BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [10 JUNE 1913]
BRACERS 17938. ALS. Morrell papers #802, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

Tuesday aftn.1^, 2

My Darling

No letter from you either here or in London, which is sad — I suppose you were too tired with seeing J. off so early. I hope you are not really bad. I can’t wait to see if there is a letter tonight, as I am dining with Ward, an official occasion, to meet the examiners for the Moral Science Tripos. Both the last years I was away — I wonder where!

I think I shall only come back here for Sat. night — as I don’t want to go on writing about theory of knowledge, there is no point in being here — in London people distract one’s thoughts — here I should go on brooding over work done.

I have begun re-reading Lane Poole on Mediaeval Thought3 — I can’t imagine how you thought it dull — to me it is fascinating. I like reading about mediaeval people because they stretch one’s imagination — just as I like talking to people in the train, because I never meet quite commonplace people elsewhere. — Think of Scotus Erigena, the Irish 9th-century Platonist — absolutely alone in a world that knew nothing of Plato and thought of him merely as a heathen — invoked to support opponents of predestination, and horrifying his orthodox allies by arguments of pure reason, which made the whole controversy shrivel. There is something infinitely interesting to me about isolated people of that sort, who are better than their age.

Ray Strachey has written asking me to dine some day so I must go. Oliver has often asked me, but it is the first sign of forgiveness from Ray. I fear Oliver has bullied her into it.

I am full of bills to pay and other end-of-term horrors. The 9th-symphony last night quite flattened me out — today I have no feelings of any kind. We must hear it together some day.

I wonder how you are and when you are coming home and how proficient you will have grown in “eliminating”.

Dearest I have been so horrid to you lately — please forgive me. Now I feel full of tenderness. Goodbye my Darling. Much love. O what joy it will be to be together again.

Your
B.

• 1

  [document] Document 000802. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “802”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 3 Avenue Agassiz | Lausanne | Switzerland. Pmk: CAMBRIDGE | 7.15 PM | 10 JUN 13

• 3

  re-reading Lane Poole on Mediaeval Thought Likely Reginald Lane Poole, Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought in the Departments of Theology and Ecclesiastical Politics (London: Williams and Norgate, 1884).