BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [10 JULY 1911]
BRACERS 17164. ALS. Morrell papers #90, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

Upper Wyche.1^, 2
Monday night.

My Darling

I have heard from Ipsden that I can have the rooms — I have taken them from July 24, which is a Monday. If I can’t come to Peppard then, I can come to Ipsden and get settled in. I am very glad the rooms are to be had. — Today we walked over to the British camp on the hills, and had the inevitable conversation — Romans, Saxons, Britons, Welsh etc. It was delicious on the hill-top. This evening after dinner we went up to the highest point of these hills — it is wonderful there in the twilight — the western view and sky are very fine. — My book is growing too difficult but I don’t know how to make it easier. It is impossible to make philosophy so that it can be understood without any trouble. I am doing my best to be simple, but tho’ I use no long words, I am afraid some thinking will be required of the reader. Tomorrow I shall embark on Plato’s Theory of Ideas, which I largely believe in. I am longing to read more Plato with you. I should love to teach you all I know in philosophy, only you would find my views very uninspiring. Most of the really interesting things in philosophy seem to me to be untrue. But it would be an immense joy to read the things I care for with you — Plato and Spinoza come first in my affections. If you can keep well and avoid headaches, we can get ever so much read, and we shall bless the goggles. (By the way, they are not really ugly a bit, whereas the pince-nez are enough to drive one wild.) I can’t tell you what a happiness and a help it will be to me if I can share my work-interests with you, even partially. I hate to have anything that plays such a large part in my time and thoughts that we do not have in common. Don’t be afraid you wouldn’t understand enough to make it worth while. The thing that can’t be acquired if one hasn’t got it is interest in the subject. But you have that, and I could soon find out how to put things so that you would understand, if you always told me when you didn’t understand. I want also to read evera so much poetry with you — and yet when I am with you I don’t want to read anything! It will take a very long life to get through it all. Perhaps if we both live to be 100 we may manage most of it. — Now I must go to bed as I am half asleep. Goodnight my Darling. I am longing for you, hungry for you. I do love you so much, my Ottoline.

Your
B.

The heat has come back and I feel tired, partly because I wrote so much yesterday. For the moment I don’t know what to go on to in my book. And as the time comes near I get so longing for you that it grows harder to concentrate my mind on work. It will be very easy to work when I can see you almost every day. It doesn’t much matter about the small town while the weather is warm, as we can sit in the woods.

Arnold Foster is coming to luncheon and we should probably all go and bathe in the afternoon — it is too hot for anything else.

Darling nothing seems worth writing except that I love you. I love you so absolutely — I do wish I was a poet or a composer or somebody who could tell you all the depth and strength of it as it ought to be told — I feel so dumb — and when I try to tell of it I fail so utterly. And when I can’t think of new words I give it up and write of other things. I suppose you do know though — only I know it is hard for you to believe it.

[{indecipherable few words} and feel {cold} when cares of the {world} {indecipherable} in ... erased] peace — You don’t know what a difficult thing it is for me to feel peace, yet with you I feel it completely. Generally I have such a reaching out after the infinite — such a blending of my own discontent with all the sorrows of the world and all the wretchedness of human life, that I feel existence itself inherently a curse, and unconsciousness the only real blessing. When I have been happiest before, that has still been my deepest feeling. I never found a happiness before that filled me — pain filled me, but happiness always seemed to omit what was really most serious. Now that is all different and when I am with you no inmost recess remains unsatisfied — it is because of some quality of infinity in your love — what you call making your love like God’s. That is what raises it so far above what I could have imagined.

O Darling I long for you —

Your
B

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  [document] Document 000090. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] A circled “88“. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | Newington House | Wallingford. Pmk: CHELSEA. S.W. | 6 PM | 20 | MAY | 19

Textual Notes

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  ever written over illegible word