Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Olive Schreiner: Extracts of Letters to Cronwright-Schreiner MSC 26/2.16/173
Archive	National Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town
Epistolary Type	Extract
Letter Date	Saturday 27 August 1904
Address From	Bedford, Eastern Cape
Address To
Who To	S.C. (‘Cron’) Cronwright-Schreiner
Other Versions	Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 249

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 S.C. (‘Cron’) Cronwright-Schreiner, 27 August 1904, NLSA Cape Town, Special Collections, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

Legend
The Project is grateful to the National Library of South Africa (NLSA), Cape Town, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner extract, which is part of its Special Collections. This extract was produced by Cronwright-Schreiner using original letters when he was preparing The Life... (1924) and The Letters of Olive Schreiner (1924). With a few exceptions, the original letters in his possession were then destroyed. However, when Olive Schreiner's originals can be compared, this shows his extracts to be severely shortened, and/or inaccurate in sometimes minor but sometimes major respects, while their frequent multiple dates (eg. 8-15 August) indicate that he often combined a number of original letters, among other bowdlerisations and intrusions as well as deletions. Consequently the status of the Cronwright-Schreiner Extracts, of which this is one, is that they are artefacts of his editorial practices, rather than being ‘Olive Schreiner letters’ as such. They are provided for the sake of completeness, because they give clues as to where Schreiner was resident at different points in time, and indicate some of her activities. However, they should be read and used with considerable caution for the reasons spelled out here. Cronwright-Schreiner has written the date and where it was sent from onto this extract, and that ‘Kwaai means stern, determined, angry & ^some^ such like quality, & is not used according to the context. Hers is used lovingly & half-jocularly.’. There are some differences between this transcription and the version that appears in The Letters….

1:  …We arrived here at dawn this morning… The saloon carriage which
2:  Will has arranged to meet us here will not arrive till Monday or
3:  Tuesday. We shall put father’s coffin into the luggage part of the
4:  saloon & Ettie & I will have compartments & it will be fixed to a
5:  goods train at Cradock at Cookhouse & so we shall go up…
6: 
7:  Am longing to see the mierkats & the dogs & the family. But the great
8:  hunger is for the old “quai” chap with the iron grey hair & the
9:  dear eyes...
10: 
11:  My darling, that morning in the dawn light, when I was looking at
12:  father’s hard iron-coloured bones lying there in black earth, it
13:  came over me with such a strange realisation, how in a few years I and
14:  you would be lying so too & how beautiful we must make the little time
15:  left to one another. I will tell you about all that happened when I
16:  come. In the dawn light before any of the work-men had come, Ettie & I
17:  went down to the graveside where we had placed the old coffin in the
18:  new one & removed a little of the earth that had fallen in & covered &
19:  we saw the back of the dear dear head resting so peacefully on the
20:  earth & the arms & feet, not one bone was moved, all resting embedded
21:  in the earth. We put flowers on it & covered it all up before any one
22:  could come, so that no one but we saw it. But it was beautiful to me
23:  that the sun rose just them & the early morning sunlight shone so
24:  beautiful on it, the sunlight he loved so, after 28 years. The coffin
25:  rested on two big rocks & surrounded by sandstone & round hard stones
26:  embedded in the sandstone, & for four days we were working it out with
27:  picks at first but the last two days with hand chisels for fear of
28:  injuring anything. It was a much greater strain than I had expected.
29:  That agonised watching each movement of the tools lest they should
30:  injure something. When it was all over & we had the dear body safe in
31:  the our waggon, a great reaction seemed to come over me, & I was a bit
32:  prostrate, but I have been wonderfully well, no asthma, no cough! Not
33:  even since the night I was in Craddock. Can’t the old “quai”
34:  chap come with me to Cape Town? I don’t want to be away from him. Or
35:  can’t he, when I am returning, meet me at Beaufort West & let us see
36:  some of his constituents then… I am bringing you back some Kat River
37:  mangoes & such lemons! Like the lemons I remember in my childhood….
38:  Isie Smuts wants us to come up (to Pretoria) to Oom Paul’s funeral &
39:  she says she will keep a bedroom for you & me in the house, however
40:  full it may be. Goodbye husband. Tell Chomanie I am so glad to hear he
41:  is such a good boy. It’s curious how I long to see that little
42:  nigger…
43: 
44:  Goodbye, Pal...
45: 
46: