"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 26/2.16/90 |
| Archive | National Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town |
| Epistolary Type | Extract |
| Letter Date | 13 July 1903 |
| Address From | Uitkyk, Northern Cape |
| Address To | |
| Who To | S.C. (‘Cron’) Cronwright-Schreiner |
| Other Versions | Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 237-8 |
| 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. Cronwright-Schreiner has written the date and where it was sent from onto this extract. There are some differences between his transcription here and the version that appears in The Letters….
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…Ettie writes me that mother is very sinking & weak. Every note ^the^
2little mother writes is about you coming & her longing for it. You
3know I think she feels she does not act very generously to you; so she
4has this curious longing before she dies to see you. Ettie says when
5she thought she was dying in Grahamstown, she didn’t talk of
6anything any of her chidr children but only of you that night - kept
7saying ‘Do you think Cron will come too? I want to see Cron! Cron
8must come!’… The Le Roux have been very kind to me too. I like
9them more & more. I suppose with a nature like mine I could hardly
10live with any one without feeling getting to love them. Of course
11there are some people with whom I couldn’t live; I would simply turn
12away from them; but if you do live with people, you must get to
13sympathise with them...
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2little mother writes is about you coming & her longing for it. You
3know I think she feels she does not act very generously to you; so she
4has this curious longing before she dies to see you. Ettie says when
5she thought she was dying in Grahamstown, she didn’t talk of
6anything any of her chidr children but only of you that night - kept
7saying ‘Do you think Cron will come too? I want to see Cron! Cron
8must come!’… The Le Roux have been very kind to me too. I like
9them more & more. I suppose with a nature like mine I could hardly
10live with any one without feeling getting to love them. Of course
11there are some people with whom I couldn’t live; I would simply turn
12away from them; but if you do live with people, you must get to
13sympathise with them...
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