Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland

By Olive Schreiner

Originally published in 1897, "Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland" is a bitterly scathing allegory written about her disillusionment with the politics of Cecil John Rhodes. Schreiner became increasingly involved with the politics of the South Africa, leading her to make influential acquaintances such as Cecil John Rhodes, with whom she eventually became disillusioned and wrote a scathing allegory in his honour. Olive Schreiner (1855–1920) was a South African anti-war campaigner, intellectual, and author most famous for her highly-acclaimed novel “The Story of an African Farm” (1883), which deals with such issues as existential independence, agnosticism, individualism, and the empowerment of women. Other notable works by this author include: “Closer Union: a Letter on South African Union and the Principles of Government” (1909), and “Woman and Labour” (1911). Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this classic insightful work now in a new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Dec 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781473397170

Olive Schreiner

Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) was a South African political activist and writer. Born to a family of Wesleyan missionaries, Schreiner was educated by her mother. Forced to move frequently due to her father’s inability to maintain a job, Schreiner became familiar with the landscape of South Africa and the cultural and political tensions holding together its diverse population. In 1881, she travelled to England in order to pursue her dream of becoming a medical professional, but her chronic asthma and limited finances prevented her from completing her training. In 1883, she published her debut novel, The Story of an African Farm, under a pseudonym, launching a career as one of South Africa’s leading writers. Throughout her life, she advocated for political equality for South Africa’s marginalized groups, including Afrikaners, indigenous Africans, Jews, and Indians. Combining a deep understanding of Christian morality with an active interest in socialism and the women’s suffrage movement, Schreiner is recognized as a pioneering feminist and political activist who wrote unflinchingly on such subjects as the Boer War, British imperialism, and intersectionality.

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TROOPER

PETER HALKET

OF MASHONALAND

By

OLIVE SCHREINER

First published in 1897

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To a

Great Good Man,

Sir George Grey,

Once Governor of the Cape Colony, who, during his rule in South Africa, bound to himself the Dutchmen, Englishmen, and Natives he governed, by an uncorruptible justice and a broad humanity; and who is remembered among us today as representing the noblest attributes of an Imperial Rule.

"Our low life was the level’s and the night’s;

He’s for the morning."

—Olive Schreiner

19, Russell Road, Kensington, W.,

February, 1897

Contents

Olive Schreiner

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

Olive Schreiner

Olive Schreiner was born on Wittebergen Reserve, Cape Colony (present-day Lesotho) in 1855. After finishing school, she found work as a governess and a schoolteacher, and during her free time began to work on a novel about her experiences in South Africa.

When Schreiner had saved enough money, she travelled to Britain, hoping to become a doctor. She lived in London where she began attending lectures at the Medical School, as well as attending socialist meetings. Schreiner met the publisher George Meredith, who in 1883 published her best-known novel, Story of an African Farm. A commercial and critical success, it is now seen as a defining work of early feminism – as is her later work, Women and Labour (1911).

Over the rest of her life, Schreiner made the acquaintance of a number of figures in London society, including future Prime Minister William Gladstone. In 1889, she returned to South Africa to be with her family. Her brother, William Schreiner, later became prime minister of Cape Colony. Over the next few years she published two collections of short stories, Dreams (1891) and Dream Life and Real Life (1893). She also became heavily involved in politics, and was a fierce opponent of racism and imperialism. Her 1897 work Trooper Peter Halkett of Mashonaland (1897) was a strong attack on British rule in South Africa.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Schreiner moved back to Britain. Over the next four years she was active in the peace movement and worked closely with organizations such as the Union of Democratic Control and the Non-Conscription Fellowship. She returned to South Africa in of August 1920, and dying following a heart attack later that year.

AARDVARK — The great anteater.

CAPE SMOKE — A very inferior brandy made in Cape Colony.

KOPJE — Little hillock.

KRAAL — A Kaffir encampment.

MEALIES — Maize (corn).

RIEM — A thong of undressed leather universally used in South Africa.

VATJE OF OLD DOP — A little cask of Cape brandy.

VELD — Open Country

CHAPTER I

It was a dark night; a chill breath was coming from the east; not enough to disturb the blaze of Trooper Peter Halket’s fire, yet enough to make it quiver. He sat alone beside it on the top of a kopje.

All about was an impenetrable darkness; not a star was visible in the black curve over his head.

He had been travelling with a dozen men who were taking provisions of mealies and rice to the next camp. He had been sent out to act as scout along a low range of hills, and had lost his way. Since eight in the morning he had wandered among long grasses, and ironstone kopjes, and stunted bush, and had come upon no sign of human habitation, but the remains of a burnt kraal, and a down-trampled and now uncultivated mealie field, where a month before the Chartered Company’s forces had destroyed a native settlement.

Three times in the day it had appeared to him that he had returned to the very spot from which he had started; nor was it his wish to travel very far, for he knew his comrades would come back to look for him, to the neighbourhood where he had last been seen, when it was found at the evening camping ground that he did not appear.

Trooper Peter Halket was very weary. He had eaten nothing all day; and had touched little of the contents of a small flask of Cape brandy he carried in his breast pocket, not knowing when it would again be replenished.

As night drew near he determined to make his resting place on the top of one of the kopjes, which stood somewhat alone and apart from the others. He could not easily be approached there, without his knowing it. He had not much fear of the natives; their kraals had been destroyed and their granaries burnt for thirty miles round, and they themselves had fled: but he feared, somewhat, the lions, which he had never seen, but of which he had heard, and which might be cowering in the long grasses and brushwood at the kopje’s foot:—and he feared, vaguely, he hardly knew what, when he looked forward to his first long night alone in the veld.

By the time the sun had set he had gathered a little pile of stumps and branches on the top of the kopje. He intended to keep a fire burning all night; and as the darkness began to settle down he lit it. It might be his friends would see it from far, and come for him early in the morning; and wild beasts would hardly approach him while he knelt beside it; and of the natives he felt there was little fear.

He built up the fire; and determined if it were possible to keep awake the whole night beside it.

He was a slight man of middle height, with a sloping forehead and pale blue eyes: but the jaws were hard set, and the thin lips of the large mouth were those of a man who could strongly desire the material good of life, and enjoy it when it came his way. Over the lower half of the face were scattered a few soft white hairs, the growth of early manhood.

From time to time he listened intently for possible sounds from the distance where his friends might be encamped, and might fire off their guns at seeing his light; or he listened yet more intently for sounds nearer at hand: but all was still, except for the occasional cracking of the wood in his own fire, and the slight whistle of the breeze as it crept past the stones on the kopje. He doubled up his great hat and put it in the pocket of his overcoat, and put on a little two-pointed cap his mother had made for him, which fitted so close that only one lock of white hair hung out over his forehead. He turned up the collar of his coat to shield his neck and ears, and threw it open in front that the blaze of the fire might warm him. He had known