Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Karl Pearson 840/4/2/90-91
Archive	University College London Library, Special Collections, UCL, London
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	Sunday 23 June 1886
Address From	The Convent, Harrow, London
Address To
Who To	Karl Pearson
Other Versions	Rive 1987: 84-5

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 Karl Pearson, 23 June 1886, University College London Library, Special Collections, UCL, London, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to University College London (UCL) and its Library Services for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Special Collections. The date has been written on this letter in an unknown hand. Schreiner was resident at the Convent in Harrow from mid May to the end of September 1886.

1:  Sunday night
2: 
3:  My dear Mr Pearson
4: 
5:  I have spent today not in telling stories to children, but with an
6:  older child, a prostitute, a woman with sweet blue-eyes & a loveable
7:  bright child’s face. I had not seen her before, but I had written to
8:  her & today she came to see me from London. We have been out in the
9:  fields nearly all the day. She said she was very happy here & she was
10:  coming again soon. I should like to bring you & her together. I feel
11:  sometimes as though part of your work in life were like that of your
12:  own Christ, to show some women that there is something more beautiful
13:  possible in the relation between men & women than they have dreamed of.
14:  Perhaps some day I shall read bits of your play to her. There is that
15:  scene in which Mary & Jesus talk, & in which Mary rushes away, that I
16:  love. I see always more & more the possible regeneration of the race
17:  in that new union ^of friendship^ between man & woman: it must & will
18:  come at last, our dreams are not delusions but the forerunners of the
19:  reality.
20: 
21:  //I felt so loving to that woman this afternoon: these women are just
22:  like big children, you know, they have such a strange passionate love
23:  for flowers: she ran about & picked them with a joy that hardly any
24:  grown up person has in them. With all her childishness she has a
25:  keenly analytical mind! She made today some of the subtlest remarks as
26:  to the differences between men & women & the causes of these
27:  differences that I have ever heard from a woman. If you passed her in
28:  the street you would think her a very refined sweet woman of the upper
29:  classes ^.(& so she is)^
30: 
31:  Yes, please come on Monday: but should you even then be hampered with
32:  work put it off later.
33: 
34:  Yes, criticism is good (even the poorest criticism may be helpful) but
35:  only in the last stage of one’s work. In the early stages when one
36:  still shapes one’s theory & collects all possible data, it is an
37:  impertinence. To criticise oneself then is bad. Much more to have
38:  another’s imbecilities thrust on you.
39: 
40:  O.S.
41: 
42:  You may tell anyone & every one that I asked you to come & see me ^as a
43:  personal favour^; it’s a little minded pride that objects to asking
44:  or being supposed to receive a favour.
45: 
46:  Wednesday
47: 
48:  Would you like me to ask Mrs Anderson (I won’t call her a prostitute,
49:  she’s a woman that I love) on Monday? I’ve just had a^n^ long
50:  interesting letter from Miss Müller. I wish you could make time to
51:  see her before you go. Her mind is working on the subject of socialism
52:  at last & a little touch from your mind might help her a great deal.
53:  She shouldn’t unreadable spending She wants to break out of her
54:  present life & doesn’t see how. (Professor K. Pearson (to himself)
55:  "This benighted individual wants one to go running about after every
56:  fourth woman in London; & at the same time expects one to produce work
57:  that shall stand the test of the ages! Humph!" - The Professors
58:  remarks become inaudible here.)
59: 
60:  //Do you ever have a sudden great longing to see a particular one of
61:  your friends? I have often. Sometimes it is my mother I get the
62:  feeling I must see her little bright intellectual old face; it is
63:  irresistible. I feel I must run down to the docks & take my place in
64:  the steamer. I had it about my brother (whom I’ve hardly heard from
65:  for so many years since I became a freethinker) a few weeks ago, then
66:  it wore off. Sometimes I have the feeling about music, an unreadable
67:  of irresistible longing to hear it for no particular reason. Last week
68:  I had that kind of longing to see you; but it’s gone now.
69:  (Professor K.P. "Ill regulated mind!!")
70: 
71:  //It will be splendid to have the historical papers published.
72: 
73:  //Ed Carpenter & I had a long restful morning in the fields on
74:  Thursday. We were discussing the need there is in modern life for
75:  institutions taking the place of the old Monastic & Conventual systems,
76:  which might absorb & give human ties & interest to those not fitted
77:  or not willing to enter on marriage, & not strong enough to live alone.
78:  One sees the need of such institutions for the weak, but the way to
79:  them is not clear. One needs a gigantic central enthusiasm. I have
80:  thought of this question much since I have been in the convent.
81: 
82:  ^This epistle does not require a reply, but a line to say whether I may
83:  come to meet you at the station (Metropol. from Baker St) or whether I
84:  shall meet you at the church, & whether you would like me to ask Mrs
85:  Anderson. ^
86: 
87:  O.S.
88: 
89: 
90: 
91: 

Notation
The 'bits of your play' refers to: Karl Pearson (1882) The Trinity: A Nineteenth Century Passion-Play Cambridge: E. Johnson. The 'historical papers' given at Men and Women's Club meetings were: R. J. Parker 'Sexual Relations among the Greeks of the Periclean Era' (February 1886), J. W. Rhys David 'Early Buddists of India' (March 1886), N.W. Tchaykovsky 'Russians of Middle Ages'(April 1886), Lina Eckenstein 'Sketch of Sexual Relations in Rome' (May 1886), and K. Pearson 'A Sketch of the History of Sexual Relations in Germany' (June 1886). Rive's (1987) version has been misdated, omits part of this letter, and is also in a number of respects incorrect.