BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [3 APR. 1911]
BRACERS 17073. ALS. Morrell papers #17, Texas. SLBR 1: #163
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell and A.G. Bone

This is where I sleep. { More’s Garden
Cheyne Walk1 ^, 2 ^, 3
Address 17 Carlyle Square
Monday night.

My darling

It was a joy to get your letter tonight. I get so hungry for you, and I was troubled by the time at Fernhurst. The whole atmosphere jarred, and Alys was very difficult. At present she is behaving well, but I doubt whether she will permanently. I am afraid that if a serious scandal is to be avoided, it may be necessary for me to remain on terms with her. She has written to Mrs Whitehead demanding sympathy and an interview. After that has happened I shall know better what to expect, as she is likely to let out more truth than she would to me. I proposed to halve our joint income, but she refused with indignation to touch a penny of my money. This looks like trouble. Meanwhile she agrees to retire for 3 months, and I agree not to decide finally as to keeping up appearances until that time is over. Without telling me, she wrote to resign all her committees. Altogether there may be much difficulty.

As to Wednesday — I have had no opportunity yet of asking Mrs Whitehead, but before I had read your letter she was saying we could meet occasionally at Carlyle Square, but not often, because she doesn’t want her servants to know, or her son — he is very perceptive, and if he saw you he would guess at once. So I hardly like to ask her, as I know she wouldn’t wish to refuse. I think it is better to avoid places like Kensington Gardens, where we should meet all our friends. The only plan I can think of is to meet at some underground station exit, and take a cab to some out of the way place like Putney Heath where we could walk if it was fine.4 This doesn’t seem a very excellent plan, but I don’t see anything better. If possible, I ought to get away by the 6.40 from Waterloo, but I should not do so if you were free longer, as it is not imperative. If you can’t think of any better scheme, I would suggest Walham Green, which you can reach in about 15 minutes from Charing X Underground. But I should like almost any other plan better if you could think of one.

I have been thinking and thinking about what to give you, till I got as complicated as a character in Henry James. I would rather it was something we both like than something you haven’t got — also I would rather give you a small book that one could easily have with one out of doors, also I find the bindings that shopkeepers think beautiful are almost always hideous. Then I thought over all the lyrics I like. Shakspeare’s songs are sometimes absolutely perfect — especially “Hark Hark the lark”.5 But his sonnets — tho’ I almost lived on them at one time — came, in the end, to seem lacking in idealism — I felt, at last, a certain trail of the common sense that made him a successful man of business. There are exceptions, of course — especially “That time of year thou mayst in me behold”6 — still, somehow, he is too finite. Mathew Arnold, at one time, I found exactly what I wanted, and “Dover Beach” still expresses my feeling, but it does not express yours.7 And the schoolmaster and pedant in him grows tiresome at last. Finally it seemed to me that Shelley and a few things in Blake were what fitted best. Shelley has been ever since I was a boy the poet I have loved best — I seldom read him because I know him so well, but he is constantly in my thoughts. A few things in Blake are wonderful — “Tiger, Tiger”, and “the Sunflower”, and “the Garden of Love”. “The Pebble and the Clod”a is in the nature of a sermon, but it is one I need.8 Today, tho’ I foraged as long as I could, I got nothing, but I will make a beginning — only a beginning — by Wednesday. I am so glad about Deirdre9 — nothing in literature seems to me to fit so well with what I have been feeling.

I am glad about Lamb — you must be the chief barrier between him and degradation.10 I am fond of his brother, tho’ he is not commendable and often shocks me.11 But sincerity makes most things bearable.

Yes, Dearest, we do seem strangely near in thought and feeling — more so than I could have believed we could be. I have the sense that you will always understand me, tho’ I know I am difficult, because things affect me in strange ways. I believe and hope that I shall always understand you — there does seem something fundamental that makes it possible. You fill my world — I find I am constantly not hearing what is said to me because my thoughts are with you, and I can’t bring them to what is happening. Beloved, you do make me feel your love — I feel it with me every moment — I feel it keeping me to the best, making the vision live and peace grow in my soul. It has been a troubled and tortured soul — I have sought truth before all, and have been willing to let anything go to the wall rather than that — it has made me sometimes hard, sometimes reckless, but now it seems easy to makeb other good things fit with truth. O Dearest, your love is absolute happiness to me, but it is more than happiness — it purifies all my thoughts, it stills the intolerable home-sickness of the exile, it revives the worship of beauty that I set out to kill in order to endure my life. I wonder if you ever read the thing I wrote about why I love Mathematics12 — you would be able to understand all but a few sentences of it, and it would tell you how I tried to live. But mathematics is a cold and unresponsive love in the end, and it is hard to generate all one’s force from within. Now I must stop — it is nearly two o’clock. Goodbye, goodbye. Your letter was a perfect joy. O Dearest I do hunger to be with you — I could not have believed I could love so absolutely. My heart, my soul, goodbye.

B.

Notes

• 1

  [document] Document 000017. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “17”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 44 Bedford Square | W.C. Pmk: LONDON.S.W | APL 4 11A| 4. AM

• 3

  More’s Garden More’s Garden is a block of flats on the Embankment. The Murrays had a flat there and BR may have been borrowing a room from them.

• 4

  Putney Heath where we could walk if it was fine Ottoline scouted the idea of meeting at a railway station and suggested instead either his room in More’s Garden or an art gallery nearby.

• 5

  “Hark Hark the lark” Cymbeline, II.iii.

• 6

  “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” Sonnet 73.

• 7

  “Dover Beach” still expresses my feeling, but it does not express yours A reference to their religious differences. Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” is about the loss of religious faith.

• 8

  A few things in Blake are wonderful … it is one I need. “Love seeketh not itself to please” is the song of the clod, while the pebble sings: “Love seeketh only self to please, | To bind another to its delight”. All the Blake poems BR mentions are in Songs of Experience (1794).

• 9

  Deirdre J.M. Synge’s one-act play Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910), based on the tragic Celtic love story in the Ulster cycle. Both Ottoline and BR liked the play. Ottoline had told him she had just bought a copy.

• 10

  Lamb … degradation Poor Henry Lamb was still in love with Ottoline. Ottoline had assured Bertie she was going to pack him off, though she still felt obliged to help him. The situation did not change dramatically — it was a long-standing tale of mutual irritation and reconciliation.

• 11

  I am fond of his brother … shocks me. Walter lamb, formerly a classics student at Cambridge. In 1913 he became Secretary of the Royal Academy and thereby the source of much amusement in Bloomsbury. Lytton Strachey nicknamed him “The Corporal”.

• 12

  I wonder if you ever read … why I love Mathematics “The Study of Mathematics” had been recently republished in Philosophical Essays (1910). BR had sent her a copy.

Textual Notes

• a“The Pebble and … Clod” Quotation marks were added to all the poetry titles in the paragraph but “That time of year …”.
• b

  make after deleted word