Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Olive Schreiner: Havelock Ellis 2006.29/7
Archive	National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	Friday 19 July 1884
Address From	Bolehill, Wirksworth, Derbyshire
Address To	24 Thornsett Road, South Penge Park, London
Who To	Havelock Ellis
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 33; Rive 1987: 47

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 Havelock Ellis, 19 July 1884, National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to the National English Literary Museum (NELM) for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Manuscript Collections. The date of this letter is provided by the postmark on an attached envelope, with the address it was sent to on its front. Schreiner stayed at Bolehill near Wirksworth from early to late July 1885, moved to Buxton for about ten days, and then returned to Bole Hill from mid August to early September 1884.

1:  Friday
2: 
3:  I thought I shouldn't to write to you today, but I find a kind of need.
4: 
5:  Did you ever read that passage in Shelly's letters where he talks
6:  about genius (I think he repeats it from another book.) that Genius
7:  does not invent, it perceives. I think that ^this^ is so won-derfully
8:  true & more true the more one looks at it. It agrees with the true
9:  fact that you noticed the other day, that men of genius are always
10:  childlike. A child sees everything, looks straight at it, examines it
11:  without any preconceived idea; most people after they are about eleven
12:  or twelve quiet lose this power, they see everything through a few
13:  pre-conceived ideas which hang like a veil between them & the outer
14:  world.
15: 
16:  By the bye (this doesn't bear directly on that) did you ever do what I
17:  was fond of doing when I was a child, I used to call it "Looking at
18:  things really"? Look at your hand, for instance, make an effort of
19:  mind, & dis-associate from it every preconceived idea, for instance
20:  that it is your hand, that it is part of a human body, &c &c. Look at
21:  it simply as an object which strikes the eye; you will be surprised
22:  who how new, & strange, & funny it looks, as though you had never seen
23:  it before. It requires some effort of mind of course, & one can't do
24:  it if one is hurried & talking, it takes some time. I used to do it
25:  often in church to pass away the time. It can be done with the other
26:  senses too, of course. I have often done it with speaking. Listen to
27:  people talking as though you didn't understand what the words meant, &
28:  didn't or that the sound came from human voices. Listen to it just as
29:  a noise striking the ear. It is utterly different from what one
30:  fancies. This isn't very interesting though.
31: 
32:  I have been reading my Emerson just now. You will do me great service
33:  if you help me to read French, it will open a whole new field of books
34:  to me.
35: 
36:  Tomorrow at twelve I must walk down to Wirksworth to meet Mrs Walter
37:  at 1.We shall talk a great deal about Hinton. I mean to try & explain
38:  Hinton to her & make her ^understand him^. I don't think she sees him
39:  rightly. I will tell you what she says & ^what^ I say about it. How
40:  beautiful about your visit to Shields.
41: 

Notation
For Shelley's letters, see Percy Bysshe Shelley (1840) Essays, Letters From Abroad, Translations and Fragments London: Edward Moxon. Rive's version of this letter has been misdated, omits part of the letter, and is also in a number of respects incorrect. Cronwright-Schreiner's (1924) version is incorrect in a range of respects.