BRACERS Record Detail for 17095

To access the original letter, email the Russell Archives.

Collection code
RA3
Recent acquisition no.
69
Document no.
000032
Box no.
2.53
Filed
OM scans 18_5: 22
Source if not BR
Texas, U. of, HRC
Recipient(s)
Morrell, Ottoline
Sender(s)
BR
Date
1911/04/14*
Form of letter
ALS(DX)
Pieces
2E
BR's address code (if sender)
VBC
Notes and topics

"I am terribly deficient about pictures—hardly any pictures really move me—only just a few, such as the Castelfranco Giorgione."

Transcription

BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [14 APR. 1911]
BRACERS 17095. ALS. Morrell papers #32, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell and A.G. Bone


Fernhurst1, 2
Good Friday evening.

My very Dearest

I cannot really believe that I shall be with you on Tuesday — I try to, but it seems too good, I feel something must happen. Three days with you is almost unbelievable — I feel I can make it nearly a life-time, by being alive to every moment. As the time comes nearer, I get more and more filled with happiness. I know it is hard on Alys to see it, but I have been so full of gaiety these last two days that even she has been carried away and has grown almost gay too.

And it is not merely gaiety, but the kind of happiness that is aware of others and quickens sympathy. Miss Cox left us today on foot, with all her luggage on her back — I started to show her the way, and soon became aware that she wanted to speak of something. So I waited, and after a time she told me a very strange story of her perplexities — entirely creditable to her, but showing how queer the young have grown. I gave sage advice, which fitted with her own judgment — I should like to tell you more, but I believe I ought not. Love has made my heart warm to everybody, and I think they feel it. But I felt rather a humbug in speaking so sagely!

I find too that my mind works unusually well — reading over the great philosophers, as I have been doing, I seem much quicker than usual to see what they mean, where they are right and where they are wrong. Karin gets the benefit of this.

I tell you all these things so that you may know it is really true that you help me, and not merely a hope or a wish. And whatever I read seems so alive that I get fifty times as much from it as I should have before. I had almost given up reading good books, and now they have all revived again for me.

I find that from Southampton I can reach Swanage either a little before two (1.49), or at 4.13. Perhaps you will let me have a telegram or letter at Southampton to say which I am to come by. I shall leave Southampton 11.57 if I take the earlier train.

If we have this weather, we shall be able to spend long times out of doors, with poetry — though I dare say we shan’t read much of it.

Tomorrow we have Dominic Spring Rice coming, a charming Irish boy, now at Cambridge. He is one of the few really nice undergraduates at King’s. Alys always tends to collect only women, and I shall be relieved by the change.

Yes, it is wonderful how we feel the same about nature. At times I have found nothing else that seemed really to help one to bear things — and the more one needs help, the more nature seems able to give. My love of it is not at all the artist’s love. I am terribly deficient about pictures — hardly any pictures really move me — only just a few, such as the Castelfranco Giorgione. It is one of the things that make me love Shelley that he has something of what I feel about nature.

I am very sorry you have a cold — I hope it is not bad and is getting better.

My Darling, my love for you grows more strong and deep with every day that goes by. At first it was so sudden and bewildering that I just felt myself carried along by a force that was almost like something from outside, but now my love has spread over all my being, and coloured everything in my mind and heart — it is all bound up with you, work and talk and books and nature and everything — I always think what you would feel, and wish to share every moment with you.

And my reason goes with it all — I feel it all so right and so good — I can’t doubt, whatever I might imagine could be said on the other side. It is for me the end of long journeyings, the home where there is rest for all my restless wishes and aspirations and longings. I could not have believed anything could so fill all my being. I had come to think there would never be peace for me — that even if I came to love, much of me would be left outside, and would still be restless. But it is not so — everything in me loves you.

Isn’t it strange that I used not to think you beautiful? Gradually I changed, bit by bit each time I saw you; and now you seem to me divinely beautiful. But all through I have thought first of your soul, and if I had not loved that, the rest would not have moved me much. But as it is, your beauty moves me profoundly — it seems so much to express you.

Now Dearest I must go to bed. I kiss you in thought, my Ottoline, and all my soul goes out to you.

B.

  • 1

    [document] Document 000032. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

  • 2

    [envelope] A circled “32”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | Cliff End | Studland | Dorset. Pmk: FERNHURST | AM | AP 15 | 11

Permission
Everyone
Transcription Public Access
Yes
Record no.
17095
Record created
Feb 27, 1991
Record last modified
Jun 23, 2025
Created/last modified by
blackwk