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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner BC16/Box4/Fold2/1909/23
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date30 April 1909
Address FromDe Aar, Northern Cape
Address To
Who ToWilliam Philip ('Will') Schreiner
Other Versions
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
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.
1 de Aar
2 April 30th 1909
3
4 Dear Laddie
5
6 I send you a letter from Adela, who says you sent her a box of grapes,
7for which she is thanking you. At last the cold weather has come here,
8& I’ve been hard at work writing the last three days.
9
10 Of course you know that Malan & Hofmeyr had a complete fall out during
11the session? I am not repeating anything Malan told me as had if from
12four other persons. I had a long private talk with Malan at his
13request the last day I was there, he spoke very bitterly of Hofmeyr.
14But I did not of course like to ask him what the difference was about.
15At bottom Malan has a nobler, deeper nature than any other public man
16in South Africa. I always feel a fear for you, for him, for any man I
17love & believe in who enters politics. "How hardly shall a politician
18enter into the kingdom of God." – or stop there if he gets in. My
19old friend Kier Hardie is the only man I have known who has enter
20political life, remained in for years, & retained all the singleness
21of mind & directness of method that marked him in private life. The
22atmosphere is rotten.
23
24 I am reading that rather feebly written life of Sir George Grey by
25Reeves: - but how the greatness of the man shines out through it all.
26No man is fit to govern in whom truth & directness does not shine out
27at every pore, and who does not realize that he has his power to
28defend the weak. He must "love much" though that seems a strange thing
29to say of politician. He must lay aside the idea of politics as a game,
30 as "sport" & think of it as "fatherhood".
31
32 Good bye dear Laddie.
33 Olive
34
35 ^My friend Miss Molteno is in great glory at the stand you have made on
36the native question.^
37
Notation
The book referred to is: William Lee Rees and Lily Rees (1892) The Life and Times of Sir George Grey London: Hutchinson & Co.