BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [4 JUNE 1913]
BRACERS 17933. ALS. Morrell papers #797, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell

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

My Darling

I am so sorry you have a bad headache. It is dreadful not to be able to do anything in the evening without paying for it. — Thank you so much for the photo of Ferney. The other never came and I was half afraid I should get none. I am so glad to have it. — Yes, your Bohemian strain is queer. It adds immensely — it gives a great deal of richness and understanding.

I am back at work, as pleased as a horse getting back to his stable. I am all the better for 2 days off, particularly as I slept till 10. — I am sorry I have made you feel me so far off. It is merely temporary — nothing whatever to mind, any more than if I were asleep. One gets oddly away from human things in thinking about abstractions. One’s own existence and the existence of other people fades from one’s mind entirely, and when it comes back, it comes back at first with an odd remoteness, without warmth or power to touch one — like people quarrelling in a language one doesn’t know. It is very hard to take the human race seriously in those moods — they seem just a collection of oddities. The habit of being purely contemplative, which one gets working, makes one very objective, and the fact that one is one of the human race seems trivial. I know this mood is inhuman, and of course it doesn’t survive when there is any strong call on one’s human emotions. But all concentration of purpose makes other purposes seem queer, and when that is joined to the coldly abstract kind of contemplation instead of the sympathetic living in other people’s feelings by which one usually understands, it produces for the moment a horrible isolated coldness which I can imagine you mind. But it is worthwhile — detachment is glorious and godlike, and gives breadth and wisdom and compassion to one’s emotions when they do come back. Spinoza is full of it.

Now this must be posted. Goodbye my Darling. Really my love is always with you, however it may get imprisoned. I send you many kisses and all my heart Dearest.

Your
B

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  [document] Document 000797. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] A circled “797”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | chez Madame Chartier | 3 Avenue Agassiz | Lausanne | Switzerland. Pmk: CAMBRIDGE | 3.15 PM | JUN 13