Zambezia (1981), IX (ii).ESSAY REVIEWOLIVE SCHREINER AND THE LIBERAL TRADITION*MANY CLAIMS HAVE been made for Olive Schreiner (1855-1920): a pioneerfeminist, socialist, and South Africa's greatest novelist. Her association with CecilRhodes and the rale of his Chartered Company has received less attention, not leastin First and Scott's recent biography, while her influence on later critics of colonialadminstration in Zimbabwe, such as Arthur Shearly Cripps, referred to inChennelPs recent study,1 still awaits more detailed discussion.First and Scott bring a wide range of skills to their task. Ruth First has had along and distinguished career as a journalist, political activist and radical historianboth inside and outside South Africa; her younger collaborator, Ann Scott, addsthe necessary feminist credentials. As a result their work explores more of thefacets of this complex woman than those of her earlier biographers, which eitherlacked a vital dimension or gave undue emphasis to a particular aspect of her lifeand work. Both in his biography and in his edited collection of letters, her husband,Samuel Cronwright-Schreiner,2 heavily censored many details of her life prior totheir marriage in 1894, with the apparent connivance of Henry Havelock Ellis; andas First and Scott show (pp. 315-19) glossed over the last troubled years of theirmarriage itself. Both Hobman and Buchanan-Gould3 engage in personal attacks onCronwright-Schreiner's alleged incomprehension of his wife's genius, while morerecently Meintjes4 has indulged in speculation, about her relations with HavelockEllis, Julius Gau ('Zaar' in Buchanan-Gould), Karl Pearson and others, that attimes borders on the prurient. One great virtue of the present work is that it hasdemonstrated with reference to the actual text of Olive Schreiner's correspondence(e.g., on Gau, pp. 62-3) that this is pure speculation. Moreover, neither Hobmannor Meintjes really shows much sympathy with her political views.A further virtue in the present work is that instead of assuming priorknowledge on the part of their readers, as earlier biographers have done, the authorshave gone to the trouble of providing the necessary historical background material.For instance, their survey of the nascent socialist movement in London during the1880s represents the first real attempt in the literature on Schreiner to explain whatwere, for example, the Fellowship of the New Life and the Men and Women'sClub, and why they appealed to the young Olive Schreiner. A similar depth ofbackground is given for South Africa and it is only in the case of Trooper PeterHalket of Mashonaland, discussed below, that the historical aspect of thebiography is notably deficient in detail.On the other hand, the nature of the authors' political commitment is in itself*R.First and A, Scott, Olive Schreiner (London, Deutsch. 1980). 384 pp.. £9.95.'A.J. Chennells, 'Introduction', in G.R. Brown, A.J. Chennells and L.B, Rix (eds). ArthurShearly Cripps: A Selection of His Prose and Verse (Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1976), 13-25.2S.C. Cronwright-Schreiner, The Life of Olive Schreiner (London, Unwin. 1924). and TheLetters of Olive Schreiner (London, Unwin. S924),Ł' D.L. Hobman, Olive Schreiner: Her Friends and Times (London, Watts. 1955); V. Buchanan-Gould, Not without Honour: The Life and Writings of Olive Schreiner (London, Hutchinson, 1948).4 J. Meintjes, Olive Schreiner: Portrait of a South African Woman (Johannesburg, Keartland,1965).177178ESSAY REVIEWa serious limitation.They have adopted an explicitly 'marxist-feminist' (p. 347)approach to her literary output, which has spilled over into the historical andpersonal matrices of their biography. They have given rather too much emphasis toSchreiner's relationship with mainstream Marxist thought, consequently mini-mizing or overlooking other important formative influences upon her politicalphilosophy.One of these was mid-Victorian liberalism, expressed in a forthright and verycharacteristic individualism: 'If I thought Socialism would bring the subjection ofthe individual to the whole I would fight to the death', she averred in 1885 in a letterto Havelock Ellis.5 And again: 'Socialism is only one-half of the truth, indi-vidualism is the other half.6 It is questionable whether Olive Schreiner was ever asocialist in the modern sense: her intellectual taproot was too firmly embedded inthe soil of early and mid-Victorian liberalism and humanitarianism. Her idols wereJ.S, Mill and Sir George Grey,7 not Marx and Engels,A second and even more potent influence on Olive Schreiner derived from thecircumstances of her own childhood. Commentators have described how shereacted against the claustrophobic environment and her repressive upbringing onthe South African missionary frontier, rejecting the religious dogma inculcated byher parents. But none has fully assessed the lifelong ethical effect of such a child-hood on her adult writings and philosophy. She embraced with additional fervourthe moral teachings of Christianity, probably as a form of compensation forunbelief in its theological doctrine. Her works are charged with a powerful emotionwhich can only be described as loveŠespecially for the underdog and thedowntrodden.Another childhood legacy was a mysticism that at times bordered on deism,and is evident especially in the allegories, the best of her writings. It is a quality thathas led some critics to query her professed agnosticism.8 First and Scott commentfairly liberally on its occurrence in her literary output but say little about itsapplication to her personal life. There is no doubt that this spiritual (using the wordin a philosophical, not religious, sense) aspect of her character circumscribed hersocialism even more than her insistence upon the individual, 'I haven't faith inanything that promises to raise us by purely material means', she told Ellis in 1884,adding that money taken from the rich would inevitably corrupt the poor.9Although she later retreated from this extreme view, which coincided with thatexpressed by F.D, Maurice and the Christian Socialists during the 185Os,!O sheseems consistently to have regarded the undue concern with things material, asopposed to spiritual (in a philosophical sense), as the chief hazard facing modemmankind. Like many liberals of the period, Olive Schreiner had abundant faith inthe power of the human conscience to prevail over greed and selfishness if given the5Cronwright-Schreiner, The Letters of Olive Schreiner, 67,6 Cronwright-Schreiner, The Life of Olive Schreiner, 180. quoting O. Schreiner, journal entry for'Monday', (29[ Jan. 1888.7 The dedicatee of Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland."e.g., Hobman, Olive Schreiner, 15.9 Cronwright-Schreiner, The Letters of Olive Schreiner, 18,"'See MLB. Reckitt, Maurice to Temple: A Century of the Social Movement in the Church ofEngland (London. Faber, 1947), esp. 19-112, and G.C. Binyon, The Christian Socialist Movement inEngland (London, S.P.C.K., 1931), 50-94.M. C. STEELE179opportunity to do so. Thus she saw the South African War of 1899-1902 as anattempt by the forces of materialism to capture the productive capacity of SouthAfrica for the gratification of a handful of speculators'," which could have beenprevented had the 'JekylT, rather than the 'Hyde' of England been awake during theearlier 1890s.12First and Scott are rather uneasy about Olive Schreiner's attachment toSocial Darwinist ideas, remarking that 'her position on race was made ambiguousby her attachment to social Darwinism' (p, 277). Certainly it is not difficult to findcorroborative evidence of this in her earlier works. But, taking into account thevarious influences on her development in the 1870s and 1880s, it would have beensurprising had she remained entirely untouched. For better or worse, evolutionismhad become the creed of many who had abandoned Christianity after the greatdebates following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species (1859). ItofferedŠat least to the Anglo-Saxons of the mid to late Victorian ageŠascientific, rational and optimistic vista of the future that had great appeal to theyoung Olive Schreiner establishing her intellectual roots in London, Almostinevitably she was affected to some extent by the more dubious offshoots of the newphilosophy: scientific racism, eugenics and Social Darwinism. It should be notedthat one of her most intense, though wholly platonic, relationships, was with KarlPearson, whose influence runs through much of her earlier non-fiction output. Aninteresting feature of Ms philosophy, not mentioned by First and Scott, was hisattempt to synthesize within a Social Darwinist framework the ultimately contra-dictory notions of socialism at home (albeit of an evolutionary, not revolutionary,form) with imperial expansion abroad.13However, it can be argued that once she returned to South Africa, the franklyracist elements of her thought became submerged beneath a more generous and lessdogmatic outlook. The main vehicle for her crasser opinions on non-White races isThoughts on South Africa, most of which was written in the very early 1890s,although even here they are qualified by an expressed sense of duty and a typicallypassionate expectation:' We will treat him as if we loved hint: and in time the lovemay come'.14 By 1897, she had moved to a new urgency and sense of personalinvolvement, summed up in a letter to Merriman surprisingly overlooked by Firstand Scott:We shall reach the bottom at last, probably amid the horrors of war withour native races, then not the poor savage, but generous races whom wemight have bound to ourselves by a little generosity and sympathy.15What occasioned the change? Could it be that the much maligned Cronwright-Schreiner was the principal agent? He had excellent 'liberal' credentials: in 1894,11 O. Schreiner, Thoughts on South Africa (London, Unwin. 1923), 310.12 Ibid., 246."On Pearson, see B. Semmel. Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social-imperialThought, 1895-1914 (London, Unwin, I960). 35-^2. On Social Darwinism and scientific racism, seeesp. P.D. Curtin (ed.). Imperialism: Selected Documents (London. Macmillan. 1971): C.H. Lyons, ToWash an Aethiop White: British Ideas about Black African Educability, I53Q-1960 (New York.Teachers' College Press, 1975); D. A. Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians (Leicester, LeicesterUniv. Press, 1978).14 Schreiner, Thoughts on South Africa, 361.15 Quoted in Hobman. Olive Schreiner, 156.180ESSAY REVIEWshortly after his marriage, Tengo Jabavu unsuccessfully tried to persuade him tostand for the Cape Assembly.Once the cause of the other South African "underdogs', the Boers, had beenserved by the grant of self-government to the former republics. Olive Schreiner'ssympathy for what was evidently becoming the opposing cause of South Africa'sBlacks became dominant. First and Scott are surely wrong in dismissing hersympathy as a mere 'protective, patronizing attitude that grew as much from herisolation as her altruism' (p. 339). At worst, this is rather a cheap sneer at theadmittedly unfashionable gospel of liberalism. But more to the point it is furtherevidence of the authors' failure to appreciate her very wholehearted, emotionalidentification with causes, combined with a thwarted maternal instinct. Theauthors say very little about the latter, beyond reporting the death of her babyshortly after its birth in 1895 and her subsequent miscarriages. There is abundantevidence in her correspondence of a mothering impulse and indeed her devotion tocauses was often expressed in such terms. 'I wish I was large and strong and couldput my arms round all the tired lonely women in the world and help them', sheexclaimed to a friend.16 Taking into account the climate of racial attitudes of thetime, her views during the last two decades or so of her life can be described only ashighly progressive; the earliest references to 'child races' are absent from her laterwritings. Yes: perhaps she was unduly 'protective' (p. 339), but given the reality ofcontemporary White imperialism and its manifestations there was a great deal fromwhich to protect non-White races, especially in Southern Africa; and theresponse was typical of the woman herself.One manifestation of contemporary White imperialism was a rapaciousmining capitalism, personified up to his death in 1902 by Cecil John Rhodes, Firstand Scott deal rather cursorily with the Schreiner-Rhodes relationship, and do notfully explore its complex and, on Olive Schreiner's side, ambiguous character.Despite its comparatively brief compass, Marion Friedmann's introduction to therecent reprint of Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland more successfullycaptures the flavour of their relationship.17 The basic point is that Schreinerconsistently distinguished between Rhodes 'the man of genius'18 and Rhodes thecapitalist. She felt that the potential for good of the first was being destroyed by thesecond. Not that this was the result of Marxist dialectics: as was indicated above,her ideological position was that of J.A. Hobson and the 'liberal tradition'.19Indeed it is important to remember that the initial breach with Rhodes was over hissupport of the notorious so-called 'Strop Bills' of 1890 and 1891, and thedisparaging way in which he referred to his subordinates, rather than his activitiesas a capitalist in Kimberley and Southern Zambezia. Right to the end of his life sheseems to have believed that Rhodes had the capacity to solve the major issues of theday in South Africa and so redeem himself. In a letter to CronwrightŠSchreiner inOctober 1894 she expressed 'strong.. . personal admiration for Rhodes's genius',even though she equally strongly 'detested' his methods.20 Shortly after his death,16Cronwright-Schreiner, The Letters of Olive Schreiner, 156 (to J.H. Philpot, 17 Mar. 1889).110. Schreiner, Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (Johannesburg, Donker, 1974; pagereferences in the text below are to this edition), 9-25.18Cronwright-Schreiner, The Letters of Olive Schreiner, 179 (to Ellis, 16 Mar. 1890).19 See J.A. Hobson, The War in South Africa (London, Nisbet, 1900), 230, 292.20Cronwright-Schreiner, The Letters of Olive Schreiner, 216.C. STEELE181she wrote to a friend: 'When death comes one forgets all the faults of a life andremembers only the awful tragedy of the individual SoulŠa great "might havebeen".'21Olive Schreiner's main contribution to Zimbabwean literature is her novelŠ'morality' is perhaps a more accurate descriptionŠTrooper Peter Halket ofMashonaland (1897), Regarded purely as a work of literature it has seriousshortcomings: it is too ready to preach and it is often long-winded. Beyond quotinga lengthy passage from it and discussing her fears of reprisals from the CharteredCompany, First and Scott offer little comment, in contrast to their detailedcriticism of her South African novels (pp. 84-107; 172-8). The historical contextreceives a potted and sometimes inaccurate treatment in a footnote (p. 225) whichstops at the Risings of 1896 themselves. Friedmann's introduction is moresatisfactory in this respect, although it adds little further data about the sourcesavailable to the author when she wrote her work. Friedmann refers to F.S. Sykes'sbook With Plumer in Matabeleland (1897),22 which describes the hangingof spies in Bulawayo (cf. Trooper Peter Halket, pp. 50-1, quoted in First and Scott,p. 227). But at least two descriptions of this notorious incident would have beenavailable to Olive Schreiner before her book was available for publication. The firstappeared in the (London) Daily Graphic for 8 May, 1896, and was writtenby an anonymous 'young tradesman' who actually owned the Fife Street propertyon which the 'hanging tree' stood. The second, published in the Independent andNonconformist, was reprinted by Labouchere's weekly, Truth, on 18 June 1896. Itclosely parallels Sykes's account and is worth quoting in extenso:Yesterday three natives were hung for being spies. They were marchedout of town about half a mile. Ropes were tied to branches of a tree. Theywere made to climb up, the rope was tied to their necks, and they weremade to jump off the tree and drop. One would not for some time; hewould talk to Mr. Colenbrander, who, asked him at last, 'Can you seeBulawayo?' The nigger said, 'Yes.' So Mr. Colenbrander said, 'Have agood look at it, for you will never see it again'. So he did, then said,'Good-bye Mr. Colenbrander', then jumped off. The cheek of the sweepamazed me. They are still hanging as a warning to spies and natives.References to the other abuses in Company administration mentioned in thenovel may be found in the contemporary radical and liberal press: the shooting ofwomen and children, extortion of labour and securing of women for immoralpurposes.23 One incident, the murder of a wounded African being treated by anEnglish doctor,24 bears some resemblance to the denouement of Trooper PeterHalket. Olive Schreiner's work is thus not the polemic slenderly attached to realitythat its contemporary critics alleged: rather, it is an intuitive insight into therepression, injustice and inhumanity of early Chartered Company rale that hews21 Quoted in Buchanan-Gould, Not without Honour, 184."(London, Constable, 1897).23e.g., Spectator., 13 and 20 June 1896. Trooper Peter Halket was published in February 1897,and so the other main contemporary broadside against the Chartered Company (J.Y.F. Blake, 'NativeRhodesia', National Review (30 Oct. 1897),217-25), was not used as a source of information by OliveSchreiner, although there are some close parallels between them.24 Reported in Truth, 3 Sept. 1896.182ESSAY REVIEWclose to the thread of actual events though the author herself only visited thecountry very much later.Schreiner's novel has had a seminal influence on later Zimbabwean writers,most immediately Arthur Shearly Cripps, who was profoundly affected by the so-called 'Suppressed Frontispiece' (showing the hanged Ndebele 'spies') thatappeared only in the work's first edition. Chennells associates Cripps's pervasivefigure of the Black Christ with Schreiner's 'Stranger', whom the reader very quicklyidentifies as Jesus Christ.25 Schreiner's influence is strongest in the novels thatCripps wrote before the 1914-18 War: Stephen Gore of The Brooding Earth(1911) could be a younger cousin of Peter Halket, although unlike him heundergoes no change of heart. Like the Schreiner opus, this novel and its successorBay-Tree Country (1913)26 are vehicles for the expression of a passionateindignation rather than canvasses upon which real flesh-and-blood people arepainted. The tradition of protest was continued by Doris Lessing, who hasacknowledged the scope of Schreiner's influence upon her.27 However, in contrastto Schreiner and Cripps, her Rhodesian novels are cool, detached and tinged with asubtle irony: perhaps that is why Lessing's criticisms of settler society in the 1930sand 1940s come across so effectively. The true heirs of the Schreiner-Cripps spiritof indignation are more recent African writers like Stanlake Samkange28 and theyoung author Dambudzo Marechera.29To sum up, First and Scott's new biography represents a useful forward step in thestudy of Olive Schreiner. Its main defect is an undue concentration on herintellectualism and political commitment. More of the real Olive Schreiner appearsin Phyllis Grosskurth's recent biography of Havelock Ellis,30 which incidentallyhas some useful information about her medical history. It may be argued that acooler, more cerebral approach is justified, if only to offset her husband'sunflattering portrayal of an indecisive, cantankerous, eccentric and, above all,selfish woman, who lacked the necessary self-discipline to realize her great literarypotential.31 But too much of the essential Olive Schreiner is missing from First andScott's rather flat and matter-of-fact account: the young girl in the throes ofagnosticism playing the role of Elijah and willing God to consume a sacrifice withfire; the ageing and ailing woman who compensated for a childless marriage bytravelling with an entourage of pets. A satisfying synthesis of Olive Schreiner theintellectual and Olive Schreiner the woman still remains to be achieved.Edgehill College of Higher EducationM.C. STEELE"Chennells, 'Introduction', 22."Both novels have been reprinted in Brown, Chenneils and Rix, Arthur Shearly Cripps.21D. Lessing, 'Introduction', in O. Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm (New York,Schocken Books, reprint edn, 1976), 2.28 On Trial for My Country (London, Heinemann, 1967), Year of the Uprising (London,Heinemann, 1978), and esp. The Mourned One (London, Heinemann, 1975).29 House of Hunger (London, Heinemann, 1978).30 P. Grosskurth, Havelock Ellis: A Biography (London, Allen Lane, 1980).31 See esp. Cronwright-Schreiner, The Life of Olive Schreiner, 269.