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Letter ReferenceSchreiner-Hemming Family BC 1080 A1.7/51
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date15 September 1902
Address FromHanover, Northern Cape
Address To
Who ToHenrietta (‘Ettie’) Schreiner m. Stakesby Lewis (1891)
Other Versions
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
The Project is grateful to Manuscripts and Archives, University of Cape Town, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Manuscripts and Archives Collections.
1Private for yourself alone
2 Hanover
3 Sep 15th 1902
4
5 My darling old Ettie
6
7 Oh I have thought of you & hungered for you during the weeks of ?Eny
8weakness & darkness. I think I have never longed so for any one. I
9think I would have sent for you & sent you money to come, but I had a
10feeling it wasn’t the end, & I couldn’t take you not only from
11your heavy duties, but from duties which would be harder to you when
12returned because they they would have accumulated. I am now able to
13move abut again, but am quite deaf in one ear & partly so in the other.
14
15 I am leaving this house as son as I am strong enough to move the
16things because it is very damp.
17
18 Cron left for Cape Town ^the day before^ yesterday, & will be there for
19a few days to visit his mother & attend his brother’s wedding.
20Don’t mention to mother that he is in Town as she might expect him
21to call, & I don’t think he will.
22
23 Dear, that letter you wrote me which I got the night before I left
24Johannesburg was very precious to me. Perhaps it happens more often
25than we dream that the love we have hungered for all our lives & which
26has never been given us will stretch out longing hands to us after we
27are dead. We shall not know it but the thought can help one to live.
28
29 Good bye, my darling. I hope you are feeling stronger. Perhaps it is
30as well you were not with me when I was so ill. In such times of
31weakness
32
33^one feels such an irresistible desire to open ones heart to one who
34would understand, & perhaps it is better that one should carry much
35silent to ones grave.
36
37 Good bye my dear one
38 Olive^
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