| Description | He sends 'delicious representatives' [photographs?] in lieu of a longer letter, as he is occupied with changing house and travelling. William notes the various apprehensions they have faced lately, including 'Margie's illness', with alarm for Amelia at Pekin and the French 'massacred' [the deaths of missionaries and others in and around the French consulate at Tianjin]. He refers to Alexander Gordon's difficulties, giving an account of his understanding of them, and concluding that Gordon 'has been treated in a most ungentlemanly & even dishonourable manner'. He refers to his mother's health, and then the hasty declaration of war by Napoleon [Napoleon III and the Franco-Prussian war]. He contrasts these events with the 'quiet pictures' which his father 'has made of the English church seen from a peaceful English home'. |