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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner: Jessie Rose Innes MSC 26/2.6.7
ArchiveNational Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date1 January 1920
Address From9 Porchester Place, Edgware Road, Westminster, London
Address To
Who ToJessie Rose Innes nee Dods Pringle
Other Versions
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
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. A typed transcript only of this letter is available; the original cannot be traced.
1 9 Porchester Place
2 Edgware Rd
3 London W
4 New Year's Day 1920
5
6 A happy new year to you, dear. I've never had a word of news from, or
7of you since I last saw you here. I suppose you are back in the old
8home leading the old life - such a beautiful life compared to the
9nightmare of cold & bad food & other things harder - in which we are
10living here
11
12 Have you news of my darling Dorothy? I am going to send her a card, it
13will surely get through now the "peace" has come. Such a "peace"!!! Do
14write & tell me all about yourself. I saw so little of you; but so it
15is always when one is in London. Friends never seem peacefully to see
16each other & be happy together in the way we are in old Africa. I
17often think of those long drives & teas out on the beach we had when I
18stayed with you. It all seems like a dream.
19
20 Did you see Dot before she left? And have you seen Ursie? I like her
21husband so much. As for Oliver's wife I love her as if she were my
22child. The more you know her the more she draws you to her. Her little
23baby comes next month. It is so terrible that they are going back to
24Africa in September, for me, who will be absolutely alone on this side
25of the world - but they will gain. England is very terrible, food gets
26worse & dearer & dearer. We have had 1oz. of butter a week, but now we
27are to get none! Things have never been as bad as they are now except
28for the very rich who can get everything. Everything has gone up in
29price in the last three months.
30
31 Does you ever see Mary Sauer? Ruth Alexander has promised to come &
32see me on her way back from America & oh how I long to see her. One
33has to lead the lonely life one does here to know how one longs for
34one's old friends: & there's no chance of ones getting to Italy or
35Nauheim things are too dear.
36
37 Remember me to dear Sir James, & ask him if he has read a splendid
38book I've just finished --- "The Economic Consequences of the Peace",
39by Keynes. Also a very good book (though not in the same street)
40Dillon's "Peace Conference". I think he would like both. Do you see
41much of dear old Merriman? Remember me to him.
42
43 Good bye dear. All the best for the coming year
44 Olive
45
46
47
Notation
The books referred to are: John Maynard Keynes (1919) The Economic Consequences of the Peace London: Macmillan; Emile Joseph Dillon (1919) The Peace Conference London: Hutchinson.