BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [2 JULY 1913]
BRACERS 17961. ALS. Morrell papers #821, Texas
Proofread by A.G. Bone et al.

Wed. night.1^, 2

My Darling My Darling

It was such a joy to get your dear letter today. Yes, I feel as if all bitterness and fear and reproach had been burnt away — understanding and love are freer than they have been for a long long time — a great flood of understanding has come to me — I see everything now from your point of view, fully. I know that all that has obscured my happiness in you is bound up with the very things that hold me to you — with tenderness and universal love. And I know now from within how your love can only come to me freely if nothing else is interfered with. I have let my love interfere with work, and it was poisoning love. I knew I ought to go away and give my mind and nerves a rest, but it is so hard to do those things. Duties to work are so queer. Another thought has helped to reconcile me — it has always seemed to me such an infinitely terrible waste of something precious that we could not be more together, and so it is — but if in time it cures me of possessiveness, it will have been not all waste. Waste is what maddens me, and if I can see that it is not all waste it will help me. I went to tea with the Whiteheads again. As soon as Mrs W. saw me she said “something has happened, you are happy again” — it was only your letters that had happened.

Dearest Dearest I can hardly bear it when you say I have given you spiritual riches — it seems to me it has all come from you. But perhaps it is Love that enriched us both. — Dear Love it will be only a joy to me if you write whenever it is not a burden to you. I don’t think I shall write much from Cornwall — I must try to go to sleep mentally — but it is only a happiness to get your letters. Only please don’t write often or more than comes from impulse — don’t let it be a burden. When you do write, do tell me how you are. — My deepest truest love is with you, my Heart — not a feverish longing, but a great thankfulness to be in the world where you bring beauty and nobility into life. Goodnight my Star.

Your
B

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  [document] Document 000821. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] A circled “821”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 44 Bedford Square | W.C. Pmk: LONDON W.C. | 2. – AM | 3 JUL 4 13D | 10 30 AM