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14 Mar 61 Peter Hong Kong Mother 10, Hyde Park Terrace ______________________________________________________________________________________________

Hong Kong. 10 May 1861

My dear Mother

At last I am happy to be able to announce the arrival of the long looked for box. The boots I am sorry to say have realised my worst anticipations & are utterly useless.

I felt sure that it would be so the moment my Father let the cat out of the bag that the party to whom the order had been entrusted was a tenant. Giving a tenant an order is about the same thing as lending a friend some money. It is always attended with unpleasant consequences.

In the present instance the boots do not fit me & even did they, I hardly think I should have the pluck to put on ‘understandings’ of so primitive a structure. For this latter reason also it will be impossible for me to get any one else to take them off my hands so that the sum of £8.8/- or thereabouts has, as it were, been thrown into the sea. This is very hard after all I said upon the matter & my distinct request that they should be only procured at a first rate house.

If however the boots are a deep source of regret to me, all the many pretty little presents which accompanied them are none the less appreciated. I cannot tell you how pleased I was with one & all, especially the inkstand, the candlesticks & the duck which is a great thing & much admired. They are without exception the prettiest little assortment of presents which could possibly have been put together & as such I can assure you, are highly appreciated. They will just come in for my new furnishings at Shanghai and as it is quite impossible to recollect from whom each came, I must commission you, in my name, to thank all the munificent donors for their respective kind contributions.

With the pictures of yourself, my Father, John & Helen, I was very much pleased & it is a very neat device but I do not think the velvet casing sufficiently strong as I am always afraid of putting my finger through them by accident. All these little things, as I before said, will just come in for use at Shanghai whither I really do expect to be proceeding now very shortly.

I am in fact under orders to proceed up in our next steamer which I am now every moment expecting. I shall not be half so comfortable there, I have no doubt, as I have well settled down into this place where I am very comfortable indeed. But I look upon it as a thing necessary for ‘moving on’ as my Father would call it & as part of my destiny accordingly. Besides, it will put me in the way of probably dropping into something better which I have been on the look out for, for some time.

The South of China is only in a sinking state while the North opens up more & more every day. I should like to be able to return home after 10 years* with a fortune. That is quite long enough, for after that & even before you can only acquire wealth at the expense of your life. But if I were to remain where I am I wouldn’t do it under 20, before which time I might be where many other poor fellows, who have tried the same game on, are.

John looks quite old in his picture & my Father quite lively & much better than could have been anticipated after his severe illness. How is it John is allowed to wear a beard in England, such being contrary, I believe, to regulations. I hope he may manage the Majority & get some good staff appointment too.

And now, thanking you all once more for all your many & various presents & with my usual kiss to the youngest.

Believe me ever

Your affect. Son

Peter G. Laurie

By this mail one of my companions – ‘Good all Watmore’ as we call him – goes home. I think his name as above is sufficient introduction. He has been five years in the house but goes home rather disgusted with them as they will not advance him. He will be able to give you a pretty truthful notion of the place, but rather a bitter one perhaps, although doubtless he will lose a good deal of that when he gets away.

I have told him to call & please do the hospitable.

P.G.L

* return home after 10 years – He did in fact return in 1871, with wife and their first two children, to retirement in Essex