Series 4 > William Melrose in China, 1845-1855

150
WILLIAM MELROSE IN CHINA
Chinaman would not sell. I made it better than [chop] no. 2
Naomi and preferred to it. Surely at Tls 21 it must be safe, freight
£2 5s. and as you will see 30s. (!) per Harbeck to Liverpool. It was
the neighbour chop of ‘Long Soey\ one of the first arrivals in
England this year, sold at is. lod. I have tried them together and
believe what the Chinaman says that they are all one ‘ mixing ’ as I
make no difference. And although we can’t calculate on is. iod.,
still it leaves a good margin. The fact of the Chinaman holding it
so long shows it cost him pretty high as he thought he was entitled
to first class price.
I certainly looked for lower advices this month but not nearly
so bad as have been received; and. as the stock is seven million lbs.
short, I can’t account for it in any way but from speculators letting
go on the market all they had hoarded up and giving the market,
from their doing so, an artificial firmness. If that is the case, teas
will come to their proper price according to stocks and imports.
And I scarcely think with your light stocks at home, even in face of
the large export, [teas] can come lower than your advices by last
mail quote them. Everyone out here was taken ‘aback’ by the
news. They calculated on the light stock at home keeping up prices
and some of them looked on their fortunes as being in a fair way of
being safely delivered. But as I have said before, ‘it is all in my eye
and Betty Martin (or Elizabeth Martin, I forget which) and vexa¬
tion of spirit’.1 Nobody will look at tea now out here unless as they
look at a red hot iron. ... In a month or six weeks some odds and
ends may be had very cheap but not sooner, that is, if bad advices
continue coming out, because the Chinamen to use a classical
expression ‘are not to be done ’ and wait for another mail or two with
a great deal of coolness. However, if anything is to be had, as it
were, just for the picking up off the street, I won’t forget I have
£3,400 of your Nationals yet, and if to be had on even better terms
than that, may not forget that I can draw on you against it. But
nothing more from me unless, to use an elegant expression, ‘dirt-
cheap ’.
I send you bills of lading this mail of the shipments. I would have
given you invoices of all of them but am going outside, perhaps to
1 The saying, meaning ‘nonsense’, should read ‘All my eye and Betty Martin’.
Eric Partridge, Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (London, 1963), i, 9.