Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Olive Schreiner BC16/Box8/Fold4/MMPr/AssortedCorres/FredPL/4
Archive	University of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	31 October 1905
Address From	Hanover, Northern Cape
Address To
Who To	Frederick ('Fred') Pethick-Lawrence
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 Frederick ('Fred') Pethick-Lawrence, 31 October 1905, 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. A typescript only of this letter is available. The transcription here follows this typescript and includes any uncertain dates, ellipses, mistakes and so on.

1:  Hanover
2:  October 3lst, 1905
3: 
4:  I have your two letters today from the Falls. I am glad it has been so
5:  splendid to you there.
6: 
7:  I am afraid I have to give up my idea of going to Cradock even now all
8:  arrangements have been laid out. My heart has been bad; I had to keep
9:  lying down for four days after the Purcells left, and if I went to
10:  Cradock I should only get there in the night to return here early the
11:  next morning. Thinking it over too I don’ think you would find any
12:  good in the little ox wagon trip by yourselves. There is absolutely
13:  nothing to see in Cradock itself, but if it were winter we should have
14:  had the most delightful little trip just going about to the different
15:  farms in the neighbourhood where old Boer friends of mine live, whom I
16:  have known all my life. I am sure your would have enjoyed it, but not
17:  speaking Dutch you would not gain anything by going to the farms alone,
18:  and the heat and dust and the flies of an ox wagon journey in summer
19:  require great ends to make them worth enduring. I would go straight up
20:  to Bethuli from Hanover if I were you where the heat will not be so
21:  sultry and tropical as in Cradock; but if you can make time when you
22:  are in East London I should certainly run up to Kingwilliamstown and
23:  see Tengo Jabavu, the Editor of "Imvo". I don’t want you to leave
24:  South Africa without seeing something of our Colonial natives. Its a
25:  great disappointment to me that I can’t see something of South
26:  Africa together with you, but I am not fit for it just now in the heat.
27: 
28:  I sent you Fichardt’s letter. He has written since and says he will
29:  make arrangements for your getting good rooms and receiving special
30:  attention at the best Hotel in Bloemfontein.
31: 
32:  Yes, I have read the "Underling". I’ll tell you what I feel about it
33:  when you come. I like the man who wrote it; he must be most loveable,
34:  but the stories, though good in outline, appear to me not to live.
35: 
36:  It would be a very great pleasure to me to see Massingham. I met him
37:  once, and he impressed me as a most interesting & strong man. If he
38:  were to come here, we would, if he cared for it, call a public meeting
39:  of all the town, black & white, & he could question people & hear for
40:  himself what the public here up country is, on the Chinese labour
41:  question. I hope he will have time to pay a little attention to the
42:  native question. That, and not any matter of Dutch and English is the
43:  practical problem of the moment. I have a most interesting letter from
44:  John X Merriman on the question, part of which I will show you when
45:  you come.
46: 
47:  My husband returned from Cape Town last Saturday; he is not going down
48:  for the second case, so I’m glad he will be here when you come. I
49:  fear that General Smuts and his wife will not be in Pretoria when you
50:  get there: they are going for some months to the seaside to escape the
51:  heat.
52: 
53:  It seems very good to think this day week you will arrive here. I hope
54:  you got my note at the Grand Hotel Bulawao.
55: 
56: 
57: 

Notation
The reference to the 'Underling' is: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1906) 'The Underling. A story in two parts' Harper’s Magazine Volume 112, January 1906: pp. 211-219; February 1906: pp. 462-471.