BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [1 JUNE 1911]
BRACERS 17170. ALS. Morrell papers #96, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.1^, 2
Thursday morning

My Dearest

It was nice of you to telegraph last night — it warmed my heart when I got back, and redeemed my post from its expected dullness. And your dear letter reached me by the first post this morning, which was an unexpected joy. Also your table has come and looks very nice indeed. It suits the room and gives it more character. Every other thing in the room is there merely because I happened to have it, or because Whitehead had it in his College rooms and passed it on to me — practically nothing is there because of being nice. So I have had a great deal to make me feel you with me since I got back here. — I was much delayed last night by floods at Acton, which made me later getting here. This morning I have had a good deal of business, but that is nearly finished, and I am expecting to get to work soon — first on proofs, then on my popular book. This book may give me some opportunities to make a beginning of the sort of thing I want to write. I must not be preachy, and must find themes where what I have to say comes in naturally as colouring some other discussion. The last paragraph of my essay on pragmatism seemed to me the sort of thing; only one wants more generally interesting subjects. It is odd that what one most thinks worth saying almost always has to be said indirectly, as colouring what one says about something else. — You always seem to think, when you begin to discuss, that I shall find you stupid, but what strikes me is that your taste is very exact, and that your mind is better than you think. At first I was afraid there would be a softness, and a fear of hard sharp outlines, in your intellect, but I was wrong. I don’t find any differences of intellectual taste. These remarks are the outcome of a perfectly cold scrutiny. — I have to go to lunch with Dickinson so I must stop. I will write again for your second post tomorrow.

Goodbye my Dearest Love. I am very happy and very calm. I ought to have dealt more gradually with Alys, but as it is all right I can’t mind much about it. Everything else is blotted out by your love — it fills me every moment, and now that agitations (I hope) are passed, I believe it will help me with work as well as in every other way.

I love you with all my being.

Your
B.

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  [document] Document 000096. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] The Lady Ottoline Morrell | Peppard Cottage | Henley-on-Thames. Pmk: CAMBRIDGE | 2 30. PM | JU 1 | 11. BR has written “June 1911” in the upper left corner.