Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Autograph Letters Collection: Alys Pearsall Smith ALC/7/3/2
Archive	National Women's Library, London
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	Sunday 2 July 1888
Address From	Roseneath, Harpenden, Hertfordshire
Address To
Who To	Alys Pearsall Smith m. Russell (1894)
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 Alys Pearsall Smith m. Russell (1894), 2 July 1888, National Women's Library, London, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to the National Women's Library, London, for allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Autograph Collections. The date has been written on the letter in an unknown hand.

1:  Roseneath
2:  Harpenden
3:  Herts
4:  Sunday
5: 
6:  Dear Miss Smith
7: 
8:  Thankyou very much all three for having come. I was quite lonely when
9:  you went away. Please remember my Nineteenth Century. I know you will
10:  forgive me for having been so stupid. I had been up all the night
11:  before till half past four writing & didn't sleep much then. I was
12:  finishing some work & it is always sad to finish anything, you feel as
13:  if you were parting with your people forever - so you are. I've been
14:  writing about little children & they're so much nicer to write about
15:  than grown up people.
16: 
17:  I wonder if you would mind my saying something. You have so much power,
18:  & gifts of so many kinds, I wonder if you have any definite plan of
19:  life! Men have always some object for which they live, if it be
20:  nothing higher than business or horse-racing. therefore their lives
21:  are more complete & great. It is not that we lack the power, but that
22:  we do not consider our lives as a whole & try to find the work we are
23:  best fitted for, & do it. I wonder whether a nature like yours is
24:  quite con-scious of its own powers, & not too diffident of it-self?
25:  Your great power of sympathy, of intuitively realizing what people are
26:  feeling & of entering into their life is in itself a great gift. It is
27:  for want of this that so many who try to spend their lives in working
28:  for others fail. They can't realize what others who differ from
29:  themselves in education & circumstances feel, & so they can't really
30:  get to them or help them. I hope you are not going to give up your
31:  studies yet. You will forgive my saying this, I would like your life
32:  to be so perfect. So many women are drifting through life, instead of
33:  swimming, knowing in which direction they are going.
34: 
35:  I have made up my mind not to go to Monmouth. I want to stay & finish
36:  my work.
37: 
38:  Yours sincerely
39:  Olive Schreiner
40: 

Notation
The writing that Schreiner was engaged in was most probably editing the manuscript of From Man to Man, which she had started while in Mentone and Alassio in late 1887 and early 1888.