BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, 17 OCT. 1911
BRACERS 17309. ALS. Morrell papers #223, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.1^, 2
Tuesday Oct. 17 1911

My Darling Love

Your letter of Sunday night and yesterday morning reached me at 11 this morning, I am very glad you are feeling better. You needn’t distress yourself about my lying awake — it is pleasant really, because my thoughts are full of seeing you again. — Maurice Amos is just gone. George Trevy is coming to luncheon — then I go to London for the night. I shall see the Whiteheads and look for flats. I was not sorry when Amos went — he is rather overpowering.

I had my first lecture yesterday evening. I have 2 courses, one for mathematicians and one for philosophers. Yesterday was the one for mathematicians. There were 12 people there, which is a good number for a lecture that doesn’t fit into any Tripos. I enjoy lecturing very much, and was glad to be started again. The nun was duly there, the only woman — last year I had no women at this course. Geach (the man who was High Church but turned materialist) wants to get into the Education Office and I have to write him a testimonial.

Yesterday I had a quiet evening (Maurice dined out), reading Tolstoy and dozing till Maurice came back. Tolstoy’s wife is horrible. I observe that in addition to all her other faults she is a snob. It is a pity Tolstoy had so little capacity for unemotional thinking — so much moral energy ought to have produced more practical plans for improving the condition of the slums and the peasantry. But he never would tolerate interposing thought between emotion and action — all his impatience of politics is foolish. All the same I feel him very great — greater than anybody else of our age. And one sympathizes with all his difficulties between theory and family duties.

I am glad Madame von Anrep was so pleased to see you — she must be a sensible woman!

I have just had a telegram telling me the Whiteheads want me tomorrow morning, so I shan’t go to London tonight. — I have finished l’Evolution Créatrice and am reading Les Données Immédiates de la Conscience. (The English for this is “Time and Free Will”, which one couldn’t have guessed.) Bergson is not quite so bad as I have made him out to be. He has what Crompton calls the academic point of view, that life and action are the great thing. But he writes pleasantly, has obviously a good deal of feeling for art, and is original and imaginative.

This is a dull letter — I feel stupid today for some reason. As the time draws nearer I feel more and more that everything waits till we meet — I imagine you won’t lunch with me Saturday, but perhaps a few minutes in the morning, and some time immediately after luncheon? I suppose about 5 I shall have to go to Camberley.

Goodbye Darling. I send you all my love though I am growing dumb.

Your
B.

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  [document] Document 000223. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] A circled “223”. The Lady Ottoline Morrell | Hotel des Saints Pères | Rue des Saints Pères | Paris | France. Pmk: CAMBRIDGE | 3.15 PM | OC 17 | 11 | 4