Before I begin posting the 1860
letters received by Alexr Dick in Australia, I need to add in an extra 1858 letter which I have found (I must have misread the date, so it’s out of order). I’ve
gone back and re-numbered the other letters to keep them in order numerically
so this is Wm Moodie Letter 14.
This letter was written by William when he was still working in Dumbarton and beginning his career as a
music teacher. A large part of the letter is philosophical musing on
international and matters and local economic troubles, but towards the end he talks
about his new career and his father’s experiences of living and working in Turkey,
and he also mentions his friend John Rattray.
I have transcribed the letter using 'Google voice input' so there may well be some odd words or punctuation which have escaped my notice, though I try to correct as I dictate.
Scans of the original letters are below the text.
Dumbarton March 1st 1858
p.1)
Dear Alexr,
Whether to set you down in my mind’s eye as still working away at those confounded “gravel pits” or by this time a money-getting flourishing citizen of Melbourne, I am at a loss, but be ye where ye may, I have but one wish regarding you, may you have seen and passed the lowest point of your fortunes. That once passed I have faith in your alternate reward.
I hope John and William are still holding a firm hand to the pick and shovel of prosperity and your father, “May his shadow never be less”.
I don't think he would make much by coming here again. There are so many idle hands, willing to toil, thrown out for the bread of the beggar, that a man up in years would find it hard I feel to earn a comfortable living. It is said
p.2) that the passing crisis in our commercial relations has never been equalled for intensity of suffering and the extent to which it has spread. No doubt you have followed its history as it grew, as victim after a victim fell an unwilling still not less helpless sacrifice to the demon that rules seemingly all things to his will, the gold worshipper.
You would be positively terrified if told the tales I have heard of want and despair, among the working population of Paisley and such places. Even in Dumbarton here it has been most severe. Plenty of working men with families living for months without turning a penny of wages, living God knows how they do it but they still keep their skeletons upright.
Although the “political horizon” is still dark and cloudy, there are signs of a relaxation of the strings of the Bank
p.3) purse and one may say that “things in general” are mending considerably, but, indeed, to anyone acquainted with the workings of the British money market and the vicissitudes to which trade is liable through the merest straw out of its place, there will appear little surprising if we wether(?) along as we are doing for a year or two yet, in a kind of intermediate state between hunger and starvation, living and dying. It was thought that once Sir Colin got his army in working order in India we would have a renewal of confidence and a proportionate “burst” of work all over the country, but now that he is beginning “to do it” that confounded China business has to be begun in earnest. Well coming along a bit caution becomes ours, but
p.4) (What would England do without that word, but) just as the news of this arrives, away goes a bomb or two at the head of that monstrous rascal Louis Nap. What a row. What a smoke. What invasions of Britain (Albion) are effected with one fell dash of a French pen.
The French ambassador storms, raves and insinuatingly threatens, the “French Colonels” (of Algerian growth) rush down to Calais and pray their “master” to send them over (everyone in the van) to sweep out that foul nest - no, den - of assassins. Well, first to see if this was not all a part of the bomb plot. John Bull never says one word till one night up gets our late Lord Pam “the Devil's own” to propose that, after all, we had used his dear friend “of 10 years standing” rather too badly, and that if we could get
p.5) our minds made up to part with one or two of those rascally refugees who “Nap said” were bringing the British name to scorn in every Council of state in Europe, we would only be doing ourselves (and our properties) justice and his friends aforesaid an immense favour.
One week after that night where was he -- he-the-conjuror who has wrought successively on all the weaknesses of the nation first her pride, then her credulity, selfishness and love of glory, but at the first faint breeze of true English liberalism and, where is he - down, down.
Here again trade is knocked on the head and so on it always is and will be, while this harlequinade is carried on in the name and place of government. Lord Derby is the next sent for to form a ministry that
p.6) will “uphold the dignity” improve the interests and “work out the resources of this great country”, by all that's holy Alexr what do you think of that. Is that not enough to send the whole lot of them nay and us too, headlong to the smoky places of the earth. You think you are hardly used out of there (and so you are) but a “Pluto” writing in every Street of every town in the empire would hardly bring them to their knees.
I am now thrown on another tack. I need not stop to enquire whether the mind has shifted or whether I have been gradually coming up to it, either way, I must make the most of it while it blows.
I was most particularly pleased with your letter on your mining affairs in the paper you sent, surely the statement of facts so plain and yet so aggravating will have
P. 7) the effect of making the press cry for right (?), and trip the feet from under those (for there have always been some) who, blind to everything but what brings to their altar its incense, stand by “things as they are” in their naked injustice, and fight, aye even fight to the lifeblood for unreason itself. The life is your veins for a state of things more noble and more ennobling than that insociable (?) patchwork called the Constitution of Victoria; you may have many things to see yet and many disappointments to meet, but live you must, as every difficulty in your way onward is only another stop upward on that mountain Truth whose summit is God, and the tableland there - Heaven.
I am glad to hear Stevens is making both ends meet (that saying is scarcely for I want, for I do not mean to say I wish the end of the day
p.8) or the end of the year to find any of my friends where the beginning left them. Some may say that if they have not made anything they have not lost anything, but where has the precious time gone never to smile on them again; + maybe their bark drifting away to a maelstrom on some of the many Gulfstreams of life. I want the end of the one year so to fit into the first day of the next, that the force and weight of a year’s good may carry it's fruit fruitful far into the world's history, and cause it to be remembered and the men of it praised and imitated whether they be news sellers, diggers, or humble (!) “hungry engravers”). --
I have seen the very same words that you to me in your last, given by many different individuals, when speaking of the usage female servants
p.9) receive when they take a place in the colonies. No wonder. I suppose the place is overrun with the worst characters out of nearly every country under the stars, and it is scarcely to be expected that men who could not behave in their own countries would place much value in a defenceless woman's virtue in a place strange to them. It has long been known that it was not safe to send young women away without male friends with them, but the cry against it has now become so loud and so general, that only the most foolish would persist disbelieving it. there are very few now who leave this quarter for Victoria and I have not heard of one for 5 or 6 months.
The gold fever has abated now we are long since (seeing the trials our friends have had to meet) sobered down
p.10) to the losing-of-home-and-all-its-comforts view of the matter, and really there seems very little to entice one to sacrifice these, for all that I am sure you are better, or in a way of making yourself better there where you are then you would likely be at home now.
When we used to plan how we could get on beside each other in the world - the time Marryatt’s novels were fulfilling their destiny - little did we think we were to be thus far put asunder in the fulfilling of ours; however, may our ways draw nearer as we draw nearer the last mile-stone on our journey, and may we become more and more likened to the spirit of Good in his Beauty as we come nearer and nearer realising that Dread Presence which we half sigh for and we are yet half afraid to meet.
p.11) You will be anxious to know how I am getting on myself.
Well I may say pretty well I am beginning to be recognised as “one of the musicians of the town”. I am confined in the works all day so that I have only time at night for about half a dozen pupils on the piano. The thing was merely an experiment at first. I think I will try a class for day pupils next year if all goes well, it would then be worthwhile waiting for it. I am out on strike for more money from the English church party so the organ is stopped altogether. They have been making slight advances “in the right direction” so I may resume some day soon; it is a half dead affair tho’, no life, “no nothing” as Sam Weller says.
p.12) Now that I am making something of it I am applying more diligently to it.
I have been elected leader of the Dumbarton Choral Union as that will help to advertise one “some” altho’ it will not swell my immediate resources.
I like it very well, better a great deal than picking away at the engraving but then that is so dull again, that it is next to nonsense waiting on it. John has not wrought any for three months but he is trying to get to Busby to precent (?) so if he succeeds he is sure of a place in the field.
Father is always in good health in Constantinople although the cold is intense this winter, so much so that the walls are prowling around the city, + have on several occasions attacked and eaten up men and horses. A steamer from some place up the Mediterranean to Constantinople lost 80 of her deck passengers through starvation. Again, the city
p.13) is one constant alarm from fire. He says he has got so used to them now that he can go to bed and one raging in the next street. They get leave to burn till Providence puts them out, a system that must come heavy on the insurance offices.
The city must be growing green again so much of it being always “under repair”. it is a dreadfully dirty place. I think I told you once before of the great pictures which stagnate in the middle of the streets, deceiving one from the Western world so, that he is apt to walk right into it thinking it merely the “crown of the causeway”.
The deluging rains which set in in Spring and Autumn wash the accumulations of the other two seasons away into the Bosphorus - the grand repository of all abominations animal, vegetable or mineral. Father send us home little pictures of the people in their various costumes which, however
p.14) picturesque in watercolours, would be apt to inspire us with the feeling of a confirmed tendency on the part of their where is to secret cutthroatishness. I would like very well to go out there for all that, but there are few places that I could fill, to be had without great influence with the consulate or whatever they call that establishment. Father was to have been appointed to a place in Portsmouth but owing to the Indian Ministry (??) the Works there were for a while suspended. I don't think he expects ever to get at all now.
I have got a letter from another friend of mine of the name of John Rattray (no (?) friend of the Busby John). I knew him when I was in Dalmonach before we went to Busby. so after we came back to Bonhill, I fell often
p.15) in with him. He is a fine singer and used to come up to our house often to practice. Just a little before I came to Dumbarton (it was Rattray got me the first place) he was sent for to go to Syria to an uncle of his, a silk manufacturer, so he is there now transformed from an engraver to an “Arab driver”. He has said as yet very little about the country but fills a good page with a description of the road to his place, four miles from Beyrout; - the road did I say- he says it were “almost blasphemy” to call them roads. They had to work their way up “steep water course that put him more forcible in mind of are badly worked quarry” then anything he ever saw “out of Bonhill”.
I will send you words now and again how he gets on and give you any
p.16) little adventure or anecdote he may have to tell, it may possess some interest apart from the thought of the romance and mystery which we attach to the Arab character - from the fact that he and I were good friends and that he has stood by me on more occasions than one when my (religious) character was at stake; and, was it not he who first brought me on speaking terms with my own Mary? I have not said anything of her before now, because it is all said in those words. I wish you had a true heart to confide in and to be blessed with. I have got your little nugget made (with another bit) into a nice ring and presented it to Mary, telling her where I got it. - I have nothing to say of your other Leven friends; they are in usual health and all wishing you all father and sons well.
Our folks send the same to you too. John is to be remembered to John and Willie particularly.
And now dear Alex, the best hopes and progress I send, I wish it now mountains of gold.
Yours, W Moodie
Scans of
the original letter (note format of pages – p.4&1, then
2&3, etc.); click on thumbnails for larger images:
page 4,1
page 2,3
page 8,5
page 6,7
page 12,9
page 10,11
page 16,13
page 14,15
