BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [27 DEC. 1911]
BRACERS 17388. ALS. Morrell papers #299, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.1^, 2

I must go on writing — it is impossible to do anything else.3 I can already see better how it is. You do not believe that reasoning is a method of arriving at truth; I do. That is the root of the matter. Reduced to that, it does not much matter. You are wrong in thinking it will crop up worse and worse as time goes on; hitherto I have never said the worst, and so it kept on growing. Things unsaid are poisonous in my mind. When once I have grasped fully how your beliefs are compatible with truthfulness I shall hardly wish them changed. But what I have done still makes me profoundly unhappy. I fear I have hurt you so deeply that you will always fear me. And I fear too that I have prevented you from trusting me again. You will not dare again I fear to seek sympathy with me when you are unhappy. You will live the rest of your life lonely, like the past. Yet I have it in me to give you sympathy and comradeship even in the things we don’t agree about. And I should cease to hurt you as I understand better. It is love makes me hurt you and when I love most I feel most need to hurt you — I don’t know why. That is maladif and will cease. Do you remember in very early days I said I would give you the cold steel and you would know the fire of passion in which it had been tempered. Something like what happened today was then in my mind. When I am violent I am not immovable — things which are immovable in me are more quiet. You know that I have to contend against years of habit and the whole tendency of my work to understand your way of reading your beliefs. I don’t know what made me break out today. I think it was the pain of longing to agree with you completely, which is very intense and greatest when I feel nearest to you.

It made me miserable to see you so unhappy and to know I could never give you the real inward agreement, such as Mother Julian gave you. I don’t believe it is possible for a human being to love more than I do. I am not nearly as much to you as I wish to be, and the pain of realizing it sometimes gives me a kind of frenzy. But I will learn patience — I will woo you afresh from the beginning — I will make you forget — I will be gentle — I can be gentle — O Darling you don’t know how I long for you to have the love you should have. You have not yet the love you should have because in important things we disagree and because I have not enough freedom of sympathy and imagination to throw off professional habits. But there is one thing — I don’t want you to think things because I do — I only wished you to hold all your opinions with the feeling they might be mistaken, and ought to be open to examination. In that way I was afraid for a moment you misjudged me.

Forgive me. I hate violence even when I am violent, and most when it is towards you. Don’t shrink from me and think I may hurt you at any moment. Goodbye Goodbye. You cannot believe the depth of my devotion. It rules my life. O do not fear me.

Your
B

• 1

  [document] Document 000299. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “299”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | Black Hall | Oxford. Pmk: LEIGH HILL | 27 DEC 11 | MARLBOROUGH

• 3

  I must go on writing — it is impossible to do anything else. The next four paragraphs [i.e., the present letter, #299] are written on a separate sheet of notepaper that was found apart from letter #300, BRACERS 17389). No. 183 in SLBR presents#299 as a continuation of #300.  [Note extracted from SLBR and modified by K.B.] Yet each document has its own envelope numbered accordingly.