Autograph letter signed : London, to Mr. Gray, 1848 Sept.

So that Mr. Gray can understand why he does not advise George to come to the City he will recount the story of his own Mercantile Career. When 16, he came to London with a letter of introduction from his uncle, Mr. Tweddale, to a Colonial Broker and then waited for 15 months, working as a clerk without salary and living in solitary lodgings, before returning to Edinburgh. Through his Uncle Tweddale he then got a position with Amyard Cornwall & Co. at £100 a year, and 7 years later was working for the same salary, twice a week until 11 at night on on Saturdays until 4, meanwhile plaguing the Colonial Broker, Mr. McTaggart, to get him something better. Mr. McTaggart then got him into Gordon Murphy Co. to handle the Custom House Business, at £150--soon raised to £200, he by now 23, with his father running into debt. Through relentless work at Gordon Murphy's, he added to his Custom House duties first the management of cash (once, on a Saturday, raising £28,000 due at 1 o'clock, when he had only £10,000 at hand), and then the correspondence with Jamaica and Cadiz. His salary was then raised to £300 and he was given a room in the House, but he knew the firm was declining because of the extravagance of the "princely Partners," Col. Murphy, James Farrell, and particularly Sir William Duff Gordon. Then Peter Domecq, one of the foreign clerks with whom he had not exchanged ten words in ten months, asked whether he would act as an agent for his uncle and handle Haurie wines. He said yes, if Gordon Murphy would consent. Sir W. D. Gordon `said he had plans of his own for me--but I was determined to avoid connection with such extravagance..." After 4 years with Amyard's and 5 with Gordon Murphy (often working till 12 or 1 o'clock) without a holiday, he asked for a few weeks for his health. Returning, exhausted, to Perth in 1813, he contracted typhus fever and remained until 1814, when he joined Mr. Domecq as agent for Haurie's. Amyard had failed, Gordon Murphy failed, and Haurie's was in a bad way: "You see that be a kind of luck I escaped from £100 a year in a decaying House & again by an unlooked for offer of Domecq from a falling House & after all when my own House began we had to struggle against the Embarassment of the third House." "In 1825 the assignees of Haurie filed a Bill in Chancery against my London House asking 108 long questions as if we were partners with Domecq in Xerez--I was very poorly in 1825 but I quite enjoyed answering this Bill--Knight said he never saw a Bill more thorougly demolished." Thereafter they were not troubled by assignees and he kept clear of foreign risk, though in Xerez Mr. Domecq is said to have made a fortune in two years, "but with this I had nothing to do." There was keen competition, especially from young Haurie, though when Mr. Ruskin began, Haurie's shipments had sunk to 20 Butts. Such details may be boring but only through them can Mr. Gray see "that what people call a nice pleasant Business has not been arrived at with little trouble & that in fact I am more like one navigating a plank saved from the wreck of several large vessels--& patched up at length into a little craft for myself." When they began, he and Mr. Telford had only £1500 between them. "I went to every Town in England most in Scotland & some in Ireland, till I raised their [Haurie's] exports of 20 Butts Wine to 3000--but the day for that is past--I have now twice the trouble for a fourth of our former Business--Amyard-Cornwall Gordon-Murphy Farrell-Domecq are all dead--the present Mr. Domecq is Brother of my late Partner but no Partner to me." With kindest regards.