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

Hong Kong. 21 July 1860

My dear Mother

You will be glad to hear of a change in my movements which has given me great satisfaction & which if carried out really as promised is far beyond what, judging from others, I could ever have expected or what indeed truthfully speaking I can justly consider myself, after the short time I have been here, entitled to.

I have to thank Mr Percival for it & his promises are most fair but I have seen so many ‘taken in & done for’ under another regime that I hardly like to be too sanguine at present.

It is however so far settled that I shortly go to Shanghai & that I engage to remain three years longer* with them. With this I cannot go wrong as at Shanghai I shall see business which I don’t here & shall probably make many useful friends. On the other hand, if Mr Percival does carry out what he says, I shall in a short time occupy one of the first & certainly the best position in this enormous house.

Fancy each of the junior newly made partners pocketing £15,000 apiece last year & their share is a very small one. To give you an idea of the grand scale in which things are done, they actually last year presented two young protégés of theirs out here learning business with a view of becoming partners by & bye, with about £7,500 apiece.

25 July. 1860

I was very sorry indeed to hear by the mail just arrived of poor Uncle Lloyd’s death.* He was a great favourite with us all from children & was always the same with something pleasant & amusing to say. His sons I am sure will feel it very much & poor Aunt Lloyd, I fear, dreadfully.

I have written a short note to her, but it is really unpleasant to have to bring forth sad subjects, when time has to a certain extent effaced them.

Good bye my dear Mother. I am tired of letter writing this mail. This being my fifth & I have yet another. Give Helen her usual kiss from

Your affect. Son

Peter G. Laurie

* three years longer – his 1860 contract with Jardine Matheson & Co. engaging him as Mercantile Assistant, remains in their archives

* Uncle Lloyd’s death – Edmund Lloyd (1795-1860) had died on 4th June, leaving Mary (née Collett and Eliza Laurie’s sister) a widow