BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [22 APR. 1911]
BRACERS 17101. ALS. Morrell papers #36, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

In the train <to Cambridge>1^, 2
Sat. morning.

My Dearest

Here I am on my way to Cambridge, very proud of having caught a 9 o’clock train without taking a cab. I slept at More’s Garden last night, saw Dakyns, and McGegan the Sec. of the People’s Suffrage. He was urging me to get up meetings at Cambridge; also he said there was to be another Conference at the House on Tuesday. I think I shan’t go, as it seemed undesirable last time. That being so, I shan’t go to London Tuesday.

I hear the Whitehead children have German measles, and Mrs Whitehead has gone down to Lockeridge with some of them. Dakyns was very vague in his information, so that is all I know.

I gather from the papers that Philip’s agitation about small holdings has been very useful, and that the Board of Agriculture is really to be stirred up — it is very satisfactory.

When I get to Cambridge I shall find all my letters, which I didn’t have sent to Studland. They are a nuisance — except one which won’t be there yet. I shall have to make myself less busy now — hitherto I have wished to be always busy, and have made myself occupations. Now I shall try to get rid of all those that are not really important. My post is generally very funny — I get long letters from Germans in illegible handwriting, telling how they anticipated me on some point and I failed to give them due acknowledgment, and letters from Italians explaining that the Chinese mathematicians are really the most profound, and letters from Frenchmen begging me to expound some passage which is suspected by certain people of being humorous. I generally answer them sooner or later. Then I get letters from Christian Scientists, Astrologers, and Swedenborgians, claiming a close affinity between their views and mine; and then there are the cranks who regard the fourth dimension as a conclusive argument for Socialism or free love. These people are harder to deal with.

I read such a funny poem of Blake’s last night, the “Everlasting Gospel”, in Ideas of Good and Evil. He makes up a Christ to suit himself, very unlike the traditional Christ — in the main it is a diatribe against chastity and humility, which are two of his bugbears. It is doggerel, and only interesting because it is Blake.

John Woolman, as I think back about him, pleases me less than formerly. He was not austere himself, because he had few of the impulses which austerity controls, but I should have to be incredibly austere to be like him. Austerity has been a passion with me, but just now, strange as it may seem, it has lost its attractiveness. I was very very much interested in what you told me about your having starved yourself — I did so well understand it, and feel such a kinship with it. While you were telling me I was wondering why I had never done the same, and realizing that it was because I always had work as the proper outlet for all such feelings. But if I had not had work, I think I should have done the same. I have often wondered what would have become of me if I had been a girl, and have generally concluded that I should have committed suicide. But your difficulties show how much harder it is for a girl. My people were extraordinarily incompetent about education — I got a very good education, but it was chiefly by my own exertions. I didn’t go to school, but had tutors till I was 16, and then they sent me to an army crammer’s, of all places. He was a most worthy man, and hired a very good mathematician to teach me, so that part was all right. But the other youths (all older than me) were quite disgusting — very vicious, and stupid beyond belief, and entirely occupied in boasting of their misdeeds, which struck them as splendidly manly. After a year and a half of this, I made a private arrangement with the hired mathematician, and left the crammer. By that time I had got a scholarship at Trinity, which was my first real chance of comparing myself with other people intellectually. But that was 10 months before I went to Cambridge.

The country is looking lovely this morning — all the green must have come on at Studland. It is a lovely place — and I have rather the feeling that I should like never to go there again. At any rate I wouldn’t go there without you for anything — it would blur the memories that I wish to keep clear.

Long ago, when I was happy with Alys, I said to myself that this was the happiest moment of my life, and that the future could only be a descent. I was wrong, but as far as she was concerned I was right — there was a steady gradual diminution, ending in sudden realization that it was all over. The reason was because happiness with her depended on forgetting various things which I couldn’t forget permanently. Permanent happiness must not leave out anything. And that is why, now, even when I am happiest, I do not feel that the future has nothing better — I feel that everything that happens, whether happiness or sorrow, will deepen the bond between us, and make our happiness in each other greater. That is because there is nothing to forget. When I look upon you coldly and critically (N.B. which I am quite capable of doing), my reason admires you just as much as my feelings do at ordinary times. And so my feelings come back refreshed by their visit to reason as by a cold plunge on a hot day.

Now Darling I must stop this long rambling letter. I could go on for ever about everything and nothing. It seems hopeless to try to speak of what is in my heart — it has gone beyond words. Goodbye, my life, my joy, my Ottoline. Your

B.

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