27 Oct 59 Peter Hong Kong Mother 5, Hyde Park Place West
East Point, Hong Kong 2 June
27 Oct ‘59
My dear Mother
If I appear to be growing rather lax in my correspondence now, you really must forgive me, for I am so worked that I really have not time to write.
The way I am going on now is nothing more nor less than slavery & perhaps circumstances have thrown it in its real light more forcibly before me of late. It is not working hard now in order that one may enjoy the benefit of it hereafter, but it is working hard now with the sure certainty of destroying your health, ruining your constitution – if not of killing yourself at once – & clearly under any circumstances of reaping no advantage hereafter.
Since I have been in the house, how many of our people are gone. Three of my immediate companions (two of whom left here for home on medical certificate) have died in that short time. Poor Compton whom I mentioned to you two mails ago died, as I too much feared, upon the passage & the same mail that brought us the news of his death brought us that of another of my companions who left this only six months since.
Poor Compton had worked his life out in J.M. & Co’s service & what for. To return home prematurely old & worn out. To return home so ill & debilitated that he did not even ever reach home & to be shot into the water without a grave to lie in or without a friend to mourn over him.
We put the flags in our little fleet half mast when we heard the news. Mr Jardine put on mourning for one day for a servant who had served him so faithfully for six & twenty years & then the matter was forgotten amidst the whirl of business.
I have seen Mr Adams at last after about six weeks or 2 mths. I have found time to call upon him upon a Sunday. They were very kind. They said I must not make a hermit of myself. I must come down & see them & I should always meet a few friends & they evidently seemed to see my true position & to try to draw me out of it. But it’s no good, as I was obliged to tell them that I can’t do it. My duties prevent me.
When I say ‘them’, I refer to Miss Adams whom I took rather a fancy to when I knew her (although I did not at all admire her at first). They were the only people that I have had the slightest sympathy or kindly feeling from since I have been here, but I probably may not see them notwithstanding all their kindness & invitations (really intended general invitations) for months again.
I spent the whole afternoon there, dined & they gave me a bed for the night as I had 3 miles to go & it was pouring with rain.
I have also made the acquaintance of late, of a friend of Mr Pulley’s. Mr Kingsmill, who some time since was acting Attorney General here. He is a strong Oirishman & expressed himself in the most strong emphatic terms as to Pulley’s genuine heartedness. He insisted upon it that Pulley had married a Miss Laurie* & that it was my sister. But I told him that I only had one sister, a Miss Laurie, and she wasn’t quite marriageable yet.
I have been waiting to send you home a few things for Christmas but have not had time to give a day to purchases. They will be too late for Christmas now, but I must see if I cannot manage to send them by next mail.
Little Helen may then expect a real Chinese diminutive tea service – tea for two – & the Japanese monkey who puts his tongue out.
Please remember me to all & tell my Father that as I wrote a long letter to him last mail, he must excuse me this.
Your affect. Son
Peter G. Laurie
I didn’t get a letter from either my Father or yourself, nor a single newspaper by last mail. I suppose some error in the post office.
I got a very nice letter from Mary which pleased me very much.
P.G.L
28 Oct
Since writing the above I have put a few things I had by me in a small box & sent them off. You will receive them via Southampton. They include some Japanese scarfs & tray.
* Pulley had married a Miss Laurie – Oddly enough, a little over 30 years later, Henry C Pulley married Peter Laurie’s own daughter Ethel