"War sent humanity back 300 years, distant future of justice & freedom" Read the full letter
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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner BC16/Box2/Fold4/1901/42
ArchiveUniversity of Cape Town, Manuscripts & Archives, Cape Town
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date28 June 1901
Address FromHaartebeest Hoek, De Aar, 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 date has been written on this letter in an unknown hand. The name of the addressee is indicated by salutation. Schreiner visited Haartebeest Hoek from late June to early July 1901.
1 My dear Friend
2
3 Everything is so dream-like. I never feel quite alive.
4
5 We are perhaps going to Hope Town next week where Cron’s sister
6lives. If we don’t we shall return to Hanover. I would rather not if
7I could help it. I have suffered so much there during the last six
8months that my brain seems to shrink from the thought I think Hope
9Town I is warmer than here. Don’t trouble to send the book I asked
10for if you’ve not sent it because in Hope Town I shall be able to
11get something to read. It is a bitterly cold day, great white snow
12clouds everywhere but the sun shining, & it looks beautiful though
13bleak out the window. I seem so curiously to have lost my hold on life
14& things. Even the war seems far away from me, though from the window
15f we can see in the distance the armoured-train going up & down on the
16line. I have such a strange feeling as though I were dead & looking in
17at a life & a world in which I have no longer any share.
18
19 Cron is looking very well; he’s gained 5lbs since he came up. The
20cold stimulating air suits him. I haven’t seen him look so well
21since before we went to Johannesburg. You won’t know him when he
22returns to Cape Town. He will likely be coming down soon for
23another three ^or four^ months soon I can fancy The confinement
24tells on C. That 6 months passed almost entirely in one room though I
25could go out to the post or the shops if I wished told me how terrible
26a thing confinement could be.
27
28 Good bye, dear friend. Much love to you both.
29 Olive
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