BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [2 JUNE 1913]
BRACERS 17930. ALS. Morrell papers #794, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.1^, 2
17 Carlyle Square
Monday morning

My Darling Love

Both the Whiteheads are out for the moment, and I am sitting in Whitehead’s study. Today and tomorrow will be the 2 days’ holiday you wanted me to have. I am afraid my letters have somehow worried you. I don’t think really I am tired — everyone says how well I look. But my energies have been so concentrated on one task that I have not had much left over for anything else.

I am sorry Combe is so ill. I hope he has been able to see you today.

It is good for me getting away from the place where I have been working. I was dazed and stupid at the Mirrlees’s last night, hardly hearing what was said till people had gone on to the next point, and not able to feel it was all really happening.

Do tell me more about Vittoz, what he says, and what he makes you do.

I am so sorry my letters have been so disappointing. A serious effort must be a rather solitary business, and it makes one rather empty of everything else. Towards other things one grows passive, because one is so active in one direction. I long for your warmth and love, but my own initiative seems swallowed up in writing. It won’t last much longer — the fit will be nearly over soon — quite over by the time you leave Lausanne.

I wish I could have met you in Paris if J. goes home first — but those things don’t matter. All our joys and sorrows are brief and trivial compared to mankind as a whole. That sounds like a phrase, but I feel it so strongly that I can’t say what I mean otherwise.

Forgive this stupid letter —

Your
B

• 1

  [document] Document 000794. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “794”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | chez Madame Chartier | 3 Avenue Agassiz | Lausanne | Switzerland. Pmk: CHELSEA. S.W. | 1.30 PM | 2 JUNE 13