Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Olive Schreiner: Mary Sauer MSC 26/2.11.59
Archive	National Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	Saturday February 1893
Address From	Middelburg, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	Mary Sauer nee Cloete
Other Versions	Rive 1987: 219-20

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 Mary Sauer nee Cloete, February 1893, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to the National Library of South Africa (NLSA), Cape Town, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Special Collections. The month and year have been written on this letter in an unknown hand.

1:  Middleburg
2:  Saturday
3: 
4:  My darling Mary
5: 
6:  It's a beautiful evening. I am just going off for my solitary walk
7:  across the plain, but I want to write to you first.
8: 
9:  I've not written the long letter because I wanted quite to understand
10:  about the going to England first. I've been thinking a good deal about
11:  it, beloved. I want it to be such a happy such a beautiful time & not
12:  only that; but a time that will help you for all your life. I shall I
13:  shall be very lonely, terrible lonely on the voyage; & the tendency
14:  for my own sake to say simply "come," is very great. But it would be
15:  such a terrible thing to me to me if your visit were a disappointment
16:  that I feel it would be better to wait till next year.
17: 
18:  You see 1st I ha I shall not take a flat or have rooms at all this
19:  year, ^shall simply stay with friends^ & I shall have after my three
20:  years being away to be continually going out of London. I have some 40
21:  friends I have to go & see in different parts, & even if I stay away a
22:  very short time, I shan't be more than three days in the week in
23:  London generally. It would be so terrible to me to think of you left
24:  alone in some hotel or lodgings, & even if you were with Mrs Hans
25:  Sauer, I shouldn't feel happy. You with ^will^ think I am very vain; but
26:  I don't feel sure you would be happy in London with out me! I'm so
27:  afraid that terrible feeling of unloved loneliness would come over you
28:  that I suffered from so much when I was first in London. In London of
29:  all places one wants someone who loves one always near one: all the
30:  picture galleries & concerts are nothing without that. Next year I
31:  shall have a nice little flat of my own. The rush of seeing people
32:  after coming back would be over. You could stay with me all the time &
33:  help me to receive the visitors & we could go to the picture galleries,
34:  clubs & lectures &c, &c. I know you would be happy then. If you came
35:  early so as to get there by the 1st of May we could go & spend three
36:  weeks in Paris, see all the interesting life, & come back to England
37:  for June & July. I shall have so much ?pure business too; seeing
38:  publishers & taking up the working of old societies & clubs with which
39:  I've had to do, ^& helping a friend to start a newspaper!^ that all the
40:  three months I'm in England will be one rush of work. It would be such
41:  agony to me all the time to think your dream had come to pass & it was
42:  all emptiness to you. You will think I'm very vain, but I know if you
43:  came next year you would be happy, & you won't be happy this. You see
44:  you'll have to be very very happy to make up for all you are leaving
45:  here, & one can be so awfully lonely in London. I would really like
46:  you to see all of London life & people that can be seen in three
47:  months, & this year you would see comparatively nothing.
48: 
49:  Darling think it all over. If you decide still to come it will be so
50:  very beautiful to me; but you must think it all out carefully. I had
51:  meant to sail on the 10th in the Scot, but now I think I shall go on
52:  the 28th in the Tartar. It would be so delightful if you were going, &
53:  we could take a big cabin together. But oh, I can't bear to think of
54:  your being left alone in London even with Mrs Sauer, & I couldn't help
55:  it this year. Almost as soon as I land I shall have to run down to
56:  Eastbourne for one day, then to Oxford for a day, then to Yorkshire
57:  for two days to see a unreadable ?people on business; it's not choice
58:  but necessity. In September I shall either go to America or down the
59:  Rhine to some little village to get out my work again, & in the winter
60:  I must go to Switzerland or Italy or perhaps Egypt. Think it all over
61:  dear carefully
62: 
63:  ^I shall be back at Matjesfontein on the 5th of March, but till then
64:  this is my address. I'm trying to get strong before the voyage.
65: 
66:  Good bye, my Mary. Write to me.
67:  Olive^
68: 
69: 

Notation
Rive's (1987) version omits part of this letter and is also in a number of respects incorrect.