"OS reply to B, who had responded to her earlier letter about harassment by a policeman" Read the full letter
| Letter Reference | HRC/OliveSchreinerLetters/OS-JohnHodgson/48 |
| Archive | Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin |
| Epistolary Type | Letter |
| Letter Date | 24 September 1915 |
| Address From | Trevaldwyn, Llandrindod Wells, Wales |
| Address To | |
| Who To | John Hodgson |
| Other Versions | |
| Permissions | Please 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. The date has been written on this letter in an unknown hand. The letter is written on printed headed notepaper.
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1Trevaldwyn,
2Llandrindod Wells.
3
4Dear Mr Hodgson
5
6Thank you so much for your very interesting letter about the condition
7of things in London. I am very glad to know the raid really did so
8little damage. I can’t agree with you in your forecast of after the
9war. I think the next great war will be between England & America,
10Germany perhaps helping England or, as there are so many Americans of
11German origin, America. It will be over the supremacy of the sea & the
12Panama Canal. Japan will go with America likely; but whenever peace is
13made there will such a blow up of all existing conditions in Europe it
14is impossible to know wheth with any certainty what the future will be.
15 I think the English must leave the Dardanelles soon, but all is very
16uncertain.
17
18I return the two verses. I haven’t any thing else of yours I burn up
19all I get by the post every day unless I am specially asked to return
20it. I would get such a mass of things if I didn’t travelling about &
21being without a settled home. I have such numbers of MS sent me by
22people who want to know my opinion & except one little poem of three
23verses of a mother to her child, none that have ever been sent me if
24have seemed poetry to me. But I am not a judge of what the modern
25public will like at all. Only one thing written in the last 20 years
26which I have read in any magazine or paper has seemed real poetry,
27except – a little poem – called the ?Anguish ?of ?a ?Squal it’s
28a dying Indian woman to her husband. And there’ve been just two of
29all the mass of wretched war doggerel turned out that seemed poetry at
30all ^to me^. One called “The Green Fields of Flanders”. It’s music
31rings in ones brain, & another quite as good in thought but not so
32perfect in expression: but it makes one feel, which is the end of all
33poetry if it be true.
34
35Thank you so much for all you told me about the Zeps it has put my
36mind at rest to know so much harm was not done.
37
38I like this place better & better I am plunged into sorrow when I
39think the winter is coming & I shall have to leave it.
40
41It seems to me the financial pressure must become so great in England
42in a year that she must make peace.
43
44Yours ever
45Olive Schreiner
46
2Llandrindod Wells.
3
4Dear Mr Hodgson
5
6Thank you so much for your very interesting letter about the condition
7of things in London. I am very glad to know the raid really did so
8little damage. I can’t agree with you in your forecast of after the
9war. I think the next great war will be between England & America,
10Germany perhaps helping England or, as there are so many Americans of
11German origin, America. It will be over the supremacy of the sea & the
12Panama Canal. Japan will go with America likely; but whenever peace is
13made there will such a blow up of all existing conditions in Europe it
14is impossible to know wheth with any certainty what the future will be.
15 I think the English must leave the Dardanelles soon, but all is very
16uncertain.
17
18I return the two verses. I haven’t any thing else of yours I burn up
19all I get by the post every day unless I am specially asked to return
20it. I would get such a mass of things if I didn’t travelling about &
21being without a settled home. I have such numbers of MS sent me by
22people who want to know my opinion & except one little poem of three
23verses of a mother to her child, none that have ever been sent me if
24have seemed poetry to me. But I am not a judge of what the modern
25public will like at all. Only one thing written in the last 20 years
26which I have read in any magazine or paper has seemed real poetry,
27except – a little poem – called the ?Anguish ?of ?a ?Squal it’s
28a dying Indian woman to her husband. And there’ve been just two of
29all the mass of wretched war doggerel turned out that seemed poetry at
30all ^to me^. One called “The Green Fields of Flanders”. It’s music
31rings in ones brain, & another quite as good in thought but not so
32perfect in expression: but it makes one feel, which is the end of all
33poetry if it be true.
34
35Thank you so much for all you told me about the Zeps it has put my
36mind at rest to know so much harm was not done.
37
38I like this place better & better I am plunged into sorrow when I
39think the winter is coming & I shall have to leave it.
40
41It seems to me the financial pressure must become so great in England
42in a year that she must make peace.
43
44Yours ever
45Olive Schreiner
46
Notation
Which particular poem on 'The Green Fields of Flanders' out of many contenders Schreiner is referring to cannot be established.
Which particular poem on 'The Green Fields of Flanders' out of many contenders Schreiner is referring to cannot be established.