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Letter ReferenceLetters/16
Archive
Epistolary Type
Letter Date24 February 1879
Address FromRatel Hoek, Halesowen, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who ToErilda Cawood nee Buckley
Other VersionsCronwright-Schreiner 1924: 7-8
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
When Cronwright-Schreiner prepared The Letters of Olive Schreiner, with few exceptions he then destroyed her originals. However, some people gave him copies and kept the originals or demanded the return of these; and when actual Schreiner letters can be compared with his versions, his have omissions, distortions and bowdlerisations. Where Schreiner originals have survived, these will be found in the relevant collections across the OSLO website. There is however a residue of some 587 items in The Letters for which no originals are extant. They are included here for sake of completeness. However, their relationship to Schreiners actual letters cannot now be gauged, and so they should be read with caution for the reasons given.
1To Mrs. Cawood.
2Ratel Hoek, 24th Feb.
3
4From seven years to eleven or twelve they should not study too hard,
5but after that let them work, even at some slight physical cost. If we
6are willing to give up nothing, we must expect nothing. I suppose no
7intellectual work is ever done without a certain price havingto be
8paid for it. No great book was ever written that did not cost many a
9sleepless night and many hours of weariness and lassitude; and with
10the lesser mental exercises it is the same. Nothing for nothing; the
11longer I live the more I feel that to be nature's inexorable law. We
12get nothing in this poor old world but the cash has to be laid down
13first.
14