Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Olive Schreiner: Extracts of Letters to Cronwright-Schreiner MSC 26/2.16/412
Archive	National Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town
Epistolary Type	Extract
Letter Date	After Start: 7 August 1907 ; Before End: 8 August 1907
Address From	Sea Point, Cape Town, Western Cape
Address To
Who To	S.C. (‘Cron’) Cronwright-Schreiner
Other Versions

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 S.C. (‘Cron’) Cronwright-Schreiner, 7 August 1907, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to the National Library of South Africa (NLSA), Cape Town, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner extract, which is part of its Special Collections. This extract was produced by Cronwright-Schreiner using original letters when he was preparing The Life... (1924) and The Letters of Olive Schreiner (1924). With a few exceptions, the original letters in his possession were then destroyed. However, when Olive Schreiner's originals can be compared, this shows his extracts to be severely shortened, and/or inaccurate in sometimes minor but sometimes major respects, while their frequent multiple dates (eg. 8-15 August) indicate that he often combined a number of original letters, among other bowdlerisations and intrusions as well as deletions. Consequently the status of the Cronwright-Schreiner Extracts, of which this is one, is that they are artefacts of his editorial practices, rather than being ‘Olive Schreiner letters’ as such. They 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 has written the date and where it was sent from onto this extract. He also comments that on 8 July Olive Schreiner had been ‘Sent an “insulting” letter from John X, who, she thinks, “must be mad”. She had apparently expressed her dislike at party politics & eulogised the Swiss system’ and that she had also attended ‘Meetings of Women, (evidently organising). Wants me to address them. (Mrs. Bateman; Eliza Findlay.’.

1:  …I’m a bit better today but rather flapdodally… I am sorry you
2:  find ^found^ things so disordered in the office; it’s all so hard
3:  & worrying for you… I’m so glad you’re at ?Shand’s. Miss
4:  Glossop has just come in… Oh, sweetheart, I shall be so glad to see
5:  your old face again, & we’ll go to ‘the Belle of New York’ &
6:  have a laugh. Eli sends love…
7: 
8: