"Did not see Jan Smuts at Golders Green, new century, try to lead" Read the full letter
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Letter ReferenceEdward Carpenter 359/43
ArchiveSheffield Archives, Archives & Local Studies, Sheffield
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter DateSeptember 1889
Address FromSt Leonards, East Sussex
Address To
Who ToEdward Carpenter
Other VersionsRive 1987: 157
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
The Project is grateful to the Sheffield Archives, Sheffield Libraries, Archives and Information Services, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Archive Collections. The month and year have been written on this letter in an unknown hand. Schreiner stayed in St Leonards for most of September 1889.
1 Dear Ed
2
3 The sandals are quite perfect. I have already lent one to a woman who
4wants to have a pair made like them. But no others will be like them
5to me. I value them immensely.
6
7 I should have written yesterday but I had had a blow that somewhat
8unfitted me. My dear friend Amy Levy had died the night before. She
9killed herself by shutting herself up in a room with charcoal. We were
10away together for three days last week. But it did not seem to help
11her; her agony had gone past human help. The last thing I sent her was
12the Have Faith page of Towards Demo. She wrote me back a little note,
13"Thank you, it is very beautiful, but philosophy can’t help me. I am
14too much shut in with the personal." You need not refer to all this
15when you write. I only tell you that you may know why I didn’t write
16sooner. They say the East End women are getting terribly tired of the
17
18^strike.
19
20 Olive^
21
22 ^I send you an allegory of mine. Return; don’t show to anyone else as
23it is only to appear in the Fortnightly next month.^
24
25 Olive
26
27
28
Notation
The allegory referred to was to have appeared in the Fortnightly Review was in the event turned down because of its length. See "The sunlight lay across my bed: Part I - Hell" New Review Vol 1, no 11, April 1890, pp.300-309; and "The sunlight lay across my bed: Part II - Heaven", New Review Vol 1, no 12, May 1890, pp.423-431. The book referred to is: Edward Carpenter (1885) Towards Democracy Manchester: John Heywood. Rive's (1987) version omits part of this letter.