Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Karl Pearson 840/4/3/53-55
Archive	University College London Library, Special Collections, UCL, London
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	Thursday 19 August 1886
Address From	The Convent, Harrow, London
Address To	2 Harcourt Buildings, Temple, London
Who To	Karl Pearson
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 Karl Pearson, 19 August 1886, University College London Library, Special Collections, UCL, London, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to University College London (UCL) and its Library Services for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Special Collections. The date of this letter is provided by the postmark on an attached envelope, while the name of the addressee and the address it was sent to are on its front.

1:  The Convent
2:  Thursday
3: 
4:  Thank you for your letter. I have very much I want to talk to you
5:  about. Now I am only writing to give you the result of my own bitter
6:  experiences; it seems a very little matter, but it is really a very
7:  great one. In choosing your rooms don’t be misled by the fact that
8:  when you go in they seem tolerably quiet; the train not very close &c.
9:  You imagine you can do brain work there – coming out of the noisy
10:  street it seems quiet. You will ^may^ find when it comes to living there
11:  month after month, & doing fine brain work, perhaps under pressure,
12:  that it is simply impossible to do anything, except at a gigantic
13:  unnecessary cost to your brain. I hope you are much too wise to need
14:  this advice – but I give it.
15: 
16:  I am sorry you are leaving the Temple. One gets accustomed to
17:  associating people with certain places & one resents their making any
18:  change.
19: 
20:  I am going to answer your letter tomorrow. You will let me know when &
21:  where you get to when you go away again?
22: 
23:  I wish you were a woman & could come & stay here at the convent. When
24:  you had rested here for in perfect quiet for six months & done nothing
25:  then your ^mind^ would begin to work; your mind would begin to work of
26:  itself without your pulling it in motion. You don’t know anything
27:  about cactus buds. I do. They stop for months on the branch, & you
28:  think they’ll never open, & they do at last; & they’re full of
29:  stamens & yellow & white pollen! Of course there’s nothing before if
30:  you press
31: 
32:  ^them open. They are still forming, & the largest buds take the longest
33:  time. ^
34: 
35:  O.S.
36: 
37:  ^I ought to be in London today but have a bad cold, so put it off till
38:  tomorrow.^
39: 
40: 
41: