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Letter ReferenceSchreiner-Hemming Family BC 1080 A1.7/73
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter DateFebruary 1909
Address FromMatjesfontein, Western Cape
Address To
Who ToHenrietta (‘Ettie’) Schreiner m. Stakesby Lewis (1891)
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. This letter has been dated by reference to content. Theo Schreiner was ill with typhoid in Matjesfontein in February 1909. Schreiner was resident in Matjesfontein from late December 1908 to late March 1909.
1 My darling Thanks for your letter. What a splendid victory you had.
2Not one license given! I rejoice so with you.
3
4 It seems to me that most of our work just now must be ^more or less^
5private work on the native question. I have I have written to ^J.H.^
6Hofmeyer General Smuts, FS Malan &c. If you had meetings with your
7Good Templars & discussed the matter with me it would be invaluable. I
8wish I could get my friends Miss Molteno & Miss Greene to who were
9known as great partizans of the Boers to go round in the Free State &
10Transvaal holding small, semi-private meeting. I think we should all
11dwell on our duty to the natives, & our love for them, more than on
12the ill treatment they will receive. It is wonderful the power of
13imitation in human creatures; if they hear you love a thing they begin
14to think they love it it. I think that’s why one often does more by
15painting a beautiful ideal than by denouncing the opposite evil,
16though there are times when one must do that, perhaps.
17
18 Theo is better, sitting up a little every day.
19
20 Good bye darling.
21
22 The ?Huttons are coming on Wednesday. I almost hoped you were coming
23with them, but as they say nothing of it in their letter to Kate
24Stuart
I suppose you are not.
25
26 Olive
27
28 ^You see, Hofmeyr & the Bond are inclined to a certain extent to stand
29with us. If we make the native question one on which there seems to be
30an exclusive English attack on the Dutch we shall drive them to join
31the Transvaalers to the great loss of the native. After all the native
32has no where such bitter opponents as the Johannesburgers & the
33English Eastern Province farmers.^
34