Letter #64 to son Alex in Australia
Busby, 18th.Feby, 1862.
My Dear Son,
I have yours of 23rd.Nov’r,with a draft for five
pounds and I am right proud and right glad at the anxiety you express for my
welfare and the sacrifices you make for my comfort. To be remembered and
assisted as I am by distant sons is the lot of very few of my rank. And when
you propose to keep me altogether, I feel a joy I cannot express. But I trust
some years will pass before I am altogether unfit for following some occupation.
I am distinctly promised a light job at Dalmonach.
I look on this as a continuation
of the letter to Jack, so I do not repeat any part of it.
The traditions are not
quite complete. My sister tells me that Wallace was several times in the Dick
house, along with others, before they knew him. He made himself known and
visited them often.
The Highlander that promised to make my Grandfather
a Gentleman in consideration of the services his forefathers had done their
country promised also to give his three brothers situations.
I omitted a trait of Mary that ought to have
mentioned when her family got up. Nothing gave her greater pleasure than to get
all the children in her neighbourhood round her fire and give them a lesson.
And though her own sons came in wet, weary and hungry her school durst not be
disturbed till she had gone through her usual routine. And my grandfather said
he was sometimes angry enough at not getting dinner and a share of the fire
when he got home. The recompense she asked from her scholars was they would
visit her in their best clothes on new year morning and she would give each a
scone and a hole in it.
And an old scholar said it
was a great treat to march up to my Grandmother's and get a scone with a hole
in it and cheese.
Perhaps it would be as well
to send the names of the books you wish out as an opportunity of sending them
may cast up.
I hope Buchanan will come in for his pile at the
diggings. Like yourselves he has had a long pull for it. Jack & William are
still persevering as contractors and with great hope of being successful. I trust
they will not be disappointed. I would like well they were in a condition to
get themselves a comfortable home. They are now members of a mechanics
institution and library that will give them an opportunity of acquiring useful
knowledge and spending their leisure evenings in a profitable and comfortable
manner.
Did the Life of Queen Mary by Miss Strickland give
you satisfaction? Of your old acquaintances I hear nothing worth mentioning and
I have almost no conversation with them, so that I cannot speak of their
comforts or discomforts. Did John King commence wholesale merchant on his own
account? John Nimmo still superintends the printers and his health is just as
when you were. Mr. W. A. Hall is in
his new cottage, getting a little round in
the shoulders but no word of marriage There is little odds on Jannet. Mr. Marsden
occupies James Hall' cottage.
Trusting you will go on prospering and to prosper,
I remain, your affectionate
Father,
Alex'r Dick.
Names & Notes on Letter #64
Mary Russell
William Wallace
Grandfather
Grandmother -Mary
Buchanan
John King
John Nimmo
Mr.W. A. Hall
Jannet
Mr. Marsden
James Hall
- transcription and
Names/Notes by Ian A Scales, c.1989
(note- the ‘original’ transcription was in printed format on
paper, and has been re-formatted using OCR – so may have some inaccuracies
which have escaped my editing – C. S-P)
Scans
of the original letter (click
on the image below to open a larger file):
No comments:
Post a Comment