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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner: Mary Sauer MSC 26/2.11.101
ArchiveNational Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date25 April 1896
Address FromThe Homestead, Kimberley, Northern Cape
Address To
Who ToMary Sauer nee Cloete
Other VersionsRive 1987: 274
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
The Project is grateful to the National Library of South Africa (NLSA), Cape Town, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Special Collections. The date has been written on this letter in an unknown hand. Schreiner was resident in Kimberley from early August 1894 to November 1898.
1 Darling Mary
2
3 I wonder if you have gone to Johannesburg? I send you Mr Lloyds letter
4to serve as to let you know what he is like. He's such a bighearted
5loving old fellow, but you mustnt get him in a room full of other
6people or he won't say anything.
7
8 My darling, you must come & stay with me some day before I go to
9England. We shall I think surely go in November.
10
11 The attack Ons Land made against my article on the Boer filled me with
12pain & astonishment. I did expect all the English papers to attack me
13& say I was playing into the hand of the Dutchman, but that the Dutch
14papers should attack me ^about it^ seems to me impossible. You know I
15feel just like a man who goes to help another man whom he feels is
16being unjustly treated & the man he is helping jumps up and gives him
17a blow between the eyes. I feel quite dizzy with surprise!
18
19 ^Good bye my own darling
20 Olive^
21
Notation
The article which Schreiner comments was attacked in Ons Land is 'The Boer question', one of her 'Returned South African' essays. A set of these was to have been published as 'Stray Thoughts on South Africa'. However, although prepared for publication, a dispute with a US publisher and the events of the South African War prevented this. They and some other essays were posthumously published as Thoughts on South Africa. The Ons Land comment cannot be traced. Rive's (1987) version of this letter is in a number of respects incorrect.