BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [31 JULY 1911]
BRACERS 17243. ALS. Morrell papers #163, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

<letterhead>1
Peppard Cottage
Henley-on-Thames2^, 3
Monday afternoon.

My Darling

It wasn’t at all a dull letter — nothing like the letter I wrote yesterday morning, which really was dull. I am sorry about Julian. I suppose it is the heat, and I hope she is getting better. — Yes, I too have the most extraordinary sense of nearness to you since our last days. I no longer have the sense of reaching out to you across a chasm. Certainly the change is very important. I am so thankful you can speak to me of religious things. You know that I should always have the most absolute respect for your thoughts and feelings on religion. Some of your thoughts I can’t share, but I can share all your feelings. — I haven’t had much time to think about Prisons. But now, this afternoon, I have time, and I shall think in the train. I think there is already enough material for a book, and it is clear it ought to be a book. I have got to think about each separate part and how to expand it. Of course theoretically it ought to be an imaginary biography like Sartor, but I have no skill in that sort of thing and must not attempt it. It is a pity; it would gain by some imaginative setting.

Yesterday I lunched with the Mirrlees’s, which I enjoyed. Mrs M. is very nice. Arthur Dakyns is falling in love with the clever daughter. She might make him happy — she is vain, and has a terribly harsh voice, but essentially she is nice, and will improve.

Then I walked out to a remote region to call on Layton, an economist, Treasurer of the Cambridge People’s Suffrage Fedn. (of which I am Sec.). His wife, who is a friend of Karin’s, seemed pleasant. But it was not an exciting occasion. In the evening I dined with Sir Rowland Wilson. He is 70, lives at Richmond, is a Unitarian and a friend of my people. Very good and very mild. I find to my surprise that he is the elder brother of the First Sea Lord. The usual King’s people were there, except my special friends. In the interstices I corrected proofs and typed stuff, and began a chapter of the shilling shocker, on the nature of truth, which I finished today and took to be typed. I have lost interest in the shilling shocker, and am in danger of finishing it in a perfunctory fashion, which I ought not to do.

I grudge not only the time away from you but also the loss of leisure of mind for thinking about Prisons. I can’t manage that in odd moments.

This morning I went to the University Library to look up a long polemical article by a German mathematician,4 mostly against me. It ends up with a statement in italics:

For Cantorism, but against Russellism!

You must know that “Russellism” is the inevitable next step after “Cantorism” — Cantor is the man who invented the mathematical theory of infinity, which I have systematized and fitted into its place in mathematical logic. My critic is the same type of man as those who turned conservative over the budget — he is in favour of every sane innovation, but these modern reformers are so different from the great men whom our fathers followed. The gravamen of his criticism is that since these subjects are difficult it would be better to think about something else.

Now I must stop as I shall soon have to start for my train. Unless you write or telegraph to 57 Gordon Square, I shall come by the 10 o’clock reaching you about a quarter to twelve. I think Lytton knows too much to matter. I am longing to be with you again — yet I feel such complete deep inward happiness that there is no restlessness in my longing. Goodbye my Dearest Dearest. I love you with all my being.

Your
B.

• 1

  <letterhead> To the left of the letterhead Ottoline wrote “for you to use!” BR replied “I obey!”

• 2

  [document] Document 000163. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 3

  [envelope] ??.

• 4article by a German mathematician Arthur Schönflies, “Über die Stellung der Definition in der Arithmetik”, Jahresbericht der  deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung, 20 (1911): 222–55.