BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [27 APR. 1911]
BRACERS 17111. ALS. Morrell papers #44, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.1^, 2
Thursday

My Dearest Dearest

Your two wonderful letters of yesterday both came by 2nd post, as I was on my way to my lecture. I had just time to look through one hurriedly, but the other had to wait altogether till my lecture was over. Since then I have been to sit with Sedley Taylor again. So I only have time now to answer them. Unless I hear something else from you, I shall look out for you at Kings X arrival platform 11.20, and I will wait there a little while if you have not arrived when I get there. Until the time of a meeting is very near, I try to keep it out of my mind, but now I am simply longing to see you Darling — I do love you so much. Yes you are a wonderful combination of saint and lover of beauty — no one who was not both and beautiful would really completely hold me, and I never supposed all could be found together. Don’t let the beauty be swallowed up by the saintliness. You ought to be beautiful and make beauty and wear beautiful clothes. It is as right as that there should be beautiful pictures in the world. I have no power of creating beauty except to some extent in words, but I worship beauty, and I think all that is ultimately and completely good must be beautiful. You are right not to worry much about money — it is not good that your thoughts should be spoilt by sordid details. I have more physical energy than you, so that I can more easily throw off the thought — but if I couldn’t I wouldn’t let myself be oppressed but would be less economical.

I am so glad you like my writing. You give me such a world of beauty that I want to give some beauty in return. I know my love for you is full of beauty — it has strength and tenderness and sums up all the thought and feeling I have ever experienced — but I long for words and more words to make you know every bit of it and how you flood my soul and show me all the beauty of the world like sunshine after mist on a mountain-top. Blindly and gropingly I climbed to a height, and now you have shown me all that was hidden as I climbed.

I know Oliver Strachey very little, and can’t tell you his history, beyond the bare fact that he divorced his wife. I like him a good deal. — Verrall has arthritis, which causes him great pain, and gradually cripples him more and more, making his joints stiffer and movements increasingly difficult. It is expected to kill him before very long. His wife is no great comfort to him, and at present he is quite alone, as she is away and so is their daughter.

Yes, Darling, before our three days I too felt troubled often — I wondered if it had been safe to trust so quickly and completely that it was all right — I wondered at times whether there was real permanence. Now I have no doubts. I can picture us both grown old and still finding complete happiness in each other. Yes, we give ourselves very completely. Do you realize that that is very rare in people with such a lot of morals to cope with? Most moral people are careful, like Mrs Graham Wallas — and that makes a barrier when it is on one side — it means an absence of whole-heartedness which is chilling. I am not thinking of carefulness in outward ways, but of the inward care that makes complete giving impossible. No, nothing in your letter sounds “conceited or calculating”. It is plain truth, thank Heaven.

Don’t imagine I wish you to give up your religion. I don’t feel that it makes any barrier, and even if I did, it is the truth of you, and I don’t want you to distort yourself. It is you that I love, not some one else more or less like you. — The more you write about yourself, the more grateful I am.

How funny Alys should have gone with Logan. Curiosity is her strongest passion, after all. I shall be sorry if you have the bother of moving. But Guildford would be in some ways convenient for me, except that every time I travel on that line I meet hundreds of acquaintances.

Today at 4 I give Karin a lesson. This evening and every Thursday I am at home to undergraduates and others. Many of those who work hard are totally uncultivated, and I try to civilize them a little. The more civilized ones don’t come, because they don’t like meeting the others. But I really like the others better — they are sometimes good.

Now I must stop. Goodbye my Darling till tomorrow. I long for you Dearest — your lips and your arms and your dear voice — Goodbye my heart.

Your
B.

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  [document] Document 000044. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] A circled “44”.