BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [7 MAY 1911]
BRACERS 17125. ALS. Morrell papers #56, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.
In the train1^, 2
Sunday aftn.

My Beloved

I cannot ever tell you how very perfect these days have been. I feel so filled with you that as yet there is no pain of being away from you. And in parting I felt such a perfect union that it hardly seemed as if the parting mattered. Every moment things grew more divine — Dearest heart, I am so glad when you say things to me. All your thoughts and feelings are full of beauty and delicacy. I love your delight in lovely things. And most of all I love you when you are most serious. All our talks were wonderful, and I loved reading poetry with you. It is so good when there is time for talks and reading. There is so much besides passion in my love for you — it is as deep as life itself. You have a strange largeness of soul, and a power of giving it to others. It is chiefly that that gives me confidence in the future — you seem able to make P. and me accept each other in a way one would have thought impossible. I thoroughly know your affection for him, and tho’ it stands in my way, it is only in my weaker moments that I wish it to diminish. (I can’t say the same of his affection for you; I should be glad if that lessened.) Your manner of feeling has the power to affect mine, which is by no means a matter of course. I don’t yet feel that I know anything about what the future will bring, except that it will bring a strengthening of our love, and make it have a continually deeper hold on our lives. But I am sure you will get the best that I am capable of — that whatever patience and generosity is in my nature, you will elicit it. In the long run that is essential to permanence. I think a great deal about you and about your ways of feeling, and I learn a very great deal. Your personality is strangely powerful. I am instinctively masterful, and yet I always immensely prefer people whom I cannot master. I think it not unlikely that I may influence you a good deal in the course of time, but chiefly by encouraging what is natural to you, never by dominating. And that is really how you influence me.

I took an early train to Hitchin and have 2½ hours here. I will write again later. Goodbye my Beloved. I can’t tell you what I feel — words won’t do it. I am yours utterly.

B.

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  [document] Document 000056. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] A circled “56”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 44 Bedford Square | London W.C. Pmk: ??.