"Prostitution, changing a whole system" Read the full letter
| Letter Reference | Olive Schreiner: Extracts of Letters to Cronwright-Schreiner MSC 26/2.16/153 |
| Archive | National Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town |
| Epistolary Type | Extract |
| Letter Date | 25 January 1904 |
| Address From | Hanover, Northern Cape |
| Address To | |
| Who To | S.C. (‘Cron’) Cronwright-Schreiner |
| Other Versions | Cronwright-Schreiner 1924: 242-3 |
| Permissions | Please read before using or citing this transcription |
| Legend |
The Extracts of Letters to Cronwright-Schreiner were produced by Cronwright-Schreiner in preparing The Life and The Letters of Olive Schreiner. They appear on slips of paper in his writing, taken from letters that were then destroyed; many of these extracts have also been edited by him. They are artefacts of his editorial practices and their relationship to original Schreiner letters cannot now be gauged. They should be read with considerable caution for the reasons given. Cronwright-Schreiner has written the date, where it was sent from and the place it was sent to onto this extract. There are some differences between this transcription and the version that appears in The Letters....
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…My Dear husband, before I got your letter this morning, Dr. Wilson
2called & said you had asked him to call as you feel anxious…
3
4 I am much better now…
5
6 been more a malarial kind of thing because quinine & tar water have
7done me such good. I am feeling better today than I have felt yet done
8since you left… When Oom Jan came here that day, I spoke to him
9about the water; he burst out in the most tremendous rage, with his
10eyes flashing, that he was a Christian & a believer in God, & that if
11God sent fever to punish people for their sins, was he going to say it
12was the water? Sickness was a punishment from God to call us to repent.
13 He took up his stick & went away… Mrs. ?F. and Mrs K)^Mrs ----^ came
14& another lady Mrs - came to see me. Mrs. ---- came to ask how I was
15last night. She began at once that that flood at Bloemfontein was
16caused by the wickedness of the people who fired cannon into the air
17to bring rain; God was not going to be mocked, therefore he had
18brought this punishment on them. She and Mrs. ---- sat enlarging on
19this. I suppose no soul who has never lived through it can know how
20spiritually and mentally (& therefore emotionally) alone one one is in
21a place like Hanover. Because people who can’t a little bit
22understand you can’t love you really. The sympathy of likeness is
23after all the only basis of true endless love…
24
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2called & said you had asked him to call as you feel anxious…
3
4 I am much better now…
5
6 been more a malarial kind of thing because quinine & tar water have
7done me such good. I am feeling better today than I have felt yet done
8since you left… When Oom Jan came here that day, I spoke to him
9about the water; he burst out in the most tremendous rage, with his
10eyes flashing, that he was a Christian & a believer in God, & that if
11God sent fever to punish people for their sins, was he going to say it
12was the water? Sickness was a punishment from God to call us to repent.
13 He took up his stick & went away… Mrs. ?F. and Mrs K)^Mrs ----^ came
14& another lady Mrs - came to see me. Mrs. ---- came to ask how I was
15last night. She began at once that that flood at Bloemfontein was
16caused by the wickedness of the people who fired cannon into the air
17to bring rain; God was not going to be mocked, therefore he had
18brought this punishment on them. She and Mrs. ---- sat enlarging on
19this. I suppose no soul who has never lived through it can know how
20spiritually and mentally (& therefore emotionally) alone one one is in
21a place like Hanover. Because people who can’t a little bit
22understand you can’t love you really. The sympathy of likeness is
23after all the only basis of true endless love…
24
25
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