BR TO CONSTANCE MALLESON, 3 DEC. 1920
BRACERS 19714. ALS. McMaster
Edited by S. Turcon. Reviewed by K. Blackwell

Peking,1
Dec. 3, 1920.

My Beloved

I have been reading over the typed letters you sent me — they make you so vivid and real to me. My Heart’s Comrade,2 I love you unalterably and for ever — nothing that happens to me can make me cease to feel that you are nearer to me in spirit than any other human being. I keep thinking and thinking of you — times when we have been in the country together come up in pictures — Now it is almost exactly 4 years since our first Merrow Down day.3 I get terribly home-sick for English country — and I long to walk hand in hand with you with autumn dews and then the stars. I am terribly busy here and have hardly any time for reading over the typed letters4 but I will read them carefully during the next week or so. I still feel I can’t bear to have things about our love published, only the impersonal things seem to me fit to print while I am alive. I am sorry I feel like that, but I can’t help it. — The Chinese are heartless, lazy and dishonest — they leave the famine relief almost entirely to Europeans, and their Government is utterly corrupt. Most of the students are stupid and timid. I don’t really feel that what I am doing here is worth doing. The Deweys,5 who have been here over a year, are utterly discouraged.

There is ancient beauty, but it is dead. There is new intellectual life, but it is as yet very second-rate. What they need is board-school teachers, not eminent philosophers; but all their actions are governed by swank. I don’t care for most of the Europeans: they are mostly vultures feasting on the carcass.

What is happening in Ireland is quite quite terrible.6 I wish one could feel one had a “spiritual home” like Haldane.7 Since I came back from Russia I have felt more than ever lost in the world. During the war one always hoped peace would make things better, but I see now that it was only the beginning of an epoch of violence in which I don’t know how to play a part.

Darling thank you for sending me the Lee Abbey booklet.8 As the Lynton9 season draws near, I think so much about the walks there, and the rain and wind in one’s face, and the sound of gulls, and the lovely warm tea afterwards — O my dear, I do love you — I love your warm heart and your gentleness — Keep me in your thoughts, my loved one — I have great happiness in my life, but no happiness could ever dim your image or make me cease to long for your arms.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 200715.

• 2

  Heart’s Comrade For information on the use of the term, see BRACERS 19145, n.12.

• 3

  Merrow Down day For information on this day, see BRACERS 19148, n.4.

• 4

  the typed letters BR first proposed a literary book of their letters on 22 November 1919. Colette re-cast many of the letters that they had already written to one another, giving them a more literary bent, and sometimes a different date. Some of the letters survive but are not grouped together.

• 5

  The Deweys John Dewey (1859–1952), an American scholar, and his wife Alice.

• 6

  Ireland is quite quite terrible In her letter of 1 October 1920, Colette wrote: “They’re razing Ireland to the ground, killing and shooting, burning towns, destroying industries” (BRACERS 116419).

• 7

  Haldane Presumably Richard Burdon Haldane (1856–1928), politician and educationist. His “spiritual home” was Hegelianism.

• 8

  Lee Abbey booklet BR had mentioned in his letter of 6 September 1920 (BRACERS 116419) that Lee Abbey was for sale. Presumably Colette had sent him the prospectus.

• 9

  Lynton season BR had spent the previous two Christmases at the Cottage Hotel, Lynton with Colette and Clifford Allen.