Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	Olive Schreiner BC16/Box3/Fold3/1904/57
Archive	University of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	24 December 1904
Address From	Hanover, Northern 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, 24 December 1904, 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 of this letter as 1904 is surmised from content and its place in the archival sequence. The name of the addressee is indicated by salutation and content.

1:  Hanover
2:  Xmas Eve
3: 
4:  Dear Friend
5: 
6:  I am sitting here in my little study again. The time at Pretoria was
7:  splendid. No accounts of the funeral that I have seen do it any
8:  justice, & I’m not fit enough to write one now. I did wish so much
9:  that you & Miss Molteno were there.
10: 
11:  I stayed with the dear Smuts’s. De Wet stayed there too. I love &
12:  admire him more every time I see him. He is not lest but more an
13:  object of poetry to me the more I see of him. Mrs Botha did not call
14:  on me, so I saw nothing of Botha but the glimpse I had when we shook
15:  hands at the railway station. De la Rey is most impressive looking but
16:  does not touch my heart nor do I feel he mentally belongs to me as de
17:  Wet does. There is something very attractive in the expression of
18:  Botha’s face very different from his photos. The scene in the
19:  Susanna Saal where the body lay in state was something more beautiful
20:  & impressive than I can des-cribe. I have seen many impressive scenes
21:  in Europe, but nothing like that. The solemn rows of burgers in their
22:  old fighting clothes about the door were very touching to me but the
23:  scene in the dim hall lighted by electric lights, & the the hundreds &
24:  hundreds of wreathes covering floor & walls to the far end where the
25:  rough old hero lay in his coffin was moving beyond pl words, in the
26:  room behind were huge books in which all who came wrote their names.
27:  The dear Smuts’ were all that is sweet & kind. She has another
28:  little girl, unreadable just ten days old the day I arrived, & only
29:  sixteen months younger than the last, an exquisite child. but now ill.
30:  Dear General Malan came with ten of his commando to see me at Smuts’.
31:  & the
32: 
33:  I stayed in Pretoria four days & then went over to Johannesburg I had
34:  the room of my niece Wynny Hemming the building specially for teachers,
35:  as she was away in the Colony. I went out to visit Malans people at
36:  Langlaagete, a few miles out of Johannesburg. Malan is the very image
37:  of his mother, except that she is very big & stout. She has even the
38:  same droop in the left eye. All the children are most interesting. The
39:  three sons who fought to the end, the youngest being only fifteen when
40:  he joined the commando, but the most attractive of all is the eldest
41:  daughter a really beautiful girl exactly like Malan, with the same
42:  curious self restraint over intense passion. The father is entirely
43:  unlike the family, they seem to have inherited entirely & solely from
44:  the mother; he is a common-place looking old fellow with rough light
45:  beard & hair & blue eyes & a low forehead (another illustration of the
46:  fact that men of genius inherit their gifts from the mother!!)
47: 
48:  The most interesting thing of all was the jingoes I saw in
49:  Johannesburg, who innundated me from morning till night. – "We are
50:  all pro-Boers now!" The change of feeling is something almost too
51:  astonishing! But I will tell you all about it in in my next letter. I
52:  wasn’t awake in the morning when albums were thrust in at my door
53:  for me to sign. I also was almost in danger of ^my^ life where there two
54:  years ago just after the war am now a most popular person!! The next
55:  thing will be the Johannesburgers will be raising a statue to Oom Paul!
56:  ! I will tell you about some interviews I have had. I was very very
57:  well in Johannesburg & especially at Pretoria but had a trying journey
58:  down. There were 250 people in the train; could get nothing to eat all
59:  day. When I got to Hanover Rd at eight o’clock ^in the evening^ the
60:  cart I had asked to have sent for me & for which I was paying well had
61:  gone back to Hanover, as the train was late, & I had to sit out on the
62:  bench on the verandah from eight o’clock on one evening till half
63:  past ten the next day waiting for a cart that never came, Good by & am
64:  knocked up a bit. Good bye.
65: 
66:  ^More next week.^
67: 
68:  Olive
69: 
70: 
71: