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High Commissioner's Office, Johannesburg.
Dec: 7: 1902
My dearest Mother
Many thanks to you & Anna for your letter this week. I hope you are keeping well & that the Mhor is recovered from his indisposition. I forgot that last mail was the Xmas mail so I sent you no good wishes: but I make up for it in this letter. I wish I could send you all Xmas presents; but the only things worth sending are either, like karrosses & trophies, too heavy, or like jewellery, too expensive. Several sapphires have been discovered on one of our Government farms. I have got 2 or 3 rough stones, which, if they turn out well, I shall have set for you & Anna. I am sorry about poor old Nan being dull, and I am very strongly in favour of her going to
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Paris in the spring.
A man called Alexander Brown turned up the other day. He is one of the Browns who used to farm at Hayfield near Pathhead – related in some way to the Livingstones. Poor fellow, he came out for his health & wanted a job. I hope to be able to get him something to do. I am still in Pretoria sweating along in a Turkish Bath climate, but I am very well, though fatigued. I spend my Saturdays to Mondays in Johannesburg, where the air is delicious. My work is going very well. Things are rapidly getting straight, and by Xmas I hope everything will be in apple-pie order. But it is no joke controlling a department with fully 100 officials
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under you, and at the same time doing my ordinary private secretary's work of despatches etc. I am much 'solemnised', as you would say, for last night, one of the best of my district officers, a young Irishman called Hamilton, an ex-officer of the Irish Rifles, was killed by lightning. One hardly realises how dangerous lightning is on the high veld.
H.E. is still on trek in the O.R.C., falling off his horse in his old accustomed fashion. I am taking the Lieut-Governor out in a coach with 4 horses to inspect a place called Crocodile Poort, a site for an irrigation dam. The chances are that I upset him. He is very lonely, poor chap, for Lady Lawley's health has quite broken down & she has had to go home.
I heard from Willie this week & also from my
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Uncle William, whose dissection of Andrew Lang in the "Scotsman" was very good. It is a pity he doesn't write more on such subjects. My speech at the St. Andrew's dinner seems to have been a great success, judging by the way people go about quoting it here. The papers last week were full of attacks on me for reckless expenditure, engineered by a man to whom I refused employment. I was able to show, however, that the figures were ludicrously wrong & that there was actually a balance to our credit in the transactions where I had been accused of wild extravagance. I don't think after my experience here I shall ever be afraid of responsibility again.
With much love to all & every Xmas greeting
Your affectionate son
John
