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High Commissioner's Office Johannesburg
March: 3: 1902
My dearest Nan
Many thanks for your last letter. I had a good budget this week, including letters from Willie and the Bird [his brother Walter], Uncle Willie & Aunt Kate, Aunt Aggie, Strachey, Cubby Medd, Denman & Lord Rosebery. Lord R. sent me a long screed about conciliation which seemed to go off the line: but he wrote a very kind, pleasant letter. I am in the most robust health now, my aged Nan, so you needn't distress yourself about me. The weather is quite cold now and very wet, just like Scotland. Yesterday I went an
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8 mile walk in my oldest clothes and got drenched to the marrow-bone. The Veld looked and smelt exactly like a Scots moor. All the streams were foaming torrents. A little trickle which runs near our house was swollen as big as Lyne Water, and took me up to my waist before I got across.
Mother writes in very good spirits. She has been travelling a lot and seeing strange beasts. I really think the change is going to do her a lot of good.
Things are going quietly here for the moment. H.E.[Lord Milner] only came back from Pretoria on Thursday – very tired and cross with life.
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We had a tremendous success against de Wet on Thursday - the anniversary of Majuba and Paardeberg. De Wet lost 800 men, and only escaped at the last moment by a drift which Elliot had left unguarded. The new policy is to drive the country between the blockhouse-lines as if it were a grouse-drive: and a very successful policy it proved to be. I almost got permission to go on BruceHamilton's staff to see the fighting, but at the last moment the scheme fell through.
Little Marshall went off home yesterday, after writing me a letter full of profuse thanks. He is a fine little man, and I enjoyed his visit.
I have been reading a rather nice
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book - Lady Ann Barnard's letters from S. Africa (1797-1801). They are written to Henry Dundas. Lady Ann wrote 'Auld Robin Gray.'
Two Scots soldiers - Macdonald of Kingsburgh in Skye and a Lord Charles Gordon, a brother of Lord Huntly's, came to me last week asking for jobs. I got Macdonald a Superintendantship of a Burgher Camp. It is an awful business being regarded as the friend in need of every wandering Scotsman.
The Archbishop of Cape Town is here just now, and I have an uphill time talking ecclesiastical shop to him.
With much love
Your affectionate brother
John
