BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [1 APR. 1911]
BRACERS 17068. ALS. Morrell papers #14, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell and A.G. Bone

Fernhurst, 
Saturday night1^, 2

My Dearest

It is dreadful to think of you ill and tired and yet having such an endless mass of things to do. I am quite aghast at their number. I don’t know how I should endure it if you were to be ill and I unable to get to you or know what was happening. But I won’t torture myself with useless fears. — While I was in London I saw no one but the Whiteheads. Here we have Dickinson for the week-end. I have a great affection for him, and he has led me to tolerate things which I used to think unforgiveable. But during the last year or so he seems to me to have deteriorated — he has the uneasy jauntiness of a man seeking pleasure in ways his conscience disapproves, and the things he says seem to me to show an occasional coarsening which disgusts me. Before, tho’ his codea was not the usual one, he lived by it, but now I feel that he doesn’t. It is very painful to me, but I suppose there is nothing to be done. When he was unhappy superficially, and not only inwardly as now, he was infinitely loveable, and in a groping ununderstanding way sympathetic. Many of the best people are on a knife-edge, and a small cause may send them down. I suppose you never met his friend Ferdinand Schiller, who dominated his life for many years. He was naturally sensitive, sympathetic, and unhappy, but he had not the strength to bear life, and became the only real and complete pessimist and cynic whom I have ever known. I wonder whether my experience has been unfortunate, but it seems to me that few people can get through life retaining their purity of soul unless they have a degree of heroism which is very rare and difficult.

Alys has agreed not to come to Cambridge again, so we shall cease to have a common life at the end of this Vacation — April 21st. She is behaving very well. I do not think she is suffering much. All the real pain was nine years ago, when I told her I no longer loved her. Since then life together has been very difficult, and I am quite certain she will be happier when she has abandoned the struggle, and I think she really knows she will. It will be a great boon to me, not only because I hardly know how to endure her, but more because she has a subtle bad influence, a weaker form of Balzac’s Cousine Bette. Do you know that book? It gives — of course in a worse form — the kind of bad quality that makes old Mrs Smith and Mrs Berenson so poisonous — and Alys and Logan have something of it. But Alys has great kindness, wherever there is no competition, and she has times of real nobility — just now nothing could be better. — I shall tell people that her rheumatism doesn’t allow her to live at Cambridge. She seems to prefer to give the reason that we can’t get on together, but except to intimate friends I don’t feel I can say that.

Dearest I long to be with you in wild open places, with the freedom of wind and sky and sea — life is so full of prisons, and I love the free spaces of the world. I have never seen you in the sort of places I love, yet I know how you would be in such places. I believe I could never really love any one whom I could not picture better there than in a room, even your room, with all its beauty.b But don’t please think I would rather see you later in the most perfect place than earlier in the most unromantic place imaginable. Wherever you are is my heaven, and imagination can do much for the rest.

I like to know all you have been doing, although it is awful to think of doing so much, and mostly such unpleasant things. One’s own parties are always trying, but yours do serve a very good purpose. Dickinson has been remarking casually that he hears all the smart people are longing to come to them. I can’t yet talk about you to other people — I shall have to learn. As yet, I dread being betrayed by something in my tone.

As soon as I got home, Karin read me a paper on Leibniz which she had done for me — a very good paper. She has given up, apparently, the Catholic practices, which I am glad of. She is a nice girl — it is a pity she is so devoid of gracefulness. I had hoped to so something to take the place of a father to her, but the separation from Alys will prevent that. I think she now has enough nice friends to counteract her mother’s influence.

Now it is nearly one, and I ought to go to bed. Goodnight, my Beloved. Take care of yourself — you are so infinitely precious. All my heart goes out to you, and I live every moment in your love.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 000014. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “14”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 44 Bedford Square | London W.C. Pmk: FERNHURST | AP 2 | 11

Textual Notes

• acode written over code <?>
• b

  even your … beauty inserted