BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, 24 SEPT. [1911]
BRACERS 17274. ALS. Morrell papers #193, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

Ipsden1^, 2
Sunday night Sp. 24.

My Darling

Today has been one of the most beautiful autumn days I can remember — clear and bright after the rain, and very warm. I seized the occasion for a longer outing than usual. First I went to Reading and posted my letter to you in the main Post Office, in the hope (probably vain) that it might reach you on Tuesday. The road from here to Reading goes through endless beech-woods, which had a fresh autumn smell brought out by the rain. I couldn’t resist coming back by way of Peppard and walking through our woods. They were still there. It was very beautiful — the sun was fairly low by that time. I loved being in them again — every inch of the path has its separate association. I could almost fancy you were with me. I have been foolish not to go sooner, but I thought it would make me miss you more — but it didn’t. I saw again the place where we waited under trees during rain on one of our very early walks, after our first reading of Spinoza, and after I had got vexed with the rhododendrons. I didn’t realize where we were then, and didn’t find out till today. We must go on with Spinoza and with Plato. I want to read the Phaedo with you, and the Theaetetus when your head is well. Would you object as much to asking questions as to answering them? One learns a great deal more from reading if one is not wholly passive. If you were to read the Theaetetus to yourself, and make up questions to ask about things that seemed puzzling, you would learn a great deal more than from passive reading. My teacher’s instinct wants to exercise itself on you! But I will keep it under just as much as you wish or your head makes necessary. The first half of the Parmenides too is very interesting. The Republic, this time, disappointed me — except the cave, it was not as good as I remembered. I dislike his aristocratic authoritarian spirit, and his view that everything really good is got by ignoring the actual is less sympathetic to me than it used to be. The definition of justice seemed to me hopeless, and the whole analogy of forms of government to kinds of character and parts of human nature seemed to me to be worked out in more detail than anything so fanciful should be. You will be amused to hear that, having finished Nevinson, I have returned to Aristotle’s Ethics. He makes some very sound observations on adultery, which I am laying to heart. Otherwise, I have not yet found anything very helpful; except that one ought not to eat or drink either too much or too little. Which reminds me that Miss Lindsay thinks I eat very little! I shudder to think of the meals she must be used to.

I got home to tea, and afterwards reached the end of my Aristotelian paper, but it wants some additions in the middle. I am glad to have come to an end of it. For some days, I was horribly puzzled. There are four different distinctions involved in dealing with particulars and universals; I had considered three of them, but the fourth, which is the really important one, didn’t come out clearly for a long time. It is the distinction between things that can be in two places at once, like whiteness, and things that can’t, like you and me. The difficulty in this distinction is to make out what one means by a “place”. But I have got it all clear now and am correspondingly happier. — I had expected to have more proofs and other dissertations to do here, and be altogether more busy. But it is lucky I wasn’t busier as my Aristn. paper would have been hard to do in term-time.

Eleven days are gone now — about a third of the total. Very soon it will be half. I have only been here just over a week, yet I feel as if I had been here half my life. I have all the sense of a hermit retired from the world — like the man in the Chinese poem, “idly his official hat lies staring at the gulls”. I have not worn my official hat since I came here. By the end of this week I shall be in the giddy vortex of Cambridge — everybody will give some account of their vacation, but mine will be somewhat expurgated. Poor Whitehead is there by himself all this time, learning about astronomical instruments, which are part of the duties of his new post. It must be dull.

In spite of your prohibition, I am very much inclined to send this letter to Marienbad. If I can get to Goring in time for the early post, I think I shall. If you leave there on Wednesday it ought to reach you. But I won’t decide till the morning.

Darling I loved going back to our woods — it made me feel you so near. They were a wonderful temple for us. My Dearest, your love is infinitely precious to me — it has transformed my life utterly. Goodnight my love. I am with you every moment in my thoughts, longing to give you every good gift, and to make myself better so as to have better gifts to give. Goodbye my Ottoline.

Your
B.

Monday morning. No letter yet — no doubt there will be one by 2nd post. But I have got a beautiful packet of envelopes — many thanks — I wish each of them contained a letter from you. I will write to Prague later in the day.

B.

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  [document] Document 000193. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] ??.