BRACERS Record Detail for 17268
To access the original letter, email the Russell Archives.
"Thursday night. My Darling—Trelawney's Letters are perfectly delightful—I have neglected my work shamefully and sat up late and finished them, and now I can't go to bed because they have interested me too much."
BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, 21 SEPT. 1911
BRACERS 17268. ALS. Morrell papers #187, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.
Ipsden.1
Thursday night. Sp. 21. 1911.
My Darling
Trelawney’s letters are perfectly delightful — I have neglected my work shamefully and sat up late and finished them, and now I can’t go to bed because they have interested me too much. I love his devotion to Shelley. Strange that he had only known him a few months, yet to the very end Shelley dominated him — altho’ his life was not otherwise uneventful or empty. It is strange to think that I might have known both Trelawney and Claire — they both died after my grandfather, whom I remember well. Trelawney in spite of being a ruffian is very loveable — always generous in money and action and feeling, full of a fine courage, and stoicism in his old age — and I delight in the way he kept all his youthful revolutionary zeal to the end — such a contrast to Claire, always lamenting, turning Catholic, and rancorous against Byron. By the way I gather that in 1830 Claire offered to marry him and he refused. I think Odysseus’ sister was one obstacle. — Biographies and letters are always melancholy — the people grow old and their friends die — Trelawney makes one feel this more than most. It is dreadful to live to be old. I don’t see how people endure life when their friends are dead and their work is done — I don’t think I should. In daily life, fortunately, one forgets that people one cares for are mortal. Life is strangely terrible — it is dangerous to base it on one’s affections, and yet so difficult not to. It seems to me that as far as happiness is concerned affection is the only thing that counts — and yet that is so precarious. I am certain I shall never learn any philosophy of life that will enable me to be happy without affections, or even not to be acutely miserable. So one must take happiness while it is to be had, and forget the future. You with your God and your immortality escape the hardest things — the eternal partings, the waste, the sense of injuries which can never be repaired. How anyone can believe that a good God devised such a hell is astonishing to me. You and I are among the very most fortunate of mankind, but tho’ we are happy now, we have both suffered much in the past, and one of us at least will in all likelihood suffer more in the future than in the past. Few people would inflict so much on their worst enemy — yet God inflicts much more on most people.
Of course wisdom demands that one should rise above happiness, both one’s own and that of people one cares for. But altho’ I see this clearly, I don’t clearly see how it is to be achieved without callousness. I see it in words, but only at moments in feeling. And those are moments of very strong emotion, either happy or unhappy. If all one’s duties consisted in dealing directly with actual people, I think it would be easier, because universal love would uphold one. But altho’ universal love may show me that I ought to do my work, it won’t enable me to do it — in order to do it, I must take a genuine interest in all sorts of non-human things. In times of unhappiness, this sort of interest, which most work more or less demands, is apt to die; and it is difficult to revive it without making the heart cold. I think in actual practice one needs compromises and all sorts of things that a general philosophy of life omits. Width of interest is very important; yet there is no good life without great devotion to particular people. It is all complicated and difficult — especially in practice.
But now I must go to bed. Goodnight my Beloved. It is a comfort to write to you.
