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Letter ReferenceSchreiner-Hemming Family BC 1080 A1.7/159
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date1913
Address FromDe Aar, Northern Cape
Address To
Who ToWynnie Hemming
Other Versions
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
The Project is grateful to Manuscripts and Archives, University of Cape Town, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Manuscripts and Archives Collections. This letter has been dated by reference to content around Schreiner planning to leave South Africa in December 1913. Schreiner was resident in De Aar from November 1907 until she left South Africa for Britain and Europe in December 1913, but with some fairly lengthy visits elsewhere over this time.
1 Dear Wynnie
2
3 Letter-writing seems impossible to me now-a-days or I should have
4written to you long ago.
5
6 How do you like your new work & home? Tell me all about it please; &
7how Elberty is getting on. What of poor old Guy?
8
9 I am going on as ever. I shall perhaps go to England in Dec to see if
10the doctors can do me any good; but I have such continual fits of
11faintness that I doubt if I shall get to the end of the voy-age. About
12the mattress you wrote of dear. If I don’t go to England I shall
13much need it this summer in Cape Town. If I had had a decent mattress
14I should never have got ill at the Grand Hotel. At home I put all the
15cushions under me, it hurts me so curiously to lie on a hard thing, it
16seems to stop the circulation & cause real agony on the side you lie
17on. If I go to England would you without great trouble store the
18horsehair for me sometime till I come back – if ever I do? What
19should you think it would cost to make the mattress with a little wool
20& good strong ticking?
21
22 Have you seen Ursie? If I come to Cape Town for the summer, if I
23can’t manage to go to Europe I shall try to take an unfurnished room,
24 & with the tables you said you had & the mattress I shall easily
25furnish the room.
26
27 unreadable How are Effie & her little ones? If they carry out that
28mountain railway scheme won’t it bring the railway close to the
29Highlands? That would greatly increase its value. It would be quite
30nice to live there then.
31
32 Good bye, darling. I do hope you are tolerably happy in your new post
33 Your loving small Auntie Ol
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