Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Radford Collection - uncatalogued
Archive	British Library, Department of Manuscripts, London
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	June 1898
Address From	The Homestead, Kimberley, Northern Cape
Address To
Who To	Dollie Radford nee Maitland
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 Dollie Radford nee Maitland, June 1898, British Library Manuscripts, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to the British Library for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Special Collections. The date and address the letter was sent from have been written on an attached envelope. The writing is in an unknown hand and most likely to be that of Dollie Radford's great grand-daughter, who owned the Radford Papers before they were sold to the British Library in 2010.

1:  Dear Dolly Radford,
2: 
3:  Thank you for your letter. I have been desiring terribly further
4:  details with regard to Eleanor. I have felt if I were in England I
5:  would find the servant who was the last person with her & get her to
6:  tell me all she knew.
7: 
8:  I have little doubt in my own mind she discovered a fresh infidelity
9:  of Avelings, & that that ended all.
10: 
11:  Private
12:  I don’t know if you know the life she life she lead with him: she has
13:  come to me nearly mad having found him in her own bedroom with two
14:  prostitutes. Just before I left England, a few days before in 1890 a
15:  friend of mine a married woman with many children, came & told me how
16:  he had made love to her, & she had & her husband forbade him their
17:  house.
18: 
19:  So it went on & on. I had thought of writing a short notice of her in
20:  one of the monthly reviews. Then I felt as I could not speak the truth
21:  about him I could not write of her. It would have hurt her to have him
22:  blamed. If you can learn anything more about Eleanor on any way please
23:  write & tell me. If you could I should like you so much to tell me a
24:  little about yourself. I got worse after I came out for a long time;
25:  but the last two months since our glorious cold has set in I am much
26:  better.
27: 
28:  I am so glad Eleanor is dead. It is such a mercy she has escaped from
29:  him. Have you been writing anything lately?
30: 
31:  Yours affectionately
32:  Olive Schreiner
33: 

Notation
This letter appears in an extracted and heavily bowdlerised form in Yvonne Kapp (1976) Eleanor Marx: The Crowded Years, 1884-1898 London: Lawrence & Wishart, p. 700.