Series 4 > William Melrose in China, 1845-1855

INTRODUCTION
XXV
his life; but early in 1847 he was sufficiently recovered, although
still very thin and far from well, to return home under the care of a
doctor.
In the good invigorating air of Pendreich, William regained his
strength. His return to the family was saddened, however, by the
death on 12 August 1847 of his mother.1 During the period William
remained in Scotland he does not seem to have been actively
engaged in transactions with China. The tea trade was undergoing
at the time one of its periodic slumps. Even had he been sufficiently
recovered, not much could have been made in the China trade.2
By June 1848, with his health fully restored and the prospects for
the tea trade somewhat improved, William embarked on a second
trip to China. But this time he went as buying agent for Andrew
Melrose and Company and its co-venturers and, as such, has left
us perhaps the only records of a tea dealer engaged to a large extent
in the China trade. William traded not with cotton or opium, the
usual media of exchange, but with letters of credit, and confined his
transactions almost wholly to tea. And yet, in a trade that was
reputedly one of the most difficult to prosecute, he managed in
five short years to pile up a neat profit for himself and his corres¬
pondents. The success was no windfall but the result of hard work
and careful management on both sides of the trading chain, as
William’s letters abundantly testify.
The idea of establishing what amounted to a branch house in
China was undoubtedly that of Andrew Melrose. As wholesale tea
dealer, grocer and merchant, he may be ranked among the driving
and innovating entrepreneurs of his time. His success was based on
a constant search for the first and cheapest source of supply, on
cash transactions, and on the employment of various methods in the
recruitment of capital and in the promotion of sales.3 But his earlier
1 Parochial Register, Lasswade, Deaths 1820-56; A. S. Craig to William Melrose,
14 Aug. 1847, ama, Letters of A. S. Craig.
2 G. Armstrong, Liverpool, toj. M. & Co., 25 June 1847; J. Ewing, Glasgow, to same,
23 June 1847; A. Robertson, Bristol, to same, 23 June 1847; jma, Corr. In: GB,
Bi/137, fos. 1280ff.
3 Mui, ‘Andrew Melrose’, 34, 36-37.