"Olive Schreiner's birth certificate" Read the full letter
| Letter Reference | Letters/513 |
| Archive | |
| Epistolary Type | |
| Letter Date | March 1913 |
| Address From | Muizenberg, Western Cape |
| Address To | |
| Who To | Emily Hobhouse |
| Other Versions | Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 321-2 |
| Permissions | Please read before using or citing this transcription |
| Legend |
When Cronwright-Schreiner prepared The Letters of Olive Schreiner, with few exceptions he then destroyed her originals. However, some people gave him copies and kept the originals or demanded the return of these; and when actual Schreiner letters can be compared with his versions, his have omissions, distortions and bowdlerisations. Where Schreiner originals have survived, these will be found in the relevant collections across the OSLO website. There is however a residue of some 587 items in The Letters for which no originals are extant. They are included here for sake of completeness. However, their relationship to Schreiners actual letters cannot now be gauged, and so they should be read with caution for the reasons given. The ‘one novel especially’ Schreiner wanted to have finished is From Man to Man.
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1To Miss E. Hobhouse.
2Muizenberg, Mar.
3
4... It isn't the pain and weakness one minds, it's the not being able
5to work. My one novel especially I would have liked so to finish. I
6feel that if only one lonely struggling woman read it and found
7strength and comfort from it one would not feel one had lived quite in
8vain. I seem to have done so little with my life. You have at least
9that solid wonderful work you did here for the Boer women and children
10to look back to.
11
12... I am much distressed about our dear, brave suffragettes in London.
13I feel such intense sympathy with them, but I cannot feel the
14letter-burning, &c., is wise or right. As long as they merely demanded
15to see the ministers and asked questions of ministers I was heart and
16soul with them: but it seems to me that the use of brute force and war
17in all its aspects are just the things we have to fight against. ...
18My one hope and joy is in our dear beautiful young girls who are
19beginning to grow up, who will possess so much we only hoped for and
20dreamed of.
21
2Muizenberg, Mar.
3
4... It isn't the pain and weakness one minds, it's the not being able
5to work. My one novel especially I would have liked so to finish. I
6feel that if only one lonely struggling woman read it and found
7strength and comfort from it one would not feel one had lived quite in
8vain. I seem to have done so little with my life. You have at least
9that solid wonderful work you did here for the Boer women and children
10to look back to.
11
12... I am much distressed about our dear, brave suffragettes in London.
13I feel such intense sympathy with them, but I cannot feel the
14letter-burning, &c., is wise or right. As long as they merely demanded
15to see the ministers and asked questions of ministers I was heart and
16soul with them: but it seems to me that the use of brute force and war
17in all its aspects are just the things we have to fight against. ...
18My one hope and joy is in our dear beautiful young girls who are
19beginning to grow up, who will possess so much we only hoped for and
20dreamed of.
21