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6 Mar 58 Peter Hong Kong Mother 1, Hyde Park Place ______________________________________________________________________________________________
Hong Kong
6 March 1858
My dear Mother
After my last letter home you will be agreeably surprised at the tale I am about to unfold.
I am at this moment an active agent in the firm of Jardine Matheson & Co,* the great merchant princes of China in the receipt of £225 a year besides 50 dollars a month mess money & house room. Now are you happy.
I have tried to persuade you, but in vain, that it was my misfortune, not my fault, that I was unsuccessful. Now will you believe me.
I like my good fortune excessively & I like Hong Kong equally as well, but the style of life we live here is enough to spoil any one. People who are away from the world & all their friends naturally seek out some way of consoling themselves, and so here we live in the most luxurious manner with our guns & our dogs & our horses & our boats & so on. I have before told you about the house. It is an enormous building surrounded with terraces, with sentries & guns & large iron gates & all that sort of thing.
It is two miles from Hong Kong & so dangerous is the country that it is dangerous to go outside the gates without a revolver & a good thick stick.
I always get up at ½ past six, have a cup of coffee & start for a walk – back at 8 – take a bath & dress for breakfast at 9. 10 till 5 office hours with an interim for tiffin* in the middle of the day. At 5 go by boat to the Club; take a row or start for a ride or anything you like till 7, then dress for dinner (full fig); abuse your ‘boy’ or servant and dinner at half past 7, sit over coffee & ‘grog’ till 10 & then go off to bed.
So that you will see, living in that style (particularly expensive as things here are) that the £375 p/annum will after all not go far. In the first place however I have but an empty room which I have to furnish myself. Bedstead, drawers, table & chairs & looking glasses are all expensive in their way but still must be had.
Then I have to get a fresh wardrobe because at this moment I am wearing the same things I left England in, having at that time only two cloth suits, a revolver too (which I have not yet got) is a positive necessary. Altogether I must try & make £50 cover it. I could have drawn on my Father for this but thought he would like it better if I do what I now propose – that is, to draw my first quarter’s salary in advance & trust to my Father’s generosity for the remuneration.
If I do this, of course I shall be six months out of pocket unless my Father will make me a present of the Outfit which I think he will. Then my Father promised to make me an allowance in addition to my earnings. £150 out of the £375 is paid into the mess fund. That leaves only £225 which, (when people frequent clubs & ride & boat & do all those things besides servants & the expense of everything here) does not go far.
I think it would be only fair if my Father were to allow me the same as he does John & Julius. I shall in any case not spend more than is necessary – so that if I do not require it, I shall have an opportunity of putting something by – but I almost fear that I shall require it.
However whatever my Father will do, please ask him to do at once & write to me as soon as possible that I may be put out of the very embarrassing position of being in a very expensive place without any funds at all except such as I shall be compelled to draw in advance.
There are also a great many things I shall want you to send me out from home – a list of which I will make out before this mail leaves. And I in return will send you home a rare stock of curios to be distributed amongst my friends, but there is plenty of time for that as soon as I am settled.
When you write on the receipt of this, do not confine yourself to the latest intelligence. I think I have had pretty well all yr. letters up to Nov 3. so from date please begin. What has become of John & of Julius, of Arthur. How Mary likes the ‘roseate hues of connubial bliss’ & so on for I know not the whereabouts of any of them.
From John I could not expect to hear – from Julius I never do expect to hear. I don’t mean any disrespect to him, only to his desire of corresponding – from Mary it would be a miracle if I were to hear & I do not suppose Arthur (unless he failed in that examination) would know any more about my whereabouts than I do of his.
However such is life, but I hope at any rate that I shall get all the news from yourself & my Father who too, notwithstanding that his time is so taken up, is yet a capital correspondent.
I shall have to write such a number of letters by this mail that I scarcely know where to begin. Business first then pleasure, so I think I will start off with Mr Lindsay, & in contradiction to what I last told him, inform him that I have succeeded, not exactly through his letter altho’ in consequence of it. However I still must insist upon the correctness of what I have all along said – that it was only by the purest accident that I did succeed. It was luck. However much I may have conduced to it, it was luck.
In a few days more I should have been on my way to England, unsuccessful, & yet my exertion would have been just as great. Certain circumstances taken advantage of conduced to the result, but it was luck that those certain circumstances did occur. I have guaranteed my remaining here 3 years but that they do not insist upon if you can get any one to fill your place. 4 months notice at any time will do that.
Mr Percival the great man at Shanghai is going home very soon, by either this or the next mail. I think my Father should make a point of seeing him. It was he through whom I got this berth. He will always be heard of at Matheson & Co* in Lombard St.
My foot is now almost all right but still a little tender, altho’ it does not prevent my walking, but my eyes which have been bad on & off ever since I left England are bad again. H.K. especially is a notably bad place for not only eyes but eyesight – from the glare of the sun upon the stone of which the whole island is composed & from the hot sandy dust which flies into them.
P.G.L
14 March 1858
H.K.
My dear Mother
I enclose a list of several little things I wish you could send me out as soon as possible as many are not procurable here & such as are, are at such exorbitant prices as to be ridiculous – viz. 10s/- for a Pr. of gloves & so on. I think I can get the greater portion of my clothes & boots here made by Chinamen – at any rate I will make them do for the present.
You will see Goddard by this mail whose place I now fill. I told him to call & he will tell you all about China & me. He is a very good little fellow – very quiet & apparently nervous but not really so. He is one of those characters that you may drop in some particular place & he will never move from it. He has been 15 years in China on that principle. But the most predominant trait in his character is want of decision. Any one can persuade him to do anything. He paid his passage yesterday or I should not be sure that he would go by this mail which leaves tomorrow morning.
You have only to say ‘Goddard, I think that if I were you I would not go’ & he would be sure not to. One day he is going overland, the next he thinks he will go round the Cape & the third he has decided upon stopping here. But his passage money is now paid & he has a brother going with him who will look after him. The brother I have seen. He is I daresay a very good fellow, but I do not know him well. I think he looks rather grocery.
I have been obliged to buy a revolver & have got a very nice one – small size with all the latest improvements, but plain – no filigree work. It is not safe to leave the grounds without one, indeed all my new friends have muskets & fixed bayonets in their rooms ready for an attack.
I have a very nice sword stick Mrs S* of Calcutta gave me & I always carry that too. Of course now I am obliged to cut a respectable appearance & have dispensed with the beard & wear a hat on Sundays & do all sorts of civilised things such as for nine months (except at Calcutta) I had quite forgotten.
Moustache is however allowable. Indeed it accords with the military force which we have for the protection of the house & the various military appurtenances such as fixed bayonets, revolvers & sword sticks. Sir John Bowring’s son is a partner in the house. He has also a very fine moustache but is certainly a most unmilitary looking figure.
There is a very nice little horse which I have been offered but which I at present cannot buy. I shall never again I fear, get such a chance, but I am trying to gain time & if our friend will keep it on a little longer, I shall better be able to do so. I do not suppose it will be less than £80 – perhaps more, such is the price of horses here; but that cannot be helped, as horses must be had.
I think too with a little training I might bring him in at one of the races & so win back his price. We are all racing people here & Goddard whom you will think anything but a character of that sort, has half a dozen horses of his own & rode many of Jardine’s at the late races.
Good bye for the present. I hope to hear from you all soon. Now you know my direction, and as I am not at home myself, please let me know as much of what is going on at home as you can.
Your affect. Son
Peter G. Laurie
* Jardine Matheson & Co – One of the oldest of Hong Kong's diversified trading companies. Formed in Canton in 1832 by William Jardine and James Matheson, it promoted the founding of Hong Kong four years later
* tiffin – Light snack or lunch
* Matheson & Co – Matheson & Co. Merchants, 3 Lombard Street, City
* Mrs S – Mrs Sinclair, the mother of Rebecca and Mary Ann, whom Peter had contrived to meet in Calcutta (as he records in ‘Rambles’)