BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [2 MAY 1911]
BRACERS 17117. ALS. Morrell papers #49, Texas. SLBR 1: #166
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell and A. Duncan

<letterhead>
44 Bedford Square
In the train1^, 2
Tuesday 5.33 a.m.

My Darling

You know exactly how long this letter will be, because you know how much paper I have with me.3 But I will write as small as I can. I suppose it was the combination of your fatigue and my visit to the Whiteheads that made us so solemn yesterday — but I think it is when we are solemn that I know most completely how much I love you and how deeply. I know then that in any crisis or misfortune we should be drawn closer together. I got on with Alys very well until the Boer war. I felt the Boer war so much that I could not think of anything else, and Alys was jealous of it. She was a foreigner, and in any case couldn’t understand feeling so much about anything that didn’t touch one personally. Altho’ the war was not what actually produced the rupture, it was the real cause. Ata the beginning of the war I was an imperialist more or less. In the middle of it, for other reasons, I had a sudden “conversion”, a change of heart, which brought with it a love of humanity and a horror of force, and incidentally made me a pro-Boer. Alys was puzzled, and disliked it — I remember one day when we were talking with other people she said casually that she wouldn’t like to have a child like me. I felt she was opposing what was best in me, and also that she did not care for me much, which was fine until she found she had lost me. — All this is a parenthesis to say why I am glad that we are sometimes solemn together. You and I are I suppose both fundamentally people to whom things are easily tragic, and it would be a pity if our happiness made us forget that. So many things seem possible when one is light-hearted that don’t turn out to be possible. Darling, don’t worry about my work — except the little book for the series,4 I have very little creative work that I ought to do for years to come, in fact I had been wondering how I should keep myself off writing till I had lain fallow for a bit. And one can’t worry about what may happen years ahead — As for the book for the series, I have more or less promised to go with North Whitehead alone to Lockeridge5 for a fortnight at the beginning of July — I shall get it nearly finished in that time. What remains I can do in August if you go abroad then. So that is all right. Dearest, nothing really matters so long as we do not have a crime on our consciences — that seems to me the only thing that could ever divide us — because we should feel alike about it.

When I spoke yesterday about having found out what pleased you, and then not saying it, I was thinking of all the things that make religion to me. They are very real, but it is a crime against religion to use it to make you love me, so I feel I can only talk about it when the impulse is straight and clear. Fortunately, with you, it often is. It is an unspeakable joy getting to know you better. I know now just how your face will look with different thoughts. I love it when it is very serious — but your laughter too — it is exquisitely delightful. Darling, I am filled full of a song of joy for having found you — I would not have thought the world contained you, and now I feel I have been searching for you all these years. Only at times it seemed a fruitless search and one gave up hope. I have an irritating variety of moods, but I see that you fit them all — except the hard intellectual mood, which essentially wants no one. I don’t really believe that in the long run I fit you as well as you fit me. Still, you saw a fair amount of me in an ordinary way, and you seem to have liked it. I think what you would hate about me is the insincere person whom I keep for clever people I dislike, or for companies where I don’t wish to be too real. But as long as present circumstances continue you won’t see that person — and perhaps he’ll die a natural death. I wonder whether you would dislike the person who denounces. I remember Mary Murray was so shocked because a young lady whom we knew very slightly, but who seemed quite nice, got engaged and brought her fiancé to Bagley Wood to tea, and I became persuaded he was a rank humbug — she was a methodist and he became one to please her — and I attacked him and argued and showed him up, without any intention. The engagement was broken off soon afterwards, and I am sure it would have been disastrous if it hadn’t been. Still, my conduct was questionable. How nice it must be to be insincere, and able to alter to suit. But as you say, we do change each other — but it is by bringing out the best, by giving one the courage of the good one would hardly allow to grow. Dearest it is wonderful how you do that for me — and all the asperity and bitterness I am capable of and all the tendencies to cynicism you melt and destroy.

I rather enjoyed getting up early. I got nearly 5 hours of absolutely sound sleep, and was amused to see the City really empty, not merely as it is on a Sunday. As far as I could see, there was only one other passenger at Liverpool Str. By the time my brother comes to breakfast, if he does, my day will be far advanced.

It was rather queer yesterday going with you to places where I had been in childhood, places where I remembered going on sunny days with my Grandmother. She would have liked you very much, as soon as she had got over thinking you too smart — she had a passion for dowdiness. You would have liked her, I think, because she was deeply religious and utterly unworldly. She was very full of anxious morality, and you might have felt her stuffy. Like all virtuous people of her time, she was insincere in thought when sincerity would have been shocking — she never, for instance, knew that she hated my brother. My attempts at truth always distressed her, and I soon learnt to keep them to myself. But I owe a great deal to her. Politically, she was perfectly generous and absolutely fearless; in private, she thought the only thing that mattered was a good heart, and she was genuinely utterly indifferent to all the things of the world — She opposed my marriage bitterly, and it produced a certain coolness during her last years. When she was dead I felt remorse, but on looking back I don’t think I was much to blame.

But, Dearest, the only thing I really want to write about is our love. I have not before felt nearly as much love as I did yesterday. It was partly that made me so solemn. It was so great a thing one couldn’t be otherwise than solemn. It is absorbing me more and more completely — I could almost wish I were not a mathematician because you are not. I grudge every thought I cannot share with you. I want to give myself utterly and wholly to you. But I also want to be worth giving. I feel that a lifetime is too short for all the things we have to say to each other. When we kiss, it is more joy than I can bear almost — it seems curiously little physical, but as tho’ our souls kissed. And then at moments when I look at you, you seem wonderful and great and far-away, and I can hardly believe I have dared to kiss you. Without your touch, I can almost feel as if I had dreamed it all, and we were still on formal terms. And then it comes over me that we know each other’s souls, and it seems strange and almost like a traveller’s tale.

It is strange. I rejoice almost more that you have found an occasion to give love than I do that I have received it — It would have been too terrible if your power of love had been wasted. There is so much, so much in my love that is just the love of what is beautiful and good, with no thought of any relation to Self. It is partly that makes me shy sometimes — I feel almost ashamed to ask that you should have any relation to me — it seems like asking the sun to shine for one’s own private benefit. However, mercifully you are less impartial than the sun, and do not shine also upon the just.

Now we are nearly at Cambridge and I must stop. Goodbye my heart. You are my life and my joy, and apart from you I no longer have any life that counts. I love you — but that word falls far short of what I mean. All religion and life and thought seem to meet in my love — it is all my being.

Your
B.

If you see Mrs. Whitehead, don’t treat her as very ill unless she tells you. She always tries to appear less ill than she is, and it is important she should.

• 1

  [document] Document 000049. Proofread against a colour scan of the original. Ottoline’s letterhead had only her street address and telephone number.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “49”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 44 Bedford Square | London W.C. Pmk: ??.

• 3

  You know … how much paper I have with me. It was written on Ottoline’s notepaper with her Bedford Square letterhead. There were two sheets, doubtless provided for the purpose, and BR filled them completely.

• 4

  don’t worry about my work — except the little book for the series  The Problems of Philosophy.

• 5

  Lockeridge Near Marlborough. The Whiteheads had a country cottage there. For unknown reasons, these plans were changed and BR and North went to the Malverns instead.

Textual Notes

• a

  At after deleted About