JEROME K. JEROME ON OLIVE SCHREINER
JEROME, Jerome Klapka.
Autograph letter, signed, to W. B. Forster Bovill.
Brussels, Wiltcher’s Hotel, 11 May 1904.
8vo bifolium (213 x 133 mm), pp. [2], paper watermarked ‘S. Cuthberts LINEN’ and headed ‘31, Rue de Naples Bruxelles’ (‘31, Rue de Naples’ crossed through by Jerome); sometime folded, very lightly dust-soiled, in very good condition in the original envelope addressed to Forster Bovill at the United Sports Club, 5 Whitehall Ct, London.
A very good letter in which Jerome K. Jerome expresses his great admiration for the South African novelist and suffragist Olive Schreiner (1855–1920).
‘Yours of 7th has just reached me here. Not only can I say it – but I mean it, I have never had the pleasure of meeting “Miss Schreiner” but I have always hoped I might one day. There is no-one I could see more gladly – no writer for whom I have found greater respect & liking. Maybe a strong sympathy with all her views – humanitarian[?] & political (if the 2 are to be separated) adds to my regard. Add my name & you will be doing me a service. For any hope of actually greeting the lady I would travel far’.
It is not known if Jerome ever met Schreiner. In his essay ‘Ought stories to be true?’, published in his essay collection Idle ideas in 1905, he wrote ‘when recalling Emily Bronte my thoughts always run on to Olive Schreiner. Here, again, was a young girl with the voice of a strong man. Olive Schreiner, more fortunate, has lived; but I doubt if she will ever write a book that will remind us of her first [i.e. The story of an African farm, 1883]’.
W. B. Forster Bovill was the author of Hungary and the Hungarians (1908).
