Monday 28 July: In a somewhat obscure family set of papers and found via one of the final cards in the card index to Cory’s manuscript collections are a number of (previously untraced) Olive Schreiner letters. These also include an envelope tantalisingly labelled as containing Schreiner’s signature – BUT, the envelope is empty! Where is this small trace of ‘her’, Olive Schreiner, now? Wherever, this is untraceable, though a small trace remains.

This acts as a useful metaphor for archival research more generally. For Mary Moffat, her daughter Betsy (rather than Bessie) was troublesome because over-active and also somewhat fragile; Bessie’s own letters as an adult woman convey her engagement with the outside world of people, events and circumstances and are not about ‘me’ in any way that conveys such characteristics, if indeed they existed in anything more than the anxious eye of a parent. And as for Bessie Price, so too for William Dodds Pringle, for Olive Schreiner, and indeed also for Mary Moffat.

Last updated: 29 July 2014