| Description | Letter to Alexander Gordon, Letterfourie, from his brother James, London, hoping he is well after long silence, struggling with multiple letters and copies of letters from Madeira, fleets passing by the island without doing business, he sent a vessel containing wheat, flour and iron hoops, and is commanding another now being loaded at Hamburg, does not want the house to speculate so much as he cannot fulfil the bills, payments from New York are slow in coming, shipping wine to India, Captain Lawson’s business is incredible, and he is ‘such an unaccountable incomprehensible strange ambitious fellow’, some account of his debts and his abscondings, Mrs Riddoch’s plans to stay in a house in Peckham while her husband is away have now changed and she wants to return to Scotland, which does not please James, account of their quarrel and his acquiescence, she can stay at Letterfourie or at Cullen as Alexander pleases but not ‘at Lynn House with the old lady’, pleased with Alexander’s plans for farming Whitefield except that he would have to build there and James has had enough of building, various plans to finish off the house including strong snecks for the doors, dressing the grounds, a temporary brewhouse and kitchen, dealing with smoke in main kitchen, plans for their retirement, chasing linen he ordered for shirts, trying to find ways of helping John Duff and Sandy Ogilvie, millwright is the best trade for making money in the West Indies, and carpenter is good, but cabinetmaker is useless, James Syme is dying and Laurence Irvine is dead, suspicion that Mrs Riddoch is expecting a child, and therefore Alexander will prefer to have her at Cullen out of his way, 20 February 1778 |