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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner BC16/Box3/Fold4/1905/33
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date25 August 1905
Address FromHanover, Northern Cape
Address To
Who ToAlice Greene
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. The name of the addressee is indicated by salutation and content. Schreiner was resident in Hanover from September 1900 to October 1907, after 1902 with visits, sometimes fairly lengthy, elsewhere.
1 Aug 25th 1905
2
3 Dear, I am always wanting to write you a long letter but not a short
4one. I hope being in the old home & being with Hellen & being able to
5help her a little sh has brought some sort of healing to the old sore
6place where the loss of your mother lies. The only comfort when one
7you love is gone & you can’t do any more for them is to be able to do
8something for those they loved. The only things that has ever been any
9help to me about my brother Freds death is always writing almost every
10week to his wife.
11
12 I liked your poem so much. There have been two columns of attack on me
13in the "Volkstem" the Pretoria paper & the organ of the Africanders &
14Het Volk. They say they want no English Africanders in their party &c
15&c It is an attack if on that article of mine on the Taal. Once this
16would have stabbed me in the heart, & now I don’t feel it one little
17bit! It’s so nice when one gets to the point where one feels nothing
18any more. But of course one gets to it only by killing out the parts
19that feel. One has to do it or die.
20
21 Good bye. I wish I knew more about all your friends, but I’m so glad
22of all you told me so vividly. I think I can picture the house & the
23garden & Polly & Florence & Hellen are all pretty real to me.
24
25 It’s such a bitterly cold windy sunny day.
26
27 ^Olive^
28
29
30
Notation
Alice Greene's poem cannot be established. The criticism Schreiner refers to was for her 'Letter on 'The Taal', published in the Cape Times 10 May 1905 (p.9); it also appears in a shortened version as Appendix E in (ed) Cronwright-Schreiner (1924) The Letters of Olive Schreiner London: Fisher Unwin.