49
No 3
Headed notepaper: Buenos Aires, 22nd August….de 189 2
My dear Mother,
I wrote a long business letter to the firm y’day. & enclosed a few lines to Addie, but I had not time to write to you since my last by “Trent” – 15th Aug.[1] Three days ago I recvd. your welcome letters of 18th & 19th July, & to-day came that of 24th, as well as a long & newsful letter from Father, all in good spirits, so I was very glad to have them, & to learn that the result of the half-year was satisfactory, all things considered, & that expenditure was less. We must continue keeping latter down & working to improve the “biz”, so as to put something to the good.
I hope to hear from Julie, after his return from Strone, how he got along, & whether he tried the fishing; – also how you liked the place.[2] In a letter to Julian[3] Mr W. says he has just been made J.P. for the county.[4] When the Conservatives come in again I suppose the next blushing honour will be “Sir” Isaac Julius.
Just now the Pater will be about starting for Russia. I hope he will secure bookfuls of orders & come home well & cheerful, & with whole shins.
No doubt the girls had a good time at Laurelvale.[5]
I hear Buckby is now in Rosario in a railway office.[6] I shall get his address & try to see him when I go there. Sorry not to have made Gideon’s acquaintance, but shall perhaps have that pleasure some day in Berlin.
The first rush of dinner invitations is over now I am glad to say. Over-eating, if persevered in steadily is apt to upset the stomach.
23rd Aug. 11 p.m. I note the time so that you may observe that my industrious fit still lasts.
I have just come from the “office” (a back-room first floor, in the business centre) where I was doing my official correspondence. Massa Julian is out visiting. I think I shall send him up to the camp for a week, to let him have a little change, as his neuralgic headaches have returned.[7]
Two Whigs came out y’day.[8] I have only read one so far. I notice in it the death of William Campbell, Elmwood Avenue. Is that the old sexton?
A tennis-club has been started here since I left. There are four good earth courts, the lines marked by metal-tape, painted white. I had three sets with Julian the other day – very good exercise. I should like to have more of it, but I have not time to play more than once a week. The telegraphing to & from Dundee has already begun.[9] To-day they want to know what are the crop prospects, – not an easy question to answer when the wheat is just showing itself above ground & no more, with all the possibilities of bad weather, locusts, & so on. I am not going to begin another sheet so bye-bye. Best love
Jack
- Addie: JMcC's brother (Ferdinand) Adolphus (see Index to People) ↵
- His brother Julius (see Index to People). Strone is a village on the Cowal peninsula in Argyll and Bute in the Scottish Highlands at the point where the north shore of the Holy Loch becomes the west shore of the Firth of Clyde. The village lies within the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park. Julie may have gone there with the Weinbergs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strone,_Cowal ↵
- Julian Weinberg (see Index to People) ↵
- Mr W.: Isaac Julius Weinberg, founding partner of “Moore and Weinberg” in Dundee, father of Julian – see Index to People. ↵
- Laurelvale is a village in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. It was founded in the 1850s by Thomas Sinton JP (1826–1887) to house the workers in his linen mill of Thomas Sinton & Co. Ltd, which was in the village: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurelvale and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sinton (Sinton family: see Index to People ↵
- The Buenos Aires and Rosario Railway (BA&R) was the second largest British-owned railway company in Argentina by the 1890s and was effectively challenging the Central Argentine's monopoly of the north-west of the country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buenos_Aires_and_Rosario_Railway ↵
- the camp = "el campo", the Argentine countryside ↵
- The Northern Whig newspaper. Its editorial line was liberal and unionist and it was seen as reflecting a Presbyterian slant on the news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Whig ↵
- "to and from Dundee" = i.e. the Moore and Weinberg office. ↵
