACERS 19506, n.3.

• 3

  my bookThe Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (B&R A34, 1920).

• 4

  Lee Abbey had been a private home, built in 1859, in Lynton, Devon. BR and Colette would have walked by it when they spent Christmas at the Cottage Hotel in 1918 and 1919 with Clifford Allen. The house was turned into a hotel in 1921; BR spent Christmas there in 1925 and 1926. Colette’s letter which must have mentioned the Abbey was up for sale is not extant.

• 5

  Different … elsewhere Ironic since BR was intensely jealous of her different loves.

• 6

  It is interesting what you say about our first year’s letters BR had left all her letters to him with her for safekeeping while he was away. She had been rereading them.

• 7

  The Arrow of Gold A novel by Joseph Conrad published in 1919 by T. Fisher Unwin (Russell Library 635). It is set in Marseilles. In July 1919 BR had given Colette a pin in the form of small diamond arrow which she named “Conrad”. It was purchased at S.J. Phillips Ltd. on New Bond Street; when not wearing it Colette kept it in its blue Phillips case. She gave it to her sister Mabel in 1925 and did not get it back until after Mabel’s death in June 1959 (letter to Phyllis Urch, 19 Oct. 1959).