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Letter ReferenceEdward Carpenter 359/21
ArchiveSheffield Archives, Archives & Local Studies, Sheffield
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter DateMonday 16 April 1888
Address FromAlassio, Italy
Address To
Who ToEdward Carpenter
Other VersionsRive 1987: 139
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 Alassio
2 Monday
3
4 I got your letter from Paris. It’s very unkind of you always to
5remember that I drove in a cab with luggage round Paris! You mustn’t
6hate us women so much (though I do it myself!)
7
8 I won’t be a woman in a couple of years. I began to be one when I was
9only ten so I dare say I will leave off being one in about two or
10perhaps three more, & then you’ll think I am a man, all of you, won’t
11you? Karl Pearson & every one, & will be comrades with me!
12
13 I feel somehow sorry about the Fords. Did you do it out of perversity
14
15 Edward, you must write much. Make your life consist in that. You & I
16must have no personality. We must die while yet we live.
17
18 I don’t know if Ellis will come at all. His mother & two sisters have
19it ^fever^. The first mother is dangerously ill, "sinking" he writes me.
20I am in painful doubt as to whether Ellis ought to come at all.
21Whether it will be happiest for him. When two people are friends & the
22one loves the other with a love that other
23
24 ^cannot return, is it not better for them never to meet? Yet I, if I
25loved a person, would so much rather see them than not see them even
26if they hated me.
27
28 Olive^
29
30^Write to me only when you ?turn to me. We must work, Edward, & every
31time our heart pains us work till the agony gets still. Love to George
32& his wife & child. ^
33
34 OS
35
36 It’s possible I may again be in the winter Riviera next winter
37
38
39
Notation
Rive's (1987) version omits part of this letter and is also in a number of respects incorrect.