BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [24 MAY 1911]
BRACERS 17155. ALS. Morrell papers #82, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

<letterhead>
44 Bedford Square1^,2
King’s X.
Wed. evg.

My Dearest Dearest

It was very hard indeed to leave you today — harder than it had been since the time I left you at the B-M tube station, when we had seen the flying machine. Then too you had your lady. It makes it harder because it makes us both serious and apprehensive. There is really nothing to be apprehensive about — I feel quite sure Logan and Alys will quiet down. And thanks to Mrs Whitehead they will do nothing irrevocable meanwhile. But I hate having to think of such matters and talk of them — yet it is quite necessary if one is to do the right thing. The Milton was a relief from sordid thoughts — I find it hard to forgive people who compel one to think of small things in a small way. Spinoza [the lecture is coming now at last] is the man to teach love of mankind to people like me. He begins with two Books of pure metaphysics, in which he tries to show that everything is necessary from the nature of the universe — these two books are not to me the most interesting. Then he goes on to show in particular (in the Third Book) how human actions are necessary — he deduces all the passions in the most formal way, and seems to be merely proving that human nature is vile. But what he is really doing is teaching one not to be indignant, but to understand people instead. He takes self-preservation as the root of the passions, and shows how it leads to strife. Then he goes on at last to point out how strife would cease if people put their Self into things which all may enjoy together — things in which one person’s enjoyment does not prevent another’s. The ultimate good which he holds before people is what he calls the “intellectual love of God” — commentators quarrel as to what he means by it, but I feel I know. He thinks men as individuals are not immortal, but in so far as they love God, their love of God is something deathless, but impersonal. He is filled full with an emotion towards the universe which is at once mystical and intellectual — it must have grown up in him through the feeling of god-like calm that comes when one passes from passionate strife to an impersonal reasoned view of the matter of strife. He thinks strife the fundamental evil, and reason informed by love the cure. His mind and heart are always great — he looks at each individual thing always in the light of the whole. His life was of a piece with his teaching. If one is in danger of indignation, or of letting desire destroy one’s poise, he is just the man to think of. It is difficult digging the good out of his writings, because it is all concealed in a horrible pedantry of geometrical demonstration. Yet even that, in the end, one comes to love — it gives the sense of necessity, and it has the austere impersonal quality that he desires to get.a

There is a very great deal — perhaps the most important part — of what our love gives us, that is quite independent of what others can do. I feel that if we had to part, I should retain all my life the knowledge of what you are, and the knowledge that I have had the perfect and satisfying love which one dreamt of but never hoped to find. That would permanently enrich the world for me, like great poetry or the beauty of nature. And it would not leave me whatever my subsequent history might be. And they cannot touch our love — they can at worst touch the personal happiness of being together — they cannot touch anything else.

When I was young, I had a good deal of cruelty in my nature — it goes, I think, with an incisive habit of thought. I was aristocratic, like Nietzsche — there were important people, and unimportant people — most people bored me and I thought them contemptible. That attitude fell away from me ten years ago — and what I learnt then I have not forgotten since.

You would not have liked me in those days, unless I had loved you, in which case I should have become perhaps more what I am now — tho’ I doubt if that was possible without great unhappiness. And I don’t believe I should have cared for you in those days. It took me a long time to become simple and find out what I really valued.

You seemed to pretend I should find you dull today. But strange to say I didn’t. You are always you, and you always give me what I love. One is oddly made, because it was your affection for Philip that made my love for you really good. During that time when I kept away from you, my love changed its character. I had felt in you before the same quality, but I had not known it, and my love did not have that quality at first — now it has.

You must tell me Miss Sands’s address. The country is lovely now — all the may is out and the fields are full of buttercups. I do not feel any real anxiety about the future. By the time I come to Peppard we shall both be able to forget all this coil.

Now we are nearly at Cambridge. I must stop. I am a little anxious about your health. You will let me know what the Dr says tho’ you can hardly give him adequate data. Goodnight my Dearest Life. You hold me utterly and in all my being.

Your
B.

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  [document] Document 000082. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] A circled “82”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | chez von Anrep | 65 Boulevard Arago | Paris | France. Pmk: CAMBRIDGE |  | MY 2? | 11 | 5

Textual Notes

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