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Delighted with receiving letter from Celia and hearing her homely gossip. Goes touring and camping in the mountains. On return, describes trying to paint a primula in his tent-door, holding an umbrella with a dense fog of midges and smoke around. Saw great snowy trumpet-lilies on steep brackened hillsides when tramping the long leagues back. Describes the cook getting drunk, falling over a cliff, injuring himself & a pleasant Scotch youth with the staggers, called Jumps [Euan H.M. Cox] taking over- making astonishing concoctions with the jam of little wild white strawberries. ‘And yet it was delightful, the solemn enormous loneliness of the heights, & the silence & the invariable alpine feeling of clean peace & remoteness.’
Celia's letters awaiting him on return from camping where he saw golden anemones beside a babbling beck & hearing black mother bears roaring after their babies among the bamboos. Writes of Celia's daughters marrying, suggests Cynthia one of them, might become his wife, Mrs Me. Suggests Celia will be free to visit him in Peking or Rangoon in late 1920, 1921 to view various sites and shopping together, aware these are lovely fantasies. Enquires about the Beautiful Young Man? [Milner?] Describes how the coolie-porters danced and sang folksongs by the campfire, a genuine art of wild hill people.
Pleased to get letter from Ernest Gye, nickname Poison - shared letter with Jumps [Euan H.M. Cox]. Speaks of the restless desire to impress & seeks gossip of English friends. Ernest writing of going to Tangiers. Describes at length he and Jumps picking raspberries to make jam, concoction insipid. Then reverted to making better jam with wild white strawberries. Writes of Jumps as youthful, unlike him who is becoming of crabbed age. Describes how a brace of young boys, Gurkhas have joined their camp. Painting primula in a tent, through a dense fog of midges and smoke. Requests from Ernest to purchase 2 or 3 Everyman volumes of Floris's Montaigne, delights in the first one. This letter is signed your loving Poppet. Jumps cooking until the Chinese cook has recovered from his cliff fall. ps Gossipy enquiries and comments. Encouraging E. Gye when writing, to be thoroughly indiscreet and viscous. Speaks of his own return to a de-Poisoned London. [Poison = E. Gye] Describes the place abounding in the most preposterous brambles - titanic wilderness of thorns, beset with raspberries in almost every colour & degree of nastiness. Wondering if Jumps [Euan M. Cox] is like all Scotch lower (or middle) class minds, are alike in a sort of Jackdawish unassimilating appetitiveness.
Fond banter between R. Farrer and E. Gye and saying he will seek his company when he returns from the dripping Aquarium, Burma in 1921. Likes the colours of the landscape but not much else here. Using mules to transport and has had a successful season of collecting. Has been injured by the scrub and bamboo and these injuries have taken a long time to heal. Describes how a red panda, a tiny bear with a banded ginger & orange bottle-brush tail has joined their camp and has become tame. He is going down to Myitkyina in a fortnight, by cargo boat slowly to Bhamo, Mandalay and Rangoon where he and Jumps [Euan H.M. Cox] will spend Christmas. Will say farewell to Jumps then and welcome the Beautiful Boy [Milner]. Sends his and Jump's love to Ernest and other friends. Signed the Master. ‘I've cut or scratched myself (as one is forever doing in the scrub & the bamboos) my sumptuous flesh, instead of promptly healing as its habit is, has developed large & perpetually pussiferous sores till now, I'm a perfect Lazarus, with my lovely legs like a professional beggar's.’ (this letter, 3 pages long in foolscap polypockets)
Has sent seeds of Nomocharis pardanthina to Ernest which the cat [the red panda?] has defecated on, which they are both are certain will affect its germination & describes at length its beauty. Reports Jumps [Euan H.M. Cox] has left and the Beautiful Boy [Milner] has slain his sister and is not coming to join him. Rented a bungalow in Maymyo to have a place of his own. Proposes to visit pagodas, but unrest with a new Burma movement may affect this. Intends to visit the Buddha's relics the Arakan Pagoda. Had some firework celebrations & received books from Bain. Describes the beauties of Nomocharis pardanthina, as ‘quite singular, being those of a little pink Lily that has had an affair with a naughty spotted Odontoglossum, & produced a child that bears several shamefaced flat pendant flowers of softest pink, which have an eye of deep chocolate, surrounded by a ring of yellow in three crested fringes, while three of the segments are very broadly oval, fringed & spotted with deep purple.’
Box 4: 1916-1918; folder of correspondence, mainly to mother but correspondents also include Aubrey Herbert, E.A. Bowles, William Purdom, Nell Purdom [William's sister], Hugh Faulkener and Italian Legation, Beijing. Subjects include Farrer's operation, John Buchan, gardener's pay, London Air Raid, World War One and Edinburgh. Also, letter from John Buchan, Ministry of Information dated 12/12/1917 referring to Farrer's writing; and folder of documents relating to Farrer's time at the Ministry of Information, 1917-18.
Not well, overdosed on arsenic taken himself, found funny, well again. Pleased off to the English & French front from Foreign Office for 5 weeks to write about it. Beautiful Young Man [Milner?] and Saxton's attitude to sham marriage.
Writes of the contrast of the splendours of Paris & the Western Front, feels there is a rising wave of human sacrifice & aspiration. Personal intrigues - difficult to make sense of. Pleads Celia to visit him in Paris.
Box 3: 1914-1916; includes letter from William Purdom outlining plans for 1914 China Expedition; correspondence from 1914-15 China expedition; some letters to and from Isaac Bayley Balfour, 1915; correspondence to parents from Japan, [1916?]; various maps of Kansu, China; Farrer's writings about Kansu - published reprints and manuscripts, 1916-18; Farrer's writings about Kansu - not known if published; newspaper cuttings including articles written about the 'White Wolf' of Kansu, c.1914, some written by Farrer; invoices from Kansu expedition; list of slides relating to Kansu expedition compiled in 1985; transcriptions of two photograph albums relating to Kansu expedition [RJF/2/2/3-4]; miscellaneous ephemera.