I didn’t expect one of my favorite stops in Matjiesfontein during my birthday weekend to be the home of one of South Africa’s greatest writers, Olive Schreiner. Seeing as I’ve recently published my own debut children’s novel, A Streak of Light, the visit felt especially meaningful. Tucked away on Logan Street is the little cottage where Olive Schreiner lived after moving to the Karoo in 1890, hoping the dry air and higher altitude would ease her asthma. It became one of the happiest and most productive chapters of her life, and she welcomed visitors including Cecil John Rhodes and Rudyard Kipling here. The cottage is surprisingly modest, with just two bedrooms, and standing inside I couldn’t help wondering where she sat to write. If you’ve never heard of her, Schreiner is best known for The Story of an African Farm, published by London’s Chapman & Hall in 1883. It’s now regarded as one of the most influential novels in South African literature. Standing outside afterwards, I found myself imagining her watching life unfold along Logan Street, drawing inspiration from this quiet little Karoo village.
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She spoke about looking out a tiny window—this must be it!
Olive Schreiner’s Display in the Marie Rawdon Museum
Some info on her in the museum
The full African moon poured down its light from the blue sky into the wide, lonely plain. The dry, sandy earth, with its coating of stunted karoo bushes a few inches high, the low hills that skirted the plain, the milk-bushes with their long finger-like leaves, all were touched by a weird and an almost oppressive beauty as they lay in the white light.
