BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [12 MAY 1911]
BRACERS 17134. ALS. Morrell papers #64, Texas. SLBR 1: #168
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell and A. Duncan

Trinity College1^, 2
May 12. 1911

My Darling

It seems a pity to waste all this good note-paper,3 and I can’t write to anybody else on it, so I am reduced to writing to you. I am thinking of you getting ready to go to Paris — you ought to have a very pleasant journey today. I had quite a crowd last night — Oliver Strachey,4 McTaggart, Shove,5 Lamb,6 young Birrell7 again, and a host of people. They are difficult to manage. They sit round in a vast circle and wait for me to start topics. One young man who didn’t know the rest came in to talk about Adult Suffrage business, and while I talked aside to him the rest preserved a dead silence, unable to think of anything to say without me to stir them up.

McTaggart always goes to sleep and can’t be got to speak unless one attacks him fiercely, when he suddenly becomes witty. — Karin says the only nice thing about young Birrell is his conceit — I rather think that is true. — Mrs Webb has been getting up Indian things with a view to her visit there and has become an ardent nationalist — almost as fierce as Keir Hardie.8 She really is generous-minded —

I have just been invaded by a woman I didn’t know from Sue, who turned out to be Mrs George Haven Putnam, the publisher’s wife,9 a College friend of Alys’s, whom Alys had never got me to meet, because when they were both girls Mrs Putnam denounced her for much the same things which I in the end found trying. (I heard this in a round-about way.) Mrs Putnam is staying with Frank Darwin, and was trying to find out where Alys is.

My Dearest, all this was only to fill up the time till the post came, with your dear letter. It wasn’t a “bald horrid letter” at all — it was so like you, as your letters always are. Some of the dons keep the beauty of the place fresh10 — Dickinson does, and that is one of the reasons I have liked him so much. — I am interested about the poor blind woman — what a terrible existence.11 I always wonder how people live without either happiness or work. I am glad you sent tulips to Mrs Whitehead — she has a passionate love of flowers.

It is odd to think of you in Paris. I have been remembering queer times when I have been in Paris. The first time was 1889, when I went with my enemy-friend FitzGerald12 and his people — it was the first time I had been abroad since I was two, and a great excitement. But I was tormented by shyness. The next time was in April 1894, when Alys and her people were there and I joined them on the way back from Rome — I was engaged then, and it was a time of delicious enjoyment. Then I was three months at the Embassy as honorary attaché in the autumn of the same year — my grandmother so hated my engagement that she begged me to go away for a time, in hopes that I should get over the infatuation; so she got Lord Dufferin to offer me this as a reason for going, and to please her I went, and married as soon as the time was up. I loathed that time and the Embassy and everything to do with it. It was then I made friends with Sturges, whom I met first at the Kinsellas.13 I also, oddly enough, made great friends with Mrs Berenson, and made the acquaintance of Berenson, whom I disliked; he began by telling me Alys was a snob, which tho’ true was not exactly tactful, and was rather a case of pot and kettle. — The next time of importance that I was in Paris was in 1900, when Alys and I and the Whiteheads went over for a philosophical congress. I was immensely struck by the Italian logician Peano, who in all discussions seemed better than any one else; so I read his works, which revolutionized my work, and started me on my present lines. I persuaded Whitehead to think equally well of Peano, and that was the beginning of our formal cooperation. All through the autumn of 1900 I worked like one inspired — every day new worlds opened before me, and I saw clearly things which had been in a dim mist before. Intellectually, it was the supreme time of my life, and my work since has been mainly developing what I saw in outline then. — So in the end my impressions of Paris are rather a jumble; but the strongest of them is the three months at the Embassy.

Now I must post this, my Beloved. It is a dreadful long time till next Wednesday — luckily for me I shall be so busy that I shall hardly have time to think, except in the way that I always think of you whatever I am doing. My Dearest, when we have been together I am filled so full of joy that I don’t feel your absence at first — it is only gradually that the hunger for you becomes hard to cope with. For some time, I feel your presence — I can almost imagine you are kissing me still. But what I do long for is time to share everything — books and thoughts and all — I hate having our daily lives so separate in their interests and occupations. But that can’t well be helped — and my work would always remain separate for the most part. — Goodbye my Life — I long to be with you — you are my all. Goodbye — my whole soul goes out to you.

Your
B.

• 1

  [document] Document 000064. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “64”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 44 Bedford Square | London W.C. Pmk: ??.

• 3

  note-paper The notepaper had Ottoline’s Bedford Square letterhead.

• 4

  Oliver Strachey One of Lytton’s brothers, Oliver Strachey (1874–1960) had been sent down from Oxford without a degree and had taken a job with the Indian railways. In India he got married (and divorced) and corresponded with BR about philosophy. He returned to England in 1911 and met Ray Costelloe while visiting the Russells at Fernhurst in March. They were married at Cambridge on 31 May.

• 5

  Shove Gerald Frank Shove (1887–1947), an economist. He was then a student at King’s College, taking part two of the Economics Tripos. He subsequently became a lecturer in economics at Cambridge.

• 6

  Lamb Probably C.M. Lamb, a moral sciences student at Caius College. His father was Sir Horace Lamb FRS, a Cambridge-trained mathematician, then the Professor of Mathematics at Manchester.

• 7

  Birrell Francis Frederick Locker Birrell (1889–1935), journalist and drama critic, the son of Augustine Birrell, the essayist and politician. He was a student at King’s College and became closely linked with the Bloomsbury Group.

• 8

  Keir Hardie In June 1911 the Webbs left on a world trip, spending most of their time in Asia. They did not return until May 1912. Norman Mackenzie, the editor of the Webbs’ letters, says that their travels made them more hostile to imperialism and more sympathetic to the politics of Keir Hardie’s Independent Labour Party (Letters of Sydney and Beatrice Webb, 2: 371), but BR’s letter suggests the change came slightly earlier. Keir Hardie (1856–1915), like BR, had been a staunch anti-imperialist since the Boer War. BR had broken with the Webbs’ discussion group, “The Coefficients”, on the issue in 1903.

• 9

  Mrs George Haven Putnam, the publisher’s wife Emily Smith, the Dean of Barnard College, had married G.H. Putnam, the publisher, in 1899.

• 10

  Some of the dons keep the beauty of the place fresh Ottoline, in her letter (the first of three that day), had commiserated with him about the stale Cambridge dons.

• 11

  I am interested about the poor blind woman — what a terrible existence. A childhood friend of Ottoline’s whom she had been to see. The woman lived alone and miserably, and generally was very disagreeable to visitors.

• 12

  FitzGerald Edward Arthur FitzGerald (1871–1931) was BR’s special friend at the crammer’s in Southgate where he prepared for his entrance to Cambridge. They had a serious falling out, however, apparently over Fitz’s treatment of his mother. See BR’s Autobiography, 1: 43–4, and Papers, 1: 60–1. His sister, Caroline (1866–1911), became a translator of Italian literary works. BR’s “fancy” for her occurred in 1889 when he went to Paris with the FitzGerald family. In that year, however, she married Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice.

• 13

  Sturges, whom I met first at the Kinsellas Jonathan Sturges (1864–1911), a would-be poet. Alys was curious whether Sturges was in love with Kate or Louise Kinsella. Although he failed as a poet, Sturges had some success as a translator of Maupassant. BR counted his friendship with Sturges, which lasted until Sturges died, as the one thing of permanent value that he derived from his stay in Paris (although he continued to misspell his name for some time) (Auto. 1: 87).