BRACERS Record Detail for 17082
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"I am glad Mrs. [Whitehead] thought Alys genuine."
Alys likes women better than men, invites women visitors all the time.
BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [9 APR. 1911]
BRACERS 17082. ALS. Morrell papers #24, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell and A.G. Bone
My Dearest Dearest
Yes I can come Easter Tuesday to Friday, or part of that time if you think the whole unwise. It suits me perfectly — very much better than the next week, as my lectures begin the next week. It will be too heavenly — I can hardly dare to let myself think of it. I shall hope you think the whole time possible. I am overjoyed that you no longer feel the unwisdom, which I don’t believe in, in spite of my gloom a few days ago.
I am glad Mrs W. thought Alys genuine. I had thought so until I talked with Mrs W., as you will remember. But I think, naturally enough, Alys felt desperate at first, and now is calmer. I don’t think her suffering has been very great since I told her, because the pain had really been earlier. She has not seemed to me to suffer as she did formerly. She is a puzzling person. Owing to her mother’s training partly, and partly to other causes, she likes women and can’t stand men. She is always making up huge parties of women, and will not take the trouble to have any men. I can’t attend to the business of asking visitors and so on, very well, because it takes up time and thought. The result is that I have the greatest difficulty in avoiding a perpetual crowd of protégées, who can serve no purpose but that of chorus. A student’s pursuits make it impossible almost to deal with such matters, because they require the sort of absorption that makes me forgetful and unable to think about details beforehand.
Arthur Dakyns is suffering in an acute form the common disease of young men, not knowing what to do. He has enough to live on, but his self-respect demands regular work, and he is too moody to stick to one job without the outside compulsion of its being paid. He says his self-respect has been suffering so from the sense of idleness that he has not dared to see his friends. He has been reading for the Bar, but he abhors it. I thought he might get reviewing etc. to do for some newspaper — I believe some form of journalism is the only thing for him. He spoke of Clive Bell and the Athenaeum.
I hear breakfast is nearly ready, and I am not yet up. I had three letters this morning from you, and only time just to read them, as I wanted to get this to the post. I will write later, but you won’t get it till Tuesday probably. Dearest, I hope Studland will really rest you, it is dreadful you should be so tired. Oh I am so happy — I can’t tell you how happy. It is like the beginning of the singing in the Choral Symphony after all the jarring discords — everything that has gone before is suddenly caught up and harmonized in one great simple song of gladness and love. — I haven’t had time to answer your letters except about coming to Studland. I could explain to you what it is that makes Spinoza splendid, but the actual language of him is so crabbed and strange that it is hard to find the meaning in his words — you need a translation into more familiar words.
Goodbye my Darling, my own. I am so filled with joy and with wonder at all you give me that everything else is blotted out. My Ottoline, I can never make you know it all — it is too great and too deep for any words. Goodbye.
B.
