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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner BC16/Box2/Fold3/1900/46
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date After Start: 1 September 1900 ; Before End: 7 September 1900
Address FromLaingsburg, Western Cape
Address To
Who ToAlice Greene
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 month and year have been written on this letter in an unknown hand. The name of the addressee is indicated by content. Schreiner arrived in Hanover on 13 September 1900 and lived there until late 1907, so a letter from Laingsburg in September will have been written earlier than her Hanover arrival and most likely preceded another letter Schreiner wrote from Beaufort West on 7 September 1900.
1 Laingsburg
2
3 Your letter & Miss Moltenos were such a joy to me.
4
5 I’ve been much worse since I came here than I was in Cape Town; & if
6I can hear of a place at Richmond I will go there to see if I can’t
7get better again.
8
9 My darling boy is coming up after some weeks. He is happy thinking he
10is converting his mother & he I am glad he will have this nice time
11with her.
12
13 Your account was so interesting of the parliament.
14
15 I’m glad you liked the article. I liked writing it, it seems
16something I’ve always wanted to say say since I was a little child,
17but I’m afraid I’ve not said it so ^that^ many people will care for it.
18
19 It’s very cold here, raining all the time till this morning, & now
20the unreadable wind cuts one in half & there is heavy frost. If it
21were a nice place I’d hoped you might come up a little. But its not
22a place I would ever wish anyone I loved to come to.
23
24 I’ll write you before I leave so write here still.
25
26 Olive
27
28 ^Tell Miss Molteno I’ve been much interested in her fathers life.^
29
30
31
Notation
The particular article referred to cannot be established. However, it could have been one of the 'Woman' articles or one on 'The Boers'. The articles on 'Woman' were originally conceived as part of a major theoretical work on man and woman', but the manuscript was left in Johannesburg when Schreiner went to Karree Kloof in late August 1899 and was destroyed when her house was badly damaged and burned by marauding troops during the war. They eventually became Woman and Labour. 'The Boer' is an article which was to have been published in 'Stray Thoughts on South Africa', composed by the essays originally published pseudonymously as by 'A Returned South African'. Although prepared for book publication, a dispute with a US publisher and the South African War prevented this. They and some other essays were posthumously published as Thoughts on South Africa.