"Not sex love, our intellectual relations" Read the full letter
| Letter Reference | Olive Schreiner BC16/Box2/Fold3/1900/28 |
| Archive | University of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town |
| Epistolary Type | Letter |
| Letter Date | Sunday May 1900 |
| Address From | Wagenaars Kraal, Three Sisters, Northern Cape |
| Address To | |
| Who To | Alice Greene |
| Other Versions | |
| Permissions | Please 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. The month and year have been written on this letter in an unknown hand. Schreiner stayed at Wagenaars Kraal from 21 February until late July 1900.
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1Sunday morning
2
3 My dear Miss Greene
4
5 I wish I could meet you at Graaff Reinet; but I can’t. I don’t feel I
6can go on staying here much longer, I feel it is too painful for the
7people who feel so intensely on the other side to have me.
8
9 I think I shall surely be in Beaufort West by the 21st of June.
10
11 Where are you & Miss Molteno going? If you are going to some up
12country place I should like to go where you were; except Cradock which
13is too low for me, I get asthma there. I know Miss Molteno doesn’t
14like Beaufort nor do I. But I don’t know where else to go. I have an
15introduction to Mrs van der Merwe the Dutch Minister’s wife, so we
16should get to know all the Dutch people if we were there. Mr Tailor
17says he is full, he can’t take more borders, (that’s the farm Mrs
18Murray told me about). My chest is so wonderfully well here that I
19shall be sorry to leave for my work’s sake.
20
21 //It will be a wonderful thing if the Boers defend Johannesburg & the
22British with their own guns blow it to pieces! If I can once stand on
23Hospital Hill by the ruins of my house, & look down on a destroyed
24Johannesburg, then they can take me away to bury me, I am ready to die.
25
26^Good bye, my dear love to you both. Cron is holding meetings again but
27I have not seen any account of how it has gone, as I have not got my
28papers. ^
29
30 Olive
31
2
3 My dear Miss Greene
4
5 I wish I could meet you at Graaff Reinet; but I can’t. I don’t feel I
6can go on staying here much longer, I feel it is too painful for the
7people who feel so intensely on the other side to have me.
8
9 I think I shall surely be in Beaufort West by the 21st of June.
10
11 Where are you & Miss Molteno going? If you are going to some up
12country place I should like to go where you were; except Cradock which
13is too low for me, I get asthma there. I know Miss Molteno doesn’t
14like Beaufort nor do I. But I don’t know where else to go. I have an
15introduction to Mrs van der Merwe the Dutch Minister’s wife, so we
16should get to know all the Dutch people if we were there. Mr Tailor
17says he is full, he can’t take more borders, (that’s the farm Mrs
18Murray told me about). My chest is so wonderfully well here that I
19shall be sorry to leave for my work’s sake.
20
21 //It will be a wonderful thing if the Boers defend Johannesburg & the
22British with their own guns blow it to pieces! If I can once stand on
23Hospital Hill by the ruins of my house, & look down on a destroyed
24Johannesburg, then they can take me away to bury me, I am ready to die.
25
26^Good bye, my dear love to you both. Cron is holding meetings again but
27I have not seen any account of how it has gone, as I have not got my
28papers. ^
29
30 Olive
31