Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	View Life/1
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	29 September 1879
Address From	Lelie Kloof, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner (1924) The Life…: 137

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 29 September 1879, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
When Cronwright-Schreiner wrote The Life of Olive Schreiner (1924), he included in it a small number of in effect complete letters by Schreiner, the originals then being destroyed. Usually, when Schreiner’s originals can be compared against his edited versions, his versions are typically shortened and/or inaccurate in sometimes minor but sometimes major respects. While these ‘whole letters’ embedded in The Life... are likely to be affected by such problems, they are provided for the sake of completeness, because they give useful 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:  My dear Mrs Cawood,
2: 
3:  I have got your letter with the stamps. I wanted you never, never to
4:  pay for the books; but, as you would not like that now, I will keep
5:  the money, and when Juta sends the account I will pay for them.
6: 
7:  I got a letter from Annie. I did not know whether it would be right to
8:  answer her: at last I decided not to write, but to send her my
9:  likeness: I knew you would not like her to be pained; and I do not
10:  think I did wrong.
11: 
12:  I do not at all blame you for not loving me any more. We cannot help
13:  love’s going, any more than we can help its coming; and when it is
14:  gone, it is better to say so.
15: 
16:  For myself, I have always liked you not for anything you were to me,
17:  but what you were in yourself, and I feel to you as I have felt from
18:  the beginning.
19: 
20:  Therefore, believe me to remain, if not your friend, one who loves you,
21:  Olive Schreiner.
22: 

Notation
Cronwright-Schreiner provides the date of the letter and the address it was sent from. This letter was written in response to the following from Erilda Cawood, dated 25 July 1879 (Cronwright-Schreiner (1924) The Life...: 136-7):

My dear Olive,

I have the less reluctance to write as I now do; because I think, from what you know of me, you are quite prepared for what I have to say. I no longer love you, and cannot act hypocritically. If you needed friends, I could not have allowed my heart to turn against you. You are rich in intellectual, influential friends. And I am quite sure you only valued my acquaintance because you thought I loved you. And I have loved you, at times with an almost idolatrous love. I have sometimes felt it in my heart to say, Olive Schreiner I love you so, that for your sake I could become anything. That is why God in His goodness and wisdom used you as a means to show me what an awful soul-destroying thing freethinking is. You know, I have often told you I can only learn through my affections.

I must tell you I am not alone in what I now feel. Richard and I have both, while pointing out to the children that they owe you gratitude, told them that you are God’s enemy and that they cannot love God and you at the same time. I tell you this, so that you shall be spared the pain and humiliation of expecting more from them, than they have been taught to give.

You know Olive, if I were a free thinker I should be a much prouder one than you are. I would never be able to accept hospitality and kindness from Christians, knowing, that if they knew me as I really was, they would fly from me, affrighted. You will say, why did I accept help and friendship and kindness from you, then? The reason is I really did not know what freethinking was till you taught me.

Yours truly,
Erilda Cawood

Letter Reference	View Life/2
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	1909
Address From	na
Address To
Who To	Westminster Gazette
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner (1924) The Life…: 155-6

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 Westminster Gazette, 1909, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
When Cronwright-Schreiner wrote The Life of Olive Schreiner (1924), he included in it a small number of in effect complete letters by Schreiner, the originals then being destroyed. Usually, when Schreiner’s originals can be compared against his edited versions, his versions are typically shortened and/or inaccurate in sometimes minor but sometimes major respects. While these ‘whole letters’ embedded in The Life... are likely to be affected by such problems, they are provided for the sake of completeness, because they give useful 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. Cronwright-Schreiner provides the date of this open letter and the name of its addressee. The beginning and end of this letter have not been provided.

1:  May I state there is no foundation for this statement. I only had the
2:  honour of meeting Mr. George Meredith once for four or six minutes
3:  while I was waiting in a publisher’s waiting-room to see the publisher.
4:  The person who showed me up said the gentleman there was Mr. George
5:  Meredith, the firm’s reader. On the table when I went in was an open
6:  illustrated paper with pictures of the Boer and British Amajuba
7:  troubles in the Transvaal. As I stood at the table looking at the
8:  picture the gentleman made some remark to me about it. I was at that
9:  time feeling very hotly on the matter, and stated my opinion that the
10:  Boers were a noble race, and had been most unjustly treated by us. To
11:  my astonishment the gentleman entirely agreed with me, and spoke even
12:  more warmly than I had done.
13: 
14:  When in a few moments a messenger came to tell me the publisher was
15:  ready to see me, he looked very intently at me and said that he
16:  presumed that I was a young writer, and that there was one piece of
17:  advice he always felt compelled to give to young authors - never to
18:  make any agreement with a publisher without putting down everything in
19:  black and white, and always to get some friend who was a competent
20:  business man to make the arrangements for them. I then went out to the
21:  publishers’ office and never saw Mr. Meredith again. I was unable to
22:  act on his very valuable advice, as all my business arrangements with
23:  the publishers were then already completed and the book in their hands.
24: 
25:  Not only was my book not mentioned between us, but we referred to no
26:  literary topic - at that time I knew him only as a publisher’s reader;
27:  and it was only some time after, when a friend sent me a book of his
28:  poems, that I found out that he also was a writer. Not only did Mr.
29:  Meredith not write to me, but I have never seen his handwriting, nor
30:  has any communication, directly or indirectly, ever passed between us
31:  except for those few moments.
32: 
33:  My book (the original of which I still have) had been so carefully
34:  prepared by me, before I sent it up to London for the publishers to
35:  see, that it was published without the omission or addition of one
36:  sentence, or, I think, of one word or stop.
37: 

Notation
The book referred to is The Story of An African Farm.

Letter Reference	View Life/3
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	5 November 1909
Address From	na
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner (1924) The Life…: 156

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, 5 November 1909, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
When Cronwright-Schreiner wrote The Life of Olive Schreiner (1924), he included in it a small number of in effect complete letters by Schreiner, the originals then being destroyed. Usually, when Schreiner’s originals can be compared against his edited versions, his versions are typically shortened and/or inaccurate in sometimes minor but sometimes major respects. While these ‘whole letters’ embedded in The Life... are likely to be affected by such problems, they are provided for the sake of completeness, because they give useful 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. Cronwright-Schreiner provides the date of this letter and the name of its addressee, while its beginning and end are not provided.

1:  Yes, Chapman & Hall did send my MS. back to me, and Chapman asked me
2:  to call and see him. When I came he said he wanted to publish the book,
3:  but he wanted me to make an alteration in it, just to put in a few
4:  sentences saying that Lyndall was really secretly married to that man,
5:  as if she wasn’t married to him the British public would think it
6:  wicked, and Smiths, the railway booksellers, would not put it on their
7:  stalls! Of course I got in a rage and told him he could leave the book
8:  alone, and I would take it elsewhere. He climbed down at once, and
9:  said it was only out of consideration for me; I was young, and people
10:  would think I was not respectable if I wrote such a book, but of
11:  course if I insisted on saying she was not married to him it must be
12:  so. He certainly never mentioned his reader in this matter; and I
13:  can’t believe Meredith, who was an artist, would ever have made the
14:  suggestion to Chapman.
15: 

Notation
The manuscript referred to concerns The Story of An African Farm.

Letter Reference	View Life/4
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	May 1896
Address From	na
Address To
Who To	Rebecca Schreiner nee Lyndall
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner (1924) The Life…: 278-82

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 Rebecca Schreiner nee Lyndall, May 1896, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
When Cronwright-Schreiner wrote The Life of Olive Schreiner (1924), he included in it a small number of in effect complete letters by Schreiner, the originals then being destroyed. Usually, when Schreiner's originals can be compared against his edited versions, his versions are typically shortened and/or inaccurate in sometimes minor but sometimes major respects. While these 'whole letters' embedded in The Life... are likely to be affected by such problems, they are provided for the sake of completeness, because they give useful 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. The month and year of this letter is implied by content. The beginning of the letter is not provided.

1:  During the last six weeks I have been very unhappy, not knowing
2:  whether to answer your letters on political matters or not. Would it
3:  not, my dear little Mother, be much better to drop all references
4:  direct or indirect with regard to politics between us? During the last
5:  fifteen years, both in England and here, my work and my interest in
6:  life have been mainly political, yet I do not think six times, I have,
7:  in all these years, mentioned politics to you, because I felt you were
8:  not sympathetic to my view; and I believe that where, with regard to
9:  either religion or politics, parents and children, or even brothers
10:  and sisters, are not agreed, they should avoid these subjects. I have
11:  held this all my life. The tender love existing between mother and
12:  child and brother and sister need surely never be ruffled by these
13:  things.
14: 
15:  The news of the Jameson Raid reach Cron and myself the first morning
16:  after we got to the Kowie. Cron has never seen you since, and I only
17:  saw you for a few minutes, and then, though you and Lily were
18:  discussing political news, I said not one word. When I got to
19:  Middelburg I sent you my usual daily line referring to nothing
20:  political, and Cron did not write to you at all as he was too busy.
21:  You then wrote me three letters on politics. I took no notice of the
22:  first three, as I was determined not to discuss politics with any
23:  private individual. Apart from anything else I have no time for it:
24:  but in your third letter you said (I quote from your letter), speaking
25:  of Jameson’s Raid, “there are even some wretches here who say that
26:  Will and Rhodes knew of it, and had to do with it” - and you went on
27:  to write as though Will were being attacked as being against the
28:  Transvaal - and you added that “he, Laing and Frost - a noble three”
29:  would stand by Rhodes.
30: 
31:  Now I had not heard from Will for some months at that time. But from
32:  private information from people in Cape Town, and from much personal
33:  intercourse with many Boers and bitter opponents of Rhodes, and above
34:  all from Will’s letter in the paper, I knew that no one was blaming
35:  Will, or thinking that he knew anything of the attack by the Chartered
36:  Company on the Transvaal, and I had been told by those who ought to
37:  know that most probably would be asked to be Prime Minister when
38:  Parliament met.
39: 
40:  I wrote telling you this, and asked you to send my letter to Will, as
41:  I never like discussing members of my own family even with others of
42:  the family unless they know what I say, and I wanted Will to know how
43:  full of admiration I was at his not entering the new Ministry. I wrote
44:  this letter in the tenderness of my heart to comfort you. You wrote of
45:  his sacrificing the “emoluments of office” by standing with Rhodes and
46:  I told you that, so far from the “emoluments of office” being a gain
47:  to Will, it was a monetary loss to him, and a heavy one, to be in the
48:  Ministry.
49: 
50:  I thought I should get a letter full of joy and tenderness in a few
51:  days. To my astonishment I received a long letter in which you asked
52:  me how I dared to insinuate that Will was on the side of that wretch
53:  Hofmeyr. To this letter I never replied, nor to any of your other
54:  letters on politics.
55: 
56:  Dear Mother, I have no time for long political discussion; can they be
57:  of any use when we are at the opposite extreme in regard to our views
58:  of what is for the true good of the country? You must not feel pained
59:  if I do not take notice of what you say.
60: 
61:  A few days after you wrote a letter to Cron about Hofmeyr and wrote on
62:  the outside do not answer. I told Cron it would be best to take no
63:  notice, but he said he thought he ought to answer it as you had begged
64:  him to He and I have not once written to you on political matters, not once.
65: 
66:  Dear little Mother, are not there hundreds of fair and beautiful
67:  things we can write of, leaving politics out? I have surely as much
68:  right to be on the side of the Transvaal Government as you have to be
69:  on that of Rhodes: have I not, little Mother?
70: 
71:  I used to feel it so bitterly when people would insist upon attacking
72:  you on your change of religion, but surely, surely, politics need far
73:  less to divide a mother and daughter.
74: 
75:  You have said in your two letters that I was allowing Cron to warp my
76:  mind and degrade my character. I can only think that you refer to the
77:  fact I am in politics opposed to Rhodes. Now, dear little mother, I
78:  will just shortly tell you the whole story of my relation with Rhodes.
79: 
80:  Six years ago in England I first heard much of him from two intimate
81:  friends of his. He had just given £10, 000 to the Irish cause. He was
82:  represented to me as a millionaire who was going to devote his life to
83:  the freeing of the Irish peasant from the landlord, to the education
84:  and development of the Native races of South Africa, and to the
85:  benefit of all poor and down-trodden people generally! As painted to
86:  me, he seemed the ideal of human greatness and one of my great wishes
87:  was to meet him. Living quietly at Matjesfontein, I had been in Africa
88:  nearly a year before I met him. It was the beginning of the
89:  disappointment. As long as he and I talked of books and scenery we
90:  were very happy, but, when he began on politics and social questions,
91:  I found out to my astonishment that he had been misrepresented to me;
92:  especially when we got on the Native Question, we ended by having a
93:  big fight, and Rhodes getting very angry. All our subsequent meetings
94:  were of the same kind. I think Rhodes liked me for the same reason
95:  that I liked him, because of his life and energy, but we never once
96:  met without a royal fight. I have copies of all the letters I ever
97:  wrote him, and they are one long passionate endeavour to save him from
98:  what seemed to me the downward course. I have felt so terribly about
99:  him, when he was acting in a course that seemed to me most
100:  disastrously wrong - I have gone out of the House of Parliament when
101:  he was speaking, and written a note and hired a boy to take it over,
102:  imploring him to abstain from damning his own soul as it seemed to me
103:  he was doing. With all his genius, with all his beautiful wonderful
104:  gifts, to see it going so!
105: 
106:  A little time after this I gave up all political hope of Rhodes. It
107:  was an affair with Logan and Sivewright and Government ground and
108:  other public matters, and it would take too long to explain, but there
109:  came a day when Rhodes and Sivewright were on the Matjesfontein
110:  railway station; we had a talk, and my disappointment at Rhodes’
111:  action was so great that when both he and Sivewright came forward to
112:  shake hands, I turned on my heel and went to my house. Some days after,
113:  Rhodes passed and called as usual to see me. I heard him knocking at
114:  the door but did not open it. Some time after, ^This is four years ago now^
115:  I went to Town and he invited me to dinner but I declined. He then
116:  gave Mr. Sauer (who was then his closest friend and who used to drive
117:  home with him in his trap every night) a message to me, asking me what
118:  was the matter. I told Sauer to tell him that in political matters I
119:  was absolutely opposed to him, and was going to fight him on every
120:  point. He twice invited me to his house again, but I refused both
121:  invitations. I have never seen him to speak to since, and only bowed
122:  to him last year when he and Will were in Kimberley.
123: 
124:  Now, dear little Mother, this all happened long before I ever met Cron
125:  or knew that such a person existed: how then can he have had anything
126:  to do with my political opposition to Rhodes?
127: 
128:  So far from my having opposed Rhodes more since I was married, it is
129:  only the last two years that I have taken no part or interest in
130:  political life, and, except that one little pamphlet on the political
131:  situation, I have not touched politics. Four years ago I did all that
132:  lay in my power to induce Sauer and Innes to leave Rhodes and come out
133:  of the Ministry. I was most active in my opposition to him then; since
134:  I was married I have said or done nothing with, regard to Rhodes.
135:  Since Jameson’s Raid I have had letters from papers asking me to write
136:  and send wires containing my views, I could have made much money, of
137:  which I am in need. But I attacked Rhodes frankly and fearlessly and
138:  endlessly when he was in power, and therefore I can afford to be quiet
139:  now. So far from hating Rhodes I have the greatest sympathy with him
140:  in many directions. With regard to religion and many other matters I
141:  am deeply in accord with him, while, with regard to politics and
142:  public life generally, I am as absolutely opposed to him, and
143:  therefore must always combat him; and I believe that Rhodes recognizes
144:  the sincerity of my attitude towards him. In the last week of this
145:  December he sent a message to me through Mr. Sauer, that when he was
146:  in Kimberley he had ridden past my house, and wanted to come and see
147:  me, but he felt he would not be welcome. So far from my having hatred
148:  towards him, there are few men in the world for whom I have such
149:  intense sympathy. Surely, my dear little Mother, you can distinguish
150:  between personal feeling and political opinions. Have they anything to
151:  do with each other?
152: 
153:  As far as Cron goes, how can he be actuated by personal feelings, when
154:  he has never even been introduced to Rhodes, and knows nothing of him
155:  but his political career?
156: 
157:  I have never read to Cron the things you have said of him in your
158:  letters to me. He has loved you so whole-heartedly and loyally that I
159:  couldn’t wound him so. Never in one instance has he said one little
160:  disloyal or unloving word of kith or kin of mine. He still feels anger
161:  against a woman because she dared to discuss Will personally in his
162:  presence. And for you he has a curious veneration and love. When Miss
163:  Molteno went to see you she wrote: “Your little mother is just as
164:  beautiful and geniusful as your husband described her.” If he had ever
165:  said one little word or done one little thing ungenerous towards you I
166:  could tell him what you say of him, but I can’t wound another person
167:  so. Whatever your views with regard to politics or religion, it would
168:  make no atom of difference to us. Cron’s favourite brother is strongly
169:  against the Transvaal Government and for the Chartered Company, but do
170:  you think that makes any difference in our feeling towards him? Do you
171:  think that I could love you one dot more if you were on our side in
172:  this matter? Do you think I would ever care one straw what your
173:  political opinions were?
174: 
175:  I have written this long letter, my little Mother, because I want you
176:  to know that at least on my side the political views of my friends
177:  make no difference! One of my dearest friends is a niece of an Irish
178:  landowner. She says she wishes Ireland could be put under the sea and
179:  all the Irish drowned; I would give my life for the Irish peasants! Is
180:  the fact that we differ so bitterly on this one point any reason why
181:  we should not be close friends on the number of subjects on which we
182:  do agree? Need we always bring up the Irish Question? Life to me would
183:  not be worth living it I felt my love grow less to my friends on
184:  account of their views with regard to public persons and political
185:  situations. Because I know my dear old Theo is on the other side I am
186:  careful never to mention politics when I write to him, just as I avoid
187:  religion with friends who do not share my religious views.
188: 
189:  Goodbye, my own little Mothie. You must not mind if I don’t refer to
190:  politics again.
191: 
192:  Your little daughter,
193:  Olive.
194: 

Notation
Although in Olive Schreiner's hand-writing, this letter is in fact a copy of a letter she sent to Rebecca Schreiner, which she made because of the family controversies concerned. Orignally, it was in an envelope with, on its front, also in Schreiner's hand-writing, 'Letters to Ettie & Mother about Rhodes'. The companion letter-copy is a letter to Ettie Stakesby-Lewsis of 25 May 1896 - see Life/5.

Letter Reference	View Life/5
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	25 May 1896
Address From	na
Address To
Who To	Henrietta (‘Ettie’) Schreiner m. Stakesby Lewis (1891)
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner (1924) The Life…: 282-6

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 Henrietta (‘Ettie’) Schreiner m. Stakesby Lewis (1891), 25 May 1896, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
When Cronwright-Schreiner wrote The Life of Olive Schreiner (1924), he included in it a small number of in effect complete letters by Schreiner, the originals then being destroyed. Usually, when Schreiner’s originals can be compared against his edited versions, his versions are typically shortened and/or inaccurate in sometimes minor but sometimes major respects. While these ‘whole letters’ embedded in The Life... are likely to be affected by such problems, they are provided for the sake of completeness, because they give useful 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. Cronwright-Schreiner provides the date of this letter and the name of its addressee. The beginning and end of the letter are missing.

1:  [page/s missing] I would not reply to your letter were it not that it has made me feel
2:  I may have been unjust to [word missing], and, though have never mentioned her
3:  name to mother or to any human creature except yourself I feel I
4:  should tell you that your letter has made me feel sure that not she
5:  but you and perhaps Theo had been dividing between us. Had anyone told
6:  me that you or Theo would have written of me to mother, I should
7:  simply have told them it is a lie. I knew that, bitterly opposed as
8:  Will and I are on political matters, he could never say one word to
9:  mother which should embitter her against her child. He is not a
10:  Christian, but he is a noble man; and, until to-day I believed that
11:  just as, for twenty years, I have striven to open mother’s heart to
12:  you and to smooth away all little religious differences - which as
13:  little as political should be allowed to interfere with the love of
14:  parents and children - so you and Theo would have acted towards me.
15: 
16:  It is hardly worth answering anything else in your letter. What you
17:  mean by vindictiveness is inconceivable to me.
18: 
19:  A letter which I wrote to mother some months ago will perhaps throw a
20:  little light on my relations with Rhodes. For five years I have
21:  accepted no invitation to his house or had anything to do with him,
22:  since that day when I refused to shake hands with him on the
23:  Matjesfontein station; since he voted for the Strop Bill I have never
24:  entered his house. He not only invited me, but once sent Sauer and
25:  once his Private Secretary to press me to come. I have copies of all
26:  the letters I wrote to him during the year I often met him, and they
27:  are one wild passionate endeavour to wake the man to nature of the
28:  hell towards which he was hurrying; I had at one time a mad idea that
29:  I might save him, but from the time I found out about that piece of
30:  ground he wanted to give Logan and the Logan Contract, I saw that he
31:  had deliberately chosen evil, and that I could not save him. The
32:  perception of what his character really was in its inmost depths was
33:  one of the most terrible revelations of my life. That was about four
34:  years ago, just before I got the measles. It was then that, in the
35:  Midland News, I saw a splendid leader attacking Rhodes for voting for
36:  the Strop Bill and his throwing the Native as a sop to the Boer. I was
37:  so much struck by this article that I wrote to Cradock and found out
38:  who it was written by, and I found out that it was by a young farmer,
39:  who wrote the leaders for the paper, called Cronwright. Nine months
40:  after I met Cron for the first time. I mention this because I can only
41:  suppose that you think that I have urged Cron to take up his present
42:  position. Cron is the one Englishman I know of in South Africa who has
43:  consistently and persistently fought Rhode for six years and stood
44:  true to the Native. I did not fall in love with him; what bound us
45:  together was our absolute union on public matters, above all on the
46:  Native Question and Rhodes.
47: 
48:  This is private, I suppose I can trust you not to mention it.
49: 
50:  So far from any vindictiveness against Rhodes, as I fought him in
51:  season and out for five years when he was in power, I have felt that I
52:  had a right to be silent now. I have been offered from a leading
53:  London paper £20 per week for one short letter on Cape affairs, and I
54:  have refused; let the man work out his own destruction.
55: 
56:  Since that time before I had the measles, when I refused to shake
57:  hands with him on the Matjesfontein station, I have met him only once,
58:  that was for a few minutes in an hotel here a few weeks before my
59:  marriage. Rhodes and Will were sitting together in the drawing room. I
60:  attacked Will and him on the Strop Bill and Native Question generally;
61:  Will - dear, true, simple old Will - answered simply and truly; as
62:  soon as Will went out to get his hat, Rhodes turned to me and in a way
63:  I know so well cottoned up to me and said I must not think he agreed
64:  with Will, that his sympathies were all with me on the Native Question.
65:  I told him what I thought of him, and then Will came in and they went
66:  out, I shall never forget looking at those two men’s faces that day.
67:  Will, poor old Will, with his lack of imagination and creative insight,
68:  but so good, so simple, so pure: Rhodes with all his gifts of genius
69:  and insight - and, below the fascinating surface, the worms of
70:  falsehood and corruption creeping. It is the most awful sight; as he
71:  betrayed Sivewright and has betrayed all the men who trusted and loved
72:  him, so he will one day yet betray Will, who still, after all, in his
73:  heart loves him. Poor noble old Will; I am bitterly opposed to him on
74:  the Native Question now, but, if ever his intellect is enlightened (as
75:  it seems to me) and he takes another view, he will hold it honestly
76:  and truly. Rhodes wants no mental enlightenment - it is the man’s
77:  heart that is corrupt. I believe that once, as a little child, there
78:  were great possibilities before him, but never since I knew him.
79: 
80:  I know you will say: “Yes, but he only votes for the Strop Bill, etc.,
81:  to get the Boer to be satisfied”: Yes, to betray the Boer, the Native
82:  is to be thrown as the sop to the Boer.
83: 
84:  If you wish to send my letters to Theo, you are at liberty to do so;
85:  but I beg neither of you to write to me any more. I do not request
86:  either of you to mention me to mother: because you will do whatever
87:  satisfies your own passions. I know mother’s nature; she has many
88:  failings like the rest of us, but, unurged on by others, she is not
89:  the person to violate the life-long tenderness and friendship I have
90:  held for her abstract political views. If I knew that mother was on an
91:  opposite side of politics or religion from you, nothing would induce
92:  me to mention either of your names to mother in that connection. She
93:  is an old woman nearing eighty, it is an easy thing to stimulate her
94:  to madness and excitement in an abstract question; but only devils
95:  would try to make political or religious differences the source of
96:  bitterness in the hearts of families.
97: 
98:  In all the years Will has been in public life not one word of
99:  discussion of him from an adverse point has passed my lips, because I
100:  feel that family relationship gives you the power of stabbing under
101:  the ribs. I have never remained silent on the Strop Bill, the Native
102:  Question, the Bond, the Excise, or any other matter because Will’s
103:  views are opposed to mine; but I have never discussed him with anyone
104:  out of the family, nor allowed them to discuss him in my presence.
105:  There is such a thing as loyalty. Please return this letter. - Olive.
106: 
107:  P.S. - I have not shown or mentioned this letter to Cron. He has been
108:  quite wounded by mother’s attacks, and he has loved her and all my
109:  people so.
110: 
111:  You must also not imagine I shall mention your name or Theo’s ever to
112:  mother, except it be impersonally. The relations of parent and child
113:  are much too holy in my eyes to be interfered with. I write to her as
114:  I have done all my life, almost every day, about books and the weather,
115:  etc. She is an old woman now, and the shadow of death must be very
116:  near her. I would like her surrounded by no feelings but those of love
117:  and tenderness for all her children. All the Cecil Rhodeses and
118:  Beaconsfields and Gladstones in the world would not make me say one
119:  word to embitter any mother or child. I have loved you and trusted you
120:  more than any woman in the world and been more loyal to you; and not
121:  all mother’s five months of attack upon me have struck me so bitter a
122:  blow as the thought that you were making my political views a subject
123:  of discussion with her. I feel as if it would be many years before I
124:  wanted to hear from you or of you again.
125: 
126:  Every man or woman is right to hold their own political or religious
127:  views, and has also a right to express; but something noble in the
128:  human soul which no law can exactly formulate says to all brave
129:  God-like hearts: “You cannot use the accident of your relationship to
130:  forge a weapon to strike your political adversary with.”
131: 
132:  Because I know that the accident of my relationship with Will would
133:  make a blow from me equal to a blow from fifty others, therefore I
134:  never strike it. It is under the belt. This week a public man wrote to
135:  me asking my opinion of Innes and of Will, etc. I answered him about
136:  Innes, for one thing because he is my dear friend whom I sympathize
137:  with - but I said nothing of Will and his views. I will give my views
138:  to anyone who asks them.
139: 
140:  P.S. - Tuesday morning. - Please understand that I am giving you
141:  permission to show these letters to Theo only on condition that you
142:  make yourself responsible that he shall treat them as confidential and
143:  not refer directly or indirectly to them to anyone, most of all to
144:  mother.
145: 
146:  Mother has been very loyal to you if you have ever mentioned me to her,
147:  because in the last year she has never mentioned Theo’s name to me
148:  except to say he had been there for a visit, and once when she wrote
149:  to tell me you had sent her some lovely presents, otherwise I have not
150:  heard from her and I shall never break the rule I have made all my
151:  life in my relations with her of not discussing politics or religion
152:  or her children with her (unless I can say something to comfort and
153:  joy her old heart and bring her nearer to them). I will also be glad
154:  if you will not write to Cron on the question; as long as you do not
155:  write to mother against me and we do not hear what you say, it does
156:  not hurt.
157: 
158:  Cron’s relations, who are far more opposed to me on the Native
159:  Question and religion than even you are to Cron, have yet never
160:  written or spoken one word to insult or pain me. I might not have been
161:  connected with them for anything they have ever made me suffer. [page/s missing]
162: 

Notation
Although in Olive Schreiner's hand-writing, this letter is in fact a copy of a letter she sent to Rebecca Schreiner. Orignally, it was in an envelope with on its front, also in her hand-writing, 'Letters to Ettie & Mother about Rhodes'. The companion letter-copy is a letter to Rebecca Schreiner dated May 1896 - see Life/4.

Letter Reference	View Life/6
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	1897
Address From	England
Address To
Who To	Sarah Ann Tooley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner (1924) The Life…: 295-7

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 Sarah Ann Tooley, 1897, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
When Cronwright-Schreiner wrote The Life of Olive Schreiner (1924), he included in it a small number of in effect complete letters by Schreiner, the originals then being destroyed. Usually, when Schreiner’s originals can be compared against his edited versions, his versions are typically shortened and/or inaccurate in sometimes minor but sometimes major respects. While these ‘whole letters’ embedded in The Life... are likely to be affected by such problems, they are provided for the sake of completeness, because they give useful 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. Cronwright-Schreiner provides the year this letter was written in and the name of its addressee. The beginning and end of the letter are not provided.

1:  I have made it a fixed rule of my life never to countenance
2:  interviewing in any way or in any of its forms. The whole of the petty
3:  personal element that is pervading modern literature seems to show one
4:  its painfullest features in the modern interview, and yet more in that
5:  taste for petty personalities which alone makes the interview pay. It
6:  is not the fault of the interviewer, but of the public which reads the
7:  interview. Shakespeare was possible in a great age which troubled
8:  itself not with his height, his hair, his house, his mother and
9:  brothers and sisters. An age which thirsts to know whether Mrs. Smith
10:  was one of two or four children, whether she wears a light or dark
11:  dress, and lives in a house in Brixton or Hammersmith, is not likely
12:  to produce a Shakespeare; or, if it produced him, would not be able to
13:  recognize him. The terrible thing to me about this element of gossip
14:  and personality which is decaying our society is that I believe it to
15:  be largely the work of women, and to mark our entrance as women into
16:  the field of journalism.
17: 
18:  Does any soul love Shakespeare more, or is the world in any way a
19:  higher and nobler world, because he left his wife his second best bed?
20:  Or do I or you love Shakespeare’s soul less because no one called on
21:  him at his rooms and examined him? Could all the interviews in
22:  creation have given us one glimpse into that divine and deep soul,
23:  whose depths a page in Hamlet makes clear to us? Have all the
24:  biographies and notices which have been written of George Eliot
25:  revealed to us one aspect of that great and heroic nature which is not
26:  made infinitely clearer by a page in The Mill on the Floss?
27: 
28:  Again: You ask me what you seem to think are two simple questions, and
29:  to which you have a right to an answer. One is “How were you
30:  educated?” I never went to any school; yet, to give you the true story
31:  of my education, would mean the rending open of my heart before you,
32:  the describing to you of the (to me) most sacred and beautiful hours
33:  of my childhood and girlhood, the books I loved and studied, the
34:  scenes I visited, the influence of a thousand beneficent and
35:  stimulating things upon my mind, matters to me so sacred and intimate
36:  that I would not discuss them with my closest friend - yet you would
37:  ask me to pour them out to you, an absolute stranger: and this not for
38:  your own special help and comfort, which might make me compelled to
39:  reply, but that you may write an article in a magazine which in a
40:  month’s time will be blazoning round every newspaper stall in the
41:  kingdom for every man and woman, who had sixpence to spend and nothing
42:  to do, to read.
43: 
44:  I know you may reply that what you want is not the true history of
45:  anyone’s education, but simply some phrase which one may read and
46:  forget in five minutes, as one forgets the gossip of a five-o’clock
47:  tea - “Mrs. Jones was educated at so-and-so”. - “Mrs. Grey has four
48:  children” - “Mrs. Smith has a new servant and has gone to the seaside”
49:  - etc., etc., etc.
50: 
51:  I reply: If this is what the public wants, its want is a distinctly
52:  evil one, the gratification of which implies the frittering away of
53:  human intellect and a degradation of the subject gossipped over. If it
54:  were possible to have the true history of the education of one human
55:  soul, even the weakest and poorest - the history of the effect upon it,
56:  during its early years, of the people who were about it, of the
57:  nature which surrounded it, of the books it read, of the social
58:  problems which were in the air at that time - it might be of value,
59:  because, carefully following the little path along which a brother
60:  soul has moved, our sympathy for it may be awakened; and a broadening
61:  of our affections and sympathies is ever for good ; but to do this
62:  would require a great genius, and he could do it only with regard to
63:  his own life.
64: 
65:  The epoch-making educational events of our lives which alone are worth
66:  recording; the hours of a long and restless night spent in reading a
67:  book which opened up to the child for the first time a field of
68:  thought which was to be its property through life; the hour of anguish
69:  when the child first saw death on a beloved face, and grasps a
70:  consciousness of the mystery which surrounds us, which it was never
71:  again to lose; these things which may form the real keynote of an
72:  education, without the knowledge of which the growth of a given
73:  individual mind cannot be understood at all - are they to be thrown
74:  down carelessly in the shape of rough fodder for men and women to
75:  tread on?
76: 
77:  Your second question, why I wrote The Story of an African Farm, is
78:  more easy to answer, because I cannot answer it at all! Those infinite
79:  powers of existence, which shaped human life and have placed each of
80:  us as a minute atom in the sum of existence, perhaps know how it came
81:  to pass that from the day I can first remember I made stories and
82:  poems and essays and shall do so till the breath goes out of my body -
83:  I don’t! Perhaps a careful study of the minds and bodies of my
84:  ancestors for countless generations might throw partial light on the
85:  matter - but, after all, it would only be throwing the mystery one
86:  step further back, why some men love to do one kind of thing and some
87:  men another! If you ask me why I printed The Story of an African Farm
88:  and my other books, that is quite another matter. Of the immense
89:  number of things I’ve made ever since I can remember, I have not
90:  written down one-half, and of those I have written, but one or two
91:  have been printed. I have printed these few in the hope that a little
92:  of the comfort and Joy I have had in writing them, some soul might
93:  have in reading them - though the hundredth part of the writer’s joy
94:  can never be known by the reader.
95: 
96:  You must not think me unkind because I have no information of the kind
97:  you wish me to give you; to do so would be to encourage a class of
98:  literature which I believe to be distinctly wrong. I never go into a
99:  railway station and see the woman’s literature lying there but my
100:  heart sinks. In the very weakest man’s journal there is at least an
101:  attempt to rise to the large and impersonal - to discuss cricket, not
102:  John Brown’s cricket breeches; to discuss a man’s work, not the colour
103:  of his eyes, his dress, and the furniture of his study. We women
104:  demand the franchise and this and that from man - it is not the man
105:  who can enfranchise us, but we who must enfranchise ourselves, we who
106:  must free ourselves from the bondage to the mean and trivial which
107:  eats out our women’s souls; and literature must lead in this matter.
108: 
109:  I know you will say: “The woman public demands such trivialities, and
110:  the editors demand from the writers a supply of such trivialities to
111:  supply the demand”; but should the writers comply with it?
112: 
113:  Instead of fifty articles describing how the Duchess of so-and-so
114:  furnishes her house, how such and such an authoress talks and plays
115:  golf, would it not be better to give one whole year even to writing
116:  one short paper on, say, the duties of the women of a dominant race
117:  (such as we English at present are) to the weaker or subject races in
118:  India, Africa, or elsewhere? Such an article might be of immense
119:  service to women, if only by turning their thoughts away from those
120:  trivialities which must play so large a part in the work-a-day life of
121:  so many of us, and which we look to literature to free us from.
122: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/1
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	5 May 1876
Address From	Victoria Hotel, Cradock, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 1

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 5 May 1876, 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 Mrs. R. Cawood.
2:  Victoria Hotel, Cradock, 5th May.
3: 
4:  I don't know when I felt more lonely in my life. I wish you were here
5:  my dear old friend. I don't think you can understand how much you have
6:  brightened and gladdened the year I have past at Ganna Hoek. Give my
7:  love to the dear little people.
8: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/2
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	8 September 1876
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 1

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 8 September 1876, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Ratel Hoek, 8th Sept.
3: 
4:  I have thought so much of you, and you would hardly believe how I wish
5:  to see you. You must get strong, very strong. I could not spare you
6:  out of the world. ... I am very well and comfortable. Ratel Hoek is as
7:  much better than Ganna Hoek as Ganna Hoek was better than Colesberg
8:  and for both these good changes I have to thank you.
9: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/3
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	4 April 1877
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Willie Cawood
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 1-2

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 Willie Cawood, 4 April 1877, 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 Willie Cawood (the second son).
2:  Ratel Hoek, 4th April.
3: 
4:  I suppose by this time you've quite forgotten me and when you get this
5:  letter you have to sit for half an hour and rub your head before you
6:  can remember who Olive Schreiner was. I'm afraid so, but hope not, for
7:  I don't like big people or little people to forget me if I love them.
8: 
9:  We are having very great storms here. One night, just in the middle of
10:  the night, I thought the house was struck by the lightning and in the
11:  morning we found four sheep dead in the kraal close by the house. You
12:  can't think what a place for snakes this is, Will. This morning Mrs.
13:  Aurett heard a funny hissing noise in the parlour, and Mr. Aurett went
14:  in and killed a big yellow snake just by the piano. And the other day
15:  when we went into the school-room we saw a great fellow lying asleep
16:  in one corner of the room. He was too lazy to run away. He just looked
17:  up at us, as much as to say, "What do you mean by making such a noise
18:  and waking me up?" and then he went to sleep again, so we soon killed
19:  him. Now when we go to school we always peep in the corners to see if
20:  his brother has not come to look for him. There's a nice little
21:  schoolmaster here to-day, but I don't think you would like him to be
22:  your schoolmaster. Guess what he does when the boys are naughty! He
23:  has a stick with the end all split, and he sticks it into their hair,
24:  and twists, and twists, till he gets a little bunch of hair out. If I
25:  was one of his boys I would cut my hair so short that there was not
26:  any left for him to pull.
27: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/4
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	8 September 1877
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 2

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 8 September 1877, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Ratel Hoek, 8th Sept.
3: 
4:  ... I don't know how it is, I seem to have met more likeable people in
5:  the course of the last year than in all the rest of my life. Perhaps I
6:  am growing less critical, perhaps more stupid and less able to see
7:  their faults...
8: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/5
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	4 November 1877
Address From	Katkop, Cradock, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 2-3

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 4 November 1877, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Kat Kop, 4th Nov.
3: 
4:  Mother Fouche says that Stoffel is determined that, when Annie has
5:  been a year in Cradock, I shall come back to them. ... Ratel Hoek does
6:  not suit my chest but I could not be more comfortable anywhere.
7: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/6
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	9 December 1877
Address From	Tarkastad, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 3

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 9 December 1877, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Tarkastad, 9th Dec.
3: 
4:  I wish you were here to talk matters over with me. I know you always
5:  make my affairs your own. The Tarkastad people want me to come and
6:  open a school here. The Dr, the Magistrate, Mr. Barker, Mr. Souter
7:  (all big guns here) would support me, and it would pay splendidly; but
8:  there are some poor girls who have a school here, and my coming would
9:  knock it on the head at once. I can't face that. It would be right,
10:  and yet, if I don't come, they will only send for someone to England.
11:  As the boy said, “If I don't eat the apples somebody else will.” Mr.
12:  Martin would I know send his little girls in as boarders, and a great
13:  many other country people would do the same. I might, after ten years
14:  or so, save enough to go home and study. It's all very well to say one
15:  can teach and study at the same time, but after five hours of school
16:  keeping the spring is out of you. Every evening when school comes out
17:  I go to my room and don’t leave my book until ten or eleven, except
18:  for supper, and yet it's very little I am able to do. Of course before
19:  breakfast I have to go for a little walk and do my needle-work and the
20:  days pass and I seem to stay just where I am.
21: 
22:  I have made up my mind not to come here.
23: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/7
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	17 January 1878
Address From	Seymour, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 3-4; Rive 1987: 21

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 17 January 1878, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Seymour, 17th Jan.
3: 
4:  ... My year at Ratel Hoek is up on the 10th May, and if I wished I
5:  could leave, and I have such a great wish to come and teach your
6:  children, that I would offer myself to you if it were not for one
7:  thing. As far as the mere teaching goes, I don't think you would be at
8:  all disappointed in me but I'm getting to live so much in my books and
9:  my scribbling, that I'm not a bit a bright, pleasant person to have in
10:  a house. I can't bear to think of your being disappointed in me in any
11:  way. Can you understand the feeling? It's just because I love you so
12:  much that I have it. A stranger would think me unsociable and
13:  disagreeable, and I would not care, if they only thought I did my work
14:  well; but with you it is quite different. ... Will is now with us. I
15:  don’t know what he would seem to other eyes, to mine he is satisfying
16:  and joy-giving. This meeting with him has been one of the most unmixed
17:  joys that has ever been given me.
18: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/8
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	10 March 1878
Address From	Tarkastad, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Catherine ('Katie') Findlay nee Schreiner
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 4

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 Catherine ('Katie') Findlay nee Schreiner, 10 March 1878, 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 Katie; Her Sister.
2:  Tarkastad, 10th March.
3: 
4:  ...I am now in Tarkastad, waiting for Mr. Martin to come and fetch me.
5:  I am much better, only a little weak and shall be quite strong when I
6:  get out to the farm and drink lots of milk. I can't tell you how kind
7:  everyone was to me in Queenstown. In spite of all the pain and
8:  weakness the time spent there will always stand out like a sunny dream. ...
9: 
10:  ... I am always thirsting for beautiful, beautiful, beautiful music. I
11:  wish I could make it. Perhaps there isn't any music on earth like what
12:  I picture to myself.
13: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/9
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	24 April 1878
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 4-5; Rive 1897: 22

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 24 April 1878, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Ratel Hoek, 24th April.
3: 
4:  Love, smoke and a cough cannot long be hid! You say you wish it had
5:  been my own engagement that I wrote to tell you of. You will never
6:  hear of that. The power of loving has burnt itself out in me; not in
7:  the widest sense, for I don't think I ever cared for so many people as
8:  I do now. But no one will ever absorb me and make me lose myself
9:  utterly, and unless someone did I should never marry. In fact I am
10:  married now, to my books! I love them better every day, and find them
11:  more satisfying. I would not change lots with anyone in the world, and
12:  my old sorrows look very foolish to me now.
13: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/10
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	4 August 1878
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 5

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 4 August 1878, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Ratel Hoek, 4th Aug.
3: 
4:  And now I'm going to quarrel with you. What do you mean by going to
5:  Cradock and staying there all that time and never having your likeness
6:  taken, when I've asked you so often and when you knew how much I
7:  wanted it? I had a beautiful nice large likeness taken when I was in
8:  Queenstown last, but I won't send you one, and there now Madam! And
9:  I'll never do anything that would please you; and there now Madam! And
10:  I nearly did die the other day; I woke up in the morning and felt as
11:  if I were dying, and I went to call someone, and fell against the door
12:  and cut my face all open, and it was half an hour before I got warm
13:  and could speak, and there now Madam! And I'm going to "spook" you
14:  about that likeness one of these days, and there now Madam!
15: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/11
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	10 September 1878
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 5

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 10 September 1878, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Ratel Hoek, 10th Sept.
3: 
4:  I am beginning to understand for the first time your wish to live to
5:  be an old woman. However hard one has to work, however much one has to
6:  suffer, it is better to live than to die. At least I feel so now.
7: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/12
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	27 December 1878
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 5-6

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 27 December 1878, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Ratel Hoek, 27th Dec.
3: 
4:  I am going to leave this in May, and if I haven't got a situation by
5:  that time perhaps I might come and spend a few weeks with you. But I'm
6:  trying very hard to get one. I am almost sorry now that I gave notice
7:  but I have a feeling (it max be foolish but I can't help having it)
8:  that I'll never get well while I stay here and that I would soon be
9:  strong if I went to another place. I really don't see why I shouldn't
10:  get quite strong, but something always seems to keep me back here.
11:  It'll be very hard to leave this place, my dear old room and the folks;
12:  they've always been so kind to me. In all these three years I've not
13:  had an unkind word or look from anyone, I feel I won't be so well
14:  liked anywhere else. Do you know I get so tired some-times I wish it
15:  were all over and yet at others there is such a clinging to life. I
16:  wish when I was two hours old the nurse had tied a garter round my
17:  neck, then I would never have known the pain of living, never have
18:  known the pain of dying. .... I saw Annie Fouche in Cradock. She is
19:  wonderfully improved. She is quite a lady! Her manners are so refined
20:  and gentle I hardly knew her. I think a teacher's feeling is something
21:  like a parent's; you can't help seeing things as better than they are,
22:  so perhaps she is really not so very nice.
23: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/13
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	9 January 1879
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 6; Rive 1897: 23

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 9 January 1879, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Ratel Hoek, 9th Jan.
3: 
4:  I wish I could see you. Perhaps it would give you a little happiness,
5:  and it would do me so much much good. I mean mentally and spiritually.
6:  I am getting to be such a selfish miserable creature. I wish I were as
7:  good as you. Perhaps if I saw you I would get like you. I would like
8:  to be so good that everything that I loved and that loved me was
9:  better and nobler and stronger for that love, but now it isn't so. I
10:  am so selfish. I'm not content to love. I want to be loved back again.
11:  We talk so much of intellect and of knowledge, but what are they!
12:  After all, the heart can't live on them. One would barter all one's
13:  knowledge for one kiss and all one's intellect for one tender touch –
14:  just one. ...
15: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/14
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	24 January 1879
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 6-7

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 24 January 1879, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Ratel Hoek, 24th Jan.
3: 
4:  Now as to my coming to you. It is as though someone held out a very
5:  nice ripe apple to very thirsty lips that were afraid to taste. Mamma
6:  says, "If you want to go so much, why don’t you?" She doesn’t know how
7:  much I would lose if I lost you, and I'm sure you wouldn’t keep on
8:  loving me as much if you sawwhat a poor weak miserable creature I am
9:  really. My heart is very bitter lately. I sometimes wish I could die;
10:  it seems as though love was all selfishness and trust almost thrown
11:  away and nothing left. But you are one of the things that are left to
12:  me and I am so afraid of anything that would take you from me. If I
13:  can at all manage it I want to come and spend two or three weeks with
14:  you when I leave this; you won't be able to get tired of me in such a
15:  little time. I know that your children would love me because I am
16:  getting to understand children better, and I am sure they would get on,
17:  and I don't think you would quite leave off caring for me if I live
18:  with you, but you might get to like me less than you do now, and
19:  that's what I don't want.
20: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/15
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	4 February 1879
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 7

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 4 February 1879, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Ratel Hoek, 4th Feb.
3: 
4:  Who do you think was here to-day, Mr. Stoffel Fouche! He came to get
5:  me he said, and he would not go away unless I came with him, but of
6:  course I told him I couldn't do anything of the kind. ... He offers me
7:  £55 per annum and I will only have to teach Peter and Christina for
8:  three hours in the morning, and he will get a piano at once and build
9:  on two nice rooms for school-room and bedroom for me. If he does all
10:  he says, it will be very nice. Of course there will be troubles and
11:  draw-backs, but heaven is not on this side of the river of death, and
12:  I fear not on the other. One reason why I would rather go there than
13:  to the Bonteboks is that I would be nearer you, and perhaps some day I
14:  might see you. ... I have such a splendid little book of anatomy. I
15:  never read any work more clear and just what I wanted. I am going to
16:  try and get some dead baboons to experiment upon.
17: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/16
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	24 February 1879
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 7-8

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 24 February 1879, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Ratel Hoek, 24th Feb.
3: 
4:  From seven years to eleven or twelve they should not study too hard,
5:  but after that let them work, even at some slight physical cost. If we
6:  are willing to give up nothing, we must expect nothing. I suppose no
7:  intellectual work is ever done without a certain price havingto be
8:  paid for it. No great book was ever written that did not cost many a
9:  sleepless night and many hours of weariness and lassitude; and with
10:  the lesser mental exercises it is the same. Nothing for nothing; the
11:  longer I live the more I feel that to be nature's inexorable law. We
12:  get nothing in this poor old world but the cash has to be laid down
13:  first.
14: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/17
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	26 February 1879
Address From	Ratel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 8; Rive 1897: 23

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 26 February 1879, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Ratel Hoek, 26th Feb.
3: 
4:  ... Now that the time for leaving begins to come near I begin to feel
5:  a great pain at my heart; but I would have had to leave in a few
6:  months' time, and it would not have been easier then than now, but
7:  rather harder. I really do not think there are in the world two such
8:  sweet little girls as mine. I never mean to stay at a place so long
9:  again; you get to care too much for everything and then you must just
10:  leave it. Even this dear old quiet parlour that has been my study so
11:  long, I feel as if it wasn't right that I should leave it. I think
12:  with all its physical suffering the time I have passed here has been
13:  the quietest and best of my life. ... If I had my way in educating
14:  children they would have a great deal less to do with dead language
15:  and a great deal more to do with nature. How interesting and eager the
16:  little creatures are if you try to explain to them the structure and
17:  uses of the parts of a flower, but if you have to press an irregular
18:  verb into their heads what labour it is. I am wonderfully stronger.
19: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/18
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	7 May 1881
Address From	Eastbourne, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Clifford (‘Annie’) Cawood (m. Mrs E. J. Stanley)
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 9

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 Clifford (‘Annie’) Cawood (m. Mrs E. J. Stanley), 7 May 1881, 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 Clifford Cawood (Now Mrs. Stanley).
2:  Eastbourne, 7th May.
3: 
4:  I came with the intention of becoming a nurse, but since I have been
5:  here I have made up my mind to study medicine. My generous old brother
6:  Fred has promised to let me have as much money as I wish, and I hope
7:  to begin my studies very soon. Isn't it jolly to be able to realise an
8:  old day dream at last?
9: 
10:  I have spent since I came to England the happiest time of my life. ...
11:  From Burnley I went to Scotland and spent six or seven days in
12:  Edinburgh, which I think to be the prettiest, grandest place in the
13:  world.
14: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/19
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	15 August 1881
Address From	Eastbourne, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 9-10; Rive 1897: 33

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 15 August 1881, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Eastbourne, 15th Aug.
3: 
4:  I don’t think when we human beings really love one another we can ever
5:  leave off doing so, and I never seemed so to long for love, or feel as
6:  though I had so much to give out as I have done since. I came to
7:  England. …
8: 
9:  I am not yet beginning my medical studies as both my brothers think I
10:  had better get my books ready for publica-tion before I begin. They
11:  think I ought to stick to literature, but I can't quite see it. I am a
12:  man with two loves and don't know which to choose. ...
13: 
14:  I had such a delightful voyage. Lord Colin Campbell, the brother of
15:  the Marquis of Lorne, was one of the passengers. He was very kind to
16:  me and we became great friends. He gave me letters of introduction to
17:  a sister of the Duke of Argyll and several other of his friends, but I
18:  have not used them. ...
19: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/20
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	3 October 1881
Address From	Eastbourne, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 10

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 3 October 1881, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Eastbourne, 3rd Oct.
3: 
4:  I leave on Saturday for London to enter the Endell Street Hospital for
5:  three months to study midwifery. ... It is a great lying-in hospital
6:  in one of the lowest parts of London, so that I shall be able to do
7:  that which I so much wish, and learn to know our poor. My chest is
8:  very bad again, I am worse than when I came to you to Ganna Hoek that
9:  time to be made well, but I am as likely to stand the winter in London
10:  as anywhere else. This ill-health makes it very hard for me to study.
11: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/21
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	14 May 1882
Address From	81 Guildford Street, Russell Square, Camden, London
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 10

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 14 May 1882, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  81, Guilford Street, Russell Square, London, 14th May.
3: 
4:  Dear old friend, so you won't write to me, won't you? Well then I'll
5:  write to you. How are you? Don't you think a body wants to hear from
6:  you sometimes, especially when you must have such interesting news to
7:  give? ... I like the life here and am in much better health. ... Is
8:  Annie at home now? Where is Willie? Is Ossy at Lovedale? How does your
9:  baby fare? Why have you got so many? I'm sure you don t need them all.
10:  And I would give just anything for one. I'm going to adopt a child as
11:  soon as ever I'm rich enough. …
12: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/22
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	11 July 1882
Address From	11 Porchester Gardens, Westerminster, London
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 10-11

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 11 July 1882, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  11, Porchester Gardens, London, 11th July
3: 
4:  Will came to say goodbye to me on Thursday. We had a very happy time
5:  together. In the afternoon we went for a walk in Kensington Gardens;
6:  then he took me to dinner at the Anglo-Indian dining rooms, and after
7:  that we went to Drury Lane Theatre, and saw Madame Ristori, the
8:  greatest actress now living, act Lady Macbeth. It was glorious. Her
9:  moan of remorseful agony in the sleep-walk scene made one quiver. ...
10:  As far as material things go, I have everything a heart could wish for,
11:  my old brother takes such care of me. ... I have had a touch of
12:  in-flammation of the lungs, since last I wrote, and am not so very
13:  strong. ... I am doing a great deal of reading and writing, but not
14:  attending lectures.
15: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/23
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	19 October 1882
Address From	St Leonards, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 11

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 19 October 1882, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  St. Leonards-On-Sea, 19th Oct.
3: 
4:  You see I have left my dear old London, ordered away by the doctors,
5:  and have been sent here for the winter. ... There are a hundred and
6:  fifty-three boys in the school. He has many more applicants than he
7:  has room for this term. ... A few days ago I went to see George
8:  Macdonald lecture. Have you ever read any of his books? I think they
9:  are just the style you would like. He is a short broad-built man with
10:  grey hair and beard.
11: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/24
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	15 November 1883
Address From	Rose Cottage, Bexhill, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 11

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 15 November 1883, 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. Cronwright-Schreiner comments that “the enclosed” refers to a photograph of Olive Schreiner: “a photo of herself, in corsets, on the corner of a table; the only photo of her in corsets”. Schreiner’s ‘little book’ refers to The Story of An African Farm.

1:  To Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Rose Cottage, Bexhill, 15th Nov.
3: 
4:  I am having to go back to St. Leonard's on account of my chest. ...
5: 
6:  I hope you will like the enclosed. The man made me jump up on the
7:  table and then said when I was only half up, "Now, steady,'" and took
8:  me; that is why I am in such a funny position. ... Almost every week I
9:  get letters from people I have never seen, telling me how much my
10:  little book has helped and gladdened them. I feel often as if too much
11:  of the good and joy of life were put into my cup. One must but try to
12:  give back what one gets.
13: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/25
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	20 March 1884
Address From	Edinburgh House, Warrior Square, St Leonards, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 13

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 20 March 1884, 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. Cronwright-Schreiner comments that the letter this extract was taken from included Schreiner ‘saying how happy her mother is at the Convent, Grahamstown, and telling of having met “a blind poet, Philip Marston”.’ The Story of An African Farm was initially published under the pseudonym Ralph Iron.

1:  To Mrs. Cawood.
2:  Edinburgh House, St. Leonards, 20th March.
3: 
4:  ... The great pleasure to me however has been the meeting of some, I
5:  may say many, fine women. The outcome of my experience of the world
6:  and of things is greatly to increase my faith in women. ... Ralph Iron,
7:  Esq., gets so many letters, and then I have to answer them for him!
8: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/26
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	2 July 1884
Address From	Aspley Guise, Woburn, Bedfordshire
Address To
Who To	Louie Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 24-5

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 Louie Ellis, 2 July 1884, 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 Miss Louie Ellis.
2:  Aspley Guise, 2nd July
3: 
4:  Dear Louie,
5: 
6:  Thank you for your letter. I'm glad you all liked “New Rush." I
7:  enclose you a likeness to look at of the woman who was the original of
8:  the Doctor's Lily. She is a connection of mine by marriage and
9:  prettier than you would think from the 'photo because her hair is so
10:  yellow.
11: 
12:  I know you are hale and true. It's not because Henry talks of you and
13:  loves you, because he might love someone who was worth nothing, but
14:  it's the way he talks of you.
15: 
16:  I still am ill, but I will be better soon I think. I am going to
17:  Derbyshire. If I can't get well there I will go to Switzerland. I must
18:  get my book copied out and ready by November.
19: 
20:  I know I should love you much more if I knew you more. I would like to
21:  write more now if I could.
22: 
23:  I'm so glad Henry's got you to love him and take care of him.
24: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/27
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	15 July 1884
Address From	Bolehill, Wirksworth, Derbyshire
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 31

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, 15 July 1884, 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:  Bole Hill, 15th July.
3: 
4:  When will you be coming it you do come? You will have your meals here.
5:  My chest is bad, to-day particularly bad. I sometimes feel almost
6:  hopeless. It seems to me like asthma more than anything else for it
7:  comes in fierce paroxysms of suffocation, and it leaves me so weak
8:  that I can only lie before the fire till the next one comes.
9: 
10:  Henry, I will have been here a week to-morrow and I haven't been able
11:  to do anything. I haven't been able to read, only a little bit of
12:  Emerson. It's been such a comfort to me, I keep the book close to me
13:  when I can't read it. I am so glad you are going to write that article
14:  on Bebel's Woman. I haven't read him yet. Yes, we must talk of it, of
15:  so many things.
16: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/28
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	August 1884
Address From	Bolehill, Wirksworth, Derbyshire
Address To
Who To	Louie Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 39

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 Louie Ellis, August 1884, 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. The month and year of the letter are implied by its place in the sequence of Cronwright-Schreiner letters.

1:  To Miss Louie Ellis.
2:  Bole Hill.
3: 
4:  I don't know if Ellis is writing to you. I want to write to you. I'm
5:  glad you have been having such a fine time. What was the gown you
6:  planned me? I want to wear boy's clothes and will as soon as I can get
7:  other women to join me. Boy's knickerbockers, but not coats, I think
8:  they are ugly. A kind of blouse reaching to the knee. Ellis will tell
9:  you about the long walks we have been, our going to Miller's Dale, etc.
10:  , etc. He is sitting at the other side of the room now writing away to
11:  someone or other. We have had a very jolly time, and I think he is
12:  looking much better than when he came. I fancy working for that exam
13:  tired him.
14: 
15:  We are going to have lunch now. I just wanted to write a word to you.
16: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/29
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	27 August 1884
Address From	Bolehill, Wirksworth, Derbyshire
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 39

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, 27 August 1884, 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:  Bole Hill, 27th Aug.
3: 
4:  I am going to begin work now. I miss you more than I thought I should.
5:  … I feel happy, though not well. Your little comrade.
6: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/30
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	13 September 1884
Address From	39 Belgrave Road, St John’s Wood, London
Address To
Who To	Erilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 41

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 Erilda Cawood nee Buckley, 13 September 1884, 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 Mrs. Cawood.
2:  39, Belgrade Road, London, 13th Sept.
3: 
4:  I haven't changed a bit in the way you fancy, though I have changed.
5:  When dear old John Pursglove was in England all he could say about me
6:  the first few days he was here was, "Well, Miss Olive, you have
7:  changed," and when I asked him how - “Why, you’ve grown so soft.” I
8:  couldn’t get any further information out of him. I should love you ten
9:  times more than ever if I knew you now. … We have often talked about
10:  good and noble men. I wish you knew my friend Henry Ellis. He is so
11:  tender to others' weaknesses and so unselfish. ... On my way back from
12:  Regent's Park I went through a large graveyard and found a very old
13:  woman trying to find her mother's grave. She must have been eighty I
14:  think. I found it for her at last and she was in such a state of
15:  delight.
16: 

Notation

Letter Reference	View Letters/31
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	7 November 1884
Address From	St Leonards, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 44-5

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, 7 November 1884, 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:  St. Leonards, 7th Nov.
3: 
4:  I think my brother liked your article on the Woman Question. He likes
5:  me to like you, he thinks you are so good and noble. He liked those
6:  first letters you wrote me, and he hasn't liked Alfred St. Johnston or
7:  anyone.
8: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/32
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	28 December 1884
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 52-3

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, 28 December 1884, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, St. Leonards, 28th Dec.
3: 
4:  My Harry, can you come on Monday? I like Myers' poems better and
5:  better the more I read them. Fancy, I know some of them by heart from
6:  hearing my brother Will saying them, without knowing there was such a
7:  man as Myers! His favourite was “Oh, somewhere, somewhere, God unknown.
8:  ” This cough tears me to pieces. ... Come for three days and bring
9:  your microscope. ... (Later.) I can't think, I can't work, what shall
10:  I do! For eight days I've not written anything. I'm in a dream. What
11:  is the matter with me? ... It is not good for a human being to live
12:  absolutely alone as I live; one is apt to go mad. ... (I wrote this
13:  the other day.) I have just had a new wonderful idea for a wild story.
14:  Not at all like my usual ones, but it will be splendid when I am able
15:  to write it. The idea is the conscious transmigration of a soul. A
16:  wild weird impossible thing, real of course - the feeling. It flashed
17:  on me just now when I was reading Maine's Early Law.
18: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/33
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	4 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 54

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, 4 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 4th Jan.
3: 
4:  I have read some of Myers' essays. He writes well and I like his mind,
5:  it is a fine broad mind, but he does not step out quite fearlessly
6:  after the truth, anywhere, anywhere. I like his essay on Victor Hugo.
7:  He and Swinburne are all sound and form, no truth and no thought.
8:  After Ibsen how small all writers and thinkers seem!
9: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/34
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	5 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 54

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, 5 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 5th Jan.
3: 
4:  I dislike the article of Myers on Renan very much. His assertion that
5:  George Sand was a Christian is simple folly. ... I'm getting more and
6:  more power to live out of myself in things that have no personal
7:  relation to me. My own life gets less and less. I love my work so. ...
8: 
9:  You and I do take the long path together because we are going on the
10:  same road to the same end. Such a feeling of blank desolation, I mean
11:  spiritual desolation, came over me this afternoon, but you and I are
12:  together.
13: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/35
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	6 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 54

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, 6 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 6th Jan.
3: 
4:  When I've had something to eat (I am faint now, lying on my back on
5:  the bed, with my feet up high and my paper against Early Law and
6:  Custom), I am going to sit down and try if I can dash off an article
7:  for the Fortnightly at one speed. If I can't I’ll leave it alone and
8:  go on with my darling book. Why do I love it so? ... I can see the
9:  ships far over the sea. I feel so happy.
10: 

Notation
The ‘darling book’ referred to could be ‘New Rush’ or From Man to Man.

Letter Reference	View Letters/36
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	9 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 55

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, 9 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 9th Jan.
3: 
4:  I have been in a dead dream all day. To-morrow I mean to work all day.
5:  Myers sent me both volumes of his essays. What you say of him is true.
6:  It is not truth but pleasant beauty he looks for.
7: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/37
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	10 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 55

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, 10 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 10th Jan.
3: 
4:  Keep me close to you. I have of late such dead feeling emotionally. I
5:  think it is the result of my physical illness. Do not you? I have been
6:  in a nightmare all these months and it is not gone. Somehow my life is
7:  ebbing away from me. I don't fear death. What I fear is a long life of
8:  dying. To live month after month, and year after year, and watch
9:  yourself ebb and ebb. To be at your own funeral. It is because my
10:  heart is full of this bitterness, and I do not like to show it to you,
11:  that you feel me far from you. Sometimes visions come to me of waking
12:  up and finding my old life again. Perhaps I shall. Oh, if it were just
13:  once again for a little time! … I have taken no chloral to-day; and
14:  have tried to write without leaving off since I got up. I have written
15:  a few lines. The pain in the left side is getting steadily worse. …
16:  The writing to you this evening rests me because I'm just telling you
17:  all the weak selfish feeling there is in my own heart about myself. I
18:  have been crying this afternoon and I cried much of last night.
19: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/38
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	10 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 55-6

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, 10 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 10th Jan.
3: 
4:  Last night I couldn't lie and rest. In my half-asleep state I prayed
5:  and I cried. I wanted someone I didn't see to put its arms around me
6:  and comfort me and help me to bear. It's interesting as showing how in
7:  states of great weakness our childish habits and thoughts come up as
8:  the higher nature sinks lower. It shows of how little worth those
9:  deathbed sayings are. I hope I shall die with my head clear. ...
10:  Afterwards I got up and put a cold compress on my chest. The relief
11:  was immediate and immense. Do you know, long ago, when I broke that
12:  blood vessel it was the thing that saved me. I wore one for three
13:  months because as soon as I took it off the expectoration and pain
14:  came back. Dr. Fergus showed me how to make it. He was a young doctor,
15:  something like you. … Send me Marcus Aurelius if you have him.
16: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/39
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	12 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 56

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, 12 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 12th Jan.
3: 
4:  Yes, I used to have that feeling of a power bearing me up, that would
5:  lead me. Now I have a kind of feeling that it has done; a blank wall now.
6: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/40
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	20 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 56

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, 20 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 20th Jan.
3: 
4:  Could you find out what the price of rooms in Gower Street is? ... My
5:  legs are bad. Three cheers for Olive Schreiner; she's the best doctor
6:  going. Old Pennie says it is the “lymphatic system"!! I look upon that
7:  as a stroke of genius, for I didn't know what a "lymphatic system" was!
8:  ... If I only add one line each day I mean to go on, I shall go on.
9: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/41
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	27 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 57

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, 27 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 27th Jan.
3: 
4:  The doctor has been and I put my rug round me and I sat in the chair
5:  when he came and told him I was much better and that I thought he
6:  wouldn't need to come again. He says that if I go to Mont Dore I will
7:  get quite well. Do you know anything about the place? Please find out.
8: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/42
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	28 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 57

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, 28 January 1885, 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. Cronwright-Schreiner comments that this letter contained ‘Then twelve more pages, all in the same strain; also asking if she should go to London for the day to consult a doctor.’

1:  To Havelock Ellis.
2:  4, Robertson Terrace, 28th Jan.
3: 
4:  My chest is getting worse, but my head is wonderfully clearer. To-day
5:  I resolved I would get up, and I went in a bath-chair; now my legs are
6:  bad. Oh, it isn't my chest, it isn't my legs, it's I myself, my life.
7:  Where shall I go, what shall I do? ...
8: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/43
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	29 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 57

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, 29 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 29th Jan.
3: 
4:  I can't tell why it is that when it begins to get dark in the evening
5:  till about 9 o'clock it is so terrible. After that, I get exhausted,
6:  but sometimes it goes on till ten or eleven. Oh, such hopelessness,
7:  such despair. If I had only a human being to speak to me! ... Oh,
8:  Harry, think, there are hundreds of human beings in London, and
9:  everywhere, lying alone with their physical suffering, and not anyone
10:  even to love them like I have.
11: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/44
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	30 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 57-8

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, 30 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 30th Jan.
3: 
4:  Alfred St. Johnston is going to publish my life after I am dead. He
5:  wants his children to know about his dear friend, he says. A fine life
6:  it will be! And besides, I am not going to die yet, eh? The funny
7:  thing is that he doesn’t know about my being ill or anything. What
8:  puts it into his head that I should die? And he's so earnest about it!
9:  I won't give him any details. I don't want my life written by anyone. .
10:  .. I wouldn't like you to come and see now, dear, for more than a few
11:  hours while I am so ill. It would only be wasting your time and love,
12:  my darling.
13: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/45
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	31 January 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 58

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, 31 January 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 31st Jan.
3: 
4:  Please look out for rooms for me for to-day week. My chest is getting
5:  much better, so if I can get strong I shall be all right. Please, if
6:  you can, get a bed with curtains. It makes such a difference in asthma.
7:  I don't know why. ... Will that paper do to join the “New Life”? … I
8:  am dead; I need rousing. Oh, to wake up and be my old self for only
9:  one day! I am getting better, except my legs. But it’s no use driving
10:  myself mad. I can’t work when I can’t … You are so good to me.
11: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/46
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	1 February 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 58

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, 1 February 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 1st Feb.
3: 
4:  I am better. I am coming to London on Friday. It’s glorious to be
5:  better. I could stand on my head.
6: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/47
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	2 February 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 58

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, 2 February 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 2nd Feb
3: 
4:  Is that George Sand? It's funny that when I looked it as I took it out
5:  of the envelope I thought "That would be a nice mother to have; but a
6:  wife or mistress!" Woe to the thing that tries to chain that lion!
7:  It's wonderfully like my mother, more like her than any likeness. … I
8:  am better. Just think, I am sitting at the table and going to write!
9:  If it's only six lines it will comfort me. … If you could get decent
10:  rooms in Bloomsbury I should be glad.
11: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/48
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	3 February 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 59

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, 3 February 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 3rd Feb
3: 
4:  I'm as lively as a young cricket this morning. I am going to try and
5:  write. ... No, I'm not more Greek than Christian, I’m both in equal
6:  parts. … I can read Manon Lescaut nicely. ...
7: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/49
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	5 February 1885
Address From	4 Robertson Terrace, Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 59

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, 5 February 1885, 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:  4, Robertson Terrace, 5th Feb.
3: 
4:  I am getting so much better that I really don't need to go to London.
5:  I wrote to-day a little. ... Last night I cried for hour, I don't know
6:  why. It was like a mad agony came on me.
7: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/50
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	10 February 1885
Address From	19 Charlotte Street, Westminster, London
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 59; Rive 1987: 62

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, 10 February 1885, 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:  19, Charlotte St., 10th Feb.
3: 
4:  I am vaguely conscious that in moral questions I am still, as I have
5:  been for the last two years, passing through a crisis like that which
6:  followed the break up of my religious ideas. I am willing, perfectly
7:  willing, to follow what is right, as I then was to follow what was
8:  true. But I didn't quite know at first what was true, and I don't now
9:  see what is right. Some day I shall see clearer. But one cannot hasten
10:  sight; it has to grow clear slowly. When one breaks away from all old
11:  moorings, and shapes a higher path of morality for oneself, and
12:  perhaps for others who shall follow one, it cannot be done without
13:  suffering (I am not explaining rightly what I mean, only I dimly see
14:  it; and know what I mean, though I can't express it.) I do desire as
15:  sincerely to do what is right as I used to desire to know what was
16:  true when I couldn't see truth anywhere. ... What help and comfort you
17:  are to me I hardly think you realise.
18: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/51
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	23 February 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 59-60

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, 23 February 1885, 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:  Hastings, 23rd Feb.
3: 
4:  I am always giving you trouble. Now you have to go running about my
5:  bag again! I'm glad it's found. I thought I saw you carry it down. ...
6:  I have worked twelve hours already to-day, and am going to work some
7:  more before I go to bed. I feel so well in spite of a little cold,
8:  have enjoyed my work so. Life would be too beautiful if one were
9:  always well. If I could keep on feeling like this my book would be
10:  done in four weeks.
11: 

Notation
The ‘my book’ referred to is likely to be From Man to Man.

Letter Reference	View Letters/52
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	24 February 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 60

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, 24 February 1885, 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:  Hastings, 24th Feb.
3: 
4:  After my fifteen hours work of course I lay awake all night. Up early
5:  this morning and for a walk. Now going to have lunch, then to work
6:  again. I am trying to break myself into the habit of going to sleep
7:  before twelve and waking very early. I wrote with such delight and
8:  enjoyment yesterday.
9: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/53
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	26 February 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 60

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, 26 February 1885, 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:  Hastings, 26th Feb.
3: 
4:  I have not read at all to-day, or thought about anything, but Bertie
5:  and Rebekah. I have such a nasty bit to revise to-morrow. I don't
6:  think it's interesting because I didn't enjoy writing. it. It's about
7:  two mean scandal-talking women, and can’t bear writing about mean
8:  people. I don’t dislike writing about wicked ones, it doesn't pain me
9:  if they're large. I have done with Rebekah's diary. I get on slowly
10:  though I work so much. You see I have to copy the whole book as well
11:  as revise. ... I don't seem to have any self, I am all lost in my work.
12:  .. I am going to do a little French before I go to bed.
13: 

Notation
The book referred to is From Man to Man, with Bertie and Rebekah characters in it.

Letter Reference	View Letters/54
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	28 Feburary 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 61

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, 28 February 1885, 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:  Hastings, 28th Feb.
3: 
4:  I sent the George Sand portrait to my brother without saying anything.
5:  He says it's just like my Aunt Rolland and my brother Will. He doesn't
6:  mention it's being like my mother, but then he's never seen her since
7:  he was about twelve years old. … I have been working to-day. But my
8:  mind is a little over-excited, and I am trying to keep down feelings
9:  which bother me. I can’t get on with those scandal-talking women.
10: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/55
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	2 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 61

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, 2 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 2nd Mar.
3: 
4:  I have been looking at that life of Schopenhauer to-day. If I had ever
5:  read him, or even knew before I came to England that such a man
6:  existed, one would say I had copied whole ideas in the African Farm
7:  and From Man to Man from him. There is one passage of his on the
8:  search for philosophic truth that reads like a paraphrase of my
9:  allegory in the African Farm. There’s something so beautiful in coming
10:  on one's very own most inmost thoughts in another. In one way it's one
11:  of the greatest pleasures one has. That Life by Miss Zimmern is very
12:  well written. ... The women's rights women are going mad, it seems to
13:  me. The latest idea is to set up a women's parliament to legislate for
14:  women and children!
15: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/56
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	3 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 61-2

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, 3 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 3rd Mar.
3: 
4:  My Aunt Rolland is my mother’s sister, married a French missionary,
5:  and went out to the Cape. I am exactly like her in face, except the
6:  nose. A painted portrait of her, before she was married, has often
7:  been taken for me. She is the mother of Mrs. Orpen and Mrs. Hope. She
8:  is still alive, very old, over ninety I think, but still writes and
9:  walks about like a young woman.
10: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/57
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	4 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 62

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, 4 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 4th Mar.
3: 
4:  I am going to finish off my scandal-talking women to-day. Somehow I
5:  can't bear them. I wish there were only noble people in the world,
6:  intense if wicked. But there are so many of these others. ... I am
7:  getting more and more to hate the world, dress, and material cares and
8:  pleasures. I used to wish I could feel like this; now that I do I find
9:  it has its drawbacks! I am entering Nirvana when you are a little
10:  waking out of it.
11: 

Notation
The 'scandal-talking women' are in From Man to Man.

Letter Reference	View Letters/58
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	4 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 62

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, 4 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 4th Mar.
3: 
4:  I've not worked yet to-day. Been doing all sorts of little things. I
5:  am very well. I haven't looked so well since I came to England. Lovely
6:  weather here.
7: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/59
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	7 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 62

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, 7 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 7th March.
3: 
4:  I had pretty bad asthma last night. ... I'm glad I'm a member of the
5:  New Life, but perhaps I shall never attend any of the meetings. I
6:  doubt whether I shall come to London again before I leave for
7:  Switzerland. ... I wish I had arranged to go to Brighton to-day. I
8:  feel so inclined to go somewhere. I have just finished a chapter. When
9:  I am in the middle of a chapter I don't care for going out, my mind is
10:  dwelling on it so. I shall have to sit hard and fast at my book if I
11:  am to have it ready by the time I leave. I feel that I must not expect
12:  much for it. It is too strong for that. If I only get enough to keep
13:  me independent for one year I shall be satisfied. The things I mean to
14:  write next are things that will pay better.
15: 

Notation
The chapter just finished refers to From Man to Man.

Letter Reference	View Letters/60
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	9 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 62-3

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, 9 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 9th March.
3: 
4:  I fight always so hard to keep all sad hopeless thoughts from me,
5:  because they sap the strength I want for my work. ... Don't let your
6:  heart get overweighted with the thought of all there is to do and the
7:  little time there is to do it in as mine often gets. “Without rest,
8:  without haste.” I keep saying that to myself.
9: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/61
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	10 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 63

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, 10 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 10th March.
3: 
4:  Miss Müller called to-day, but I didn't feel that I wanted to see her.
5:  I sent down word to say I couldn't; to-morrow I go to her Woman's
6:  meeting, I think, but I'm so afraid my brother'll come while I'm out.
7:  I have a feeling that he's coming, You know I've only seen him for a
8:  few hours in the last year and a half.
9: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/62
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	12 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 63

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, 12 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 12th March.
3: 
4:  Miss Müller called to-day. We had a long and very delightful talk. ...
5:  No, I never feel "Without rest, without haste." That's why I always
6:  have to keep saying it to myself. ... You never told me how glorious J.
7:  A. Symonds' new sonnets are; "Stella Maris" - isn't it fine?
8: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/63
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	13 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 63-4

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 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 13th March.
3: 
4:  I went to Pevensey in the afternoon. It was so beautiful. Here are
5:  three daisies I picked there. I sat in the fork of a tree below the
6:  Castle. The rooks in the tall bare branches of the trees were talking;
7:  they seem to me to be always talking, you can hear, it's conversation.
8:  An old church, too, a grave-yard, great flat marches, and the sea far off.
9: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/64
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	20 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 64

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, 20 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 20th March.
3: 
4:  Can one talk of a "croning" laugh? I say “Rebekah laughed the small
5:  croning laugh she laughed only at Bertie." I always use the word.
6: 

Notation
Rebekah and Bertie are characters in From Man to Man.

Letter Reference	View Letters/65
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	21 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 64

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, 21 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 21st March.
3: 
4:  All the last eight days I have a most terrible headache that never
5:  leaves me. I feel so over-excited and full of blood, like when I'm
6:  very miserable. But I'm not miserable at all now.
7: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/66
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	22 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 64-5

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, 22 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 22nd March.
3: 
4:  I have got up very early, have had an egg and some bread and some
5:  squeezed lemon (my invariable breakfast) and am going out to post this
6:  and for a walk. … Mrs. Walters is the one woman who sympathises with
7:  me in everything. …
8: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/67
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	29 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 66-7; Rive 1987: 63

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, 29 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 29th March.
3: 
4:  Only about 130 pages revised, and four or five hundred more! When will
5:  it be done? Yet I can't quicken myself. My mind must work at its own
6:  pace. ... To-day I thought of these things that always goad me up into
7:  life and work again: my want to be independent, the thought that I may
8:  die and leave my book unfinished. I shall perhaps send you a couple of
9:  pages, revised and unrevised, and not tell you which is which, and see
10:  which you like. Oh, I must work, I must work. Death'll come and I've
11:  done nothing, and I've so much I want to say and so much I want to
12:  paint. You know my mind is beginning to feel a little like when I
13:  wrote the African Farm, and at Ganna Hoek and Lelie Kloof and Ratel
14:  Hoek. My work and my people seem more real to me than I myself. ...
15:  This morning I looked at Elle et Lui., How splendid it is in some
16:  parts! That last little bit is like the grand parts of the Bible in
17:  style.
18: 

Notation
The ‘pages revised’ were in From Man to Man.

Letter Reference	View Letters/68
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	29 March 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 67; Rive 1987: 63

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, 29 March 1885, 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:  Hastings, 29th March.
3: 
4:  Oh Havelock, when I have even £200 of my own, so that once again I can
5:  have that feeling of perfect freedom and independence! If it were you
6:  or any other man it would be the same. I can’t live on dependence. Ah,
7:  freedom, freedom, freedom, that is the first great want of humanity.
8:  That is why I sympathise so much more with the Herbert Spencer school
9:  than with the Socialists, so called. If I thought Socialism would
10:  bring the subjection of the individual to the whole I would fight to
11:  the death. But human nature will assert itself under Socialism as
12:  elsewhere. Better to die of cold or hunger or thirst than to be robbed
13:  of your freedom of action, of your feeling that you are an absolutely
14:  free and independent unit.
15: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/69
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	1 April 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 67

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, 1 April 1885, 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:  Hastings, 1st April.
3: 
4:  If I was to be in love with anyone else and tell you about it would
5:  you be able to sympathise with me? There is a young Jew singing in the
6:  next room, with such a beautiful full man's voice, and it seems to
7:  wake up in me all my old, old dreams of when I was about fourteen, I
8:  don't know why. I know it would never be possible for me to find that
9:  ideal love: but somehow, I can't say why, the longing wakes up in one
10:  again. My body even has the same feeling. Perhaps it's because his
11:  voice is just like my father's that it brings back the past. ... I
12:  have been lying down all day, not able to work, but I have read The
13:  Mummer's Wife. I like it very much, better than Nana, and I think it
14:  shows a great deal of genius, and I'm going to stick up for it.
15: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/70
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	2 April 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 67-8

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, 2 April 1885, 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:  Hastings, 2nd April.
3: 
4:  I can't get out. I sprained my leg on that long walk. Roden Noel
5:  called yesterday, and to-day, too, but I've not been able to see him.
6:  I like him very much, more than Myers, he's more real. … I've never
7:  left off work since I got up early this morning. If it were something
8:  new I should get on quickly. I should like very much to sit quietly by
9:  you and talk this evening. I have got a horrid bit of my book to
10:  revise now; then I have only one more horrid bit; all the rest is
11:  delightful to the end.
12: 

Notation
The ‘horrid bit’ being revised refers to From Man to Man.

Letter Reference	View Letters/71
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	4 April 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 68

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, 4 April 1885, 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:  Hastings, 4th April.
3: 
4:  I am better. I am going nearly mad with my work. I have written this
5:  half chapter out nine times. Now I’m going back to the first, only
6:  I've torn it up.
7: 

Notation
The chapter referred to was in From Man to Man.

Letter Reference	View Letters/72
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	5 April 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 68

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, 5 April 1885, 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:  Hastings, 5th April.
3: 
4:  My mind struck work to-day and I have been doing needlework. ... Roden
5:  Noel returns to London to-morrow. He has given me a pressing
6:  invitation to come and spend at least a day and night with them, and
7:  then I shall be near you. I shall come up to town the 1st May for good.
8:  Hastings is already getting too enervating for me. ... With regard to
9:  my scribbling, I have gone back to the original thing. I think I get
10:  silly over my work, I want more than I can have at last. I am getting
11:  so disgusted with my work; it seems I don't show people at all what I
12:  mean. But I suppose the ideal perfection is no more attainable in
13:  one's work than elsewhere. ... The only part of Hinton’s teaching that
14:  is quite original is his idea of polygamy as a remedy for prostitution
15:  (one-sided polygamy) and this is just his false and weak point. What
16:  Hinton did, the great good he did, was that by his character and
17:  standing he got a hearing for ideas that many other people might have
18:  preached in vain. As a man he must have had genius, that wonderful
19:  personal power which makes people listen and follow whether they will
20:  or not. I think I should have liked Hinton very much if I had known him.
21: 

Notation
The ‘original thing’ refers to the original rather than the edited manuscript of From Man to Man.

Letter Reference	View Letters/73
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	8 April 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 69

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, 8 April 1885, 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. Cronwright-Schreiner comments that the ‘this’ Olive Schreiner has just received was from Eleanor Marx.

1:  To Havelock Ellis.
2:  Hastings, 8th April.
3: 
4:  I have just received this. Please go and see them and tell me just how
5:  Aveling is. If he gets dangerously ill I must go. If the Avelings are
6:  very hard-up I must try to send them something, but I am hard-up
7:  myself just now.
8: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/74
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	9 April 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 69

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, 9 April 1885, 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:  Hastings, 9th April.
3: 
4:  You know I think the brain works hard when one is not conscious of its
5:  working. I told you this afternoon I had not been working for some
6:  days. I'd sit at my table but nothing would come, only a strange blank
7:  feeling in my mind; couldn't think, couldn't feel. Suddenly, this
8:  evening, the feeling came to sit down and write. I have been writing
9:  hour after hour, page after page. I could write till to-morrow morning.
10:  I don't know where all the ideas come from if they've not been
11:  forming slowly these last few days while my mind has felt so blank. I
12:  have had the same experience over and over again before. I work very
13:  hard for some days, or think very intensely on some subject day and
14:  night. Then suddenly my mind strikes work. For a day or two days or
15:  three day I seem quite passive. Then suddenly, as in a moment, it all
16:  bursts open again, and I find all the thoughts that were half-formed
17:  and in confusion when I left work, completed and ready. I wonder
18:  whether other people have the same experience.
19: 

Notation
The ‘writing hour after hour’ refers to From Man to Man.

Letter Reference	View Letters/75
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	10 April 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 69

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, 10 April 1885, 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:  Hastings, 10th April.
3: 
4:  If you're a good boy when you come I’ve got a lovely little story to
5:  tell you that came to me this morning when I was in bed, quite a new
6:  one I never had before. It's about a man and a little girl on a desert
7:  island. It's lovely.
8: 

Notation
The ‘little story’ referred to cannot be established and was most likely never written.

Letter Reference	View Letters/76
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	11 April 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 69-70; Rive 1987: 63-4

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, 11 April 1885, 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:  Hastings, 11th April.
3: 
4:  I have been working all the morning, but now I must give in and read
5:  French. ... Long ago I used to think that was quite a discovery of
6:  mine that there is as much structure in prose as in verse. The
7:  difference is that in verse (which is only a kind of style in which
8:  you set certain fixed laws for yourself, and then follow them, with
9:  regard to repetition, rhythm, pauses, etc.) you are able to see
10:  clearly by looking at the work what the structure is, whereas in prose
11:  (of course, I am not speaking of unstructural prose, but of prose
12:  which has an artistic structure) it is sometimes next to impossible to
13:  discover the law according to which it has been constructed. Take the
14:  last passage in Elle et Lui, take the first three chapters in
15:  Revelations in our English translation, one feels the structure, but I
16:  have not yet been able to bring sufficient analysis to bear on them to
17:  discover their law. With regard to my own work, I feel what I must,
18:  and what I must not, do; I know perfectly when a line or a word or a
19:  sentence breaks the law, and it causes me agony to let it go. But what
20:  law it breaks I don’t know. I suppose that I could find out if I gave
21:  enough time to analysis. But it wouldn’t help one a bit in one’s work;
22:  one must only follow one’s feelings there. I found out when I was a
23:  child that if I changed one word I had to change the whole sentence,
24:  and that writing “ribbed” was quite a different thing from writing
25:  plain. But I didn’t know what writing “ribbed” meant, nor do I know now.
26: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/77
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	13 April 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 70

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 April 1885, 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:  Hastings, 13th April.
3: 
4:  I am alright. But my legs always ache. I don’t know how or why they
5:  ache, or what it is. I won’t have any more doctors. … There’s a lot
6:  about you in that letter of Mamma’s. I didn’t know that the Gordon she
7:  knew was Chinese Gordon. It was quite a surprise to me.
8: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/78
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	14 April 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 70

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, 14 April 1885, 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:  Hastings, 14th April.
3: 
4:  I am a bit weary and heartsore. My chest isn’t right; it will never be
5:  like it used to be again. I’ll get worse and worse as the years pass.
6:  Whatever I have to do I must do quickly.
7: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/79
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	26 April 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 71

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, 26 April 1885, 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:  Hastings, 26th April.
3: 
4:  All day and all last night I have been quivering and vibrating. I
5:  wonder if you ever have that feeling, as if you were all just nerves
6:  at their highest state of tension and that another turn and they would
7:  break. You feel you must bite your hand or knock your head till it
8:  breaks. I haven’t felt like this for a long, long time. It's a
9:  physical feeling, not mental at all, though it seems to affect the
10:  mind most. If I could have gone for a long fifteen mile walk I should
11:  have worked it off to-day and been able to work to-morrow. You seem to
12:  vibrate even in your fingers and feet.
13: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/80
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	1 May 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 71

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, 1 May 1885, 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:  Hastings, 1st May.
3: 
4:  The swelling is almost gone. I'm scribbling to-day. It's ten days
5:  since I last wrote. When I am well my work is so delightful, so
6:  glorious to me. ... Julius Gau is coming to England. Is there any way
7:  of finding what passengers come by the large steamers? I want to watch
8:  at the docks when the Cape steamer arrives. I want to look at him once
9:  more. I've not seen him since I was fifteen.
10: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/81
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	3 May 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 72

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, 3 May 1885, 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:  Hastings, 3rd May.
3: 
4:  I have just discovered from Bagehot that I what I am trying to do is
5:  to make my work classical! That essay of his on the Classic and Gothic
6:  rather good, eh? I am better.
7: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/82
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	4 May 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 72

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, 4 May 1885, 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:  Hastings, 4th May.
3: 
4:  I have been making observations now for many years and I have come to
5:  te conclusion that between the brain and the kidneys there is the most
6:  wonderful interaction. It seems ridiculous but when I work much and
7:  use my brain powerfully it always has an effect on my kidneys an
8:  causes a heavy sediment. A very intense feeling, connected with
9:  terrible over-excitement, has the same effect.
10: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/83
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	5 May 1885
Address From	Hastings, East Sussex
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 72

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, 5 May 1885, 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:  Hastings, 5th May.
3: 
4:  I think Eleanor is coming to meet me at Charing Cross, but I have to
5:  hear from her again. Alfred St. Johnston has sent me flowers. … This
6:  morning it has been so beautiful on the sea, a bright wonderful light
7:  along the horizon, one of those beautiful scenes one never forgets. …
8:  I feel better to-night. I won’t take any more bromide.
9: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/84
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	17 May 1885
Address From	41 Upper Baker Street, Westminster, London
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 73-4; Rive 1987: 64

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, 17 May 1885, 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:  41, Upper Baker St., London, 17th May.
3: 
4:  This afternoon Philip Marston and Rider Haggard called. I had such a
5:  dreadful time. In the middle of the visit my landlady burst open the
6:  door in a rage - I’ll tell you all about it when we meet. After they
7:  were gone the two women turned on me and stormed. They asked me if I
8:  had so many men always coming after me. Then they said they were much
9:  insulted that I hadn't asked them to come in and introduce them. I
10:  began to cry. ... I hope Roden Noel won't come. They will think I have
11:  nothing but men followers. Goodnight, Havelock, I wish I was a little
12:  child and God wrapt me up in his arms and took care of me. I won’t
13:  feel silly like that soon.
14: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/85
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	18 May 1885
Address From	41 Upper Baker Street, Westminster, London
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 74

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, 18 May 1885, 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:  Upper Baker St., 18th May.
3: 
4:  I don't wish I was a little child now. I'm a big woman. I feel very
5:  happy to-day. I'm working. ... You and I will go to Kew very soon by
6:  water. I will come and meet you at Westminster. Find out when the
7:  boats go. We are wonderfully near each other, because your work seems
8:  to you somehow connected with me and mine with you.
9: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/86
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	20 May 1885
Address From	41 Upper Baker Street, Westminster, London
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 74

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, 20 May 1885, 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:  Upper Baker St., 20th May.
3: 
4:  The old maids are good tempered to-night.
5: 

Letter Reference	View Letters/87
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date	22 May 1885
Address From	41 Upper Baker Street, Westminster, London
Address To
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 74

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, 22 May 1885, 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:  Upper Baker St., 22nd May.
3: 
4:  You know I am getting fond of my good old maids. I can't live with
5:  people without loving them. ... Why am I always so very, very tired
6:  now? All my nature seems sending up one wild passionate cry for rest.
7: