Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Olive Schreiner BC16/Box2/Fold1/Jan-June1899/38
Archive	University of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	Wednesday 28 June 1899
Address From	Johannesburg, Transvaal
Address To
Who To	William Philip ('Will') Schreiner
Other Versions	Rive 1987: 365-6

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, 28 June 1899, 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. The date has been written on this letter in an unknown hand. Schreiner was resident in Berea, Johannesburg, from December 1898 until late August 1899.

1:  Wednesday
2: 
3:  Dear Laddie
4: 
5:  Miss Molteno & Miss Greene are here & I am going over with them to
6:  Pretoria on Friday, & shall be glad to have some news direct. We shall
7:  stay at Smuts’s. Smuts’s wife is a splendid little woman. I shall
8:  see Esselin too. Will tell you what the exact state of feeling is, but
9:  expect you know much more than I do. It is only when one sees & knows
10:  & lives among this Johannesburg rabble that one can fully realize how
11:  grotes-que, wickedly grotesque all this affair is.
12: 
13:  I took Miss M & G down to Commissioner St yesterday past the exchange
14:  where all the business men were standing about with that cut throat
15:  look they always have. I had been telling them about the roughs who
16:  sand-bag folk here (ie hit them on the head & neck with sand bags, to
17:  stun & rob them) three men were sand-bagged last Monday. Miss Molteno
18:  remarked quite seriously "I suppose these are the sand-baggers." She
19:  absolutely would not believe when I told her we were among the wealth
20:  & aristocracy of Johannesburg. The panic has gone down here the last
21:  two days & shares are up.
22: 
23:  Private
24: 
25:  Will, does it ever strike, I’m sure it must, it does come to me
26:  often - in ten years time or five, if we live so long, looking back
27:  will we see that it was best not to have fought now? I think & think
28:  the matter over, & I cannot but feel that the immediate thing is to
29:  work for peace, but it is possible that in after years one will see
30:  that war now was our last chance against the enemy. Don’t think I
31:  would not do all I can on the side of peace, that what little I can do
32:  is done on that side, "give them all they want rather than fight," -
33:  but the doubt will come!! If we had the natives on our side it might
34:  perhaps be better to make the stand now, we will have to make it one
35:  day – but our birds are coming home to roost. Every act of injustice
36:  against the black man, is tying our hands to-day. If the name Boer was
37:  a name to conjure by among the natives of South Africa, if we knew
38:  they would stand by us we could meet the Capitalist now. As it is, war
39:  would be a catastrophe, so awful that one feels it an imperative duty
40:  to put it off as long as possible. Whatever comes war or no war you
41:  men must stick to your places. You must ^give^ Chamberlain no chance of
42:  dis-charging you as rebels. To throw up the sponge in case of war,
43:  would it seems to me be suicidal. If you do nothing else you keep the
44:  men out who would turn the full force of the volunteers upon us. I
45:  myself am not afraid that we could ^not^ deal with the English troops
46:  except they were in the very largest numbers, but with a squad of
47:  Eastern Province volunteers it would be otherwise. What you men have
48:  to do is to sail on, & on as close to the wind as you can, & never
49:  give them a chance of turning you out.
50: 
51:  Good bye dear. I hope you are still feeling the benefit of your trip
52:  physically. Don’t smoke more than you can help, & take some
53:  exercises.
54: 
55:  I'm sorry to hear my darling lass has been ill.
56: 
57:  Your small sister
58:  Olive
59: 
60: 
61: 

Notation
Rive;s (1987) version omits part of this letter and is also in a number of respects incorrect.