"Angry exchange with Little, Brown & Co, 'Stray Thoughts on South Africa' is not published" Read the full letter
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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner BC16/Box8/Fold4/MMPr/AssortedCorres/FredPL/3
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date25 October 1905
Address FromHanover, Northern Cape
Address To
Who ToFrederick ('Fred') Pethick-Lawrence
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. A typescript only of this letter is available. The transcription here follows this typescript and includes any uncertain dates, ellipses, mistakes and so on.
1 Hanover
2 October 25th, 1905
3
4 I’m glad to know it has been so pleasant at the Falls. I am writing
5this in the hope of its finding you at Bulawayo. Its grand to think
6you really will be back here on the 7th. There is a letter here for
7you and a small book, but I don’t send them on, for fear of their
8missing you and getting lost.
9
10 I got the enclosed wire from Fichardt and wrote to tell him you would
11not be there before the 7th. I expect there will be a letter from him
12tomorrow; and in his absence I am sure he will arrange for General
13Hertzog
or someone else to come and meet you and make all arrangements
14for your seeing de Wet etc.
15
16 I have also a letter from Dr. Mortimer of Potchefstroom. He says all
17the hotels in Johannesburg are bad, but Heath’s is much the best in
18South Africa, and that he will have great pleasure in doing all he can
19to make your stay interesting. All Milner’s settlements which
20miscarried so badly are to be seen there: its one the most interesting
21places in South Africa. I should certainly go there if I were you. The
22friends on the farms near Cradock write they will be very glad to see
23us and Mr Armstrong is arranging about the wagon and oxen. If I am not
24well enough to go you must still go, for I am sure you will enjoy it.
25I want you to see something of our real born South Africans of English
26blood, and you only see them on their farms in the East.
27
28 Thank you so much for "The Garden of Allah". Its a wonderfully
29powerful book. Some of the love scenes are as subtle and powerful as
30anything I have read anywhere, but though the writer means it quite
31otherwise, it is one the bitterest attacks on Christianity and
32Catholicism that I know! It chokes one with hatred and scorn of the
33crushing system - but we can talk about it when we meet.
34
35 I am sending "Souls of Black Folk" to Charles Fichardt. I don’t like
36to part with it even for a time! But I want him so much to read it.
37
38 Cron is still in Cape Town over his case, and the Purcells left last
39Tuesday, since which I have been alone with the meercats and my little
40kaffir. It is so beautiful to think you will be here again. You
41can’t understand the joy it has been to see you both. I shall only
42be sorry when you go right away. But all beautiful things one has once
43had never really pass away, they are a part of the permanent riches of
44life. I hope your journey down will be all pleasant and comfortable.
45
46
47
Notation
The books referred to are: Robert Hythe Hichens (1904) The Garden of Allah Leipzig: Bernhardt Tauchnitz; W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) The Souls of Black Folk Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co.