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HIGH COMMISSIONER'S OFFICE, JOHANNESBURG
May: 5: 1902
My dearest Nan
Many thanks for your last letter. I am glad you liked the photographs. I have got another very good one of myself which I will send you shortly. I suppose you will be back now from your trek to Paris. How did you like the change from the cool uplands of Tweeddale to the garish asphalt of the Boulevards? I don't think I ever want to see a city again, except of course Auld Reekie.
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I have become a tremendous rustic, and chew straws and slap my boots with a riding switch all day long.
I had long letters on Saturday from Cubby Medd, Malcolm McCaskill, Miss Maclean & John Edgar, Lady Leconfield, & Dougie Malcolm. The great John is very concerned because he awakens every morning and finds the palms of his hands a bright yellow. I have told him that it is the potations of youth coming out & taking the path of least resistance.
Thank goodness H.E. returns to morrow,
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and part of my responsibilities is removed. I expect to get off on a week's leave on May 14th. I shall go to Port Elizabeth via Durban, as I want a day's sail, & come home by train. I hope to be able to stay a night with the Nelsons at Colesberg. I have also promised to go for a night to the Hely-Hutchinsons, but I think that will be impossible.
Sellar's cousin Major Sellar of the K.O.S.B. is staying with us just now on leave & has brought a very funny Scots servant, a man Maclellan from Dumfries, who wakens him in the morning by singing 'Annie Laurie'
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in the garden. I have just had a very nice young Edinburgh man called Legat staying with me. The Cape Govt have lent him to us for our Forestry Department. He told me that Tommy Nelson's sister had nearly died.
I am afraid I have very little news. I have read rather a good book 'The Westcotes' by Q & also 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' by Conan Doyle, a stupid work. No word yet, I suppose, of my forwarded volume.
With much love
Your affectionate brother John
