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HIGH COMMISSIONER'S OFFICE, JOHANNESBURG,
Jan: 14:: 1902
My dearest Nan
I was very glad to get your letter on Saturday, and to hear that you enjoyed Stirling so much. I have not heard from Mother since I wrote to you, though I have written twice. I was a very sick man the last time I wrote, and I was pretty sick most of the week, but I am quite recovered now, and as the weather has got much colder, and I am very careful of my diet, I don't think it need recur again. I envy you
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being at Broughton, and I envy you the snow. I would consent to be a sheep, for the pleasure of being smoored in a snow-drift.
Nothing much has happened since I wrote last. I had letters from John Edgar, Charlie Dick & a most brilliant one from Raymond Asquith, wh. I gave H.E. to read - all about Rosebery's speech. I have read the said speech, and though it is a fine piece of oratory, the central position is thoroughly illogical and absurd. I wrote him a long letter on Saturday and told him so.
I had Duncan, the Comptroller of the Treasury, from Pretoria staying with me over Sunday - a fine dry Scot from Aberdeen.
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A very excellent man has just been in to see me - Colin Hardinge, the administrator of Basutoland, 1000 miles N of the Zambesi. He bought me a walking-stick he had cut at the source of the Zambeis. He wants me to go up & shoot with him the first holiday I get: but I get no holidays, and it takes 22 days to get there from here, - nearly as much as to England. My first holiday must be to Port Elizabeth.
I have been reading Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides with great delight the last few days. The 'Atlantic' has arrived with my 'Mansfield' article in it. To-day there is a Scots mist & it is raining hard. We would call it unbearably close at home, but here
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the coolness is quite a god-send. As I drove down in my high dog-cart this morning, there was quite a W. Highland feel in the air, and I might have been going to shoot in Colonsay.
Fancy! I was offered the S. African war medal and declined it with oaths and cursing. It is ridiculous giving it to civilians, and cheapening it for the men who have done the fighting.
Have you seen a poem by Kipling called "M.I." - an excellent thing. Lord K. is in low spirits. He came to a polo match the other day, and did not speak to a soul, but lay down on the grass & fell asleep. He is frightfully over-worked.
Love to all
Yours affectionate brother John
