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Letter ReferenceHRC/CAT/OS/5b-xv
ArchiveHarry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date4 July 1916
Address FromLlandrindod Wells, Wales
Address To14 Dover Mansions, Canterbury Road, Brixton, London
Who ToHavelock Ellis
Other VersionsDraznin 1992: 512
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. Dating this letter has followed an associated envelope and its postmark, which also provides the address it was sent to.
1Llandrindod Wells
2Wales
3July 34th 1916
4
5Dear Havelock,
6
7Did you get my letters asking you about destroying all my letters. I
8see there’s a divorce in the papers Hinton versus Hinton I wonder if
9they are relations of old Hintons.
10
11I am some what anxious when I don’t hear from you, thinking
12something may have happened to you. How is Edith? Is she making much
13money by her lectures? Mrs Jacoby writes me that she is working at her
14Hinton book.
15
16The curse of Hintonism is that its false; that it doesn’t look the
17facts of human nature in the face. That it makes out you can freely &
18recklessly play with the gratification of sex instinct – its like
19teaching a child you can strike matches & throw them down just werever
20you think good. Advance on the matter of sex means in the future more
21& more a sense of the awful importance of sex feeling; & the need for
22its absolute control by the higher centres of the mind, the reason,
23sense of duty.
24
25Edith may have been mad all her life; a f woman I know told me that
26when she knew Edith years before you met her she always felt sure she
27much end her life in an asylum. & that Edith feared it too. But I
28don’t believe she would ever have got so bad without Hinton-ism Her
29poor weak brain & character couldn’t stand it.
30
31I am a little better, but only able to live while I am lying down flat
32with my feet higher than my head; as soon as I sit up all vitality
33goes. The doctors say it because my heart is too weak to pump the
34blood up ^to my head^ when I’m upright.
35
36Good bye dear
37Olive
38
39What do you think of the present situation It seems impossible that
40with the whole world against her Germany should not be crused &
41destroyed, & yet I can’t help doubting whether England France Russia
42Italy Portugal, Japan Australia &c &c with all the help of America
43will ever take the Rhine or Berlin
44
Notation
Draznin's (1992) version of this letter is in some respects different from our transcription.