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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner BC16/Box3/Fold1/1902/1
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date1 January 1902
Address FromHanover, Northern Cape
Address Toc/o Dr Murray, Kenilworth, Newlands, Cape Town, Western Cape
Who ToBetty Molteno
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 year of this letter has been derived from the postmark on an attached envelope, which also provides the name of the addressee and the address it was sent to. The envelope has been opened, stamped and passed by the military censor.
1 Hanover
2 New Years Day
3
4 A Happy New Year dear ones to you both. This new year I think opens
5for us all a happier year that the last. It can’t be a sadder one.
6Thats always a comfort.
7
8 I am sending you tomorrow Registered the cheque for £261.0.0. You
9must cash it at once please. I have just sold the little house because
10I wanted to pay off every thing I owed. I have sent the money to the
11Standard Bank Cape Town. The man has promised not to disturb my
12baby’s grave till I am able to remove her body after the war. It is
13beautifully dry & cool here now & I am feeling stronger than I have
14yet done this year. I am trying a new system of dieting, recommended
15to me by a Dr Friend in England. I am living almost entirely on hot
16boiled milk taken in small sips. For the last six weeks I have not
17touched meat. He says his wife who has an enlarged right heart, &
18whose feet & legs were becoming so much swollen that that she could
19walk little has much improved since she took to this diet, which
20throws little work on the heart. I can’t yet say whether it is the
21diet or the weather but I certainly am able to lie down better.
22
23 A dear good woman living next to us in a tiny clean house of three
24rooms with mud floors has asked Cron & me to go & have dinner with
25them today. It’s the first time any one has invited us any where in
26Hanover & I feel quite touched by her kindness. What good sweet people
27there are in the world. But poverty helps people to be beautiful &
28human. Wealthy people can never know the joys of all those little
29things poor people are able to do for one another. The world will be
30much nicer to live in when nobody is rich & we all need each other.
31
32 I hope you have got good from the stay at Kalk Bay. Did you see
33anything of my dear little sister-in-law & the children. Its such a
34long time since I heard from either of you. Miss Greens last was dated
3519th of November, & your last was written the day after you got to
36Kalk Bay.
37
38 Olive
39
40
41