1 Hanover
2 Nov 24 / 04
3
4 My darling Friend
5
6 You seem to be always with me sometimes almost present to me. I hope
7you are feeling stronger. I fear the autumn which is the time I have
8to leave England is pressing you down. You will feel much better when
9the winter comes if it is sharp & stimulating. I don’t think any one
10not born in South African can understand how the autumn English
11climate affects us. The continent is quite different. Paris is a
12splendid stimulating climate. I hope by this time you have met your
13young sister & that perhaps you & she are now travelling about on the
14continent together. I feel great sympathy with her: when people get a
15certain point they feel they must live their own life & have to break
16away. Try & visit Munich. It’s one of the lovely & delightful places
17on earth. Art, music, old buildings & simple German life & everything.
18Did I tell you I was perhaps going up to Oom Paul’s funeral at
19Pretoria? I know it may make me ill, but I feel I must. I wish you
20were here to go with me.
21
22 If Alice can’t come out next spring, & you have to come out, feel
23such a great longing for Africa perhaps you & I might travel a little
24while Parliament sits; say go to Pretoria & stay with the Smuts’s a
25little. Cron wants to stay with his mother while parliament sits, & to
26go & stay quite alone in the boarding house in Tamboer’s Kloof now
27the beloved Purcell's have gone is not much good, though one has the
28beloved glorious mountain. I just mention this in case you are making
29plans with Miss Greene.
30
31 I wonder sometimes if that farm Lily Kloof that I loved, & have
32dreamed to live on ever since I was a girl & a governess there, would
33perhaps suit you & Miss Greene. You are near to the Pringles & those
34nice Baviaan’s River people on one side & now the war fever is dying
35they might want to send their girls. Did I tell you Nessie Pringle was
36to married to a Mr Ross.
37
38 It’s about 10.30 now & I’m going to bed to read Bryces American
39Commonwealth. Do Cron is down at his office, but will I expect be in
40soon. He has started a cricket club. I am so glad as it gives him some
41interest in this monotonous life. The young ladies are getting up a
42club concert for it. I can’t take part in the concert as I don’t
43play, but I’m giving a cricket ball to the young man who pl attends
44practise most regularly during the season, just to take an interest in
45it.
46
47 To-day for the first time for two months I went out into the village
48as a couple of people are ill & I went to see them. The people here
49don’t distress me any more, I’ve just let them drop from me.
50It’s strange how suddenly you can do that; how a moment comes when
51you don’t care any more, & you can look back at people & say "are
52you the people who used to agonize me so?" & wonder! Yes, this
53reaction among the people is much, much sadder than the war.
54
55 I do wish you could see my meerkats; they get sweeter & sweeter every
56day. "Litty-von" is the most intelligent big eyed tame fearless little
57meerkat I ever saw. I could write a long letter about him. My little
58Kaffir remains a good & sweet as ever; he has a strange complex little
59nature. Curiously sensitive. The more I know Kaffirs the less I am
60able to understand where their inferiority comes in.
61
62 I am writing at my little war story still but I only manage a few
63lines a day & not always that. I’ve been house cleaning the last two
64days, & haven’t written any thing. It’s called "Elaands Laagte"
65It’s not much. But it relieves my mind to write. Heaps of little
66stories come to me in the night when I lie awake; but you know in a
67way it’s not worth writing them out. English people don’t want my
68stories any more, & South Africans don’t read or care for anything
69that is like art.
70
71^Good night beloved friend. I am just writing on to feel a little
72nearer you. As I was walking up & down at the back of the house just
73now there was such a beautiful moon rise. ^
74 Olive
75
76 Yes, I felt so quite quite sure Miss Greene ought to go to Hellen.
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