BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [13 APR. 1911]
BRACERS 17092. ALS. Morrell papers #30, Texas. SLBR 1: #164
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell and A.G. Bone

Fernhurst1^, 2
Thursday mg.

My Dearest Dearest

Your beautiful letters have just come. I am so sorry to have troubled you so with my depression — it is gone, but it was real. I am not really ashamed of having written it out, because it is what I should have wished you to do with me, so that I was following the Golden Rule. But you may always know absolutely for certain that my depression would go if I were with you. And don’t ever fancy it could have anything to do with being disappointed in you. I could not possibly be disappointed in you. You are far far more wonderful than I knew or supposed, and I love you quite infinitely more than I did at first. You seem to think I must want you to be “clever”, but I never thought you that, if that is any comfort to you. My judgment of people’s brains has nothing to do with my liking or disliking them. On the purely intellectual side, I have scarcely any companionship, because intellectual work is not easily shared, tho’ I have the rare good fortune of sharing mine with Whitehead. But that is not what I want from you, and I am not disappointed at not getting it. My world is full of “clever” people — most of them so clever that they have seen the folly of everything I value. Serious people are not “clever” inside. If they seem so, it is only a mask. What matters is how one feels about the things that are important. And your way of feeling is much better than mine, and just what I should wish mine to be. But if I ever did feel differently, of course I should tell you, because without truth-speaking and the knowledge that there will be truth-speaking, nothing worth having can be preserved.

Yes, Dearest, we must never again let a chance go by.3 You must certainly come to see me in Cambridge. I long to be able to feel your presence in my room — the once that you were there last term is not enough to count. And I want you to know all about how I spend my life. But as a rule it will be better for me to come to London. I will see about getting a little house in Chelsea as soon as I can. But it may take some time, because it must be cheap and I won’t have it squalid.

I should like to see you with your hair in two plaits and looking very wild.4 Oh how happy we shall be when I come — I shall feel like a boy fresh from school for the holidays, and almost unable to seem sensible.

Yes it is often difficult to know the real value of one’s emotions, but chiefly when they have little value. I never had one instant’s doubt of the value of my love for you — I don’t know how or why, but from the first it was clear to me that it was great and real and deep. The reason I was sure so quickly was that without my knowledge love had been growing and growing, and suddenly it blossomed. I am very blind to feelings I don’t expect. And then at once it appeared how much more wonderful you were than I had ever known — and your answering love was so unbelievably beautiful — But in moments of depression it happens to me to think that nothing in life is as long as life.a I long for the continuity that comes with children — but that is a useless thought. Would it matter if you had a child? Altho’ I should loathe its not being ostensibly mine, still it would be on the whole a joy. — Am I to make friends with Julian? I could readily love her very much, and if I did she would probably like me. But if she talked of me to Philip, it would be enough to drive him mad; so that I think perhaps I had better not make her notice me.

Breakfast has been ready for ages, and I am not yet up. Goodbye my Dearest. Think of me as very happy, and wearing out the hours by long long walks spent in thinking of you. My loved one, I long for you. I long for complete union —

Goodbye, Goodbye.
B.

• 1

  [document] Document 000030. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “30”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | Cliff End | Studland | Dorset. Pmk: FERNHURST AM |AP 13 | 11. On the verso: WAREHAM | 2 30 AM | AP 15 | 11

• 3

  we must never again let a chance go by The chance of a meeting: Ottoline regretted that so many opportunities had already been missed.

• 4

  I should like to see you with your hair in two plaits and looking very wild. Ottoline had told him that in the country she was wearing her hair down in two plaits.

Textual Notes

• a

  long as life. Followed by the obliteration of about nine words: When I am ? old ? ?, I ? all