Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Schreiner, William Philip
SCHREINER, WILLIAM PHILIP (1857–1919), South African lawyer and statesman, the fifth son of Gottlob Schreiner, a Lutheran missionary sent out by the London Missionary Society, by his English wife, Rebecca Lyndall, of London, was born in the Wittebergen Reserve, Cape Colony, 30 August 1857. After a school-life which was broken by spells at the diamond fields, and a brilliant career at the South African College, Cape Town, he entered first London University, and then, in 1878, Downing College, Cambridge, and the Inner Temple. He won the senior Inns of Court studentship in 1880, and in 1881 was Chancellor's medallist and senior jurist in the law tripos at Cambridge. He was a fellow of Downing from 1884 to 1887. Called to the English bar and to the Cape bar in 1882, he became Q.C. in 1892. In 1884 he married Frances Hester, a sister of Francis William Reitz, chief justice and subsequently president of the Orange Free State. Two sons and three daughters were born of the marriage.
After serving as parliamentary draftsman and legal adviser to the high commissioner from 1887 to 1893, Schreiner entered the Cape parliament in 1893 and held office as attorney-general in the second ministry of Cecil Rhodes in that year and again from 1894 to 1896. He helped to arrange for joint action with the British government against the South African Republic (Transvaal) during the Vaal River crisis of 1895, and defended the charter of the British South Africa Company after the Jameson Raid (1896); but he introduced in the Cape parliament the report of the committee which condemned Rhodes for complicity in the Raid. He now became leader of the Afrikander Bond parliamentary party, and, in 1898, prime minister of Cape Colony. A man of peace, slow-moving in his anxiety to be just, he first tried to avert war in 1899 and then to keep his colony neutral—‘a port in the storm’—till his duty as a minister of the Crown and the republican invasion rendered that course impossible. In June 1900 his Cabinet split, and he retired for a time from politics.
As leader of the bar Schreiner, by his example and influence with the younger advocates, did much to maintain the high standard of his profession at the Cape. He was a freemason, a keen sportsman, and an expert rock-fisherman. Early in 1908, believing that group politics could alone check ‘radicalism’, he declined to lead a combined moderate-progressive party to ‘smash the Bond’. He re-entered parliament in 1908 for Queenstown as an independent, and accepted a seat in the National Convention, which he resigned before the meeting of that body in October 1908, in order to undertake the defence of Dinizulu. He favoured federation rather than union as the best safeguard of the Cape native franchise, and, mainly on this ground, fought the draft Union Bill in Cape Town and in London. In 19l0 his championship of native interests earned him a seat in the senate; this he vacated in 1914 in order to go to London as high commissioner of the Union. The strain of his official duties, and still more of the manifold services rendered to others during and after the European War—for Schreiner, ever generous, suffered all men gladly—wore him out. His heart had never been strong enough for his burly frame. He died at Llandrindod Wells 28 June 1919.
His sister, {{sc|Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner (1855–1920), authoress, the fifth daughter of Gottlob Schreiner, was born at Wittebergen mission station 24 March 1855. After spending several years as a governess in South Africa, Miss Schreiner came to England in 1881. She brought with her the manuscript of her earliest and most successful published work, The Story of an African Farm, which, read for press and praised by George Meredith, appeared in 1883 under the pseudonym ‘Ralph Iron’. In 1889 Miss Schreiner returned to South Africa, and in 1894 married Samuel Cron Cronwright, a South African politician, who took the name of Cronwright-Schreiner. Among other works, she wrote An English South African's View of the Situation (1899) and Women and Labour (1911). For the greater part of her life she was troubled by ill-health, and she died at Cape Town 11 December 1920. An uncompleted novel by her, entitled From Man to Man, was published, with an introduction by her husband, in 1926. She had been engaged upon it intermittently since 1876, or even earlier, and frequently refers to it in her diaries and letters. She evidently regarded it as her most important work, and wove into a story of strong emotional appeal much of her own social and moral philosophy.
[B. Williams, Cecil Rhodes, 1921; G. R. Hofmeyr, Life of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, 1913; private information. See also, S. C. Cronwright-Schreiner, The Life of Olive Schreiner, 1924, and the introduction to From Man to Man.]