BRACERS Record Detail for 17941
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"Friday aft." "My work still goes swimmingly—today I have been writing on memory,* finding out all sorts of things. I hope to finish Part II today. Tomorrow I go to London till Tues mg."
*I.e. "Degrees of Certainty", the last Ch. of Pt. II.
BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [6 JUNE 1913]
BRACERS 17941. ALS. Morrell papers #805, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.
My Darling
I was very glad indeed of your letter this morning.a I return Miss Crutwell’s letter, which didn’t irritate me at all. It made me like her and feel sorry for her. It is awful how many women are doomed to futility by bad education and bad institutions, without any fault of their own. But I don’t see anything particularly foolish in her present beliefs, which seem really much the same as one’s own. Yes, her Persian is the man I heard in London.
It really didn’t hurt me about not coming out to you — that wasn’t what I meant to say. It is difficult to combine a passionate interest in some one at a distance with the absorption in abstract things that my work requires, and anything agitating makes it more difficult, and therefore compels me to make myself think less about you and feel less passionately. So when anything worrying happens, it makes me rather aloof even if I am not hurt in the least. But I did fully understand, and I thought you were quite right. The reasons both on your side and on mine are conclusive. I am not really in a mood to be hurt — the wish to get on with my work occupies my mind too much for that.
Croft was the girl in the Bank — she said there was another over her, who perhaps is the one you know.
As you go to Newington on 21st, I suppose I shall see you first on the 23rd?
No, I haven’t seen Trevy’s Bright.3
I am so sorry you are so tired — it is no wonder, and you certainly will need time alone to recover.
My work still goes swimmingly — today I have been writing on memory, finding out all sorts of things. I hope to finish Part II today. Tomorrow I go to London till Tues. morning. — Work is delicious. I dread coming back into the human world with its intolerable pains. But I am near the end of my writing powers for the present, and shall soon be unable to keep up the absorption. I don’t know why, but all this time I have had the sense of some utter misery that I was keeping at bay by work. I suppose it is because of your being away — I don’t know what it is — some dumb obscure feeling, but not important.
Forgive me for being so foolish — I dare say it is only nervous fatigue, the reaction from excitement and concentration. And this work has made me feel rather cut off from you. It will be all right when you come home and I have written out all I can.
Goodbye Dearest — I am too tired to write more.
Your
B
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[document] Document 000805. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.
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[envelope] A circled “805”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 3 Avenue Agassiz | Lausanne | Switzerland. Pmk: LONDON W.C. | 03 | 10 AM | JU | 13
- 3Trevy's Bright G.M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913).
Textual Notes
- a
morning after deleted afternoon