Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	MacFarlane-Muirhead/21
Archive	MacFarlane Collection
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	16 November 1908
Address From	De Aar, Northern Cape
Address To	Great George Street, Hillhead, Glasgow, Scotland
Who To	Robert Franklin ('Bob') Muirhead
Other Versions

The manuscript of this letter by Olive Schreiner belongs to the Archive referenced above; its ownership of the original should be acknowledged by referencing the letter as indicated: Copyright transcription: © Olive Schreiner Letters Project. This transcription can be freely used as long as copyright is acknowledged and it is referenced using the following citation: ‘Olive Schreiner to Robert Franklin ('Bob') Muirhead, 16 November 1908, MacFarlane Collection, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to Mrs Hazel MacFarlane for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter to Bob Muirhead, which is part of the MacFarlane family collection of Muirhead Papers, Special Collections, University of Glasgow Library. The address this letter was sent to is provided by an attached envelope.

1:  Box 24
2:  De Aar
3:  Nov 16th 1908
4: 
5:  Dear Bob
6: 
7:  I am sending you two photos of my self, take one for yourself & Lenie
8:  & send the other to Ed Carpenter.
9: 
10:  I’m still at de Aar & the world goes the old pace. All my thoughts &
11:  interests are just now centred on the Dinuzulu Trial in Natal, in
12:  which my brother Will is defending Dinuzulu & my dear friend Miss
13:  Colenso is straining ever nerve to see justice done. It will be a
14:  terrible mis-carriage of justice if he is not brought in innocent; for
15:  not only his own people but all the natives if South Africa know he
16:  was innocent, but that it was he & he alone who prevent a general a
17:  rising when the Natalians began their wicked little game, he simply
18:  would not let his people move. If he is brought in guilty every scrap
19:  of faith in English justice will die, & I don’t know what will happen.
20:  This closer Union movement here is really a plan on the part of the
21:  two white races to combine so as to wipe out the natives more easily,
22:  & take away the Franchise from them who have it. It’s rather terrible
23:  to live in such a country.
24: 
25:  Give my love to dear Lenie; that beautiful letter she wrote me made me
26:  love. I seem really to know her now.
27: 
28:  Good bye.
29:  “Alles ten beste”
30:  As the Boer’s say.
31:  Olive Schreiner
32: 
33:  I wish I could see your children. Waldo must be getting quite big.
34: 
35:  ^I wonder if you would have recognized the photos as mine if you hadn’t
36:  been told. I have changed more than you, except that my hair is
37:  thicker & longer than ever, & hardly any grey ones.^
38: 
39:  But people pass me in the street who know me & don’t seem to recognize me
40: 

Notation