______________________________________________________________________________________________

4 Jan 58 Peter Shanghai Mother ______________________________________________________________________________________________

Shanghai

Jan 4. 1858

My dear Mother

At length we are at Shanghai. We have been lying here for some days down at Woosong,* the Gravesend of Shanghai, discharging poppy opium* which is not allowed to be brought into China & which we therefore smuggle in – which little transaction accounts for much that one hears of at home, where Chinamen are presumed to be cut-throat villains &c. &c. by us.

I have just received five letters – four of which were from yourself & my Father, the remaining one from Teddy, to whom I wrote. Your letters (of course written at different periods) teem with very different ideas & expressions.

After one of these, I really feel called upon to enter into my own defence. In the first place, I must emphatically declare (& I think all my arrangements on leaving will stand as my witness) that when I left England I never for a moment dreamt or intended to return.

You then think that the outbreak in India would alarm me. On the contrary, I thought it would be an opening for me – but there I was under the same false impression that you all are. All the Indian appointments are given away at home. Any one on the spot is as far away as he possibly can be. There are commercial appointments to be had & the railways & telegraphs at times have openings but it is just these very things that the mutinies have knocked up. And mercantile transactions being to a certain extent so too. Merchants were decreasing their establishments instead of increasing them. But I have given you other reasons of the fallacy of coming out to try & get into a Merchant’s House before. Well then you must remember Calcutta is the only place where I have stopped. I was only a day or so at the other ports & these sorts of things are not brought about in a day.

I was as much annoyed at my failure as I possibly could be & I think the tone of my letter will show that. I would much rather stop out here as was intended than return home unsuccessful & for that reason I have spared no pains – but the time is most unfortunate & nothing could have prevented the result.

If you think that the life I am leading is ‘delightful’ – an expression used in one (I think of my Father’s letters), you are very much mistaken. It is a sort of scheme to get thro’ the day. It is perfect misery to me.

From what I could make out in one of your letters, my Father had to pay £1.10.0 for the Cape Views I sent home. When I posted them I was assured that the postage would have been nothing particular – or I should scarcely have sent them. For altho’ you of course are pleased at receiving anything of that sort, still that is too much of a good thing.

I am glad to hear that Mr & Mrs Riley* are enjoying themselves & must congratulate Robert on his good fortune. I hope Arthur has passed & Julius is well. I wrote to John from Singapore I think, but of course do not expect to hear from him.

Teddy encloses me a letter from you as I told him I had not heard from home & recommended me strongly to go to Hong Kong. I think I shall do so but it will depend upon the ship’s movements. I do not think she is likely to come home, but at present nothing is known.

I am also going to pay my respects to all the Merchants but having only just arrived, have not yet done so. There is nothing in the market. No tea, no silk. News from America and England is bad & trade here is almost at a standstill.

I will add a few lines before closing this packet.

P.G.L

* Woosong – Now Wusong, at the mouth of the Huangpu River which joins the Yangtze River near its mouth

* discharging opium – The Chinese authorities' attempts to stop the import of opium were seriously hampered by the efforts of the British who considered it their right to engage in unrestricted trade - at least partly because opium and cotton grown for the British East India Company were the two commodities which the Chinese showed any real interest in exchanging for their own tea, silk and porcelain. This was not as cynical by the British as it might now seem. Unrestricted import of opium into the United Kingdom was still allowed at this time, although the dangers to public health were becoming apparent. Following the Pharmacy Act 1868, only professional pharmacists were allowed to supply it

* Mr & Mrs Riley – Peter's half-sister, Mary, had married John Riley 23 Jul 57