Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Letters/412
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	13 August 1890
Address From	Matjesfontein, Western Cape
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 195

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 August 1890, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
When Cronwright-Schreiner prepared The Life... (1924) and The Letters of Olive Schreiner (1924), with few exceptions he then destroyed the original letters in his possession. When Olive Schreiner’s originals can be compared with his edited versions, his versions are severely shortened, and/or inaccurate in sometimes minor but sometimes major respects, and/or are combinations of a number of original letters. The status of ‘the Cronwright-Schreiner letters’ is therefore that they are artefacts of his editorial practices, rather than being ‘Olive Schreiner letters’ as such. Consequently, where original letters which appear in The Letters... have been traced, they appear in the context of the appropriate archive collections and not as ‘a Cronwright-Schreiner letter’. In addition, where a version exists as one of the Extracts made in preparing The Letters..., the extract version is provided because usually longer and in other ways closer to the characteristic writing practices of Schreiner’s original letters. The remaining ‘Cronwright-Schreiner letters’, of which this is one, are provided for the sake of completeness, because they give clues as to where Schreiner was resident at different points in time, and indicate some of her activities. However, they should be read and used with considerable caution for the reasons spelled out here.

1:  To Havelock Ellis.
2:  Matjesfontein, 13th Aug.
3: 
4:  I've been writing and am now going to bed (10 o'clock). I am in all
5:  things able to work as I used to at Ganna Hoek, but I get so terribly
6:  tired soon. I can't keep on at a stretch for ten and twelve hours, in
7:  fact not more than half an hour, without feeling fagged. It is colder
8:  here than I ever knew it in England. A healthy dry cold though very
9:  painful. My nervous system is so strong again, and so of course my
10:  head. I feel now I could bear a great sorrow without dying. ... Do you
11:  know I have that old intense love of life, the animal love that I used
12:  to have, and that so completely died in my ten years' agony in England.
13:  I am so glad when I wake in the morning, and I wish I could live for
14:  ever and ever in this beautiful world. You know I can breathe. ...
15:  Harry, will you forgive all the unkind things I said and did to you?
16:  You know, dear, I'd borne just as much as I could. Do you quite
17:  forgive me? If you marry, will you call one of your little girls Olive
18:  Schreiner after me? If your wife will? Good-night.
19: