BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [25 MAR. 1911]
BRACERS 17060. ALS. Morrell papers #6, Texas. SLBR 1: #159
Edited by N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell and A.G. Bone

Van Bridge,
Fernhurst, Haslemere1^, 2
Saturday night

My Dearest

It was good of you to give me your little note this afternoon. I know you are not killing our love — but love dies in the end if it is not nourished, and if we have to part it will die. I don’t know quite why I have to ask for all or nothing, but I know I am right. I feel that if you refuse all, I shall be terribly tempted to accept less, but it would be wrong — I should be somehow degraded by it, and that would degrade our love. In time I suppose I shall know why this is so — now I only know it is so. I shall tell Alys on Monday — I can’t tell her while she has our visitors on her hands. I have written to tell the Whiteheads, and the letter will go by the same post as this. I should be very glad if you were to see them during this time of waiting. They are my best friends — they have known all my intimate concerns, or all that could be told, and they have helped me in all difficulties. Dora Sanger’s remark about Mrs Whitehead is wholly unfounded. Dora always speaks ill of women — I have heard her speak ill of you, in days before I knew you at all well.

The first few hours after I left you I felt confident you would decide as I wish; now I think you won’t. I am so tired that I have no feeling left except utter weariness. Your will is very strong, and it is hard work to battle against it. I know you are not deficient in courage, indeed your courage is splendid. But there is one sort of courage which consists in choosing one’s own happiness on those rare occasions when it is right to do. Only generous people have any occasion for this sort of courage. There have been things in my life which I should have wished to tell you, but that I am not at liberty to do so; they would have illustrated why I am so certain of what I think right. But Dearest I honour you the more for your self-sacrifice; and formerly I should have been more ready to think it right.

I ought to go to bed, but I can’t stop writing to you.3 It is horrible here — poor Alys gets on my nerves to such an extent that I don’t know how to bear it another moment. I always find her very trying after an absence, but this time naturally it is particularly bad. However, I have talked and laughed the whole time, so that inobservant people would have supposed I had not an anxiety or a trouble in the world. Karin and Ray are both here. I don’t much like Ray — I think she is exactly like Alys — kind, hard-working, insincere and treacherous. Karin is quite different. I have undertaken to coach her this Vacation in things I don’t know properly myself, so that I shall have to work hard to get them up. I have also undertaken to finish by July a popular book on philosophy, which I have not yet begun. Heaven knows how I shall manage, but I must do it as I have signed the contract.

Dearest I feel sure you will decide against me, and that it will be the wrong decision. If I were less tired I should be more hopeful, but just now I merely feel that life is one long irony, in which the good things come in glimpses that only make common life harder. I cannot understand the wish for a future life — it is the chief consolation that in the grave there is rest. Goodbye, Goodbye.

B.

• 1

  [document] Document 000006. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] A circled “6”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 44 Bedford Square | London W.C. Pmk: FERNHURST | MR 23 | ?

• 3writing to you. Now on Bagley Wood letterhead.