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Letter ReferenceEdward Carpenter 359/11
ArchiveSheffield Archives, Archives & Local Studies, Sheffield
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter DateTuesday 5 September 1887
Address FromWhitby, North Yorkshire
Address To
Who ToEdward Carpenter
Other VersionsRive 1987: 129
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
The Project is grateful to the Sheffield Archives, Sheffield Libraries, Archives and Information Services, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Archive Collections. The date has been written on this letter in an unknown hand.
1 Whitby
2 Tuesday
3
4 When you have read the enclosed, (any time when you’ve nothing else
5to do) please return it to me & tell me whether you think it worth
6publishing. It doesn’t say what I see, how the soul stood up &
7wrapped its cloak about it, & looked up.
8
9 I have a curious idea that you would write a story so well. Won’t
10you try? It is only in work that has no connection with the self that
11we can find rest to our spirits. Life, personal life, is a great
12battlefield. Those who enter it must fight. Those who enter it & will
13not fight get riddled with bullets. The only thing for them is keep
14out of it, & have no personal life. This as much whether the object be
15love & sympathy as whether it be wealth & power. One will never find a
16man to love that some other woman does not desire. Write a little
17story. I should love it so tenderly is ^you did.
18
19 Your friend
20 O.S.^
21
22 ^The lights that it had unreadable^
23
24 This ?nectie’ll grow to be old in time! If
25
26 Had a lovely bath this morning, quite different from the others; great
27big breakers were coming in, & rolled you over.
28
29 Somebody’s baby had no one to put them to sleep last night. It’ll
30never forget that it was put to sleep; no one ever tried to put it to
31sleep before,
32
33 I’m going to write to your sister & ask her if she won’t come to
34see me some afternoon as soon as I get back to Town.
35
36 [missing page/s] ^...other ways.^
37
38 Good bye Ed Carpenter
39 Olive Schreiner
40
41 ^...got 19 letters from Todmorden by this morning’s post! I love
42these rooms better than any I’ve been in in England. I should stay
43here till I left E if I wasn’t paying for my rooms in Town. It’s a
44quite perfect day.^
45
Notation
There seems to be a page or pages missing, after '...back to Town.' and before ^...other ways^. 'The enclosed' is no longer attached and it is not known which piece of writing it refers to. Rive's (1987) version has been misdated and omits part of this letter.