BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [11 JUNE 1911]
BRACERS 17183. ALS. Morrell papers #108, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.1^, 2
Sunday mg.

My Dearest Dearest

Your two letters this morning were a very great joy to me. Yes, I am sure Miss Harrison can be reassured — I go to tea with her this afternoon — perhaps she won’t mention her doubts — in that case I shall know it is all right. I have had a very friendly letter from Oliver Strachey (which I will show you) saying Ray and he were married “last week”, and that both want to be friends with me and not let domestic troubles interfere. I have written a friendly answer.

Whitehead was never not nice, only one saw he was making efforts — and that seemed over now. — I had a telegram too about Sturges’s death. Poor man! I had a great affection for him. There was so much good gone to waste, and such suffering — and he was grateful for affection.

My Darling, I shall never be in the very slightest degree disappointed in you, of that you may be quite sure. I know you now very well, and every growth in knowledge has been a growth in love and in realization of all you are. Don’t you see that my reason and my religion love you just as much as my passions do — and so you will never have to give up one iota of my love, because everything in me joins in loving you. Everything else in the world now comes to me through our love — the other people I care for I see illumined by the radiance of our love, and my heart overflows to all the world — but it all comes from you and exists through you. So you won’t have occasion to become a “jealous creature”. But I rejoice that you are becoming “greedy” of me. I ask nothing better than to supply your “greed”.

Yes, I felt we grew into each other more during our days — I had more and more the feeling of resting in you absolutely, and the feeling of a lifetime of comradeship in great things ahead of us. I can never tell you the feeling of solemn peace that I have when I am with you. I have often imagined the martyr’s first moment in heaven — when the glory of God is revealed, and the grave music of the angelic choir first floods his soul — I don’t know anything less that will do for a comparison.

When I first come away from you, I can never say much — I have no need of words when we are together, and for some time after they seem so poor and thin that I cannot use them.

Unless you write to the contrary I will come Tuesday arriving about 10.30. I do hope we could manage a short time on your birthday, even if it was only half an hour. Yes, I remember the 4 times a year. But I thought at the time you were putting a minimum so as not to raise hopes that might be disappointed. However, I didn’t for a moment think it would turn out as well as it has done. Fate has been very good to us. Yes, I had thought too about a cottage or rooms near you. Next year I think it might well be feasible if you are in any place which one might reasonably choose for its own sake; but if you are at Banbury I am afraid it would be very obvious. It would be heavenly if it could be managed. I need not be very near, as I could bicycle a good many miles.

Dearest, what you say about my work does not sound “silly and patronizing”, quite the reverse — it is the greatest joy to me that you feel as you do. You did make me feel what you felt, but it is a comfort to have it in words. Do go on asking me — I love talking about it to you.

I think formerly you were more austere in practice than I have ever been — but not in thought, because your religion was more satisfying. Yes, it does make a firm foundation — I feel one can take happiness so much more finely when one has learnt to value the things that do not depend upon happiness.

I hear my Thursday evening was brilliant, the most successful of the term! I got my Welsh pupil Geach to be host — Sanger and an economics lecturer whom I don’t know came, and a host of people. Geach is a man I like very much. He was formerly a Churchman and intended to take orders — he would have been very high. Now he is a materialist and an atheist. (I am afraid this is partly my doing.) We had a long talk about religion yesterday — I find him more really in agreement than any of the young men except North. We talked through a strange series of scenes that might have come out of an Opera. There was a concert in the Hall, to which the soberer half of the College went — in the interval they marched out with their ladies along the cloister to supper at the other end. As soon as they had gone, the drunken revellers from the Bump Supper appeared, more drunk than usual because Trinity had gone head of the river. Last of all came gnomes who cleared away all the finery. It was a queer spectacle from my windows.

Dearest, I must stop. I am sending this to London in case you leave Peppard before the 2nd post comes. I love you, my Dearest, with all my heart and strength, absolutely and completely. I do long to be with you more and more, but I feel our foundations so firm that patience is not so hard as it would otherwise be. Goodbye, my joy and my life.

Yours utterly
B

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  [document] Document 000108. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] A circled “108”.