Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Olive Schreiner BC16/Box3/Fold5/1906/30
Archive	University of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	27 December 1906
Address From	Matjesfontein, Western Cape
Address To
Who To	Alice Greene
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 Alice Greene, 27 December 1906, UCT Manuscripts & Archives, Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.

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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 name of the addressee of this letter is indicated by salutation and content.

1:  Matjesfontein
2:  Dec 27th 1906
3: 
4:  My darling Friend
5: 
6:  It is a most curious thing that in all the long letter I’ve just got
7:  from you that there has not been one word, I might almost say, that I
8:  did not know! The curious thing is that Betty has told me nothing that
9:  I’ve known it all by instinct. She’s talked of the English climate
10:  suffocating & oppressing her & so on, but I’ve known every thing. I
11:  didn’t know how exactly I was right till I got your sweet letter. I
12:  do understand it all so as well as know it. But I don’t think either
13:  you or Betty quite realize how depressing the mere English climate is
14:  for a born South African. I have all my dearest friends in England,
15:  the life there is infinitely happier for me than the life here, & yet
16:  I feel the climate crushing me. I stay as long as I can & then I have
17:  to fly off to the continent winter after winter. And oh, the joy of
18:  that lighter air in Switzerland & Italy & Germany! It’s strange I
19:  just posted a letter to you you three days ago & now I’ve got yours.
20: 
21:  Cron came & spent nearly three days with me; now he’s gone on to
22:  spend days with his mother in Cape Town. He is looking very tired &
23:  over worked after the fearful heat at De Aar. His business is doing
24:  very well there; & he has a plan to start a newspaper, which I think
25:  will succeed well if he can get enough people to take up shares. There
26:  is no paper in that part of the country now. If I am returning to
27:  Hanover on the 10th January. I shall live there alone till perhaps
28:  some day Cron builds a little house at De Aar a little out of the dust
29:  & heat & smoke of the station.
30: 
31:  It is England who is going to lead in the fight for freedom just now I
32:  think. My heart is all there with the working men & the women.
33: 
34:  Good bye dear one Thank you so very very
35: 
36:  ^much for your letter. ^
37: 
38:  Olive
39: 
40: 
41: