"Solitude, change, work" Read the full letter
| Letter Reference | Alice Clark M/L 90/1 |
| Archive | Alfred Gillet Trust Archive, Street |
| Epistolary Type | Letter |
| Letter Date | After Start: January 1912 ; Before End: December 1912 |
| Address From | De Aar, Northern Cape |
| Address To | |
| Who To | Alice Clark |
| Other Versions | |
| Permissions | Please read before using or citing this transcription |
| Legend |
The Project is grateful to the Trustees of the Alfred Gillett Trust Archive (C. & J. Clark/Clarks International, 40 High Street, Street, Somerset) for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter to Alice Clark, which is part of the Clark collections. Schreiner was resident in De Aar from November 1907 until she left South Africa for Britain and Europe in December 1913, but with some fairly lengthy visits elsewhere over this time, and thus the dating of the letter.
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1de Aar
2^Cape Colony^
3
4Dear Miss Clark
5
6Thank you so very much for the copies of the English woman you have
7sent me, & yet more for the kind letter that came with the first one.
8
9My niece may have perhaps told you that I have not been well enough
10for writing
11
12I'mn the last number you sent me was a quite wonderful little poem by C M A.
13Peake Do you know the writer at all, & is it a woman? The Poem is
14called “The Squaw”. Nothing I have read for years has touched me
15so much. I should like to write to her & tell her how I liked it if
16she were a woman: & young. Thank you so much for your kindness.
17
18Yours very sincerely
19Olive Schreiner
20
2^Cape Colony^
3
4Dear Miss Clark
5
6Thank you so very much for the copies of the English woman you have
7sent me, & yet more for the kind letter that came with the first one.
8
9My niece may have perhaps told you that I have not been well enough
10for writing
11
12I'mn the last number you sent me was a quite wonderful little poem by C M A.
13Peake Do you know the writer at all, & is it a woman? The Poem is
14called “The Squaw”. Nothing I have read for years has touched me
15so much. I should like to write to her & tell her how I liked it if
16she were a woman: & young. Thank you so much for your kindness.
17
18Yours very sincerely
19Olive Schreiner
20
Notation
It is likely that this letter dates from after publication of Schreiner's Woman and Labour and in 1912, with the contact related to Alice Clark's later work: Alice Clark (1919) The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century London: George Routledge & Sons. The link was facilitated by Schreiner's niece Lyndall (Dot), a friend of Alice's who had stayed with the Clarks in Street in late 1912. Schreiner's reference to the 'quite wonderful little poem' is to the Englishwoman’s Review, although which number the Peake poem appears in cannot be traced.
It is likely that this letter dates from after publication of Schreiner's Woman and Labour and in 1912, with the contact related to Alice Clark's later work: Alice Clark (1919) The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century London: George Routledge & Sons. The link was facilitated by Schreiner's niece Lyndall (Dot), a friend of Alice's who had stayed with the Clarks in Street in late 1912. Schreiner's reference to the 'quite wonderful little poem' is to the Englishwoman’s Review, although which number the Peake poem appears in cannot be traced.