Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	HRC/CAT/OS/4b-xii
Archive	Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	13 May 1890
Address From	Matjesfontein, Western Cape
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 185-6; Rive 1987: 170-1; Draznin 1992: 460-2

The manuscript of this letter by Olive Schreiner belongs to the Archive referenced above; its ownership of the original should be acknowledged by referencing the letter as indicated: Copyright transcription: © Olive Schreiner Letters Project. This transcription can be freely used as long as copyright is acknowledged and it is referenced using the following citation: ‘Olive Schreiner to Havelock Ellis, 13 May 1890, Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Manuscript Collections.

1:  Matjesfontein
2:  May 13 / 90
3: 
4:  I got your journal letter & liked it. Did Symons have to pay on the
5:  post card I sent him?
6: 
7:  Isn’t it curious that I only wish to be with you in Paris. That I
8:  never feel the least desire ever to see London again. Whether it will
9:  wake up again some day I don’t know. I have got quite out of that
10:  objective happy state. I am working and suffering greatly from from
11:  depression. I am sure this absolutely solitary life is good for no
12:  human being, but to take a change of a week after every three or four
13:  weeks of solitude which would be good is too expensive, especially in
14:  this country.
15: 
16:  The man to whom this place belongs Mr. Logan, is going to call the
17:  house I am in Schreiner house after me. I think that’s the only news.
18:  I am waiting now for the train to come that I may have go & have my
19:  dinner. It’s very cold
20: 
21:  I haven’t seen the Review of Reviews, but Mrs. Philpot writes me that
22:  there’s a portrait in it, & a review by Stead of my Dream. The
23:  Spectator says, it is quite wonderfully written, but shows not only a
24:  want of reverance, but the lack of the power of feeling reverence.
25:  Please send me reviews of it if you see any, because I am so curious
26:  to know whether ordinary folk will see that what is about at all. John
27:  Pursglove thought it was about “drinking” & my mother says she didn't
28:  know what it’s about! That’s rather encouraging! Except once, when
29:  Will came & put his head by me & spoke kindly to me, I’ve not had
30:  anyone say anything gentle to me since I left England. It seems to me
31:  I did n’t prize all the love that was given me in England half enough,
32:  & I shall never go back again. I should like S.A.F. to be published in
33:  that Review, but I doubt whether French people would care for it,
34:  Germans ought to. I have just been reading Ohnets The Last Love. It is
35:  as near me as any French novel could be, but the only French writes I
36:  know for whom I feel sympathy are Renan, & George Sand, the others I
37:  only admire, I don’t like or enjoy. I like French people best of all
38:  people; I doubt I whether I could ever get to really love one, French
39:  person, they don’t touch me; they are interesting & nice.
40: 
41:  Please write me as long letters as don’t interfere with your work. I
42:  can’t write you a journal because there’s nothing to say, & if one
43:  writes anything about oneself one cries out, & one shouldn’t. All
44:  London I wonder whether the work I am doing now is good; there are
45:  times when I feel so indifferent, you know I love my people & I should
46:  like other people to know & love them, but all, I don’t know what to
47:  call it it’s not ambition, but it’s the something that drives you to
48:  express to others, seems dead. I don’t want to tell anyone, it’s
49:  enough that I feel & know & have seen it.
50: 
51:  Good night. I’ve talked long enough. The wind is blowing out side &
52:  its very cold, & I’m getting faint with waiting for my dinner.
53: 
54:  Olive
55: 
56:  This is a Karroo, plant. The plants here are so beautiful to me & the
57:  red sand. The plants seem to me like living things & I love them so, I
58:  like to touch them. When I wake up in the night I think I shall seen
59:  them the next day. They are the only I things I feel near to in Africa,
60:  & the sky & the stars & the mountains. I like the ants too. & the
61:  little mierkats I could never love the nature in Europe as I love this
62:  The only thing I ever loved there, was the Alps in winter, & the sea
63:  in the Riviera. If ever you go to Italy go & see Alassio & my Ruined
64:  Chapel. I like to think you will see it one day, but it will he quite
65:  a common place to you like any other place, & to me it is so wonderful.
66:  I can’t think that it’s only a little more than a year since I was in
67:  Italy. It seems so long ago. I have changed so. Good night again
68: 
69:  Your little Olive
70: 

Notation
The 'Review' mentioned was actually a 'notice' of Schreiner's allegory 'The Sunlight Lay Across My Bed', which appeared under the heading of 'A Vision of Hell. By Olive Schreiner'; see ‘A Vision of Hell’ Review of Reviews April 1890, p.317. See also 'The Sunlight Lay Across My Bed; Part I - Hell' New Review vol 1, no.11, April 1890, pp.300-309. The book referred to is: Georges Ohnet (1890) A Last Love London: Chatto and Windus. Draznin’s (1992) version of this letter is in some respects different from our transcription. Rive’s (1987) version is in a number of respects incorrect. Cronwright-Schreiner’s (1924) extract is incorrect in various ways.