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19 Jan 59 Peter Hong Kong Father ______________________________________________________________________________________________

Hong Kong - 19 Jan. ’59

My dear Father

I sit down at a very early date to reply or rather begin to reply to your long letter received by last mail – which arrived just as the homeward mail was leaving the harbour.

I am glad you all liked the tea. I was afraid it might turn out musty as a great deal of it has. The price of it, as you wish to know, is $9 for a box like that I sent & as high as $21 according to size. This is a fearful price but then it is our own private mixture & of course therefore very superior.

I shall be very happy at any time to send you home a fresh supply, as also of preserves which we get here very good, but they must at all times be as presents or at any rate you can repay me in some other way.

I should like very much to have seen Nellie in the Chinese suit tho’ I have quite given him up as a lost sheep – or at any rate as a very unkind one. As to his envying me the butterflies, I don’t think he’d catch many if he was here as they are very agile & far too sharp to be caught even by a man of his active habits.

Teddy made a collection but he has got a butterfly of another sort now.

I am glad you found Goddard out.* Like the butterflies, he’s very slippery & not easily caught. I’m afraid you’ll miss Percival who has left ere this.

Blenkin took his departure last mail. He is very heavy – he came up & said goodbye to all at the Point & never so much as asked for me.

The Viscount doesn’t seem to get on – I suppose on account of Blenkin being away. But Lord Derby* still keeps above water & long may he – at least not as far as my politics are concerned for I haven’t yet decided yet on which side of the House I will sit.

When I last heard from John he was about to start for Bombay.

Julius’ correspondence has been more slack of late & I have not so much as heard from Arthur which I don’t understand.

I think with you that Edmund was a great donkey to get married, but it certainly is very lonely work for quiet people in these out of the way places. Lively birds can always find something to chirp about.

I know Turner very well. He is what is commonly called a rum’un – that is to say there is generally some funny story about him & his goings on. He is fond of horses & dashing conveyances – keeps racers & bets, gives periodical balls at which all sorts meet – milliners etc. – & does much more strange things sometimes. With all this he is a very quiet man to speak to. Still water, but certainly not deep. Slow without being sure. I think he is a bit of a noodle myself & he is certainly very old woman-ish in his ways.

I thank Keith & the Solliss for their enquiries – there is nothing more pleasing than to know that one is not forgotten at a distance.

I don’t think the Emperor of China would care about the coach – before they use carriages they must make roads, a thing at present entirely unknown in China. You might as well think of sending him a steam engine – or an Electric Telegraph.

Your affect son

Peter Laurie

You need be under no fear of sending me out as many consignments as you like.

5 Feby. 1859

Many thanks for the handsome present* which this last mail has brought to me & which surprised me all the more from the unexpected manner in which it arrived. I need not say how I shall value it for that of course I shall & there is nothing that makes a handsomer or a more useful present than a gold watch.

The same steamer brought out another for the commander of the gunboat that rescued our schooner yacht the ‘Heatherbell’ from the pirates & he, a man of war – I don’t mean it for a pun – chose the watch in preference to the sword.

All the other contents of the package were capital & I have expatiated more fully upon them in my letter to my Mother.

I am glad to see that Lord Derby keeps up so well. I think he was quite right in refuting Sarawak as, with all due deference to Sir Ja^s Brooke, I don’t see what good it would be to us.

Things here go on rather queerly – the braves show up occasionally & altho’ they get chastised they still prove that our difficulties are not yet finished. Lord Elgin* has at last come down & is going to settle everything – Braves & all.

Sir John Bowring* is at the zenith of unpopularity & I must say I think he is the most base, brazen faced old villain that ever was, & how he can go on in the way he is doing when the term of his stewardship has so nearly expired I cannot make out.

The last freak & one which has kept all Hong Kong in a state of agitation for 12 months was an attempt to compel the legislative council to vote a sum of money (which they hadn’t got & had no prospect of getting), to build a parade or sea frontage to be called the ‘Bowring Praya’ or parade.

His only object in this is to perpetuate his name.

The colony is so poor that they actually have no means of carrying out necessary improvements & he has been trying to force down this unnecessary one, notwithstanding that there is no money to pay for it & notwithstanding that there is not a soul in all Hong Kong who would vote for it.

In order to strengthen his position he has actually introduced fresh members into the councils – official members who of course must vote with him. This has produced a strong protest which has gone home.

With great difficulty the thing has been postponed & postponed but yesterday the Governor was determined to carry it thro’ as he has only about another month. Council met – the 6 official & 3 non official members – & imagine Sir John’s discomfiture when three of the official members rose one after the other, said they had changed their minds & should now vote against it. One of them, the Chief Magistrate, actually gave vent to his long pent up feelings & said that so long as he had been here, he had not been able to get a cover to his official table & now he was called upon to vote sums of money (which didn’t exist & might not exist for a century to come) for the erection of an ornamental terrace which nobody wanted & which would be of no use to anybody. As the papers expressed it ‘Sir J.B. rose up enraged & said that those who didn’t vote for the measure must take the consequences’. But it was eventually negatived by 6 out of the 9.

As to Arthur’s four servants & your thinking that too much – I should think fourteen would be more like the number, especially if he keeps a horse. John’s idea of his being able to save out of his pay is very good. I will go to the other length & say don’t let him get into debt – for once in there’s no getting out – & it soon grows natural.

13 Feby -1859

A fresh mail has arrived & brought a letter from my Mother – also 2 from John.

I see I finished off the other day with talking about Arthur not getting in debt. My mother in her letter urges me not to get in debt. As to myself there is only one way of getting in debt & that is to my employers. It is always better to speak the plain truth. The fact is I cannot live upon £200 a year in the way we live here & I am in debt to them at the present moment.

They do not mind that as long as it is reasonable – as a good bonus very often doubles one’s salary but still it is well to keep up one’s credit. In order to do this, if it should be necessary – would you mind me at the year’s end paying off any sum overdrawn by a bill on yourself. I do not think it will be necessary but as I have gone very heavily into cheroots from Manilla (100,000) to the extent of £200 – which I may not be able to realise by the year’s end (June 30) – it might possibly be found necessary to put the account a little bit square.

In drawing upon you, it would only be a temporary loan for the purpose assigned & I could of course repay it in any way, any time.

What has put me in a little fright is this cheroot business – altho’ done quite openly, in fact thro’ the house themselves. If I had known they would have made all the difficulty they did, I would never have gone into it – but having once commenced, I was determined notwithstanding all obstacles to carry it thro’, & I did – but as John Chinaman says ‘My too Muchchee fear’.

If therefore this little piece of business should necessitate such a proceeding, I am sure you will have no objection to put me square. It is my first spree & cannot be a losing one. By holding on for 12 mos. I may perhaps make £100 & I can at any moment get rid of the whole lot at a profit – even if small.

Money is everything, if I only had something now, I would make a little fortune out of Japan. Now is the time – a friend leaves here tomorrow for Japan & offers to do anything but I haven’t a cent to give him to purchase on my account.

Several of my ‘fellow expatriates’ have done it but alas, I am shut out of it. They have only done it in a very small way, but I am sure some one going heavily into this Japan-ware (sending it home by first opportunity, getting some fashionable exhibition* of it & then selling it – perhaps by auction) would make a mint of money. There is no fear of it overflowing the market because the Japanese are a poor people & cannot have a sufficient supply on hand to overstock an English market.

As mail after mail arrives I am becoming dreadfully disappointed at not seeing or hearing anything of my journal. After all the trouble I took in collecting together the fragments & putting them in form, I did intend that something should come of it. Please do see to this as I really shall not be satisfied till I hear something more of it – particularly after you assured me about 6 months ago that next week you would make a point of arranging about it.

I think Murray might give something for it, to pay for the cheroots or at any rate he might give so many copies for the benefit of the manuscript. I really am very anxious about it & hope that you will really do something at once towards getting it printed.

I have got the first copy here & very often pick it up & read & I am sure that there is a good deal of interest in it.

Your affect son

Peter G Laurie

* found Goddard out – Not the exposure of an untruth; this simply means that they had made contact, and probably met

* Lord Derby – Earl of Derby (1799-1869). Conservative Prime Minister 1852, 1858-9 and 1866. Responsible for the India Bill

* handsome present – His 21^st birthday was in January that year

* Lord Elgin – James, 8^th Earl of Elgin (1811-1863), governor of Jamaica (1842), governor general of Canada (1847), envoy to China (1857) and viceroy of India (1861)

* Sir John Bowring – (1792-1872). After a varied career as journalist, poet, financial and economic expert, MP, traveller and diplomat, became consul at Canton, 1847; later appointed plenipotentiary to China and governor commander-in-chief and vice-admiral of Hong Kong; undertook hostilities against the Chinese, 1856, and with Palmerston's support withstood a vote censure

* fashionable exhibition – It wasn't until the London International Exhibition of 1862 that Japanese objects were commonly seen in Europe. The display was an immense success with critics, designers and the public