BRACERS Record Detail for 17211
To access the original letter, email the Russell Archives.
"Tuesday mg." "By masterly tactics I have managed so that I shan't want a cab till I get to Malvern, and shall be able to bicycle half the way there. I bade an affectionate farewell to my bedmaker. She says the gentlemen is so proud now-a-days they won't hardly speak to you. Not like they was in the old days. Now I was telling the elp 'there's the Hon. Russell, he's like the old-fashioned gentlemen he is, he will speak to you now and again'. You see she resembles Clive Bell. She and I are very good friends—she tells me her history and ailments and talks politics—she is a keen Liberal."
BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [27 JUNE 1911]
BRACERS 17211. ALS. Morrell papers #131, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.
<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.1, 2
In the train
Tuesday mg.
My Darling [I don’t mean Mrs Morrell]
It was a great and unexpected joy getting your letter this morning, as I feared you would have written to Haslemere. What you tell me about Mrs Morrell is very serious, and I am trying to worry about it, but so far I have only succeeded in being amused. I think you ought on the spot to have told her how severely you had written to Lytton telling him to recollect himself. Shall I write to him telling him to appear dying of love — doing his best to conceal his grief, but also unable to do so? Are you sure you got no other letter from Cambridge? “Dear Lady Ottoline” would be much more unmistakably not for Mrs Morrell — the others beginning … she might feel “one never knows”. I certainly think Lytton should be asked to display an interesting melancholy — he would enjoy it.
By masterly tactics I have managed so that I shan’t want a cab till I get to Malvern, and shall be able to bicycle half the way there. I bade an affectionate farewell to my bedmaker. She says the gentlemen is so proud now-a-days they won’t hardly speak to you — not like they was in the old days. Now I was telling the elp “there’s the Hon Russell, he’s like the old fashioned gentlemen he is, he will speak to you now and again”. You see she resembles Clive Bell. She and I are very good friends — she tells me her history and ailments and talks politics — she is a keen Liberal.
I am glad you are back at Peppard. I dare say Broughton would make a very good hermitage. I don’t any longer feel selfish in longing for you to be as much as possible out of London, because I see how London knocks you about. Why do people wear out your nerves so badly? I feel as if that ought to be curable by taking them differently — accepting their limitations and shortcomings as inevitable, as they mostly are, and only trying to get the best out of them along the lines that are natural to them. But I think very likely the great good effect you have on people would be less if you accepted their limitations more, so I don’t want to see any change except for the sake of your nervous strength.
I feel I shall get on very well with my work at Malvern. I have got into the right vein, and can write easily. Only as I have to keep off religion and morals I can’t write anything that would interest you much and this worries me. Writing is curiously instinctive — one can’t write for anyone else. I am very fit. In spite of all agitations, my nerves have been more rested lately than any time these last 10 years. I wish yours could get rested too.
I hope you will get on well with Goldie. He is infinitely loveable. But he has a suspicion of all women — feels he can’t understand them — so women don’t get as much good out of him as men do. He is very fond of Melian Stawell.
I am very sorry indeed your eyes are hurting you. If you are in London Wed. I am there free from 2.30 to 5.30. I will sleep Wed. at G.W. Hotel, Paddington, so write there if we don’t meet. I shall call at More’s Garden 2.40 for letters. If you come up you might wire to More’s Garden.
Goodbye my dearest Heart. I am longing for you. I shall come if you will let me by 8.40 from Paddington Thursday and bicycle up to Peppard — I hope you are not too much worried about Mrs Morrell, and that you are getting rested. Yes your Lady is very erratic. Dearest it will be divine being with you again in the country — all my thoughts are directed to that time. Last night for the first time I dreamt about you. We were walking together and I was very happy, but on looking again I saw for the first time that your face was small and insignificant with a little snub nose. I thought it odd I hadn’t noticed it before, but I told myself it is only the heart that matters. Now we are arriving and I must stop.
Your loving
Lytton.3
