BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, 26–27 AUG. 1911
BRACERS 17255. ALS. Morrell papers #174, Texas. SLBR 1: #176
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

c/o Miss Morris
Basset Manor
Checkendon, Reading1^, 2^, 3
Sunday night.
Aug. 26–7. 1911

My Beloved

I can never hope to tell you all that this time has been to me. It has been the birth of a new life — in happiness, in thought, in feeling and insight and power. My life has reached its completion in every way, through you. All that I have been blindly groping after I now possess. I had dimly imagined such a love as ours, but I had never thought I could come to know it. I know now that together we can achieve great things which we could not achieve apart. You not only fill me with your thoughts, but you give me such an incentive as I have never had — the wish to express you and to give you your use to the world. I feel no doubt of being able to accomplish it, if nothing unpredictable interferes, even if what has been written is inadequate. The whole world is changed to me — it is larger, freer, more infinite; what was obscure is clear, but there are endless horizons beyond, where as yet I see only possibilities. You spoke of your always pressing on — you will find me quite as eager and as little inclined to rest in what is done. I had always thought of happiness as apt to produce the effect you described in Oliver Strachey.4 But our happiness is just the opposite — it opens mind and heart more and more.

Julian evidently minded your going a good deal, but wouldn’t let anything appear. I stayed a little while, she showed me the Japanese house, and I took her a little way on my bicycle. She wanted Nurse to read to her, not me. Did Nurse tell you she said “Daddie’s gone and Mummie’s going — it’s a queer world.”5

Since then I have finished my chapter — 17 pages, which is my longest day’s work so far.6 I haven’t begun to miss you yet, I feel you with me so fully, and the work is almost like talking to you. I hardly believe I shan’t see you tomorrow — it has come to seem so natural to see you every day. But it won’t be long till I see you again. I do hope Marienbad will do you good. Your headaches and bad eyes have been the only thing that was not happiness — except Socrates!

My Darling, I love you with all my heart and mind and soul — every bit of me is yours, absolutely. Goodnight my heart. I wish I could close your dear eyes with kisses four.7

Your
B.

<at top:> I stay at Grosvenor Hotel in London, as I start from Victoria.

• 1

  [document] Document 000174. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] ??.

• 3

  [address] BR had taken new lodgings, not far from Henley, until 8 September. On earlier trips to London he had stayed at the Paddington Hotel; from his new location, however, he would now arrive in the city at Victoria Station and chose a new hotel convenient to it.

• 4

  Oliver Strachey Oliver Strachey, Ray Costelloe’s new husband, was not noted for a strong sense of direction. Having given up his job in India, he decided not to take another one, but to live off Ray’s money while they wrote a history of India together. Nothing came of this enterprise, though they did at length produce a joint book, Keigwin’s Rebellion (1916).

• 5

  “Daddie’s gone and Mummie’s going — it’s a queer world.” Philip was away in London; Ottoline was going to Marienbad.

• 6

  I have finished my chapter … my longest day’s work so far This was to be part of “Prisons”.

• 7

  I wish I could close your dear eyes with kisses four. Keats’s “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, stanza viii: “And there I shut her wild wild eyes / With kisses four.”