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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner BC16/Box5/Fold3/1914/50
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter DateSunday 23 August 1914
Address From30 St Mary Abbotts Terrace, Kensington, London
Address To
Who ToWilliam Philip ('Will') Schreiner
Other Versions
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
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. The date has been written on this letter in an unknown hand.
1Sunday
2
3Dear Laddie
4
5Thankyou for your note. Yes one is on one’s brain ends. This war
6seems to me the most wicked England has yet engaged in: - the day will
7come in 90 so years time, or sooner, when she will have to strain
8every nerve to help Germany to keep alive against Russia. I enclose a
9letter of Hodgson which I know he wouldn’t mind my showing you.
10(I’ll tell him I did) which exactly expresses my meaning except that
11I feel here Germany will be beaten Russia & France were quite strong
12enough for that with out England – who if she had taken no part
13could with America have come in as powerful mediators at the end. I
14have been in bed since Friday. Am going next week to try & find
15quarters where I can settle down, & try to revise my Stray Thoughts,
16so that I can publish them after the war.
17
18I do hope you are taking care of yourself in diet & all matters dear
19one. It’s nice to think you have the children near you. Give my love
20to them. I do hope boy Oliver will not find these terrible matters
21make study impossible. They make a great fuss about German treatment
22of foreigners. Can anything be more melancholy than the fate of
23Germans in England today. We have shot one man already.
24
25Good bye dear.
26Much love to you.
27Only keep well.
28Olive
29
Notation
The enclosed letter is no longer attached. The 'Stray thoughts' Schreiner mentions are the essays originally published pseudonymously from 1891 on as by 'A Returned South African', intended for publication in book form as 'Stray Thoughts on South Africa'. However, although prepared for publication, a dispute with a US publisher and the events of the South African War prevented this. They and some related essays were posthumously published as Thoughts on South Africa.