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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner BC16/Box2/Fold4/1901/13
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter DateThursday March 1901
Address FromHanover, Northern Cape
Address To
Who ToBetty Molteno
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. The month and year have been written on this letter in an unknown hand. The name of the addressee is indicated by salutation and content.
1 Thursday
2
3 Dear Friend
4
5 You couldn’t come up now, if you came you might not be able to leave
6for months & I don’t believe you or Miss Greene could stand the life
7here: the never being able to say a word, & even the Africanders
8shrinking from you lest you should get them into trouble. We have been
9three full months under martial law now (a little more than three
10months) & in all that time I have never had one walk. The long to get
11away & be alone in the velt comes on me sometimes like a kind of
12passion. I never knew imprisonment could be so hard, & I can look out
13& see beautiful sky & the velt in the distance. What it must be to a
14person who loves velt & hates walls to be shut up in a prison for
15years! They mayn’t die physically but they must die mentally. If one
16had a friend with one in prison it wouldn’t be so hard.
17
18 Good bye
19 Olive
20
21 ^The Boers didn’t come yesterday. They just get up these little
22scares. I believe they see cows & think they are Boers.^
23
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