"Getting in Dutch vice president of Women's Enfranchisement League, Mrs MacFadyen, we have to educate women in South Africa slowly" Read the full letter
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Letter ReferenceW.P. Schreiner MSC 27/287
ArchiveNational Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date26 March 1900
Address FromWagenaars Kraal, Three Sisters, Northern Cape
Address ToLyndall, Newlands, Cape Town, Western Cape
Who ToWilliam Philip ('Will') Schreiner
Other Versions
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 address this letter was sent to is provided by an attached envelope, on the front of which Schreiner has written 'Personal'. The final insertion is on the back of the envelope.
1 Wagenaars Kraal
2 Three Sisters
3 March 26 / 00
4
5 Dear Laddy
6
7 Thank you for your note, received just now, & the letter of last week,
8& for the wire I got to-day from the folk at Lyndall. For the last 11
9days we have had no news from the outer world! & the strain has been
10great. I have got my papers now.
11
12 Cron has been to Cambridge I send you a letter from Professor Robert's
13wife which may interest you. Also Cron's with regard to the meeting ^in
14Cambridge^. The Roberts's attitude is interesting because Roberts was
15an old friend of Milners & one of his most enthusiastic ?lovers; when
16he came out here Roberts told me I should never feel lonely in Africa
17again because I should have Milner!!
18
19 I am copying out the last article of my Boer book. I am inundated with
20letters from America about my articles on the woman question, but I
21feel a curious absence of interest in any but one question just now.
22
23 Good bye, dear Laddie, We shall see what we shall see.
24 Olive
25
26 ^Could you send me the book you mention when you have quite done with
27it, if you have a copy.^
28
Notation
The 'last article of my Boer book' is likely to be: "The African Boer" The Cosmopolitan vol 29, no 5, September 1900, pp.451-467; and "The African Boer (Continued)" The Cosmopolitan vol 29, no 6, October 1900, pp.593-602. A set of Schreiner's 'Returned South African' essays was to have been published as 'Stray Thoughts on South Africa' at around this time. 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 articles on the 'woman question' are Schreiner's two-part essay on 'Woman': "The Woman Question I" The Cosmopolitan vol 28, no 1, November 1899, pp.45-54; and "The Woman Question II" The Cosmopolitan vol 28, no 2, December 1899, pp.182-192. These eventually became Woman and Labour. They were envisaged as part of a major theoretical work, a book on the 'man and woman' question. However, the manuscript, left in Johannesburg when Schreiner went to Karree Kloof in late August 1899, was destroyed when her house was badly damaged and burned by marauding troops during the South African War.