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7 Dec 55 Peter on board 'Alipore' Mother 1, Hyde Park Place ______________________________________________________________________________________________

Balaclava 7 December 1855

My dear Mother

I have at length the pleasure of informing you that I am coming home again. We yesterday received orders to proceed to Spithead having first taken in such stores as shall be sent on Board which will however only detain us a few days and then we start for old England.

We shall have a miserable time of it coming home I expect – stormy & contrary winds all the way and it will very likely be three months before we reach our destination.

I have written to John today asking him to send down his Russian relics but for some reason he makes a difficulty with everything. I brought him two beautiful turkeys from Balchik and have bought some coals for him but they are still on Board and I have no doubt we shall have the pleasure of demolishing the Turkey on Christmas day instead of him yet.

I shall as I expected just miss the packages you were kind enough to send out for me which is equally a great pity and a horrid nuisance. I have commissioned John to get me a pair of boots but despair of ever getting them. I have not been able to leave the ship except once (when I borrowed a pair) for the mud – tho’ you will scarcely credit it – is literally up to one’s knees. At every step in many places you sink at least two feet into the ground.

We have however constructed a beautiful road up to camp but it is a great pity it was not well trodden down before the wet weather comes on. It runs parallel with the railway and looks more like a railroad without the rails than a carriage road.

In some parts it is raised above the level of the ground & in others they have blasted the solid rock – no trouble has been spared. This and the Railway quite beat François. He sees the trains pass one after the other with the two neat little engines ‘Victory’ & ‘Alliance’ and may well stare for we have regularly beaten the French. People at home talk about the French and what they do & in many respects they are perhaps right. There is no doubt we have each plenty to learn from the other – but François has no railway and the unsurpassable French have at any rate been once beaten. Our troops too – you will see each man walking about in his fur coat, jackboots, warm gloves, fur cap and red scarf and in wet weather he has waterproof clothing – but François wears the same all weathers – summer, winter, wet & fair weather. He walks about with his hands in his capacious pockets and a long coat down to his heels, the only variation being that in wet weather he has a sort of gaiter about 9 inches long which partially covers his boots and keeps his trousers out of the wet.

As for Mr Sard* – he as being our Protégé, of course copies every single thing we do but all the same he has not yet had time to copy our winter clothing and therefore still walks about in his long grey coat, something very much like our hospital dress.

We have heard some report about the Robert Lowe* being lost but as we saw her arrival mentioned in the paper and understood she was to be detained some time at home to have her engines enlarged, we think it is a mistake perhaps founded on some slight accident to her, or at any rate having perhaps some truth in it magnified a great deal.

I suppose by this time Julius is at home acting the hero – but I hope his being so devoted a patriot &c. has made no difference in his personal appearance for he used to be a most handsome young man (of course I do not want to make him vain). You must feed him up well for I understand he has grown up thin as a lath tho’ the riddle would imply the contrary: it says ‘When is a man thinner than a lath’. Answer ‘When he’s shaving’.

Now I know Julius discontinued that operation out here and the natural result was a fine and extensive beard &c. &c. &c. of course and I do not therefore credit all I hear. To John that would apply better. I say better but I might say entirely for I can assure you all tho’ perhaps you would not think it, that John is really ‘not as thin as a lath’.

As to myself I am just the same as when I left except slightly damaged every way by being tossed about at the mercy of an ever angry sea. I am looking forward with dread to the approaching voyage for you have no idea how miserable I am at sea. Here in harbour I am comfortable enough, for I have converted one of the dirtiest pigsties I have ever set eyes on into a comfortable cabin.

The first step was getting rid of my companions; the second was cleaning it. The third is all sorts of new contrivances between myself & the carpenters. Then came pictures, then bed curtains actually & various other pieces have made me a most snug little place.

It alone wants a carpet which I could manage but at sea I should get flooded & wish it elsewhere. I will write again (if not before) at Constantinople.

Love to all &c. from Yr affect son

Peter Laurie

* Mr Sard – Sardinian troops

* Robert Lowe – The Robert Lowe was an iron hulled vessel of just over 1,000 tons displacement built for WS Lindsay. Named after a politician and article writer for The Times, Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke (1811–1892), she was still working in 1860, so was clearly not lost in 1855