Series 4 > William Melrose in China, 1845-1855

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WILLIAM MELROSE IN CHINA
days you see a great difference on me, will you believe that it is
from the black sugar. He said, Oh yes. In seven days after, I was
quite out of his hands save for dressing my ear, and could scarcely
get my clothes to button to the astonishment of both him and the
other passengers. I always keep some of it beside me so that should
I get down I may apply to it. I used to take from about a third to
half stick every forenoon, but it must be in the open air with a little
exercise. So much for black sugar, which I daresay you will have
a good laugh at too, as being a whim of mine. If it is, it is a feeding
one.
I am thankful to observe you have got off so many of the
Gunpowders. I have been enabled, as you will see from Mr Simpson’s
letter, to get off a good many too; although apparently at a loss,
it is in reality no loss as exchange has risen so much since they were
bought that, either to have shipped them or sold them, there must
have been the difference in exchange for us to lose from its turning
against us. But had the loss been three times what it is, I would
rather have borne it than shipped tea that might have turned out
unsaleable, increased by charges, especially when I had bought so
many of them as 1,100 to 1,200 boxes. It has been hard work for
me to get them off as nobody will look at them here now at any
price.
I have had an anxious time of it for the last two months. When
the January mail came out with news of the rise in Gunpowder,
everybody I met used to be congratulating me on my good fortune;
some would be saying I would find I had made a fortune a month
or two hence; others offered me 30 to 50% profit on them. Two
months after that, out came your letters saying you had never
thought of looking at the samples, but that now they had arrived
you had found out that it was likely they might turn unsaleable.
Here was a change! The very people who had congratulated me
before now seemed to ask if, instead of making a fortune, I would
not be altogether ruined. I often thought of your Bohea speculation
long ago and thought that there might be a way out of the wood
after all. I have got a terrible fright, I am even afraid now some of the
people at home may be trying to repudiate them, as Mr Simpson
wrote me the mail before last one buyer wanted to do so. However,
if we get out scaithless excepting the fright, I will be content enough.