BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [20 JUNE 1913]
BRACERS 17951. ALS. Morrell papers #812, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

Friday night1^, 2

My Darling

I hated leaving you even one moment sooner than was necessary today, but I had thought you would want me to go earlier and had led the Whiteheads to expect me sooner so I didn’t like to be later. I had a nice time with them — no fresh worries, and agreeable talk. I never have now the uncomfortable feelings there that I used to have a year ago. I shall dine there Monday.

All this time, I see, I have had two opposite sub-conscious feelings — a longing for your help to get me straight, and a dread of the pain it would involve — like the circulation coming back into frozen limbs. I am sorry to have given you such a miserable home-coming. I was afraid of you because I was in an unworthy state of mind which I was struggling against. I hope it is some consolation to you to feel how immeasurably you help me.

Unless I telegraph to the contrary, I shall bicycle to Cambridge tomorrow and return on Monday. It will give me exercise without expense or solitude.

I don’t think you can easily understand the way I feel towards you. At all times, really, I love you as if my heart would break — but almost always I feel you the other side of a gulf. That is why I seem so aloof from your concerns — except when it is really from self-absorption. I have a rooted feeling — not a belief — that you want to shut me out from your life — also there are things of great importance to you with which I cannot fully sympathize tho’ I have tried hard. And always I have the sense of being unimportant to you. In quite early days, before we had had any troubles, you told me you could hardly keep from suicide, and were never so happy as when you were alone — and of course since then you have often said similar things. All this made me feel that love cannot be to you what it is to me. And then you told me you cared just as much for P. as for me — and I knew that the way you cared for him was very different from the way I cared for you. All this made me feel cold and lonely at heart, and I tried to make my feeling for you no greater than yours for me. When it seems as if you really did love me, there is always a whisper of doubt in my mind — and always the feeling that you live apart, and condescend to me from kindness. Please don’t think I believe all this, for I don’t — but it has got into my bones, and it is hard to get it out. This is the whole of the trouble, the whole of what prevents happiness. If I could again believe in your love with my feelings, and not only with my reason, there would be no troubles at all. I cannot live without you — whatever happens, I know you hold me as long as we both live. But I feel you find me selfish, tyrannical, exhausting, irritating to your nerves, that my impulses constantly hurt you — and so I get a feeling of humiliation, and then I retaliate by unkindness, and the love I feel can’t express itself spontaneously. All this disappears at great moments — it did yesterday and today completely, and the time when I broke down on the Fairmile, when your compassion was divine. I long to do all that would make you love me, but the constant inward sense of a barrier prevents me. You will think this is only my mood of the moment, but it isn’t. I have thought it all for a long time, but have felt it useless to keep on saying it. What would help most would be if you gave me much more sharp outspoken criticism. Unspoken criticism shows in your manner, and hurts without helping me to put things right. I know you do as you would be done by, but explicit criticism does me good. I am saying all this now because I feel more hopeful than usual, not less. I feel often such a poor creature that it seems simply impossible you should love me, and that makes me sensitive. But just now I feel capable of beginning afresh, if there is hope. Dearest you don’t know the terrible strength of my love, and the aching longing I have to feel your love as I used to. Love itself, when it is so great, almost makes a gulf — for it brings with it a constant fear, and makes it very difficult to have easy relations. Since you left Breach House, there has been nothing to cause me to feel fear — but as you know I am slow to adjust myself.

Oh dear what a horribly selfish letter. It is the result of hope, owing to your divine goodness these days. It has made me feel again that perhaps only folly keeps me from the full joy of feeling your love. If I could only make you know the wild strength of my yearning to you — Goodnight my Darling.

Your
B.

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  [document] Document 000812. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] A circled “812”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | Newington House | Wallingford | Berks. Pmk: LONDON. W.1 | 2. AM | JUN 21 13