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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner BC16/Box7/Fold2/Aug-Dec1919/22
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypePostcard
Letter Date13 October 1919
Address From9 Porchester Place, Edgware Road, Westminster, London
Address ToClarensville, Patterson Road, Hampstead, London
Who ToGeorgiana Solomon nee Thompson
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 postcard, which is part of its Manuscripts and Archives Collections. The date of this postcard is provided by the postmark, and the name of the addressee and the address it was sent to are on its front. Schreiner was resident at Porchester Place from early April 1917 until August 1920, when she left Britain for South Africa.
1Dear Friend,
2
3I do hope your son & Daisy have got off all right. Let me know of your
4movements Could you give me Solomon Platjes address I know a friend
5who I think might help him with a little money for his paper, if I
6could ask him here to tea to meet her. Don’t mention it to Platje as
7it may not come off!!
8
9Much love to you
10Olive Schreiner
11
Notation
Schreiner called on her friends and acquaintances to support Plaatje and also the aims of the South African Native National Congress Delegation which he was a member of. A response to an August 1919 letter from her concerning this was received from Isabella Ford, as follows:

Adel Grange
31 August

My ever dear Olive

Your letter touches me very keenly – & I care for you all down inside me. You too, to me, represent something of the old beloved England & you also represent Olive dear something of the new spirit. I am coming up about 19th or 20th Sept. & of course shall let you know at once. It would be delightful to me to ask the S.A. delegates to come to the flat. I should like it above everything. I will tell you as soon as my dates are clearly fixed in my mind & will you then ask them in my name? & I shall give them tea. How nice of you to think of such a thing - I thank you so very much - Olive dear the heat must have been dreadful for you – unbearable - & I thought about you with deep sympathy – but now, it is all better - I have been thinking too about your sister-in-law & her family all going to S.A. & leaving you here behind.

- Edward Carpenter came here for a night last week & he was very nice & very kind & good.

Shall I ask Ramsay MacDonald to meet the S.A. delegates? Or who? I think its so terrible about their treatment coming to the ?port. But I haven’t been out at any meetings since I came home – I felt I couldn’t think clearly enough to do any good – but now I feel some of the old spirit stirring again; & because ?Bessie isn’t here & my sister Emily & I don’t think alike, I feel the necessity of again working

It makes my blood boil – of course Serbia & the other countries are in a horrible state & it makes one rage & ?grieve but coloured people’s wrongs lie even nearer my heart – I think I was a dark person in some former incarnation!

- Bruce Glasier is dead – oh dear I am so endlessly sorry – my dearest Olive goodbye
Yours’ always
Isabella

The 1919 date has been written on Ford’s letter in an unknown hand.