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21 May 60 Peter Hong Kong Mother 5. Hyde Park Place West ______________________________________________________________________________________________

Hong Kong. 21 May 1860

My dear Mother

The mail arrived yesterday & consequently the outgoing one has been postponed a day by particular request of the Admiral. The consequence of this is that I am able to find time, which I otherwise shouldn’t, to write to you.

I am very much amused at the bother you have had about the box of toys I sent by ‘Canaan’. The fact is the things are not worth the trouble you seem to have in getting them & being quite valueless are not certainly worth any duty or dock charges. It is too bad. I would not have sent them only the Captain who is a very nice fellow promised to forward them to you himself & was uncommonly civil about the matter.

But out of sight – out of mind, I suppose.

I have received a letter from John who seems very much pulled down. Has been laid up a month with fever but is now convalescent. I seem to keep up after all, best of the lot, though Heaven knows I have indeed a hard time of it. Julius hasn’t favoured me for along time, but perhaps his letters miscarry. I am rather amused at Alfred & his guinea pigs & white mice. He must take after me. I was relating the story at breakfast this morning when one of my companions who is the father of 8 children in England (but only 2 or 3 & thirty himself) also told me. He had received a letter from his eldest son – 8 years old – stating that he had bought a sword & a drum & requesting to know if he might be allowed to join the volunteer corps.

I am glad to hear the Oldhams have dropped in for some thing. I liked them very much & there is only one thing for which I cannot forgive Mr O & that is that he has never answered a long letter which I wrote him from this.

It is becoming very hot here now & while my Father complains in every letter of the cold, here am I wishing I could only get a little of it.

My collection of butterflies gets on beautifully but as the last three days have been very showery I have not made many additions of late, you can have no idea how beautiful many of them are. Long swallow tails to their wings & of the most splendid colours.

They are very slippery however & not easy to be caught but I think that this is the best year for them since I have been here. This may be merely however because I have gone more amongst them & sought out the places which they frequent & so of course see more of them.

Mr Bowring, Sir John’s son, a partner in this house, has the most splendid collection ever made in China but he has completely broken a naturally strong iron constitution in getting it. He is a most extraordinary, clever man & a very great naturalist, but he is certainly a miserable creature to look at. He is Sir John’s eldest son & the old man in his vanity was in the habit of speaking of him as the ‘future Baronet – the leading member of the largest mercantile firm in the World’ but I am afraid that now he will be disappointed in both.

Tell my Father that we expect that the two Mr Jardines will leave this in about a month. They are however always going & never go when it comes to the point & it is very doubtful if they will this time. On one occasion they even went as far as to tell their brother to meet them at Malta. I don’t know whether he started but if he did he must have been horribly sold.

My time is beginning to get very short here now & I am on the ‘qui vive’. I think I must leave J.M. & Co. unless their promises are very fair & take up my quarters in some smaller ‘shop’.

Like the Circumlocution Office* it is all vested in one family & goes by interest. But I am of course waiting to hear from my Father upon the subject. I have even an idea that it would not be a bad plan to come home & arrange matters & then come out again for a longer spell. Under any circumstances however I should take a tour first & see what can be done & I am most decidedly of opinion that the East is the place.

I am sorry to have to mention disagreeables but as you continually allude to the subject in your letters, I must set you right. I was compelled some little time since to write to Mr Riley a letter which will at any rate settle the matter one way or the other

[half the next sheet torn off and missing]

was. I wash my hands of the matter & if he cannot see the error of his ways I must wash my hands of the concern. It is the only recourse left to me.

Tell my Father I have received all the duplicates of the ‘Fiery Cross’ consignment but as he will be aware the originals have long since turned up, having been discovered at the top of the box which was detained some six weeks upon the road as boxes overland generally are. It was a heartless hoax and as it has given my Father a little trouble I hope he will never attempt any thing of the sort again.

My dog ‘Typhoon’ the puppy, has lately become a splendid water dog & fetches sticks &c. greatly to the delight of the natives who probably look upon him as quite mad just as they do Europeans for taking walks when it would be so much easier to employ Coolies & sedans to carry them. Dora is very seedy & has gone on board ship for a change of air.

Give little Helen a kiss & tell her not to take example by her Brothers in the writing department which you say she is now studying.

Your affect. Son

Peter G. Laurie

* Circumlocution Office – The type of a government department satirised by Dickens in ‘Little Dorrit’