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High Commissioner's Office, Johannesburgh.
May: 13: 1903
My dear William [his brother]
I am a bad correspondent and it is a long time since I wrote to you. I hope you have had a pleasant last term. It is a nice thing, in a way, to go straight from Oxford to your life's work [in the Indian Civil Service] without dreary London plans intervening. However the purpose of this letter is not to moralise, but to try and make a plan for October. "Ons sal a slim plan maak", as the Dutch say. I am very anxious that you
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should take Altarstone for September at my expense. I want you to have a pleasant last month in Tweeddale. I see small chance of my getting away from here before the last week of August; but with luck I shall get to Scotland by the end of the second week of September. I hoped to leave here in July like everybody else but it seems I must stay and take charge till I am relieved. Deil vax the thrapples of the folk who detain me! I think in the beginning of October you & I and our feathered friend, the Bird [their brother Walter], should go a walking
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tour of perhaps a week either in the Highlands, Galloway or the Borders. I should have preferred to go to Kings House & fish, but the season will be rather late for that. It will be necessary for me to keep in touch with the post, as I may be recalled to London at any moment, and I shall have to be with Lord M. sometime in October. I also propose that you & I should attend B.N.C. Gaudy together.
But all this depends on what date you sail. Please write to tell me what the date is. Sometime at the end of October or beginning of November I presume? How is my old mother
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taking it? I am glad I am to be at home before you go.
I hope to get John Edgar up here to console my solitude in August. That enterprising soul has been having many adventures. He is now a prominent member of the Bond, and I hope shortly to hear of him getting 'two years' hard' for high treason. He also openly announces his intention of getting married, as soon as he can find somebody, as he says he feels lonely. I have warned him that if I hear any more nonsense I will come down "ane's-errand" and deal faithfully with him with a sjambok.
Much love
Ever yours
John
