BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, 5 NOV. 1911
BRACERS 17332. Morrell papers #245, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

<Cambridge>
Sunday Nov. 5. 1911. 6 p.m.1^, 2

My Darling Love

I have now at last finished all my proofs — shilling shocker, mathcs., and Hungarian-French — so I have a mind at peace. I shall now be in the painful position of having to go on reading Bergson! I have not quite forgotten you even in the delirious excitement of searching for wrong commas. Your letter this morning was a great joy. I won’t say it is kind of you to do my furnishing but I will say it gives me a very great deal of delight to think I shall have things you have chosen. As for the sofas, have the one you think would suit you best from the point of view of comfort and beauty combined. I am very well off — as I told you, my balance is huge. And very soon I shall have £50 for my S.S., pure extra. So except from the point of view of duty, there is no need to economize.

Charlie Sanger turned up this morning — we talked about Miss Malecka and a host of things. Then we went on to Moore’s rooms, where we found Ainsworth and Wolfe. Ainsworth is Moore’s closest friend — they lived together in Edinburgh; then Ainsworth got into the Education Office and they went to live at Richmond and Ainsworth incidentally married one of Moore’s sisters. I hadn’t seen him for ever so long, but I think he is rather nice. We argued about Germany — Sanger loves the Germans and hates the French, and thinks we ought to be friends with Germany rather than France and Russia. I don’t take that view — but it is a dreary topic and it was a waste of time talking about it. — It was a heavenly day, and I went a walk by myself, which I enjoyed — it gave me a chance to think of you uninterruptedly. Then I went to pay a duty call on the Sorleys — I had called before without finding them, and they wrote to say they were in Sundays. Sorley (who succeeded Sidgwick as Professor) is dull, Scotch, stupid and conventional; his wife seems somewhat better but not much. I found an American youth named Jones in the middle of an anecdote: “Now Wall Street is a very busy place”; Mrs Sorley “I have always understood so”. I began to think I should yell, or stand on my head, or do something desperate to improve the conversation; but I was presently rewarded by hearing all about the Sisterhood that my nun comes from. They live in the house the Sidgwicks had before going to Newnham, and Sidgwick’s study is turned into a chapel. It appears they refuse to do any ordinary religious or parish work, and devote themselves entirely to contemplation and going to lectures. They are the community of the Holy family; their Mother Superior is a sister of Mason the Vice Chancellor, and has written a book about St. Theresa. My nun is apparently the housekeeper. They wanted the parson to turn up every morning at seven to officiate, but apparently he said he couldn’t be expected to do that, seeing they wouldn’t do any parish work. — Tonight I am dining with Dickinson — he said he had some Americans coming, and invited me as a self-sacrificing altruist. After that, I suppose I shall find them agreeable.

I am half expecting Lytton some time but I don’t know if he will come.

Last night I went to Bevan’s to see his brother who is up; an interesting man, author of a very learned book on the House of Seleucus, a great traveller, educated no one knows how (at least I don’t), very tall and thin, with a hungry searching face, very correctly dressed, almost exquisitely, with correct conventional manners, but obviously really very like our Bevan. I found myself liking him very much indeed — there is some strangely appealing quality about him — rather like the youngest of Giorgione’s 3 Kings.a He is a friend of Lady Lowe and Cecil Burns and all that lot, but I don’t think he is or was a Catholic. I met him first years ago at the Murrays’ at Churt. I shall never know him well, much as I should like to. When I got back from Bevan’s, North came in and stayed nearly 2 hours. — I have at last finished Tolstoy and am reading George Trevy. The story of Lacaita and my grandparents is a very good one — George tells it a hundred times better than Desmond did.

I am afraid you must be having a trying and tiring time at Oxford. I wonder how Mrs M. will have behaved. — Dearest, I am so full of happiness all day and every day — I can’t tell you how great it is. Whatever I am doing it remains with me. Quite seriously and soberly, you are what I have dreamt of and what my soul needs. Don’t think I suppose you faultless, but if you were you would hardly have such understanding sympathy, or give one the sense of victory through struggle, which is to me so far more inspiring than the serenity of simpler natures. I rest in you with the most extraordinary feeling of security — security not of achievement but of progress — security that together we can be better than either singly. Dearest don’t think that I shall ever be exacting of your time or of anything you ought to give to others — if I ever begin to be, the least hint will stop me — tho’ of course I can’t help letting you know how important you are to me.

I long to have long talks with you about my life and how to make the best use of it. Not that I have anything clear to say, but that I want to have thought about it with you. I have a very profound sense of spiritual communion with you, but it depends upon feeling that I am living in the main as well as I can — if that feeling were sufficiently strong, the sense of spiritual communion would survive a great deal of absence. But I suppose whatever I did I should feel dissatisfied with myself — I don’t mean in a tiresome way, but only that possibilities are infinite and achievement is finite.

Dearest, Dearest, you are most infinitelyb previous to me. Everything in you and in your life adds to what you give me. And I long most passionately to give the world things worthy of you and of your love. O my heart, I love you most infinitely, most tenderly, and with all the strength of a great purpose.

Your
B

• 1

  [document] Document 000245. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “245”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 44 Bedford Square | London W.C. Pmk: CAMBRIDGE | 10.PM | NO 5 | 11

Textual Notes

• a

  3 Kings capital and italics added editorially

• b

  infinitely misspelt infinitey; cf. infinitely below