Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Edward Carpenter 359/92
Archive	Sheffield Archives, Archives & Local Studies, Sheffield
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	9 February 1907
Address From	Hanover, Northern Cape
Address To
Who To	Edward Carpenter
Other Versions

The manuscript of this letter by Olive Schreiner belongs to the Archive referenced above; its ownership of the original should be acknowledged by referencing the letter as indicated: Copyright transcription: © Olive Schreiner Letters Project. This transcription can be freely used as long as copyright is acknowledged and it is referenced using the following citation: ‘Olive Schreiner to Edward Carpenter, 9 February 1907, 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.

1:  Hanover
2:  Feb 9th 1907
3: 
4:  Dear old Ed’ard
5: 
6:  I send you a bit of a letter I’ve just got from a very dear &
7:  remarkable friend of mine, Mrs. Earle. She the grand daughter of an
8:  Earl, I mean a an Lord Earl, all her relations are lords & ladies, but
9:  she’s a grand old Radical. She’s over 70 & as young & lovely in
10:  mind as if she were 20. I’m going to tell her to send you some of
11:  her books with which I think you’ll like. How she will love you when
12:  I tell her, as I’m going to in my letter today, that you were an
13:  anti meat eater twenty five years before the fashion came in. She is
14:  quite mad on the no meat question. Its She quite wrong about my meat
15:  eating. I’ve not eaten meat or soup practically now for one year & a
16:  half, & never taste it when I’m in my own home, live principally on
17:  sour milk & a very very little dry biscuit (bread & sugar are worse
18:  for me than meat). What I contend with her is that what suits us does
19:  not of necessity suit everyone. Here are the Boers one of the biggest
20:  & most powerful races the world has yet seen who live entirely almost
21:  on meat. My objection to meat eating is & remains the horror of eating
22:  ones animal brothers. I never pass a flock of sheep, or cattle with
23:  their dear large restful eyes but I get a stick in my heart. Of course
24:  people like Mrs. Earle with generations of port drinking overeating
25:  aristocrats behind her ought for purely physical reason to eat meat or
26:  take any stimulating diet. I believe that nearly all the diseases of
27:  the wealthy ?men classes in England, might be cured by a non-meat diet.
28: 
29:  Everything is going on all right with me. I am still at Hanover living
30:  quite alone now as Cron has his business at De Aar where I can’t
31:  live, I stayed there a month & nearly died. He’s coming over on the
32:  24th of this month to see me ^which is our wedding day^ & then on the
33:  24th of March which is my birthday. It is very hard to be separated
34:  from him, but I stay here so that if he were ill or wanted me I could
35:  go at once.
36: 
37:  He is going to start a newspaper at De Aar, a general paper, but it
38:  will support labour, the doing away with the disabilities of sex, &
39:  above all seek for justice for the native, the one great all important
40:  problem here now. The different white governments here are going to
41:  bring on a terrific native war here within the next few years! They
42:  will likely bring on a small one in Natal next May. There is no one
43:  here to defend the native because it doesn’t pay.
44: 
45:  ^Good bye dear old Brother. I had my likeness taken here the other week
46:  by a little travelling photographer who goes round to take the Boers,
47:  if its a passable likeness I’ll send you one. Do you ever see
48:  anything of our old Bob? Is he changed or much the same as ever? ^
49: 
50:  Olive
51: 
52:  Dear Isabella has written a fine paper on the woman question. I’m
53:  writing at my book.
54: 

Notation
The book Schreiner was 'writing at' is From Man to Man. The paper referred to is: Isabella Ford (1907) Women and Socialism London: Independent Labour Party.