"Great is silence, time for silence, time for speech" Read the full letter
| Letter Reference | HRC/OliveSchreinerLetters/OS-JohnHodgson/84 |
| Archive | Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin |
| Epistolary Type | Letter |
| Letter Date | After Start: Monday September 1918 ; Before End: December 1918 |
| Address From | 9 Porchester Place, Edgware Road, Westminster, London |
| Address To | |
| Who To | John Hodgson |
| Other Versions | |
| Permissions | Please read before using or citing this transcription |
| Legend |
The Project is grateful to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Manuscript Collections. This letter has been dated by reference to when Oliver Schreiner became engaged and John Hodgson and Joan Wickham were married, in July and September 1918 respectively.
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19 Porchester Place
2Edgware Rd
3Monday
4
5My dear dear John
6
7I haven’t written to you for a long long time; at first I didn’t
8write because I always feel newly married people mustn’t be troubled
9with letters, & the last 6 weeks I’ve been in the hands of the
10doctors not able to write to any one. I’m better now. Do write &
11tell me a bit about yourselves. Are you going to move into your own
12house soon? Are you both fit? Thank Joan for her lovely letter. Do ask
13her to come and see if ever she comes to town. I should love to see her.
14
15I told her my nephew Oliver, the beloved of my soul, is eng-aged to a
16little girl at the Cape. Those who know her give such accounts of her
17that I am in love with her myself without having seen her.
18
19Dot is bringing out a tiny book, hospital stories. I think they are
20rather good; & you know I am generally frightfully hard on the people
21I love! They are very slight, but so much herself. She publishes then
22under her Christian names “Frances Lyndall”. Oliver is in
23Mesopotamia. I think he was at ?Balkan, but his last letter is four
24months old. Dot is quite well now, & has joined the navel division &
25will probably be going to a post soon; Ursula is working away in
26France. Poor little soul, she sh has hardly seen her husband in the
27year they have been married.
28
29I’m reading a most fas-cinating & illuminating book “The Fight for
30the Republic in China” by Putnam Weale. It has thrown more light on
31the Chinese question to me than all the numbers of other books I have read.
32
33Have you read a most interesting book by George Schreiner called
34“The Iron Ration”? Have you also read ‘Japan at the Cross
35Ways”? That also is most interesting.
36
37My dear love to you both. I wish you lived in London. All the friends
38I have in England except one seem to live out of London.
39
40Your loving small
41Aunt Olive
42
2Edgware Rd
3Monday
4
5My dear dear John
6
7I haven’t written to you for a long long time; at first I didn’t
8write because I always feel newly married people mustn’t be troubled
9with letters, & the last 6 weeks I’ve been in the hands of the
10doctors not able to write to any one. I’m better now. Do write &
11tell me a bit about yourselves. Are you going to move into your own
12house soon? Are you both fit? Thank Joan for her lovely letter. Do ask
13her to come and see if ever she comes to town. I should love to see her.
14
15I told her my nephew Oliver, the beloved of my soul, is eng-aged to a
16little girl at the Cape. Those who know her give such accounts of her
17that I am in love with her myself without having seen her.
18
19Dot is bringing out a tiny book, hospital stories. I think they are
20rather good; & you know I am generally frightfully hard on the people
21I love! They are very slight, but so much herself. She publishes then
22under her Christian names “Frances Lyndall”. Oliver is in
23Mesopotamia. I think he was at ?Balkan, but his last letter is four
24months old. Dot is quite well now, & has joined the navel division &
25will probably be going to a post soon; Ursula is working away in
26France. Poor little soul, she sh has hardly seen her husband in the
27year they have been married.
28
29I’m reading a most fas-cinating & illuminating book “The Fight for
30the Republic in China” by Putnam Weale. It has thrown more light on
31the Chinese question to me than all the numbers of other books I have read.
32
33Have you read a most interesting book by George Schreiner called
34“The Iron Ration”? Have you also read ‘Japan at the Cross
35Ways”? That also is most interesting.
36
37My dear love to you both. I wish you lived in London. All the friends
38I have in England except one seem to live out of London.
39
40Your loving small
41Aunt Olive
42
Notation
The books referred to are: Frances Lyndall (1918) Hospital Sketches London: G. Allen & Unwin; Putnam Weale (1917) The Fight for the Republic in China New York: Dodd, Mead & Co; George Schreiner (1918) The Iron Ration: Three Years of Warring in Central Europe London: John Murray; and Andrew Melville Pooley (1917) Japan at the Cross Roads London: Allen & Unwin.
The books referred to are: Frances Lyndall (1918) Hospital Sketches London: G. Allen & Unwin; Putnam Weale (1917) The Fight for the Republic in China New York: Dodd, Mead & Co; George Schreiner (1918) The Iron Ration: Three Years of Warring in Central Europe London: John Murray; and Andrew Melville Pooley (1917) Japan at the Cross Roads London: Allen & Unwin.