Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Edward Carpenter 359/35
Archive	Sheffield Archives, Archives & Local Studies, Sheffield
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	21 January 1889
Address From	Mentone, France
Address To
Who To	Edward Carpenter
Other Versions	Rive 1987: 147

The manuscript of this letter by Olive Schreiner belongs to the Archive referenced above; its ownership of the original should be acknowledged by referencing the letter as indicated: Copyright transcription: © Olive Schreiner Letters Project. This transcription can be freely used as long as copyright is acknowledged and it is referenced using the following citation: ‘Olive Schreiner to Edward Carpenter, 21 January 1889, Sheffield Libraries, Archives & Information, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to the Sheffield Archives, Sheffield Libraries, Archives and Information Services, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Archive Collections. The date has been written on this letter in an unknown hand.

1:  Mentone
2: 
3:  My dear old Edward
4: 
5:  You don’t know how precious your last letter has been to me. You can’t
6:  understand.
7: 
8:  I’ve read your paper in Pioneer. I like it best about the nakedness,
9:  but I like all, except where you talk against the intellect. You do
10:  understand, my Ed’ard, that the same joy and peace comes to my little
11:  soul from reading Spencers First Principles or Mills Logic or even
12:  Gibbons Decline & Fall that comes to it from looking at a sunset
13:  behind these tall mountains. God can and does reveal himself through
14:  the intellect as through nature, through the reason of the man as in
15:  the blowing of the wind. Thou darest no more blaspheme against the
16:  intellect than another dare against nature.
17: 
18:  What you, who have been over taught, are striking at, is that wretched
19:  choking of the intellect that goes on in schools & colleges, but we,
20:  people who have never been over fed like myself, we who have never
21:  been to school who have never been taught anything, we cannot feel as
22:  you do. You have been over fed. We are dying of hunger. That’s true
23:  about things coming to us when we don’t care any more. But then we
24:  can’t be said ever to have them. What we have gained is the power to
25:  do without them, the part of ourself which wanted them we kill slowly,
26:  & the benefit is that so much more is dead. This sounds sadder than I
27:  mean, but I think you
28:  understand.
29: 
30:  I would like to have heard the discussion at the "New Noah’s Ark." It
31:  will have been lovely I’m sure. Will you please send me all you write.
32:  If you ever should go to Mr Pearson’s again would you send me
33:  something out of his garden; pick it for yourself. You know my heart
34:  lives always in that little study in Hampstead; ^it is like a little
35:  chapel to me;^ it is all so beautiful to me. Now I know that he never
36:  needed ^wanted^ my friendship ^I can rest.^ It’s to me as if he was buried
37:  personally but so beautiful to know he’s alive & working ^impersonally.^
38:  All goes well and happily & me here. Such loving letters from my
39:  people rejoicing at my return to the Cape in August. It’s not a secret.
40:  I’ve told the Robertses. My hospital plan has to be given up, no room
41:  for me.
42: 
43:  I’m writing something very lovely. Edward, it isn’t really the
44:  intellect & nature that are at war, it’s the personal & impersonal.
45: 
46:  Your sister
47:  Olive
48: 
48:  ^I’ve got a beautiful likeness of Walt Whitman. I wonder if you would
49:  like to see it? I’ll give it you if you would value it. I value it, so
50:  I’d like to give it you.^
51: 

Notation
The 'very lovely' thing Schreiner was writing cannot be established. The references are to: Edward Carpenter (1889) 'Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure' Pioneer January 1889; Herbert Spencer (1862) First Principles London: Williams & Norgate; John Stuart Mill (1843) System of Logic London: Parker; Edward Gibbon (1776-1787) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire London: T. Cadell. Rive's (1987) version omits part of this letter and is also in a number of respects incorrect.