"Case against Cronwright-Schreiner; OS asks Will Schreiner seven legal questions" Read the full letter
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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner: Extracts of Letters to Cronwright-Schreiner MSC 26/2.16/31
ArchiveNational Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeExtract
Letter Date14 September 1900
Address FromBeaufort West, Western Cape
Address To
Who ToS.C. (‘Cron’) Cronwright-Schreiner
Other VersionsCronwright-Schreiner 1924: 229-30
PermissionsPlease 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 letter, and also that Olive Schreiner’s letter had commented about her family history, from information sent to her by the Pastor at Fellbach. There are some differences between this transcription and the version that appears in The Letters....
1 …has spent months, he says, searching all the old registers and
2Burgomasters’ books which they have had in the village for hundreds
3of years. My ancestors seems always to have lived in that same tiny
4little German village for centuries. The population in that part has
5not shifted much xince ^since^ the first centuries of the Christian
6Chapter 6. Era when the Alamani settled there, according
7^according^ to Gibbon; no wonder I don’t like towns when all
8my ancestors for countless generations ?hav have been peasants,
9labouring in the open in their own little vineyard vineyards and
10gardens. I feel so at home with the earth and animals…
11