Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Smuts A1/194/9/61
Archive	National Archives Repository, Pretoria
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	Tuesday 1911
Address From	De Aar, Northern Cape
Address To
Who To	Isie Smuts nee Krige
Other Versions

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 Isie Smuts nee Krige, 1911, National Archives Repository, Pretoria, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to the National Archives Repository, Pretoria, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Special Collections. The year has been written on this letter in an unknown hand.

1:  de Aar
2:  Tuesday
3: 
4:  My darling Isie
5: 
6:  How sweet your loving letter of invitation was to me. I don’t know
7:  if I shall be well enough to come: it will be a bitter disappointment
8:  to me if I can’t, but I’ll certainly come to you. at least for one night
9:  I shall only be there two days as Cron has to hurry back to his office.
10:  Cron had unreadable through his unreadable? eh?
11: 
12:  I am so nervous to hear what Emily Hobhouse gets from that man. Her
13:  condition is so exactly like mine, except that I don’t know if her
14:  heart is enlarged like mine. She is just like me, as long as she is
15:  lying down flat, she feels so much better & can think, but as soon as
16:  one sits or stands up every thing gets dark before one & one feels
17:  feels faint. Sometimes when I wake in the morning I feel full of hope
18:  & life as if I could do anything: but as soon as I move about it all
19:  goes. I can just get through my household work & lie down again.
20:  I’ve written half the paper I want to be ready at the congress, but
21:  I don’t know if I’ll get the other half written, and its no use my
22:  ^coming without it.^ Just as I was writing this letter there came a box
23:  of lovely fruit. I’m sure it must be from you though there was no
24:  name on. I am making some lovely angels food for dinner with it.
25: 
26:  Good bye dear. Excuse blots & hand writing, & I am writing lying
27:  down: & my writing is none of the best at any time.
28: 
29:  Thine ever
30:  Auntie Olive
31: 
32: 
33: 

Notation
Schreiner's aborted paper and the congress in Johannesburg or Pretoria it was to have been given at have not been established; however, from content it was perhaps a women's congress with Isie Smuts involved in an organizational capacity.