"Wicked mad diplomacy, lying & darkness" Read the full letter
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Letter ReferenceHRC/CAT/OS/4b-xvi
ArchiveHarry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter DateThursday 23 December 1915
Address From30 St Mary Abbotts Terrace, Kensington, London
Address To
Who ToHavelock Ellis
Other VersionsDraznin 1992: 498-9
PermissionsPlease 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. In the absence of other information, dating this letter has followed Draznin (1992), who has done so by reference to a version in the Lafitte Letters typescript in the British Library. The end of the letter is missing.
130 St Mary Abbotts Terrace
2Kensington W
3Thursday
4
5I hope you’ll have a happy Xmas, dear, & feel better.
6
7I had dinner with Lady Low the other evening. I never heard anyone in
8such a delight over your writing. She says your Impressions – which
9she thinks your purest work are the only book she can read now, “so
10noble, so detached.”
11
12I hear sad news about Mrs Schwimmer. The women’s international have
13had to say they will have nothing more to f do with her. She runs up bills
14^buy things^ in every country & makes other people pay for them. Yhey
15gave her
&c &c. I am so glad I didn’t give her introductions to any of
16my American friends. Just something, a certain feeling of mistrust
17kept me from doing it. I think it was the way she piled on the agony
18about the Suffering in Austria. The worse things are the less one must
19exaggerate, & state carefully & exactly. The great thing that the
20world seems to have lost sight of to-day is truth. Is one old
21fashioned that one still believes in it as the highest end. The longer
22I live the more I feel its importance One never suppresses or
23misstates things – even with the best motives, without it doing harm
24in the long run. I shrink more & more from the mob orator style of
25person. It is truth they are out to preach but passions they are out
26to wake.
27
28Oliver has come back for a week from the front looking very bright &
29fit & strong. Have you read a splendid simple little Book called
30“letters from a field Hospital” by a Mrs Percy Deamer who died in
31Serbia? If I could I would buy 200 copies to give away. I wonder if
32the British will ever get out of Kut El Amara!
33
34[page/s missing]
35
Notation
The books referred to are: Havelock Ellis (1914) Impressions and Comments London: Constable & Co; Mabel Deamer (1915) Letters From a Field Hospital London: Macmillan & Co. Draznin's (1992) version of this letter is in some respects different from our transcription.