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High Commissioner's Office, Johanessburg.
April: 19: 1903
Mr dearest Nan
Many thanks for your last letter. I hope Mother did not overdo it at the Sale of Work. By the time you get this I suppose you will have come back from France. I hope you had a good time. I enclose some photographs of my last trek. You will see my distinguished form in several. I have written what they are on the back. The one I like best is of myself & the old Boer on the top of a mountain. It is called "Bushed" and might sit for a picture of two lost hunters.
Lady Leconfield sent me out 'Wee Macgreegor' by the mail. That makes the fifth copy of that work I have had sent me. I don't think it good,
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and the Scotch revolts me, but it seems to have had a great success. It beats me how anybody south of the border can understand a word of it: but they seem to like it. I have just had an invitation to the B.N.C. Gaudy in October: tell my Brother William that he & I will go together.
I am certainly coming home this year, but I shall not know when till a week before. It entirely depends on Lord M, and his going depends again on what trouble Parliament make about our 35 million loan. He might get away as early as the end of June, in which case I should probably wait a few weeks longer, as I am loth to leave the country without a little big-game
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shooting on the Limpopo, and without ascending Mont aux Sources. On the other hand he may be delayed as late as August, in which case I shall travel with him. My future doings will not be decided till I get home. It is just on the cards that I come back again with Lord M: it is possible, too, that I may go back to the Bar & accept the Spectator's offer: but the most probable contingency is one which can only be settled when I get back to London. In any case I think you right to take Altarstone for September. Hugh Wyndham has taken the Floors Castle fishing from the Duke of Roxburghe for October & November.
For the next few months I shall be very busy with financial work, and I am also
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trying to get my S. Africa book near completion. Mind you don't tell anyone about the said book, as I have told William Blackwood that I intend to publish it anonymously.
I am very well & I hope you are all well too. Lord M. is well but worried. By the way I acted as best man last Wednesday at a marriage. Never felt a bigger fool in my life. Little Gardiner of Peebles was the "officiating clergyman".
With much love to all
Your affectionate brother
John
