Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Olive Schreiner BC16/Box4/Fold2/1909/23
Archive	University of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	30 April 1909
Address From	De Aar, Northern Cape
Address To
Who To	William Philip ('Will') Schreiner
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 William Philip ('Will') Schreiner, 30 April 1909, UCT Manuscripts & Archives, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

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.

1:  de Aar
2:  April 30th 1909
3: 
4:  Dear Laddie
5: 
6:  I send you a letter from Adela, who says you sent her a box of grapes,
7:  for which she is thanking you. At last the cold weather has come here,
8:  & I’ve been hard at work writing the last three days.
9: 
10:  Of course you know that Malan & Hofmeyr had a complete fall out during
11:  the session? I am not repeating anything Malan told me as had if from
12:  four other persons. I had a long private talk with Malan at his
13:  request the last day I was there, he spoke very bitterly of Hofmeyr.
14:  But I did not of course like to ask him what the difference was about.
15:  At bottom Malan has a nobler, deeper nature than any other public man
16:  in South Africa. I always feel a fear for you, for him, for any man I
17:  love & believe in who enters politics. "How hardly shall a politician
18:  enter into the kingdom of God." – or stop there if he gets in. My
19:  old friend Kier Hardie is the only man I have known who has enter
20:  political life, remained in for years, & retained all the singleness
21:  of mind & directness of method that marked him in private life. The
22:  atmosphere is rotten.
23: 
24:  I am reading that rather feebly written life of Sir George Grey by
25:  Reeves: - but how the greatness of the man shines out through it all.
26:  No man is fit to govern in whom truth & directness does not shine out
27:  at every pore, and who does not realize that he has his power to
28:  defend the weak. He must "love much" though that seems a strange thing
29:  to say of politician. He must lay aside the idea of politics as a game,
30:  as "sport" & think of it as "fatherhood".
31: 
32:  Good bye dear Laddie.
33:  Olive
34: 
35:  ^My friend Miss Molteno is in great glory at the stand you have made on
36:  the native question.^
37: 

Notation
The book referred to is: William Lee Rees and Lily Rees (1892) The Life and Times of Sir George Grey London: Hutchinson & Co.