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On the first day of May, 1873, Olive Schreiner, then just eighteen, was living in tents at New Rush, the two-year-old Diamond Diggings now known as Kimberley. On that day she entered in her journal that she had written out the first chapter of Other Men's Sins, a name that does not appear again; but, when she was governess at the farm Ratel Hoek, she entered in her journal on the 3rd of August, 1876, that she had made up her mind "to write A Small Bit of Mimosa and Wrecked in one"; on the 21st of the same month that she had "Got some idea of Saints and Sinners"; and on the 10th of September "Saints and Sinners is growing clearer." I am inclined to think that, when she decided to blend A Small Bit of Mimosa and Wrecked (both then mentioned for the first time), she incorporated Other Men's Sins into the same plan. At any rate, we now have this novel fairly started; for Saints and Sinners was "the original germ," as she styled it, of From Man to Man. Not only did she tell Havelock Ellis this in 1884, but it is abundantly clear otherwise. For instance, in September, 1883, she enters in her London journal that she is "At the Jew and 'Rain in London,'" which is now Chapter XI of this novel; and she adds: "Thought of a name. From Man to Man." This title is taken from a sentence of John (later Lord) Morley's, which runs as follows, except that I have forgotten the adjective: "From man to man nothing mutters but...charity." The missing word connotes "boundless," "all-embracing," or some such large and generous attitude of mind.

Olive sailed to England for the first time early in March, 1881, taking with her Saints and Sinners (as far as it was completed), in addition to The Story of an African Farm. While governessing at Ratel Hoek and Lelie Kloof she had apparently made considerable progress with Saints and Sinners. For instance, at Lelie Kloof, in October, 1880, this entry occurs in her journal: "Had an idea about Bertie this afternoon—suicide, quite strong"; Bertie being one of the two chief characters of the novel. Such a reference seems to indicate that she had already made considerable progress in the plan of the work, for Bertie's death is bound to come late in the book.

From May, 1876, to November, 1883, this novel is always referred to as Saints and Sinners; thereafter it is styled From Man to Man. I have no recollection that, after November, 1883, she ever referred to it, in speech or in writing, by any other name than From Man to Man; though, while we were "detained" by the British military at Hanover during the greater part of the Boer War, I typed "The Prelude," the first six chapters and part of the seventh, as she revised them in 1901 and 1902.

When we lived at De Aar, from 1907 onwards, it was her custom (necessitated by ill-health) to leave home every year to escape the great summer heat of the upper Karoo. She often spent a large part of such absences in Cape Town; she was there in 1911, and then had "The Prelude" and the first six chapters retyped in triplicate and sent to me by the typist from Woodstock (a suburb of Cape Town). Knowing what the package contained, I do not think I opened it then; I have no recollection of having done so; nor do I remember having then seen the alterations she had made in the Dedication and the Title. I put the package carefully away, and, when I left De Aar in December, 1919, stored it there with my other things. Olive, who had sailed to England early in December, 1913, was unable to return to South Africa; and so, being free on retiring from De Aar, I went to England in 1920. She returned to South Africa in August of that year, leaving me to follow after the winter, but she died in her sleep at Wynberg in December.

I returned to South Africa in February, 1921, but was too much occupied to get my De Aar things down to Cape Town and go through the papers until the end of that year; then I opened the Woodstock package that had been posted to me in March, 1911. At that time I knew the book as From Man to Man, and by no other title; and I was familiar with the dedication, which, before the death of our baby in 1895, ran, "To My Little Sister, Ellie, who died, aged eighteen months," with the relative couplet that now appears in the present dedication. In the Hanover typing of 1901-02, the title and dedication remain the same except for the following addition: "Also to My daughter and only child, Born the 30th April 1895, and Died the 1st May, aged one day. She never lived to shed a woman's tears." In the Woodstock typing of 1911 the title appears as The Camel Thorn, but the pen has been run through it and a new title, Perhaps Only, substituted therefor. (The Camel-thorn, Afrikaans Kameel-doring, is Acacia giraffae.) The new title is taken from a sentence uttered by the little child in "The Prelude": "Perhaps only God knew what the lights and shadows were." She wrote this sentence (which appears on p. 67 of "The Prelude") beneath the typing of the Woodstock title-page. I give a facsimile of the sentence as she wrote it with the pen, and in the same relative position.

The Woodstock dedication, as then typed, reads thus:—

Dedicated

to

My Little Sister Ellie

Who died, aged eighteen months, when I was nine years old.

*

Also

to

My Only Daughter.

Born on the 30th April, and died the 1st May.

*

She never lived to know she was a woman.

The last line, so typed, stands wholly excised by Olive with pen and ink. The couplet under the dedication to little Ellie, as it now appears in this book, indicates the astounding effect Olive claims the infant's brief life and early death had upon her own life.

Except that the title (The Camel Thorn) is crossed out and Perhaps Only is written above it in largish letters, the "prelim." page of the Woodstock typing is as follows:—

THE CAMEL THORN

Prelude

The Child's Day

*

The Book

The Woman's Day

*

Part 1

(List of six chapters as they now appear.)

The original plan, or one of the early plans, of the novel was, as I understand it, that The Child's Day should be Part 1, The Woman's Day Part 2, and Rebekah Part 3. I give a copy of an old page, just as I found it in Olive's handwriting:—

Chapter 8. Bertie wants Dorcas to hold her hand.

Chapter 9. Showing how Veronica took hens to the old farm.

Chapter 10. Bertie ties ribbons round the kittens' necks.

Chapter 11. Bertie seeks for the country and cannot find [it].

Chapter 12. "Sally is my Sweetheart, Sally is my darling."

End of Part 2.

Rebekah.

*

Chapter 1. Great White Angels.

Chapter 2. Rebekah's Books are Dead

Chapter 3. The Waterfall.

Chapter 4. Muizenberg.

Chapter 5. Sartje.

Chapter 6. Koonap Heights.

Chapter 7. The Old Farm.

Chapter 8. Baby-Bertie.

Chapter 9. A Bit of Mimosa.

Chapter 10. How the Wax Flowers Smell.

I now give a list of the chapters of what the whole novel was at one time meant to be, just as I found it:—

Perhaps Only. Prelude: The Child's Day. The Book: The Woman's Day. Part one of the Woman's Day Chapter 1. Showing what Baby-Bertie thought of her new tutor and how Rebekah got married. Chapter 2. A Wild-Flower Garden in the Bush. Chapter 3. The Dam Wall. Chapter 4. Showing how Baby-Bertie heard the Cicadas cry. Chapter 5. John-Ferdinand shows Veronica his new House. Chapter 6. How Baby-Bertie went a-dancing. Chapter 7. You cannot capture the Ideal by a Coup d'Etat. Part 2 of the Woman's Day. Chapter 1. Fireflies in the Dark. Chapter 2. The Little Black Curl. Chapter 3. The Rocks again. Chapter 4. Koonap Heights. Chapter 5. The Glittering of the Sand. Chapter 6. Veronica. Chapter 7. The Lure Light. Chapter 8. A Bit of Mimosa. Chapter 9. The Kopje. The End

The thirteen chapters, as presented in this book, are all in the order in which Olive meant them to be. Chapter XIV, "The Pine Woods," was begun; but as there are less than a thousand words, as they are of no importance to the narrative, are unrevised, and lead nowhere, I do not think it necessary to give them. After the opening lines, Rebekah and Drummond begin a conversation which, as far as it goes, has no significance, except possibly for its last few lines:

"'Have you ever hated anyone?' he asked.

"She sat upright: 'No, not if hatred means the wish to injure. I have loathed people; I have tried to forget some people.'"

There the manuscript ends. There is not another word of the novel or of anything in connection with it. It is as though nothing more had ever been written. It was a custom with her to retain not only her first rapid drafts, but also any manuscript she had gone over and revised. For instance, there were three drafts of The Buddhist Priest's Wife, each progressively shorter than the previous one and none of them quite complete; to get the final draft I had to sort out the last two drafts in several ways—by handwriting, by age of the paper, and so one—then get the (often wrongly numbered) sheets into consecutive order respectively, then compare and adjust them. It was much the same with On the Banks of a Full River, and with several other of her writings. And so it was with this uncompleted novel; there were a considerable number of drafts of parts; there were fragments, revisions, etc.; but none of these had any relation to the book after the thirteenth chapter, except the few words, already referred to, of the fourteenth. I feel certain that she had "finished" the novel in her mind; I think she had not only thus "finished" the plan of it, but had done so in considerable detail in parts; nothing, however, short of clear proof, will convince me that she wrote down any more after the few words I possess of the fourteenth chapter. I am unable to think she destroyed any of the manuscript of the fourteenth chapter or of any later chapters. After all her assertions, verbal and written, it may seem difficult to believe that her actual writing ceased with the beginning of Chapter 14; and yet that seems to me by far the most likely explanation. (Readers are referred, for comparison, to the strange story, related in the Life, of the "Big Sex Book.") Considering that she kept so much of the rejected, revised and incomplete manuscripts of other books while still working on them, that she actually did the same with this specially loved and valued novel, knowing well also the unreliability of her statements about her work, I am simply unable to believe she destroyed the balance of the manuscript of From Man to Man. I do not believe a balance existed. Well, there is the fact, which, extraordinary as it is, yet cannot seem so extraordinary to me as it may to other people. I have been carefully through all her papers; the manuscript of the novel, in whatever confusion, was in one bundle (as was, I think, each of her other sets of manuscripts); and there is not a single scrap of paper after the few opening lines of the fourteenth chapter. It is my considered opinion that she wrote no further than where the manuscript now ends, but that later, at various times and irregular intervals (sometimes intervals of years), she went back to the beginning and to other early parts and set to work on revision. If she had quite abandoned all hope of further work on this beloved book, if she had decided on its destruction and had had sufficient strength to carry out such decision (which I doubt), she would, in my opinion, have destroyed the whole novel except "The Prelude"; she would not have destroyed merely a portion of the unrevised manuscript and left the revised and unrevised remainder. But I do not believe she ever abandoned all hope of still doing some work on the novel, and I do not believe she had it in her heart to destroy this greatly loved offspring of her mature mind any more than it could be in her heart to destroy a child of her physical body.

At the end of Chapter XIII, I give a brief account of what she told me as to the ending of the book. It is remarkable and fortunate that the novel does not stop until the tale is told almost to completion, and that the short account I am able to add will largely satisfy a legitimate desire of those whose interest will lie mainly in the incidents of the narrative; though, to all who love her work and recognize her power, there must ever remain the deep regret that she was unable to wind up the tale herself.

As to the name of the book, I have decided after much thought not to use the title I prefer (and which indeed I wish the book could be known by), but to adopt the one already familiar from its frequent use in the Life and Letters—the only title I ever heard Olive use. It seems to me that some confusion would result from the exclusive use of Perhaps Only; I do not feel at all sure that she would have used it; I am inclined to think she would have retained the title From Man to Man. As far as I know, the titles Camel Thorn and Perhaps Only were never mentioned to any person. Yet, though I believe I have decided rightly, I deeply regret that Perhaps Only—(so she wrote it) cannot be used except as an alternative title. As apparently her last choice, one might well expect it to be the most suitable, expressing with rare art, by the use of those words taken from the wondering and deep-piercing mind of the child, a kind of stunned reluctance to judge the meaning (if there be a meaning) and the incomprehensibility of the "ethic" (if there be an ethic) in the awful and mysterious living cosmos.

For purposes of this Introduction I went carefully through both the Life and the Letters and copied out practically every reference to the novel contained therein. When all the extracts were before me in chronological order, I decided to leave them to tell their own tale. And so there follow, as a kind of supplement to this Introduction and without comment, nearly all of such references, made by herself and in her own words.

In dealing with the unrevised original text of the novel all I could do legitimately was, as far as possible, to give it to the world in the form in which Olive left it. I have striven to present it exactly as she might have presented it, if she herself, without further rewriting, had reduced to its final word-form the unrevised manuscript that came into my hands.

Olive loved this book more than anything else she ever wrote, and, of the book, she loved "The Prelude" best. I have therefore printed "The Prelude" (The Child's Day) just as it stands in the Woodstock typing of 1911, and as revised by herself at the time.

It may interest readers to know that many references to "the old farm" are applicable to Klein Ganna Hoek, the farm where she was governess in 1875 and 1876, and where she wrote nearly all of Undine and much of The Story of an African Farm. But some other farm or farms, which I cannot identify, though I suspect Ratel Hoek for one and possibly Lelie Kloof, must also have been in her mind. "The Child's Day" is certainly almost wholly autobiographical: to take one small incident—she herself built the little mouse-house on the bare rock at Witteberg and waited for the mouse and then fashioned her hand to imitate the mouse entering into it.

S. C. Cronwright-Schreiner.

Cape Town, South Africa,

March, 1926.