BRACERS Record Detail for 17251
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"Sat. mg. [Either late July or August 1911.] My Darling—Your 2 dear letters came this morning—it was a joy to get them."
BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [1911]
BRACERS 17251. ALS. Morrell papers #170, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.
My Darling
Your 2 dear letters came this morning — it was a joy to get them. It is rather terrible about the neuritis. I have always understood it was slow and painful. I hope Marienbad is really the thing. Is there nothing else to be done? I wish I knew more about neuritis. I don’t really know how difficult it is to cure.
Dearest I was at least as much upset as you were the night before last. I felt an intimate disgust which was quite unimaginable for the moment, and shut out better things; that, and shame. It made me wish to be metallic and impersonal. But now I have got over it.
This morning I feel very fit, after a long sleep. I am going to bicycle a good part of the way to Marlborough, perhaps all the way. — I got my Bank Book this morning, and for the first time in my life found myself richer than I expected. It is a great economy not living with Alys.
I shall be glad, my Darling, if I can give you more confidence and make you express yourself more to other people. You really would be more useful if you did. Our Visions are extraordinarily similar — much more so than I used to suppose. But your faith is more constant. The only part of my faith that never flags at all is my love of truth — I mean really something more than love — an inability even to imagine that there is anything better worth having than truth. But all the rest — all that is less cold and more coloured — fluctuates and is sometimes dim to me, then suddenly clear. You help me amazingly to see it steadily and really believe in it. And some things I have seen through you which I never saw at all before.
Your poor cousin’s life sounds rather dreadful — it is awful to be shut away in a hot-house, and never get the cold air of reality. — It vexes me frightfully that I don’t remember meeting you at Ham. — I don’t know whether Miss Lindsay knows Italian. When the telegram came, I thought of half-a-dozen people it might be from, and finally pitched on the Fatal One. But I now learn that I was mistaken. This is of course a sad blow.
Dearest, it is quite impossible you should ever disappoint me. It is not anything accidental about you that I care for and that helps me — it is your inmost being, what is most utterly you. I, on the other hand, shall disappoint you for long times together — because the vision will sleep and be replaced by an icy intellect. But you will know it is only an interval. I believe it is because my vision is not constant that I can express it — it has so often the freshness and vividness of a new discovery, and it has so clearly in memory the state of mind it wishes to combat. — Darling I can never tell you the extraordinary solemn depth of joy that it is to me to have our love blend with my purpose, revive it, and give it substance when I almost despaired of it. To give religion to those who cannot believe in God and immortality has been for many years my deepest hope; but the fire left me, and I lost faith. Now I have a deeper, wider, calmer vision than ever before, and your faith makes mine easy. I don’t mind or feel absence when I can carry on our work. It seems then not absence, because I feel you with me. I only mind when other things come in and interrupt. — Goodbye my Beloved. I am very anxious about your eyes — your beautiful eyes, which have all the inward beauty of your soul.
B.
