BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [30 JULY 1911]
BRACERS 17241. ALS. Morrell papers #161, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.1^, 2
Sunday 30th July

My Darling

Your two letters this morning were a very very great joy. I am so utterly thankful for all that you say. No, I do not now feel even the slightest shade of loss, only pure gain — it was a feeling I had at first, but it went quickly. I do feel that now there is no barrier of any sort. The difference about religion somehow seems to me unreal, because the agreement is so very real. I do agree that everything before was very incomplete compared to what we have now — I am so thankful you would not be satisfied with anything less complete. I have now no fears for the future, so long as we ourselves are concerned; and I don’t think when you feel aloof or want solitude hereafter it will produce any crisis. — My bedmaker (or rather the Help) is coming in and out and makes it very hard to write. Your letter of Friday night arrived 2 minutes after I did — it was a very great joy to get it, and so unexpected. Darling I can’t tell you the happiness it gives me that you feel as you do now — and I am sure it is solid and real, because I feel the same, and I know what gives you happiness is something very real.

I am very full of things to do here! I got proofs and typed stuff yesterday, which must be finished today; and I am going out to all meals except breakfast — lunch with the Mirrlees’s (North and Arthur Dakyns are staying there), tea with Layton (an economist) and his wife whom I have never met (she is a friend of Karin), dinner with poor Sir Roland Wilson in King’s. Yesterday I sat at home doing proofs etc. — it was too hot for calls or anything. Today it is delicious. Last night various people came to see me — Hardy, Littlewood (a young mathematician), Broad, and earlier North and Dakyns. Mya Lamb is really rather trying — he is so vainb — and when I am next him in Hall he seems vexed and interrupts when I talk to my other neighbour. Last night he told me more about Waterlow — apparently Waterlow is not making any great effort to keep his secrets except from his wife.

I don’t think Lytton matters. I can turn up by the train I meant to come by, I think — Henley 10.53 — I shouldn’t reach you till about 11.45. But if you think it unwise for me to be so early you can send a letter to 57 Gordon Square and I will come by any later train you like. But I see no reason why I shouldn’t come, seeing how much Lytton knows from Lamb. I hope he will go fairly early on Tuesday.

I haven’t thought at all about Prisons or about anything else. You see I keep all business things for these days at Cambridge, so that I am in a rush and have no time either to think or feel. I wish the days were past and I were back. But I am lost in the effort of keeping 3 books separate — the big book, the shilling shocker, and the prisons. I feel like Napoleon playing 6 games of chess and dictating to 7 secretaries all at the same time (I forget whether he ever did so). The effort of putting Prisons out of my head rather tightens me up. — Now I must go back to proofs. I wish I could shake off my jobs, but I can’t get my mind free till they are done. Dearest I do long to be back with you. When I am with you now I get so much besides absolute happiness — I get the feeling that the thoughts that come to us are the best worth thinking and that my mind is doing the very best work it is capable of.

Now I really must stop. Goodbye my dearest dearest Love. I will arrive Henley 10.53 unless you write to the contrary.

Your utterly devoted
B.

• 1

  [document] Document 000161. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] ??.

Textual Notes

• a

  My inserted

• b

  vain written over indecipherable word