BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [6 APR. 1911]
BRACERS 17078. ALS. Morrell papers #21, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell and A.G. Bone

Fernhurst1^, 2
Thursday night

My Dearest

The day has seemed a little long, because of your letters not having begun coming yet, but I have a sense of great calm — whatever reasons there may be for foreseeing evil, I feel I can’t be bothered to foresee it. Alys has gone to London for the night, and is (I believe) seeing Mrs Whitehead. Mrs Whitehead dislikes her, but Whitehead hates her — he has never been able to stand her. She seemed to me much calmer and less unhappy — I don’t know what resolution she had come to.

Karin had done me a paper on Descartes and another on Spinoza while I was in London. She read them to me today; her mind is good, but seems to have hardly any connection with her real interests, and I believe she could give up using it without a pang. Tonight two Newnham friends of hers are here, one clever and the other nice. They all seem very young. While people are at College they are quite detached from everything that makes up ordinary life, and it makes them seem younger even than children — they cannot talk properly except about absolutely un-human things. Fortunately they have gone to bed soon after ten, and left me to you. The moment I am alone I begin to live with you, Dearest. I want gradually to tell you everything I possibly can about myself, and to hear everything about you that it doesn’t bore you to tell me. I have written for a copy of my Essays to be sent to you — only two or three pages of the one on mathematics, and “the free man’s worship”, would possibly interest you. I know you don’t quite feel as I do about religion, because you believe more than I do; but I think the difference is not important, because I want to preserve much that belongs with religion, and I care deeply about religion. I lost my belief, gradually, between the ages of 14 and 18. I had no friends at all at that time, and no one I could talk to. I minded very much when I came to disbelieve first in immortality and then in God — I was profoundly miserable, and supposed that I should never meet any one who would be congenial and whom I could talk freely to. I read Shelley, and wondered whether anybody like him still existed. Then I read Carlyle, hoping to find a religion in Sartor Resartus, but I saw that he was a rhetorician with no care for truth. Then Mill influenced me greatly, and I lived on his autobiography for a time. Then I went to College, and to my amazement found people who spoke the same language, and really responded. Whitehead, who examined for scholarships, had been struck by my work, and told people to look out for me, so I got to know many of my present friends at once. My obligations to him began at a very early date.

I wish very much that my work was less technical. I should like to be able to write things that would say more of what I feel — but hitherto I have found it very difficult. I am full of vague plans, but I don’t know what will come of them. I feel that you will help me. So much that goes into religion seems to me important, and I want somehow to make people feel what survives dogmas. Most of the people who think as I do about the dogmas seem able to live in the every-day world without windows into a greater world beyond. But to me that would be a prison. Much of what I feel is in Spinoza, but he is difficult, and very few people can get what he has to give. I do not know how to express myself so as to appeal to people, and yet I am certain there is a way, if it could be found. I tried in “the free man’s worship”, but that is only for people in great unhappiness. One wants also something for people whose vision is fading because their daily life is all prose. Politics seems to do it for Socialists, and for people with a panacea, like Crompton. But I am always pulled up by the thought: if all these people who are struggling were rich and prosperous, would they be any better than a set of stockbrokers? One wants many things besides economic reform to make a good world. In recent years I have been restless and weary and inclined to lose faith. But now I am none of these. And the more I have myself, the more I feel the need to give what I can to others. It would be the crown of joy if it could be used in that way. I see all this sounds stilted, but it is real. And besides all this, it would be such a joy if I could do work that could interest you — it is trying to have to give my best time and thought to things wholly remote. Not that I should let that feeling influence me, unless I found it possible to do so without my work being the worse for it.

Dearest, I am longing to hear from you. I don’t know your address at Studland, so this must go to London, where it may miss you. I bless you every moment of the day. I wonder if you can ever really know what your love is to me — how it fills my inmost thoughts with joy, how it makes all the common tasks of the day seem easy, and makes the world radiant with beauty. Goodbye, my Ottoline, my darling. I have kissed your picture, and so goodnight. All joy be with you, my Dearest.

Friday morning Two letters from you just come. I am very sorry you are so tired — Studland ought to do you good. I was there at Easter last year with Crompton and Sanger and Hawtrey and Bob Trevy. I will put your initials and mine in the Blake when I come, and in the little one I will mark things I like if you don’t know them all already. “I will not cease from mental strife …3 Till we have built Jerusalem on England’s green and pleasant land”. Blake did live with the vision.

Goodbye my Darling — I am with you in spirit every moment.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 000021. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “21”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 44 Bedford Square | London W.C. Pmk: HASLEMERE | 7.45.PM | AP ? | 11 | ?

• 3

  mental strife … The omitted line is “Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand”, from William Blake’s “Jerusalem”.