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Letter ReferenceSchreiner-Hemming Family BC 1080 A1.7/27
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date4 February 1893
Address FromMiddelburg, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who ToHenrietta (‘Ettie’) Schreiner m. Stakesby Lewis (1891)
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.
1 Middelburg.
2 Feb 4 / 93.
3
4 Dear old Ellie,
5
6 My own darling. How I long to see you. I hope it is beautiful for you
7to be out here again. I hope it’s all beautiful about you & that a
8new time of strength & health is coming.
9
10 I had such great hopes of the physical effect of marriage for you my
11dear one. When we went to Healdtown I remembered so that day,
12Willie’s birthday, when we climbed the hill behind station & sat on
13the flat rock on the very top, & picked some red flowers, & you & I
14talked of all sorts of things. We were so young then. I slept in Mr
15?Fish’s room, & when I lay in bed there came back the nights before
16Ellie was born when you & ^I^ used to sit up in the window.
17
18 I think I shall like to go back to England & see all my friends, but I
19don’t mind much one way or another. All seems almost alike to me.
20One strives so all ones life that the feeling of "self" with it’s
21desires & needs may die out, & when the time comes when it seems dead,
22one looks back upon the old struggle as something almost beautiful;
23but one wouldn’t have it back.
24
25 I have a little room here ^in a cottage^ to myself, & its quieter than a
26farm.
27
28 Good bye, my old sister
29 Your little old
30 Olive
31
32 Don’t write yourself dear, let someone else write.
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