Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Edward Carpenter 359/98
Archive	Sheffield Archives, Archives & Local Studies, Sheffield
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	17 June 1912
Address From	De Aar, 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, 17 June 1912, 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:  De Aar
2:  June 17th 1912
3: 
4:  Dear Edward
5: 
6:  Thank you much for your book. I would have written sooner but I’ve
7:  been through a time of much sorrow. My favourite sister Mrs Stakesby
8:  Lewis died of heart disease the week before last after 7 months of the
9:  most terrible anguish I ever saw a human creature go through. I have
10:  just been down to Cape Town to her funeral. Oh it is blessed to think
11:  she is enjoying an everlasting sleep. I don’t know how those can face
12:  death who believe their beloved are still as individuals ^existing^ in a
13:  universe where such suffering & torture exists. My husbands mother
14:  also died when I was down there. It was a very terrible death. She was
15:  buried on the same day as my sister.
16: 
17:  Cron is well. He is going next Sunday on a trip to the Victoria Falls
18:  & will be away for two weeks. You ought to see the Falls. There are
19:  much the most beautiful & wonderful thing in nature that I have ever
20:  seen any where on earth. We were all nearly drowned when I was there
21:  last year - my sister in law her young son of 20 & my two young nieces
22:  with 12 other people. We were in a steam launch with which broke down
23:  when we were above the falls & we were slowly but surely drifting down
24:  to them when eight boats manned by powerful natives came from the
25:  shore a mile off & saved us. It was splendid how brave everyone but
26:  one woman was. It is curious how instead of making me shrink from the
27:  falls it made me love them more than ever. It was as though after that
28:  there was an organic connection between one & them, as if they were
29:  calling to me. No pictures of it give you the slightest idea of its
30:  glory. It is not a bit as they paint it mere water. It is an infinite
31:  wild strong spirit leaping down on an edge hundreds of feet high &
32:  turning into smoke which rises miles into the air. You can see the
33:  smoke miles & miles away rising in a great cloud into the sky. There
34:  is a place called Danger Point, where you look at it from there the
35:  mist is covered by three or four rainbows, & you can only cry with joy
36:  as you look at it. I asked an American, who was there what he thought
37:  of it. He said "Well after this I think they’d better dry Niagger up &
38:  run it into a furrow – it’s nothing." When it is full as when we were
39:  there it is a mile & a half wide. When you are in a boat in the middle
40:  of it you can’t distinguish objects on either bank. You can see a boat
41:  but you can’t distinguish the people in it.
42: 
43:  Good bye dear old Edward
44:  Olive
45: 
46:  My dear friend Lady Constance Lytton is very ill. She has been almost
47:  insensible for two weeks, she knows people & can make a sound in her
48:  throat but cannot speak or move her right hand or leg. The specialists
49:  say a little particle of the tissue of her worn out heart has got into
50:  the brain. She may never speak or move herself again or in two or
51:  three months it may have dissipated & she may partly recover; but it
52:  will always happen again as the heart is quite broken down.
53: 
54:  ^She & Adela Smith are the two women nearest & dearest to me in the
55:  world now my sister is gone.^
56: 

Notation
Carpenter's book is likely to be The Art of Creation (1912, London: Allen).