BRACERS Record Detail for 17171
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"Thursday evg.
My Darling
I have just told Dickinson that Alys is probably going to live with Logan, though we remain perfectly good friends. He naturally received the information in silence. I don't think I need tell any one else. It is unpleasant, and he will tell other people. Most people here will think it very sensible. By the way, I meant to say that I feel sure Alys doesn't know of your visit here. She would have told the Whiteheads, and they certainly don't know of your visit to Carlyle Square. They constitute her "evidence" I am sure; she knows nothing else, or she would have told the Whiteheads and they would have told me. I meant to have said this, because it would be unpleasant if she knew anything in detail, and I am sure she doesn't."
BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [1 JUNE 1911]
BRACERS 17171. ALS. Morrell papers #97, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.
<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.1, 2
Thursday evg.
My Darling
I have just told Dickinson that Alys is probably going to live with Logan, tho’ we remain perfectly good friends. He naturally received the information in silence. I don’t think I need tell any one else. It is unpleasant, and he will tell other people. Most people here will think it very sensible. By the way, I meant to say that I feel sure Alys doesn’t know of your visit here. She would have told the Whiteheads, and they certainly don’t know of it. The only things she knows are Studland, my visits to Bedford Square, and your visit to Carlyle Square. They constitute her “evidence” I am sure; she knows nothing else, or she would have told the Whiteheads and they would have told me. I meant to have said this, because it would be unpleasant if she knew anything in detail, and I am sure she doesn’t.
The Royal Society invites me to bring “a lady” to their show on June 15. What a pity I can’t bring you! I shan’t go.
I am anxious to know about next Wednesday. If it is all right, I can come as early as you can have me, and stay as late Thursday. I didn’t dare to look round much yesterday as I drove off for fear of my driver, who was already in a very bad temper. — I have finished the Idiot. The idea is very good, and I thought the book splendid up to the time when Nastasia refuses to marry him, but after that it seemed to grow chaotic, and then was too much of other people and too little of him. Also the people are all so amazingly désoeuvrés and uncontrolled and mad. But the Idiot himself is wonderful.
I am reading G.E. Moore’s lectures on Metaphysics to working men (typewritten); they don’t seem to me nearly as good as they ought to be. I think Moore’s intellect is not so good as it was, which is disappointing.
Darling, I wish I were with you. I long to share everything — Life is short, and so much of it has been wasted already. I try to think there will be many many years ahead — but so long as we both have our work utterly separate, it makes a separation in what is important. I will associate you with my work, somehow, in time — even if it means altering the nature of my work. I have done all I ever intended to do in the way of mathematics — when the publication of this big book is finished, I should in any case do no more in that line. I meant anyhow to take to philosophy, and in that I can associate you to a great extent, if you are mostly in the country. It is important to do so — it will make my work much better. Most of what I want to write in philosophy will be more or less popular, and I can work in the sort of things we have talked about. I have never before felt anything in my life as important as my work — now I feel our love is more important than anything. That is partly because I have finished the most difficult and serious piece of work I shall ever have had to do. If I died tomorrow, other people could manage the printing. Until that was done, I was oppressed by the sense of its importance, and by the feeling that I must finish it — it has been for many years a constant weight on my mind. Now that weight is off it, and it makes an enormous difference. I am reading Carlyle’s letters at the time he was writing the French Revolution, and I know so well all the feelings of oppression he complains of. But this book has been a bigger job than that, from the point of view of the work it has cost.
Darling I must stop — It is very difficult leaving you, and I must manage to make the things I do away from you have some reference to you. I shall manage it in time. You shall ask me for essays on matters that interest you and that you think I could write on — that might be an excellent plan.
Goodbye my life and my joy. I love you more wholly and deeply every day.
Your
B.
