"About Rebecca Schreiner, OS's childhood, her writing" Read the full letter
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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner BC16/Box4/Fold3/1910/7
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter DateWednesday 16 March 1910
Address FromCape Town, Western Cape
Address ToSandown Road, Rondebosch, Cape Town, Western Cape
Who ToLucy Molteno nee Mitchell
Other Versions
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
The Project is grateful to Manuscripts and Archives, University of Cape Town, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Manuscripts and Archives Collections. The date of this letter has been derived from the postmark on an attached envelope, which also provides the address it was sent to. Schreiner was in Cape Town from early January to early April 1910.
1 Wednesday afternoon
2
3 Dear Lucy
4
5 I shan’t be able to come. I’d love to be with you but I’m up to
6making any kind of an effort ^to go anywhere^. I started out to go
7somewhere this afternoon & turned back. I don’t know what this
8hideous want of life is.
9
10 I like your little poems dear so much in that they give me a glimpse
11into your dear beautiful spirit that I’ve never had before. That
12little one "My Child", is I think the one I love best. One of the
13great goods of writing is that it helps one a little to get out of
14that high walled enclosure in which each one of us is shut in, so that
15those we love my see & understand a little of that inner life we lead
16within it.
17
18 I’ll come & see you for a few hours some day soon. Do try & come &
19see me if it doesn’t tire you too much to make this long journey.
20One reason why I like to stay here is that my dear sister Ettie is
21slowly dying at the Highlands & I feel nearer to her here than
22anywhere; though really it would only take me half an hour longer to
23get to her from Rondebosch than here. It is so strange to look at her
24with her white dead face lying there & remember its my little sister
25Ettie with the long golden hair, whom I used to play with when I was a
26little child. Life is so stern as one gets older.
27
28 Good bye, dear. Thank you for all your love & kindness to me. Give my
29love to Betty if ever you are writing to her. I seem to have nothing
30to say to any one now.
31
32 Olive
33
34
35
Notation
Lucy Molteno's poems cannot be traced and were probably not published.