FROM OLIVE SCHREINER TO MRS HALDANE MURRAY AND HER DAUGHTER

3 postcards written by Olive Schreiner to her friends.

1 addressed to Mrs Haldane Murray Portlock Graaff Reinet with the postmark Somerset Wet Feb 28 1911 at Somerset East, which arrived in Graaff Reinter on 2 March.

1 addressed to Mrs Murray Portlock nr Graaff Reinet with the postmark Wynberg, Cape dated 10 Jan 1912, which arrived in Graaff Reinet on 13 January

1 addressed to Miss Andre Murray Portlock nr Graaff Reinet dated Wynberg 10 Jan 1912 which arrived in Graaff Reinet on 13 January.

The postcards are all in good condition. The contents cover domestic issues, inquiring whether they had a good Christmas, whether they were well, where she was staying on a trip to Cape Town, wishing she could see them all.

(Andrew) Haldane Murray (1866 - 1916) was married to Schreiner's friend Mimmie Murray. He was a son of the influential Dutch Reform Church dominee Andrew Murray, and studied ethics and philosophy at Cambridge. On his return to South Africa he became a teacher and later a headmaster and then a school inspector and married Mimmie or Minnie Murray nee Parkes (1865-1929)

They lived and worked on the farm Portlock in the Graaff-Reinet area. Here, according to one source, it was Mimmie Murray, rather than her husband Haldane, 'who turned out to be the champion farmer', an activity she continued after his death.

Mimmie Murray also became involved in the women's suffrage movement and was active in setting up a local branch of the Women's Enfranchisement League in the Graaff-Reinet area. https://www.oliveschreiner.org/vre?view=personae&entry=53

Andre Murray was a daughter of Schreiner’s friends A. Haldane and Mimmie or Minnie Murray who lived on the farm Portlock near Graaff-Reinet. The letters and cards to Andre Murray are part of a wider pattern of Schreiner befriending younger women, especially the daughters of friends (including May Murray Parker, Dorothy Von Moltke, Lucy Molteno). Andre Murray is clearly an example of this, perhaps as part of Schreiner’s attempts to awaken greater ambition and political awareness in the younger generation of women. Mostly Schreiner wrote short letters and later lots of postcards to Andre Murray when she removed to Europe, tantalising her with cultural titbits (architecture, churches, paintings) on the front of postcards. Throughout warmth and affection come across, and also that Schreiner greets her as a peer, as ‘your friend Olive Schreiner’.https://www.oliveschreiner.org/vre?view=personae&entry=52