BRACERS Record Detail for 17946
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"Late. My Darling Ottoline—This can't go till tomorrow but I will begin it now—I hope it will reach you on your birthday."
BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, 14 JUNE 1913
BRACERS 17946. ALS. Morrell papers #808, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.
Trinity.1, 2
14 June ’13. Late.
My Darling Ottoline
This can’t go till tomorrow, but I will begin it now — I hope it will reach you on your birthday. I do love you so deeply, my Heart — and I feel I have caused you so much pain, and altogether failed in so many ways towards you. I do hope I shall give you more tenderness in future, and have more thought for you and less for myself. I feel very very humble thinking of it all — I have been looking at the pictures I have of you — there is a big one done a good while ago, and one at Venice, and one on the sands at Studland, and one at Churn with the pines in the background — In some strange way you symbolize the eternal things to me — from all that is restless and harsh and of the moment, I am brought back to what is great and enduring. It is so difficult to remember what one lives for when one is the middle of the fight — one loses the end in the dust of battle — If I often fail, it is partly the fierceness of the struggle that makes me fail — it makes me sometimes impatient of tension and effort outside work. But the tension and effort would be less if one were less full of self-seeking. — Our first year I lived in a fool’s paradise, and our second year I had to pay for that — but now I do hope I shall not make you pay for it any more. I feel I have been odiously and quite unwarrantably critical and superior; it was hurt feelings, that took that form. But now there are no hurt feelings, and I don’t think I shall be critical any more. Darling I do hope this next year of your life will be a happy one — it shall be if I can make it so. I long to surround you with tenderness and devotion, and all the sympathy you have missed hitherto in me. Goodnight my dear dear Love — my spirit is deeply with you.
