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24 Oct 58 Peter Hong Kong Father ______________________________________________________________________________________________
Hong Kong
24 Oct. 1858
My dear Father
As you will see by my letter to my Mother, I send you by this steamer some small trifles as Christmas presents from China & I hope you will find the one useful while the other may prove ornamental.
I am writing a great many letters by this mail so you must excuse the few lines I send you but I want you to sound Percival & to obtain from him his serious opinion of what I may expect if I stop in this house.
He will probably be the leading man here soon & it is most important that it should be clearly understood what I may expect – I would not pump him but I would put it clearly to him ‘Mr Percival, my son is at present at Jardine’s. Do you consider that should he show proper discretion & at all times be found attentive to his duties, he will in course of time – say in a few years – rise to become a Partner in the house.’
If Percival says ‘of course he is a junior partner & cannot have an opinion upon the subject: that he will be treated as others & run the same race’ that is all humbug – it’s all interest & connections.
There is a nephew of Sir Jas. Matheson’s here who came out since I did & who has at present a far less salary than I have who altho’ he has been in a house of business in Liverpool as long as I was in London has yet far less knowledge of business who is certainly the same age as I am but do not think would be considered so – & who I will venture to say will be a partner in a very few years, while Heaven only knows how long I might be going on – even if I showed great talent before they would make me a partner.
There are at the present moment out here 3 representatives of interest all looking forward to become partners & these with one or two old outsiders do not leave the slightest sign of an opening at any future period for one placed like myself. I therefore think there ought to be some understanding. If I remain here (when I say remain of course I do not refer to the present) as I should not like to return home after 25 years hence penniless & with a retiring pension as one of our old hands – who happened to have no interest – is soon about to do. Twenty five years hence, perhaps even the retiring pensions might be stopped.
So now I have given you another Christmas present in the shape of a dose of physic of which I think if you were to take a spoonful a night & give my mother the benefit of a little of it too in the shape of a curtain lecture* – you would both next morning agree that in my prescription I was not such a bad doctor to my own interests & should I be successful in life – I may say – to the interests of the whole family. I have ‘spun my yarn’ out longer than I expected – now I must try John once more tho’ it seems little use. John Wimburn I mean – there are so many Johns now (it would be still less use writing to John No. 5).
Well, a Merry Christmas & have a happy new year, but Don’t LEAVE PARLIAMENT* whatever you do.
Your affect son
Peter G Laurie
25/10/58
The mail has arrived & I just add a few lines to my former note.
You seem very anxious to print my memoirs* & I am myself very anxious that they should be printed – indeed I shall be dreadfully disappointed if they are not. I would not mind regularly giving them into Murray’s hands or any good publisher – only of course in that case they would be under an assumed name & then I might get a little consideration, for every little helps.
I would not do this if at home tho’ – I also wish to have my ‘trip to the Crimea’ sent out to me – it is sewn up in a manuscript book & was inside the wardrobe in my bedroom with all the other books when I left. It has no cover, only white paper – at least it was white once.
You will see I am getting quite literary & important now. Read that letter signed ‘Anti Olo Custom’ in the China Mail & know that your humble servant is the writer. The term is explained in my letter to my Mother.
There is a very wide field here for writing upon abuses – from the Governor downwards. The idea of the Governor wanting four coaches. Before you have coaches you must have roads – before you have roads you must have a proper man at the head of affairs – a man of any description would be better than an ‘old woman’. The aristocracy here only cover pony phaetons & a coach of all things in the world as if it was not hot enough without shutting oneself in.
I enclose you the receipt for the case of Christmas presents which you had better give to Wheatley’s to clear – ‘Value £12’ marked upon it explaining to them the contents & requesting that they may not be pulled about – PGL
[Written diagonally across the final page]
I send Sir Peter a paper – please point him out the letter.
* curtain lecture – A querulous lecture given by a wife to her husband within the bed curtains, or in bed
* don’t leave parliament – John Laurie retired as MP for Barnstaple the following year due to ill health
* my memoirs – ‘Rambles in India, China &c’ by Peter G Laurie was printed for private circulation in 1859