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Letter ReferenceHRC/CAT/OS/5b-v
ArchiveHarry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter DateSaturday 11 March 1916
Address FromAlexi, 31 The Park, Hampstead, London
Address ToRose Cottage, Carbis Water, Cornwall
Who ToHavelock Ellis
Other VersionsDraznin 1992: 501-2
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
The Project is grateful to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Manuscript Collections. Dating this letter has followed an associated (unattached) envelope and its postmark, which also provides the address it was sent to.
1Alexi
231 The Park
3Hampstead
4Saturday
5
6Dear old Havelock
7
8I do wish you & Edith could let or sell your house at Carbis Water If
9you’ll write me out a bit of paper what its like & the terms I might
10try among my friends I might just hear of some one who would like a
11nice quiet little place in Cornwall. So many people want to be out of
12London now on account of the Zeps. I fear the real big raid is still
13to come; but I can’t understand people being so frightened & rushing
14away. I am staying here in the Countess Batthyanys house. The perfect
15quiet & solitude here is delightful. You can’t feel lonely when you
16are quite alone. – its people make you lonely. An over-wrought high
17tensioned person like poor Alice Corthorn does break one down. I am
18trying to write I’ve unreadable written a little thing on
19con-scription which is coming out in the Labour Leader. Do you see it
20regularly.
21
22Oh the peace here is so delightful I don’t feel I want to see anyone
23or go any where just absolute quiet & that I have here. I’ve not
24been into town for two weeks, but am going tomorrow to lunch with Lady
25Low
. She and the Countess Batthyany are now the two closest friends I
26have in London except my beloved faithful Adela Smith. I think the
27Batthyany’s
are very hard up because of course they can’t get any
28money from the continent. (Private, don’t mention this.) Every one
29seems hard up. You see all the papers going for me like “old
30boots” about my little article on conscription soon!
31
32I do hope Edith is better: but the weather here has been so awful
33every one I know almost has been ill here, influenza of a very bad
34kind, that won’t go away, seems everywhere. All my brother’s
35family have had it. I never knew such cold & damp together in England.
36If you go out you feel as if you were perfectly naked & the wind
37cutting through you, & the dark sky & wet earth are pretty depressing.
38Every one says they’ve never known such cold in London. Of course
39its much colder up here than in London itself & much damper, but the
40quiet & rest makes up for everything.
41
42Good bye dear, I hope you are feeling better.
43Yours ever
44Olive
45
Notation
For the 'little thing on conscription', see "To Our Anti-Militarists, By Olive Schreiner" Labour Leader 16 March 1916, p.6. Draznin's (1992) version of this letter is in some respects different from our transcription.