"Your astonishing letter, family duties, will never mention Katie's name as long as I live" Read the full letter
| Letter Reference | Olive Schreiner: Extracts of Letters to Cronwright-Schreiner MSC 26/2.16/70 |
| Archive | National Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town |
| Epistolary Type | Extract |
| Letter Date | 30 May 1903 |
| Address From | Beaufort West, Western Cape |
| Address To | |
| Who To | S.C. (‘Cron’) Cronwright-Schreiner |
| Other Versions | Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 232-3 |
| Permissions | Please read before using or citing this transcription |
| Legend |
The Extracts of Letters to Cronwright-Schreiner were produced by Cronwright-Schreiner in preparing The Life and The Letters of Olive Schreiner. They appear on slips of paper in his writing, taken from letters that were then destroyed; many of these extracts have also been edited by him. They are artefacts of his editorial practices and their relationship to original Schreiner letters cannot now be gauged. They should be read with considerable caution for the reasons given. There are some differences between this transcription and the version that appears in The Letters… and Cronwright-Schreiner’s version, including that it has been misdated as 20 June 1903.
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…I put the little mierkats with little food basket & took them out
2for a walk on to a little koppie near the town this afternoon. It’s
3the only breathing space one can get within an hour’s walk... They
4were so happy up there, poor little things. Their little spirits were
5quite broken with being shut up… I’ve often thought since I was
6here how nice was the old Norse idea, that, when you’d lived long
7enough & had nothing more to live for, you made a funeral pyre for
8yourself & mounted it & had your favourite animals killed to go with
9you - then no one could be unkind to them…
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2for a walk on to a little koppie near the town this afternoon. It’s
3the only breathing space one can get within an hour’s walk... They
4were so happy up there, poor little things. Their little spirits were
5quite broken with being shut up… I’ve often thought since I was
6here how nice was the old Norse idea, that, when you’d lived long
7enough & had nothing more to live for, you made a funeral pyre for
8yourself & mounted it & had your favourite animals killed to go with
9you - then no one could be unkind to them…
10
11
12