Settler colonialism and migrant letters: the Forbes family and letter-writing in South Africa 1850–1922

Abstract

The ‘migrant letter’ has been proposed as a separate genre of letter-writing around features concerning absence, identity and relationships and location. However, questions arise about this claim, made using largely North American material. Explored in a different context, important complexities and differences come into view. This is discussed regarding the settler colonial context of South Africa using data from the Forbes family collection, containing around 15,000 documents written between 1850 and 1922. The Forbes were Byrne migrants to Natal, then Transvaal. The majority of letters in the collection were written and exchanged within South Africa, with significant numbers from family members remaining in Scotland or who removed elsewhere, and many drafts and copies of letters written by the South African end exist too. The size and composition of contents enable migrant letters to be explored within the greater entirety of the family’s letter-writing, conceived as a scriptural economy with characteristic writing practices. This is examined by looking in detail at the writing practices of a range of letter-writers and their correspondences. Important differences concerning how absences, identities and relationships and locations are inscribed in the context of South Africa are explored and traced to features of its settler colonial mode of production.

Keywords:

• Family
• household
• migrant letters
• settler colonialism
• scriptural economy
• South Africa

1. Introduction: the migrant letter in perspective

It is on one level self-evident what a migrant letter is: a letter from someone who has removed ‘abroad’ to a person remaining ‘at home’, written in a context of permanent absence, with contents characterized by looking back to shared bonds while valorizing the new circumstances, through this creating a ‘third space’ of structures supporting letter-exchanges, such letters being more often written by men than women because of literacy differentials. These ideas have been explored in insightful contributions theorizing migrant letter-writing and its role in the migrant experience (Baldasser & Gabaccia, 2010a, 2010b; Cancian, 2010; Chilton, 2007; Elliott, Gerber, & Sinke, 2006; Fitzpatrick, 1994; Fraser, 2000; Gabaccia, 2000; Gerber, 1997, 2000, 2005, 2006; Markelis, 2006; Middleton, 2010; Richards, 2004, 2006; Vargas, 2006). Relatedly, it has been proposed that these features add up to migrant letters being a separate genre, most influentially by Gerber (2006); see also Elliott et al. (2006). However, questions arise about the general applicability of these ideas, based largely on North American/northern European data, for there are different migratory origins and points of arrival and settlement and most migrants will have produced many different letters, some to people ‘at home’, others to connections in the new context. These matters are explored here from the perspective of settler colonial letter-writing in South Africa.

The Forbes brothers were 1850 Byrne migrants to Natal and later lived in the Transvaal. The Forbes collection contains around 15,000 documents written between 1850 and 1922.¹ Letters are a major component, with diaries, accounts, tallies, inventories, ledgers and other papers also present, written by the Forbes family, their kin, friends, neighbors, business associates and officials. The majority of those extant were written and exchanged within South Africa, although significant numbers are from family members who remained in Scotland or removed elsewhere, and there are many drafts and copies of letters written by the South African end as well.²

The size and varied composition of collection contents provide the breadth and depth necessary for examining in a methodologically robust way how migrant letters shape up when located within the greater entirety of a family’s letter-writing, explored later as a scriptural economy. Doing so enables definitional claims about the migrant letter to be productively considered from a perspective different from the North American and southern European one that has dominated discussion to date. Work on the Forbes collection is part of the Whites Writing Whiteness project (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk), concerned with letter-writing in South Africa by white settler colonists from the 1770s to the 1970s.³ Ideas about the migrant letter as a distinct genre are now discussed in more detail, to draw from these some points of comparison in considering what a Forbes and South African settler colonial perspective might add to understanding migrant letter-writing more generally.

The first feature seen to define migrant letter-writing is that it bridges the ontological gap between the migrant in the new settlement, and family connections in the country of origin, through the affirmation received in response to their communications (Gerber, 2006, pp. 2–5, 13–21, 92–94). This is seen to involve interrelated kinds of writing, which are regulative (organizing and maintaining relationships), expressive (representing experience and expressing emotions) and descriptive (writing about quotidian events and routines) in character (Gerber, 2006, pp. 101–131), with emotion and affect viewed as charged aspects of many migrant letter exchanges (Cancian, 2010, pp. 6–7; Cancian & Gabaccia, 2014). However, although such things take particular shape in migrant letter-writing, they are not unique to it, being characteristic of the epistolary genre generally (Decker, 1998; Jolly & Stanley, 2005; Stanley, 2004, 2011, 2012). Letter-writing as a communicative genre is premised on absence and distance between a writer and their addressees; and this is so even if (as with leaving notes for people) the separation is temporary and the distance small. All correspondences over time persist because of continuing bonds. Also, the gap that letter-writing bridges can be (semi-) permanent and involve absence and great distance in more circumstances than migration. The propelling absence, for example, might be a migrant one but with the people concerned ‘repeat returning’ to the erstwhile homeland (Gabaccia, 2000; Harper, 2005). And regarding South African letters, it could also include (semi-) permanent absences and great distances but with the people concerned living in the same country, and shorter separations between people living on neighboring but still distant farms who rarely saw each other.⁴ Looking back at the shared past, however, is found only rarely in these letters. They are rather descriptive and communicative, inscribing everyday activities, exchanging information, goods and services, and expediting shared activities of different kinds including mutual business matters, and this is as much so for the ‘migrant’ exchanges as the internal South African ones.

The second feature seen as definitional of the migrant letter is the connection between letter-writing and identity-making, with the person at the migrant end viewed as looking back to use the shared past, and forward to promote the new self (Baldassar & Gabaccia, 2010b ; Elliott et al., 2006; Gerber, 2006, pp. 1–32). Letter-writing here is seen more as a means to identity construction, less as having focused communicative purposes (Gerber, 2006, p. 57). But again, while raising interesting ideas, it is letter-writing generally, not migrant letters especially, that helps maintain networks of communication with identity-making a part of this. This is pertinent regarding war and mass separations (Lyons, 2013) and imprisonment (Maybin, 2006), but occurs too in the most ordinary of letter-writing (Barton & Hall, 1999a, 1999b; Lyons, 2007; Whyman, 2009). However, as discussion later details, in the South African settler context, identity matters in letter-writing take a different form, being characterized by exteriority around sharing everyday detail and joint activities, rather than overt self-fashioning or affect,⁵ something also present in letters by other migrant groups where periods of absence and presence alternated and attention was given to practical concerns in the family economy.

The third feature seen to define the migrant letter is the growth of interpersonal and organizational structures around letter-writing and exchanging, drawing on transnationalist thinking about ‘third space’ (Bhabha, 1990; Davis, 2010; Ikas & Wagener, 2008; Soja, 1996; Vertovec, 2009; and regarding letters, Elliott et al., 2006, p. 12; Gerber, 2006, pp. 92–94; Jones, 2006, p. 190). In relation to letters, this has been seen as ‘a unique social space’ (Elliott et al., 2006, p. 12), with recent electronic variants such as text and social media seen to have similar features (Haggis & Holmes, 2011).⁶ However, migration sociology’s emphasis on epistolary and other communications being shaped by local and emergent practices is more helpful in thinking about the coexisting although geographically separate epistolary spaces of letter-writing, for transnationalism covers diasporas experienced very differently by disparate groups and migrations to very different circumstances (Gabaccia, 2000, pp. 81–105; How, 2003).⁷ Correspondences are consequently better seen as parallel moments of writing, sending, reading and replying rooted in the material circumstances of both contexts and taking shape around mutual concerns (DeHaan, 2010; Stanley, 2004, 2013b). These heterotopic aspects of epistolary spaces give rise to a shared mode of engagement that distinguishes each correspondence from others, and not surprisingly, the specifics of particular migrations also mark this (Altman, 1982; Decker, 1998; Foucault, 1967; How, 2003).

It may be concluded here that while conceptualizing the migrant letter as a distinct genre has reinvigorated thinking about migrant letter-writing, it has also obscured features shared with letter-writing generally. Wider developments in epistolary scholarship have made little impact in the migrant letters context, although there are some points of crossover, particularly the work of Altman (1982) and Decker (1998). This is to be expected in a still-evolving area of work, and there are now signs, including the existence of this special issue, of more detailed engagements across the boundaries of migration studies, the migrant letter literature, and wider epistolary scholarship.⁸ However, the definitional approach to ‘the’ migrant letter remains problematic, and so the question arises, should these ideas be abandoned? There are two reasons why their development would be more helpful.

First, even if the characteristics noted are not definitional, nonetheless they do characterize some migrant letters, primarily those written in the North Americas. These were produced by labor migrants crossing national boundaries and deep cultural divides, and whose mobility challenged notions of national belonging and accompanying cultural mores and practices. However, as the following discussion shows, the Northern European settler colonists migrating to southern Africa did it differently. And while the letters discussed later are no more representative than those of labor migrants to the Americas, they are letters by people of different material and ideational circumstances – of the ‘middling sort’ (Hunt, 1996), who migrated for different reasons – entrepreneurial opportunities, to a very different migratory context – the settler colonies of South Africa. Secondly, what follows is that, if different kinds of migrants and contexts produced different kinds of letter-writing, it is important to detail what these differences are. In this, drawing points from the migrant letters literature – succinctly summarized from the above discussion as absences, identities, relationships, and parallel locations – is helpful in making such comparisons.

Many settler colonists in South Africa amassed large family collections now part of its national archives system, notably those of English-speaking and particularly Scottish backgrounds.⁹ The Forbes were Scots from the Perth and Pitlochry area. This collection contains some 15,000 documents written from 1850 and emigration by some family members to Natal and subsequently Transvaal, through to 1922.¹⁰ There are over 4000 letters, with contents also including notes and memos, lists, ledgers and inventories, accounts, diaries, wills and other business and official communications (Stanley, 2015b, 2015d). Family relationships, household, farm, wider economic life, kin relations and entrepreneurial activities were overlaid, encompassing both immediate family and kin, and a range of friends and associates in Natal and the Cape as well as the Transvaal,¹¹ and internationally, from Scotland and England.¹²

As a result, the range of economic activities the Forbes engaged in cannot be distinguished from their personal and familial relationships, and are both deeply rooted in life in South Africa and encompass equally important connections with people elsewhere. The Forbes were British in origin and also identified as Scots and Transvaalers and had complex allegiances, distinguishing themselves from the way of life of their Boer (later Afrikaner), German and other settler neighbors, while identifying with many aims of the Transvaal’s political elite, except with regard to territorial expansion, when British loyalties came into play. Their ideas about belonging were constituted around these multiple identities and allegiances, with their letter-writing both articulating and traversing such distinctions.

Another result is a set of things that are ‘the migrant letters’ cannot be picked out of these exchanges. Certainly many letters were written and sent, and many were received and read, in circumstances of migration and the new context of settlement. But at the same time, across the generations the Forbes were busy active people, time did not stand still, and they not only established roots but became closely embedded in the developing settler colonial economy in economic ventures that drew in many other people, including locally, in Scotland, elsewhere in South Africa, and Australia. Consequently, ‘the migrant letters’ thought of in the narrow sense are just letters among the large number of Forbes letter-writings overall and are fully part of the economic and related activities the Forbes were engaged in, not separate from this.

2. Settler colonists: family, household, economy, letter-writing

British migrants to Africa were relatively few compared with numbers migrating to, in ascending order, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the USA, and also unequally distributed in the different African colonies.¹³ Early emigration to South Africa, as distinct from the individualized arrivals of traders and missionaries, took place via emigration companies.¹⁴ Alexander and David Forbes were Byrne ‘Emigration and Colonization Company’ migrants to Natal in 1850, with younger brother James following in 1859.¹⁵ The interrelated Purcocks, Dingley and McCorkindale families were also Byrne migrants, with Kate Purcocks marrying David Forbes in early 1860.

After arrival in Natal, David Forbes combined hunting and trading with Alexander, and farming cash crops (arrowroot and indigo) for an inter/national market on his own behalf. On one trading trip to south-eastern Transvaal,¹⁶ he was impressed by its rich farmlands and was the source of Alexander McCorkindale negotiating with the Transvaal’s President Pretorius to purchase 200 large parcels of land, from which local black peoples had been disappropriated. These were the basis of how McCorkindale attracted people to his Glasgow and South Africa Company migration scheme. While it drew relatively few people direct from Britain, a large number of originally Natal migrants became involved, amounting to a large ox-wagon trek from Natal to McCorkindale’s farms. A large number were Scots and the farms were in an area called New Scotland (later New Amsterdam) in the Ermelo district.¹⁷ Soon after the move, with his younger brother James, David combined agri-farming on a large scale with prospecting and mining, first for diamonds at New Rush (Kimberley), later for gold and coal in the Barberton and Swaziland areas.

David Forbes purchased four farms direct from the Transvaal government, then acquired others. Some, centering on the largest, Athole, were farmed by the Forbes; others were leased to tenants, including the Purcocks and Dingleys. After David’s death in 1905, two were farmed by Forbes daughters Kitty Rawson and Madge Dunn (later Tonkin). Athole was then run primarily by Kate and their eldest daughter Nellie Forbes until Kate’s death in 1922, although with holdings of land and stock retained by Forbes sons David (Dave) junior and his younger brother James (Jim) junior.¹⁸

The Forbes and other white migrants to South Africa were settler colonists (Elkins & Pedersen, 2005; Veracini, 2010, 2011, 2015; Wolfe, 1999).¹⁹ Over time, these people shifted from being colonists to being the dominant group, in a process which turned indigenous peoples into internal migrants and squatters, and the settlers into land-owners, with key features of settler colonialism not only occupation and possession but also displacement and removal (Bose, 2014; Cavanagh, 2013). The South African case is a variant, with white occupation and its desire for (cheap, black) labor, coexisting with the desire for its displacement (but somewhere conveniently nearby). This characterized the large farming estates of the Transvaal (Krikler, 1993), including those in New Scotland, and produced complicated arrangements for both the availability and removal of black labor.²⁰

The settler colonial economies, originally dependent on a metropole, started entering the world market from the 1780s. In South Africa’s case, arrowroot, indigo, wool, with lesser successes in coffee and cotton production, were involved from the 1850s on, followed in the 1860s by diamonds and the 1880s by gold, coal and other minerals, and after 1900 by refrigerated and frozen meat, fruit and wine (Denoon, 1983; Feinstein, 2005; Lloyd, Metzer, & Sutch, 2012). The Forbes had stakes in many, starting in the 1860s with arrowroot and indigo, followed by sheep farming for wool, then adding stock-rearing for meat, horse-breeding, coupled with mining ventures in diamonds, gold, and later coal, and dealing in stocks and shares. Farming households of the Transvaal like the Forbes developed around strong ties with others connected by kinship, and also expanded into wider spheres of economic activity as the settler economy grew, substantiating South Africa’s settler way of life premised on black labor. The close interrelationship between family, household, kinship, land and production persisted as the settler colonists diversified from their agricultural base and their new economic activities encompassed kin in the original homeland and to an extent other colonies too.²¹ These are notable features of the economic lives of the Forbes.

The Forbes came from the ‘middling sort’. Adam Forbes and his brother-in-law, Peter Sim, owned a timber-yard in Pitlochry near Perth that exported timber. In 1840, the business failed when their uninsured ship sank. In 1842, Adam’s wife Ellen then Adam himself died. Their daughters became upper servants, Lizzie a housekeeper, and Jemima a lady’s maid, while their sons Alexander and David did laboring jobs, including in Ireland and Liverpool, then in 1850 became Byrne migrants to Natal, with James following later.²² The Forbes siblings had little formal education. Lizzie and David became proficient letter-writers, while James’s skills improved over time and Jemima’s remained elementary.²³ Letters from family and wider kin display varying proficiency in the formalities of letter-writing, but have considerable communicative competence, with the high level of Scottish basic literacy a factor here. Alongside this, there is the monumental fact that the Forbes collection contains over 4000 letters and many other documents. There is little sign the Forbes were readers on any scale, but by any measure they were voluminous writers.

The contents of other South African collections too indicate there was a high degree of literacy among English-speakers and particularly the Scottish migrants there.²⁴ Many had migrated for opportunity reasons rather than in extremis circumstances. In a large country with great distances between centers of population, white settlers farming outside its towns and villages lived fairly isolated lives: even neighboring farmhouses could be miles apart, for poor-quality land meant large farms. A white household with aspirations could soon find its members living hundreds of miles apart, as children went to school, daughters married out, sons left to establish themselves elsewhere, which resulted in even unpracticed writers frequently putting pen to paper.²⁵

The propelling factor in letter-writing is absence and for migrant letters has been seen as permanent absence (Fitzpatrick, 1994; Gerber, 2006; Elliott, Gerber, & Sinke, 2006), although actually absence can be of varied kinds and involve different durations and distances. Regarding the Forbes letters, it typically took the form of interrupted presence rather than permanent separation (Stanley, 2015a, pp. 242–244). By ‘interrupted presence’ is meant that these letter-exchanges concerned shared activities and were conducted with the premise the relationship would resume face-to-face eventually.²⁶ They concern a flow of activities and are purposive in expediting activity and forwarding plans. For the Forbes, it was not permanent absence and ‘back then’, but interrupted presence and the activities of ‘now’, that were central; and this was as much so regarding the letters between correspondents on different continents as those on adjacent farms or temporarily absent.

A particular impetus to Forbes letter-writing came from the economic activities engaged in. Their farming household needed to obtain goods and services from urban centers, maintain contacts with banks and insurance companies, keep records and accounts. Also, the Forbes and their relatives the Purcocks, McCorkindales and Dingleys set up trading stores, sold livestock and arable produce in a market, and bought to lease both farming and urban property. The Forbes themselves diversified into large-scale agri-business, then diamond, gold and coal mining, through which companies were established, stocks and shares bought and sold, with all these undertakings requiring both extensive record-keeping and a continuing flow of correspondence. The Forbes letters are overwhelmingly concerned with these interconnected economic activities, rather than personal life or matters of affect.

There were close links between the household as a focus for production and these wider economic involvements. Athole’s homefarm under the aegis of Kate Forbes produced milk, butter and cheese and grew cash crops such as mealies (corn) for a local market; also the related agri-business enterprises engaged in on the homefarm by the six Forbes children as they came to adulthood included sheep and stock farming, horse-breeding, droving and carting.²⁷ In addition, wider family economic life encompassed the labor and monetary contributions of Alexander senior and James senior, also distance contributions to and by Lizzie Forbes, Jemima Forbes, and after Jemima’s marriage her husband David Condie and their children.²⁸ ‘The Forbes’, then, was variously a family, a larger household, kin relations, other linked households, and a network of people with shared economic activities.²⁹ Family, household, kinship and friendship, land and other property, paid occupations, share-holding and share-dealing, and other means of producing income, intersected over the generations and stretched from Natal to the Transvaal, Cape, Swaziland, London, Scotland, and at points Australia too.

While the economic unit underpinning this centered on the Forbes household and Athole Estate, it had generous and permeable boundaries, involving flows of activity, goods, services, money and many movements of people.³⁰ Because of their shared business ventures, the Forbes and correspondents were necessarily involved in writing and receiving large numbers of letters which rehearsed, expedited and communicated these activities while also keeping in touch and facilitating ongoing relationships. As the discussion following shows, levering apart what was a business/economic letter and what was a private/personal one, and what was a migrant letter and what was not, would miss the point, for the letters concerned made no such distinctions.

3. The Forbes scriptural economy and its writing practices

The Forbes collection consists of a large multi-generational flow of letters over more than 70 years, involving some hundreds of addressees and recipients, with a core group of around 20 letter-writers.³¹ It is composed of letters and many other everyday ‘documents of life’ (Plummer, 2001; Stanley, 2013a). These are components in what Michel de Certeau (1984, pp. 131–164) has termed a ‘scriptural economy’. A scriptural economy is organized around epistolary exchanges – letters and correspondences – and related documents. The different forms of writing involved – letters, diaries, inventories, ledgers, etc. – have their own ways of positioning the reader, the writer, and what can appropriately be written in each. Also, Certeau sees each scriptural economy as developing customary practices, which intermesh with and reshape genre conventions, referring to this as an economy because involving flows of writings. These ideas are helpful in thinking about the Forbes letters (and those in other South African collections too).³²

The Forbes collection as a scriptural economy has a large size and wide temporal span and encompasses the Forbes’ many enthusiastic involvements in the settler economy. The people involved wrote, and wrote again.³³ The letters exchanged within South Africa are purposive communications, providing information, making requests and expediting ongoing activity, with the writer and addressee expecting to meet again in the (immediate or further off) future. The letters exchanged with people in the local Ermelo environs, and those in Scotland, are strikingly similar. With the latter, there is sometimes more relaying of news to keep the other person up to date, but these exchanges too are marked by their purposive character and shared activities of a ‘will you go to a shareholders meeting’ and ‘send me your local newspaper’ kind.

In the Forbes scriptural economy, the business involved was mainly literally business, with these letters characterized by exteriority (projects, activities) rather than interiority (affect, self-fashioning), purposiveness rather than reflection or retrospection, and communicative focus rather than matters of affect. It is unsurprising that writings such as ledgers, lists, tallies and accounts have these characteristics, but they also mark the many Forbes diaries, which are rarely concerned with anything personal and instead engage with everyday tasks regarding the Athole Estate, and also their letters.

Forbes family letter-writing began around absence: the Forbes sisters in Scotland, and their brothers in Natal. The person who provided the initial momentum was Lizzie Forbes, who ensured her continuing links with her brothers through letter-writing. Through this, a set of practices emerged that were taken up by all the siblings and influenced how the Forbes scriptural economy and its writing practices developed subsequently. The presumption of response is linked to the reciprocity aspect of letter-writing, for a letter’s direct address to a named person invites, more strongly implies, an expectation of response (Altman, 1982; Stanley, 2011, 2012). In the 1850s writing to her brothers, Lizzie’s letters are directed to one then another in turn, with contents passing on news that each brother had previously told her to the others.³⁴ At times she played them off against each other, commenting about who had not written and praising who had. Her letters also provided news about people they had known in Scotland, detailing these people’s present-time activities and writing that they had requested news from Alexander, David or James. Lizzie also involved her sister in these epistolary practices, chivvying Jemima to write regular detailed letters. What resulted was an interconnected set of exchanges concerned with the unfolding ‘now’ rather than the past, forming a network involving a number of people, not just one person waiting for letters to be sent to them.

While Jemima at points contemplated joining her brothers in Natal,³⁵ Lizzie never did, although this was not the finality of permanent absence but by her viewed in interrupted presence terms. Thus in the 1860s she frequently wrote about anticipated reunion with one or more brothers, envisaged as lengthy but temporary Scottish visits following them achieving economic success.³⁶ The letter-exchanges between the siblings consequently do not look back, but are immersed in a shared ‘now’ of expanding business concerns. Also Lizzie and Jemima frequently purchased and arranged the shipping of goods to Athole, ranging from clothing to seeds and agricultural tools. Business could concern family matters more directly too, with ‘the Forbes’ as a collectivity taking responsibility in the 1880s for the Condie children after their parents died, a family trust being established to look after them. Lizzie Forbes oversaw their education and looked after her ailing namesake, Lizzie Condie, until the latter’s early death; and she was paid a quarterly sum by the Athole Estate to support her when family responsibilities took precedence over her employment.

Another important characteristic concerns the everyday quotidian of people, places and activities. Lizzie’s early letters, for instance, express interest in the minutiae of South African life, asking David to relate what clothes he wore, what lions and other animals looked like, where he lived and so on.³⁷ After David married, Kate Forbes became the main person corresponding with Lizzie and Jemima in Scotland. Kate too was an inveterate letter-writer, maintaining a range of correspondences including with her sister on the next farm and relations in England and Australia. Her letters prototypically detail the quotidian, as do Lizzie’s to her. They shared this focus from their first exchanges in 1860.³⁸ Their exchanges took parallel form, engaging with what the other had written, describing their own activities, considering shared business and other interests, frequently also sending each other newspapers and magazines. An engagement with the everyday also marks letters between Lizzie, David and James, and later Lizzie’s Forbes nieces Nellie, Kitty and Madge too.³⁹ However, this was not a ‘Lizzie thing’, for it also characterizes the letters Kate and David sent each other when apart because of his lengthy trading and prospecting trips, the many letters Dave junior wrote to his parents during periods of duty as manager of a coal mine in Swaziland, and the letters Sarah Purcocks (later Straker) wrote to her sister Kate, discussed later.

Forbes letter-writing as a scriptural economy, then, has shared writing practices that can be traced across different correspondences and over a lengthy time period. It involves a network of interrelated epistolary exchanges marked by a focus on ‘now’ and shared practical activities, the inscription of activity and the quotidian, a surface lack of affect and self-fashioning, and a focused concern with exteriority and practical matters. As later discussion shows, the different letter-writers developed variations and specific content, but within these broad commonalities. This was perhaps because Forbes letters are business-like, in two senses. They are purposeful communications, with matters of affect and relationships typically a matter for sign off only, and a focus on activities and exteriority. They are also concerned with actual business, with this being what is of most interest and concern to the letter-writers involved, something returned to in the concluding discussion.

These observations are now explored in substantive depth. Given the large numbers of letters involved, selections have had to be made and points of focus decided and a methodological strategy for analyzing the workings of the Forbes scriptural economy adopted. Its first aspect has been to explore flows of letters in cross-sections of one randomly selected year per decade of the collection’s existence, some 2650 letters, and how they fit together at these temporal junctures (discussed in Stanley, 2015d).⁴⁰ Its second aspect, detailed here, focuses on the writing practices of different Forbes letter-writers and their correspondences, involving some 1380 letters. These have been purposively selected as reflecting varied circumstances of absence and distance, with two other themes drawn from the migrant letter literature, concerning how identities and relationships are inscribed, and how the parallel ‘here’ and ‘now’ of locations are handled, also discussed. Transcribed extracts from all letters quoted from are provided at http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/.

4. The scriptural economy at work

The methodological strategy of examining cross-sections of letters points up the diversity of flows of Forbes letters over time, who was involved in these exchanges, some of the broad changes occurring over this more than 70-year period, and also and importantly how all the letters fit together within this (Stanley, 2015d). In addition, broader aspects bearing on debates concerning the migrant letter are also raised. The ebbs and flows that mark the broad shape of the scriptural economy, for instance, are shown to be located around complex sets of factors, including external events (migrations, wars), life-course and generational matters (relocations, marriage, births, deaths), technological and communication developments, and attrition of different kinds. Within these flows, it also shows that picking out ‘types’ of letters is analytically problematic, for the letters, all the letters, are closely embedded within the unfolding fabric of activities, relationships and networks involved and there are no separate concerns or ways of writing that can be pulled out and dubbed as ‘the migrant letters’.

A cross-sectional analysis necessarily focuses on flows, decennial patterns and broad changes, and what working at this scale does not show is how the writing practices of particular letter-writers developed over time or were modulated regarding the different people they corresponded with.⁴¹ Thus the focus in what follows is particular letter-writers and their writing practices, and within this how absences, identity and relationships, and ‘here’ and ‘now’ matters of distance and location, are inscribed. A number of Forbes letter-writers and correspondences have been purposively selected to reflect different kinds and degrees of absence, separation and distance. These range from migratory absence and great distance (Lizzie Forbes), through different kinds of mobilities, including internationally (James Forbes), nationally and internationally (Mary McCorkindale, and in a different way Dave Forbes junior), and nationally (David Forbes), to short separations at local distance (Sarah Purcocks Straker).

4.1. I was right glad to hear: Lizzie Forbes

There are around 370 extant letters by Lizzie Forbes in Scotland, plus drafts of letters sent by her sister-in-law Kate Forbes, additional numbers by Lizzie to other family members in South Africa, also a handful to her from other people she sent on as enclosures.⁴² The letters between Lizzie and Kate might be seen as ‘classic’ migrant ones, except that Kate, who migrated to Natal from England as a child, was later a ‘temporary migrant’ (six months’ sojourn or more) to Britain on three occasions during which letters between her and Lizzie continued with largely unchanged features. Kate’s first return was in 1885, with David taking their daughters Nellie, Kitty and Madge to Scotland; during this period, Kate and David were temporary migrants in Britain for over a year and their daughters for nearly four. Kate’s second visit, with similar complications for how to perceive letters to Lizzie at the time, was in 1889/1890, accompanying David on a business trip. The third was a farewell visit following David’s 1905 death. However, notably there is little significant difference in these letters as compared with those written when Kate was in South Africa and on a different continent; certainly specific local references in their content differ, but otherwise they have similar concerns and structural features.

Lizzie Forbes’ letters provide rich detail about her working life, family and kin matters in Scotland, her local church and current affairs, including the American Civil War, bank crashes and other public matters.⁴³ A letter of 2 August 1862 to Kate is prototypical.⁴⁴ It provides a strong indication of ‘here’, with Lizzie and Jemima in Edinburgh anxiously awaiting a letter, then details Lizzie’s conversation with a family connection, Mrs McTear. It engages with ‘there’, regarding a trading trip by her brothers, Cape news, the migration of a cousin (another Alexander known as Alick Forbes) to Natal, and reading in a newspaper Kate had sent about a photographic studio opening in Durban. Family networks are an important aspect, with Alexander, James, Jemima, the Natal Alick Forbes, the McTears, and Kate’s children Nellie and Ackie (Alexander junior), all mentioned. ‘I’ is present in relation to other people, while ‘you’ is a strong presence regarding ‘your letter’, ‘none of you writing’ and so on. The letter conveys Lizzie’s emphasis on the practical aspects of family bonds, with the undemonstrative way this is expressed and the rather formal signing off to her letters a Forbes convention which is not to be read just on the surface, for the correspondence and the relationship were lifelong and clearly important on both sides.⁴⁵

Two of Lizzie’s letters to Kate, one undated although from 1890,⁴⁶ the other dated 1 September 1899, provide interesting departures from the typical.⁴⁷ Her long 1890 letter is mainly about James,⁴⁸ who first returned to Britain in 1888 and left finally for South Africa in 1893.⁴⁹ His health problems (an ulcer or the onset of stomach cancer) are mentioned, but the letter is mainly concerned with what Lizzie saw as James’s incomprehensible behavior regarding business matters. There is much detail on the Forbes Henderson mining company James and David had started, its directors and share prices. Indeed, the letter is actually all about business, with James’s conduct a topic because of possible economic consequences for his family. While David was the person with most direct interest in this, the letter is to Kate, who had independent investments in the company.

Lizzie’s letter of 1 September 1899 is particularly concerned with her niece Lizzie Condie’s death the previous Saturday.⁵⁰ This is written about largely in terms of practicalities – interrupted prayers, Lizzie Forbes telling Susie and Nellie Condie about their sister’s death, them fetching her possessions, arranging the funeral. There is little about emotional aspects, apart from ‘poor Nellie’ being told about her sister’s death and having to work her nursing shift with ‘breaking heart’. And while Lizzie does comment about being ‘torn with anxiety’, this is connected with the start of the South African War, not personal matters.⁵¹

Lizzie’s letters generally have such ‘here and there’ and ‘I and you’ aspects and emphasize everyday detail and business matters. However, her letters to different people are modulated, shown by comparing ones to her middle Forbes niece Kitty on 9 September 1904, and the eldest, Nellie, on 14 July 1904. Her letter to Kitty, then 29, is friendly and describes people and activities. That to Nellie, then 44 and a friend as well as niece, is fuller and more concerned with ‘here and I’ aspects because relating information about Edinburgh people Nellie had known while living there as a young adult.⁵²

Clearly the letters between Lizzie and Kate Forbes were predicated upon absence, which lasted for lengthy time-periods and was both at great distance and a shorter one when Kate too was in Britain. But putting on one side details of specific content, the ‘migrant’ and ‘non-migrant’ letters here share structural features such as few overt signs of interiority and identity-making, a focus on business interests connected with the family economy, shared detail on the everyday quotidian, and regular exchanges which included goods and services as well as letters. And while Lizzie’s letters were modulated for different correspondents, this occurred within this broad framework.

4.2. Send also the dynamite: James Forbes senior

There are more than 100 letters by and to James Forbes senior, with his main correspondents his brother David and nephew Dave junior, with many partially dated or undated. Typically they have a brevity and focus which bring them closer to notes than letters. The first is dated September 1857 and the last February 1895.⁵³ James migrated to Natal in 1859, later spending two ‘temporary migrant’ periods in Scotland and London in the late 1880s and early 1890s, returning to South Africa in 1893. His letters encompass circumstances of being a migrant, a temporary migrant, and interrupted presence during frequent periods when he lived in different places while on trading and prospecting trips although with Athole as his base.

From being a young man on, James was seen as deficient about keeping in touch, with many laments about this in his sisters’ letters. He was not ‘a letter-writer’ in the strong sense, unlike David and Lizzie, also Kate and later Dave junior, with his letters usually short and activity-focused, and when longer focusing on prospecting, mining and business matters. A letter of 5 December 1882 to David at Athole while James was away prospecting, for example, is typical in its immersion in activities (‘I heard..., got..., started a cradle..., load up your things..., sent the cart...’), with ‘here’ entirely implicit, for it remains unclear where James was except that he would ‘start working again tomorrow’.⁵⁴ ‘I’ is certainly present as agentic, but there is nothing about self or other people beyond activities engaged in.

James’s letter of 14 June 1888 was written in London, to David in South Africa.⁵⁵ ‘Here’ is again implicit, embedded in reporting conversations with Farrant and Faviell, rival members of a consortium that had bought out the Forbes Henderson Company. The letter’s specific concern is share prices and cartage costs, both significant for the Forbes family business. Activity and the agentic ‘I’ who expedites action appear throughout. There is little of ‘you’ present – David is merely recipient of such activities, apart from being invoked as a source of authority to co-director and rival Farrant. The same emphasis on activities connected with business interests occurs across James’s letters, regardless of where they were written. A letter of 29 December 1890 to Dave junior, written at great distance while James was in Edinburgh, and that of 12 January 1895 written from Darkton just 50 miles away, for instance, have similar focus and emphasis on activities.⁵⁶

The few extant letters by James to his Forbes nieces provide interesting comparison. A 26 February 1892 letter to Nellie Forbes, written while he was in London, is similar to those discussed above in its immersion in activities around family business interests.⁵⁷ However, it differs in its expression of affection and family bonds. Usually it is only in signing off that James acknowledges (and then just in passing) such bonds. In contrast, this letter provides information about Edinburgh people Nellie knew and shows they were James’s friends too; and expresses affection for Nellie and her sister Madge, wishing for their company and letters from them. In this respect, Kate Forbes’ letter to James of 26 February 1896, sent when he became ill, is relevant.⁵⁸ It is affable, writing that ‘we are all very sorry’ and he should ‘come home’ (that is, to Athole), but also restrained and measured, offering practical help with little emotional expression.

Apart from the few to Nellie and Maggie, James’s letters are often more like notes. They lack full dates and addresses, have considerable brevity, and are focused on expediting activity. It is activity and purposiveness that shape James’s letters across the different kinds and extents of distance and absence they were written in, characterizing things he wrote to people just a few miles away as much as those that traversed continents. Most of his extant letters are to David and Dave junior, part of their shared involvements in prospecting and mining; and while Kate Forbes, like them, was also a keeper of letters, there are few from James to her and vice versa. This and the affectionately demonstrative letters to his two nieces indicate less a gendered dimension, more that his letter-writing was marked by closeness (of interests, of affection) to others or its lack.

4.3. Your affecte aunt: Mary McCorkindale

Mary McCorkindale (1807–1879), a Dingley by birth, was maternal aunt to Kate Forbes and Kate’s sister Sarah Purcocks, whose mother was her younger sister Anne Purcocks. Married to the entrepreneur and founder of the ‘Glasgow and South African Emigration Company’, Alexander McCorkindale, Mary was educated while Anne was functionally literate only; Mary also lived a geographically and socially more mobile life than most of her family. Over 100 of her letters are in the collection, predominantly to Kate and, like those of James and Dave junior, they straddle varied circumstances of absence, interrupted presence and distance.⁵⁹ Mary and Alexander McCorkindale lived initially at Sinquassi Manor in Natal, about 10 miles from Doorn Kloof farm, where David and Kate moved after marrying, although only a short ‘running over’ distance from the Purcocks in Sinquassi.⁶⁰ When the Forbes and other Natalians moved to New Scotland, the McCorkindales moved near them, to Lake Banagher. However, following Alexander’s sudden death from malaria in 1871, Mary lived at further remove, in Pretoria, then Britain, then Natal, then Pretoria again. During her sojourn in Britain, Mary McCorkindale’s letters were ‘temporary migrant’ ones, and she spent long periods of varying distances from her family although still in South Africa. In all, her letters have similar concerns and emphases, with those to Kate, the family member she was closest to, helpful in exploring this.

The earliest extant letter from Mary McCorkindale to Kate Forbes is dated 14 March 1860, a few weeks after Kate’s marriage, with the last in 1879 just before Mary died.⁶¹ The purpose of the first is firm advice about how Kate should comport herself. Kate is told about proper conduct regarding her handwriting, not washing things when servants could do this, and keeping up her appearance, while there is little sense of ‘here’ or ‘there’ apart from brief news about family connections.⁶² She wrote a similarly instructional letter later to Kate’s sister Sarah Purcocks, dated 25 October 1869 and sent from London, where the McCorkindales had gone on business.⁶³ It emphasizes that Sarah, then 19, was not to think of marriage until her aunt’s return. The context was Anne Purcocks’ uncertain health and that her daughters looked to their aunt for guidance.⁶⁴ Both letters, the first from a seven-mile distance and the other from several thousand miles away, should be seen in quasi-parental terms. Directly instructional letters ceased when her nieces reached maturity, although focused activity remains evident across Mary McCorkindale’s letters. For instance, a letter to Kate on 24 December 1868 concerns how to handle a ‘difficult’ servant and business matters regarding her husband Alexander’s land schemes.⁶⁵ Letters to Kate on 8 August 1875 and David on 10 August 1877, both from Pretoria, focus on legal issues occurring in the wake of Alexander McCorkindale’s death and the Transvaal Raad (parliament) enforcing an interdict until these were decided.⁶⁶

Mary McCorkindale’s letters are primarily concerned with activities and business matters, with just a handful about everyday matters.⁶⁷ In this they are more like, for instance, the letters of James than those of Lizzie Forbes or Kate Forbes. While kindly, her letters are undemonstrative, with statements of affection and relational bonds confined to signing off, again similar to James Forbes. They were written in varied circumstances of interrupted presence and absence. This is however difficult to discern apart from addresses at their head, for focused purposiveness is their main characteristic, with absence and distance rarely mentioned. They are also marked by differences in age and authority between her and her correspondents, with this coming across clearly in letters to David Forbes as well as nieces Kate and Sarah and sister Anne Purcocks. There is also a gender dimension here, with her letters’ purposive contents often enlisting male members of her extended family for practical help, for example marshaling David, Joshua Straker (married to Sarah), and nephews Vincent Purcocks and James Dingley in reclaiming farms when the McCorkindale case was settled in 1877.

4.4. Your letter with enclosed letters: Dave Forbes junior

There are over 380 letters by David Forbes junior (1863–1941), known as Dave. From a young age, he was an inveterate writer of letters, notes, lists, inventories and later a memoir (Forbes, 1938). From early adulthood, he worked for lengthy periods in a different country, Swaziland, although regularly returning on furlough to Athole, 60 miles away. His letters were written in South Africa or just over its borders in changing circumstances of absence and interrupted presence, although differently configured ones from those experienced by Mary McCorkindale and James Forbes. His first extant letter is dated 1874 and the last 1921.⁶⁸

Kate and David Forbes’ eldest son, Alexander Forbes junior (1862–1885, known as Alex), died of malaria during his parents’ 1885 absence in Britain. Dave junior and Jim junior remained in South Africa, supervised by Sarah Purcocks, with Dave becoming responsible under her aegis for the stock and carting components of the Forbes agri-businesses as well as for Jim junior. The Forbes’ three sons and three daughters had been given land in Athole’s environs, keeping horses and stock as well as growing crops on this, with Dave and Jim then branching out into carting and sheep droving at significant levels. By the time his parents spent a second sojourn in Britain in 1889/1890, Dave junior had become involved in mining, initially with the Forbes Henderson Company, later the Swazi coal mine.⁶⁹ From the early 1890s to 1916 he was its manager, also purchasing a nearby farm although maintaining close economic and other involvements with the Athole Estate and spending extended furloughs there.

Dave junior’s letters share the customary Forbes focus on activity and business, with ‘here and there’ implied through activities rather than explicitly invoked, and with affect and interiority largely absent. His letters of 25 June 1888 to his father at Athole, and of 19 September 1890 when David was in Britain, show the complications that arose regarding management of ‘the Forbes’ as an economic enterprise as the Forbes children came to maturity.⁷⁰ In particular these letters signal the changing terms of the relationship between the two Davids, with his father still largely in control, but challenges from Dave junior. Dave’s 25 June 1888 letter is a careful mixture of ‘we’ and ‘I’ inscribed with an implied instructional aspect. This is closely linked to his father as its addressee. It refers to a letter Dave was sent by David about Athole farming matters, writing that while business instructions received had not been carried out, he had found third parties to encourage his father to sell family shares in the Forbes Henderson Company. While Dave’s reasons were economically correct,⁷¹ the sense of a new guard straining to take over comes across, with this stronger in his 19 September 1890 letter.⁷² This too is a response to a letter from his father, and again Dave’s own agenda is pursued in pushing a point his father’s letter had made in passing, not to buy more shares in the mining company. Dave writes here in an instructional way about things his father should and should not do: he should not put more money into the reef, should put more stock on the farm, should make excuses to the Company’s Board, should get rid of the coal concession.

It is not possible to tell from content, however, that David was in South Africa when Dave junior’s 26 June 1888 letter was written, and on a different continent when that of 19 September 1890 was sent. His father is the object of the contents, although there is nothing that indicates where David was and what he might be doing. But that Dave junior wrote these letters while he was in different places is apparent, in the June 1888 one because concerning people and activities in Barberton, a mining area; and in the September 1890 one because the Swazi reef and its mine are mentioned. It is Dave junior’s activities concerning money, shares, the company, reef and farm stock, drilling and mining, that are the focus of both letters, as key strands of Forbes business ventures that Dave was wanting to shape. Two more letters of Dave’s are worth noting here.

The first is to his youngest sister Madge dated 22 July 1896, one of a number concerned with training her to manage property interests (Dave’s, also the Forbes’ generally), in drawing up leases, sending accounts, ensuring lettings were made and negotiating payments.⁷³ It is not instructional in tone, however, but matter-of-fact about Madge acting as Dave’s agent in these dealings, perhaps because no re-negotiation of their relationship was needed for him to exert authority, unlike with his father. The second is from Dave to his mother, dated 10 February 1912.⁷⁴ Their spheres of economic activity were fairly separate, with Kate as book-keeper and accountant, a very hands-on manager of the homefarm, and in control for her lifetime of the Athole Estate, although she had partially divided some farms between herself and her children following David’s death in November 1905, with considerable protections for her position of control.⁷⁵ For some years thereafter, letters between Dave and his mother convey no sense of change to Kate’s authority.⁷⁶ However, his 10 February 1912 letter is different.⁷⁷ Albeit with gestures towards tentativeness (‘with your approval’, ‘Jim also to get permission’), it announces a conclusion, implied as Jim’s initiative but patently coming from Dave himself. This was to reduce the Athole Estate to the homefarm, sell off Tolderia (which Jim farmed), money going to Kate and the sisters, and the brothers changing their focus to horse-breeding and stock-raising.

For more than 30 years, Dave junior cyclically split his time and economic activities between the mine and farm in Swaziland, and the Athole Estate. While absent from Athole, its life went on, activities were engaged in, decisions made, and a large number of workers managed by his mother and siblings. Dave was alternately distant, excepting his frequent letters, and present, a difficult balancing act. It is likely his instructional letters to David and Kate were a product, writing rather starkly things that would probably have been expressed differently face to face.

Dave junior’s letters are very activity-focused and absence is of an interrupted presence kind, with content routinely anticipating the face-to-face meeting about to occur.⁷⁸ Dave was to inherit the main part of Athole, and although the Estate was reorganized so all the siblings received portions of similar value, his letters are marked by his status as eldest son and Athole owner-to-be, as well as by worldly concerns that make them overtly gendered. One aspect has already been noted, him squaring up to his father about the direction of family business involvements. Another is implicit, that Dave was involved throughout his working life in the heavily masculine and racially hierarchical activities of prospecting and mining. This had ramifications for his management of relationships with others and how he wrote about them, particularly noticeable in routine use of pejorative racial terms in his letters (Stanley, 2015b).

4.5. Do all your business: David Forbes senior

David Forbes was a focal point for many letters, including from Lizzie, James senior, Dave junior, the Condie children and others, also for official letters in the collection.⁷⁹ He is not quite its major letter-writer in terms of numbers of letters extant, although if more of his letter-books had survived he certainly would have been.⁸⁰ The scale of his letter-writing is shown once the facts that some of his main correspondents, particularly siblings Lizzie and James, did not keep letters to them, and that he was ordinarily at home and did not regularly write to Kate, who did preserve letters, are taken into account.⁸¹ The first letter extant by David is dated 12 April 1860 and the last, 2 September 1903, with around 350 in total.⁸² A significant proportion of his ‘actual’ letters (as distinct from the many copies and drafts) were written to Kate while he was on trips away.⁸³ They were a recurrent feature because concerning important ventures in building up capital so as to finance other family economic activities.

Two letters from David to Kate of 16 December and 26 December 1866 were sent during the lengthy trek of some 30 ox-wagons and over 200 people travelling from Natal to begin the New Scotland farms that McCorkindale had purchased then sold on or leased.⁸⁴ Although the letters were addressed by place (e.g. Ladysmith), these were just brief halting-points to re-provision and rest. David was away for over six months, during which he was neither at home nor abroad nor a temporary migrant. Letter-collection and delivery were very uncertain because of the remoteness of places passed through, and there was clearly distance and separation, while the absence his letters inscribe is of an interrupted presence and future-oriented kind.

In both letters, ‘here’ is primarily the ox-wagon David traveled in with his brother-in-law, with ‘we’ being both them and the convoy. Related comments include whether the route being traveled was good or bad, events en route, and activities at halting-places. In his 16 December letter, this concerns David hearing a bishop preach⁸⁵ and visiting his brother Alexander’s grave;⁸⁶ and more schematically in the 26 December one, waiting for other wagons, having a ‘very poor X mass’, and worrying because letters for him had not arrived. ‘There’ inheres in Kate and their children and David’s anxieties about Kate’s pregnancy and childbirth. It also arises around Kate acting legally in selling land formerly belonging to Alexander (who had died the previous year).

Matters of affect are raised by both letters, and also one David received from Kate dated 21 December 1866.⁸⁷ All three have an affectionate sign off and express loving concern for each other. Thus on 16 December, David wrote, ‘I am always thinking of you’ and ‘about little Georgie … you must not fret too much’.⁸⁸ In her letter of 21 December Kate wrote, ‘You must be careful of yourself’ and ‘I am so dreadfully nervous about you’. And on 26 December, David wrote, ‘the post is in and no letter for me my dear Kitty I hope there is nothing the matter with you’. Such comments appear before or after detail on more mundane matters and are contained by these. This is particularly notable regarding David’s 16 December rather sententious comment that Kate should not ‘fret’ about the then-recent death of Georgie, their infant son, which is preceded by comments about a sick horse, and followed by briskly describing his brother Alexander’s grave. Kate’s 21 December letter relates her post-partum ill-health and while protesting ‘I do not grieve’, a sad sentence about Georgie’s ‘winning ways’ suggests otherwise. However, this too is preceded by quotidian detail, about one of David’s letters having been opened en route, David being careful, and their daughter Nellie making herself sick eating bananas, and followed by further everyday matters.

The letters convey a life shared which they express and further the purposes of through David’s trip. There is a low-key loving kindness in how these and other letters during his time away are written, with matters of affect contained and in their proper place as part of the shared life. Examples are ‘I often regret coming away but it was for the best’ in David’s 7 June 1871 letter,⁸⁹ and stress on judiciousness about grief in the 16 December 1866 one. And while Kate departed from this in grieving for Georgie, she repeatedly stressed that David should complete the purposes of his trip before thinking of returning, for these were to further their shared future.

While away, David was unsurprisingly more concerned with worldly matters outside their farm than Kate. However, there is still a strong sense of mutual business in which Kate was a full part, including her concluding land sales, having David’s general power of attorney and making all decisions while he was away,⁹⁰ as well as having her own responsibilities for the household and homefarm at Athole. Their letters also show the importance of interconnected networks in facilitating Kate’s activities, combining family, business, and neighborly links she was part of and that appear across their letters.⁹¹

Their letter-writing during David’s trips away related ‘now’ and its daily events through epistolary practices that helped maintain the enduring bonds of their relationship, enabling them to meet after a long separation having shared at least a small part of each other’s lives while apart. These ‘now’ aspects of their letter-writing also reference the future, the greater prosperity that was to come, which David’s trips were bringing about. His absences were of long duration and involved much hardship, during which he was in an ever-changing elsewhere with no fixed reference points other than his ox-wagon and companion and his home. Fears and worries were for him, in literally unknown territory, while it was specifically around the dangers of childbirth that there were concerns for Kate, not that she was left in charge of a large farm and managing its many workers, which their letters represent as order and safety. Loving affection is certainly a dimension, expressed in measured ways as part of the entirety of their life together. There is also a gendered division of labor represented in their letters, David abroad trading and prospecting, Kate at home and experiencing difficult pregnancies. However, this should not be seen in binary terms, for during this trip Kate managed the large farm-estate with around 100 workers and had a complete power of attorney to make all legal and financial decisions, while David was a home- and child-centered man, in love with his wife and missing his home and family. On the next long trip, the whole family trekked to New Rush/Kimberley, to pursue the economic possibilities of diamond-mining together.

4.6. All the news: Sarah Purcocks Straker

Squaring the circle of kinds and degrees of absence and separation in Forbes letter-writing, there are some 80 letters by Sarah Purcocks (1850–1911), written in circumstances of a different kind of interrupted presence from that just discussed.⁹² From the move to New Scotland on, Sarah ran the Purcocks’ Westoe farm, seven miles from Athole, including after marrying Joshua Straker in 1880.⁹³ The majority of extant letters are to her sister Kate Forbes, with some written as amanuensis for their mother Anne, functionally literate only. These are the remaining part of a constant stream of notes, invoices, goods, services and labor as well as letters that flowed between the sisters from Kate’s marriage until Sarah’s death.⁹⁴

A 23 April 1866 letter, written before the Forbes and Purcocks trekked to the New Scotland farms, was sent from Sinquassi in Natal to Kate at Doorn Kloof, 10 miles away.⁹⁵ At the time, this was an insuperable distance for casual visiting, although letters, goods and services were exchanged, sent via African farm employees to expedite the many economic concerns shared between these households. This letter details people and everyday activities, with Sarah writing ‘I have told you all the news’, although reticent about her own activities as mainstay of the Purcocks household. A year later, her letter of 29 May 1867 provides more information about her doings.⁹⁶ In the intervening period, the Purcocks parents had lost the Sinquassi farm through non-payment of lease money and fallen on difficult times, with Sarah trying to ameliorate the problems, and David later giving or leasing Westoe to them.

Twenty years later, a letter of 1 August 1886 from Sarah to Kate, then in Britain, is also filled with everyday detail, but with Sarah’s driving involvements having become her interconnected business activities.⁹⁷ One element was as manager of a pig farming business shared with Dave junior and Jim junior. As they were too squeamish, she and a farm-worker, Bismark, did the slaughtering before selling the carcasses to a butchery. In this letter, ‘business’ also includes Sarah taking responsibility for Athole while the Forbes parents were away, superintending building work there, keeping a close eye on her nephews, dealing with a farm sale, a mining concession being assayed, the continuing fallout of McCorkindale Estate matters, and running Westoe.⁹⁸ Sarah’s letters of 16 July 1889 and 4 May 1890 were written while Kate was in Britain again, and have similar concerns.⁹⁹ Her business as a farmer is embedded in comments such as, in the July 1889 letter, regarding farm workers, a visit from her nephew Jim junior from the Tolderia farm, putting up fence-posts, pig-killing at Westoe and at Dave’s Swazi reef; and in her May 1890 letter, regarding wool sales and her investments in stocks and shares.

In Sarah’s letters to Kate, degrees and kinds of absence do not make a significant difference. What do make a difference are Sarah’s responsibilities at the time of writing. As a young woman in April 1866 she was involved in managing family troubles, while as an older one in August 1886 she had major farming and business involvements, with these material circumstances dominating letter-content. Although Kate was just a few miles away and Sarah would see her soon after the 1866 letter was sent, and some thousands of miles away long-term in Britain when her 1886 one was, the two are structured similarly in combining local news with shared business matters and anticipating face-to-face meetings.

Sarah Purcocks Straker’s letter-writing activities occurred in varied but local circumstances of separation, distance and interruptions of presence. As a girl and young woman, the geographical distance from her key correspondent was not large but Kate’s move to Doorn Kloof prevented easy face-to-face meetings and required written means of communicating, as did the distance later between Westoe and Athole. There was a gender dimension here, for although as an adult woman Sarah eventually commandeered a saddle, bought a horse and rode between the farms, earlier she had been as protected as the Forbes daughters were a generation later, until they too struck out for freedom of movement, while their brothers experienced no such restriction. However, there were also new technologies that helped reshape Sarah’s experience of absence and separation, in particular her early embrace of both the telephone and the motorcar. These restored elements of the swift voice-to-voice and face-to-face family communications of her youth, and it is notable that her Forbes nieces enthusiastically embraced them too.

5. Settler colonialism and migrant letters: concluding thoughts

The Forbes letters show that the South African settler context and the character of its migrant population made a difference. These letters are unlike ‘the migrant letter’ as largely considered to date and discussed earlier. In the South African colonial context, settlers of the middling sort with some literacy skills migrated for opportunity reasons and produced letter-writing with characteristics different from those discussed in the migrant letter literature. Trying to isolate migrant or other types of letters among them is problematic, for these were ‘just letters’ and integral to this settler colonial family’s letter-writing in total. When its shape, flows and dynamics are explored over an extensive time-period, as here, while attributes assigned to ‘the migrant letter’ can be found, this is because these are aspects of letter-writing as such and also they feature in very different ways. The differentiating factor here is the Forbes scriptural economy and the ways in which its writing practices were used, developed and modulated by the different letter-writers concerned. There are a number of these customary practices involved that bear on absences and distance, identities and relationships, and locations, as raised at the start of this discussion.

Absence as the basis of letter-writing is often treated as unitary, but once people’s practical living and writing circumstances are considered, then greater complications are seen. The premise of Forbes letter-writing was that relationships between correspondents would continue in a face-to-face way at some point, perhaps in a few days, perhaps at longer intervals. Rather than absence as unitary and permanent, these letters are marked by and help bridge different kinds and durations of interrupted presence, with the writing practices involved modulated by the different letter-writers. Accompanying this, other shared features include using letters in purposive ways, a concern with everyday business matters, an emphasis on ‘now’ and its activities rather than looking back, and focusing on exteriority and measured restraint rather than interiority, introspection or affect.

It should not be thought from this that the Forbes or their correspondents lacked emotion or did not prize their bonds with others. Emotion is at points quite apparent. But this is seen to have a proper place, both in life and as expressed within the regulated spaces of letter-writing (How, 2003; Milne, 2010). Examples include David’s comments about Kate’s grief over the death of Georgie, and Lizzie Forbes writing about someone else’s breaking heart and not her own when Lizzie Condie died. The convention marking the Forbes writing practices here was measure and restraint. Affect was indeed indicated through such idioms themselves, which formed a taken-for-granted bedrock with people assumed to know the emotions underlying restrained turns of phrase and a shift from a charged topic to one less so.¹⁰⁰

This also points to customary ways in which self-fashioning occurred. The self in this scriptural economy was importantly shaped around letter-writing itself, in writing regularly, seeking opportunities for dispatching letters, which were of fitting length, with content deemed proper, and containing appropriate mixtures of the communicative and purposive. As represented across the letters, this self focused on shared business and other interests, attended to obligations and responsibilities, provided judicious information about people known in common, and signaled but contained affect. The foundation was sharing an ongoing relationship with their addressees, with epistolary exchanges a necessary adjunct when separations of time and distance existed.

Gender, age and generation are discernible although complicated factors in the Forbes scriptural economy, and also point up some changes over time. There is no indication of binary spheres around gender in either epistolary exchanges or many business and other interests. Letter-writing is equally a female and male activity with no evidence of different levels of literacy,¹⁰¹ while letter-content is similarly diverse, although there are some activities – in particular childcare and household responsibilities, and hunting and mining – that mark women’s letters but not men’s and vice versa. But alongside this, Lizzie, Jemima, Kate, Sarah and also Anne Purcocks and Mary McCorkindale all had independent as well as family economic involvements.¹⁰² Sarah Purcocks Straker was a major farmer with a range of business interests, and both Kitty and Madge Forbes in the next generation followed a similar path after their marriages and became leading farming presences in the Ermelo area. Sarah’s letters were to keep in touch and expedite activity, and early mentions of the telephone and motorcar appear. Relatedly, just handfuls of Kitty’s and Madge’s letters and only a few more of Nellie’s survive, with the indications being that few were written, for unlike their brother Dave they were not ‘letter-writers’ and favored alternative communicative means.

This brings to attention changes over the generations connected with technology and communications. The early installation of the telephone at Athole, Westoe and other family households, and equally early embrace of motorized transport, made important differences to letter-writing in the scriptural economy, reducing letter flows except on occasions such as birthdays and festivals (although other components, such as accounts and diaries, were unaffected), and increasing the amount of routine visiting. Other developments, especially the move from sail to steam then the introduction of fast steamers with a significant reduction in passage costs, further changed generational patterns. This included an impact on the character of migration itself. For the first generation, while some particularly entrepreneurial migrants like the Forbes might ‘return’, for most migration was seen as a permanent move, and thus Lizzie’s decision to stay and Jemima’s hesitation about leaving Britain. For Jemima’s daughter Susie Condie, however, it was different; Susie visited South Africa on two occasions, first as a ‘temporary migrant’, then as a wartime nurse, but on both occasions eventually decided to return.¹⁰³

Letter-writing for the Forbes adds up to a scriptural economy in which the extended networks of the Forbes and their connections engaged through its customary writing practices. Its migrant letters, conceived narrowly, cannot be sensibly separated from Forbes letter-writing generally, for these writing practices were utilized across the range of different circumstances its letters were written in. The letters are points of exchange in continuing flows, linking differently located people in varied circumstances, and doing so across different kinds and degrees of absence and separation. The concept of a scriptural economy gives shape to such complexities, which add up to what is precisely an economy, a diverse set of flows of epistolary products with changing exchange values. Conceiving this as a scriptural economy is apposite too because letter-writing was completely integral to, indeed constitutive of, Forbes business activities, not separate from these.

Taking into account settler colonial letter-writing has import for how migrant letter-writing should be seen. It has been through taking into account an entire large collection of settler colonial letters, the Forbes papers, rather than focusing on smaller groups of letters identified as migrant ones, that has uncovered such differences and how they play out in the writing practices of this scriptural economy. Working in this inclusive fashion may be the state of the art, but it has been done only rarely to date in considering migrant letters, perhaps because many migrant groups do not ‘settle’ in the colonialist way that people did in South Africa, nor take with them established cultural practices concerning both writing and also preserving letters in the way the Forbes – and also the Pringles, Findlays, Schreiner-Hemmings and others in the South African context – did.

From this the question arises, are the Forbes letters exceptional, rather than having more general import? The collection involves letters from and to many people who are not Forbes in any direct sense, not only Kate Forbes née Purcocks, Mary McCorkindale née Dingley and Sarah Purcocks, but the hundreds of other people whose letters it contains. Also, there are other family collections in South Africa with similar characteristics. The core letter-writers in these, as with the Forbes, were English-speakers, with the Pringles, Findlays and Forbes also Scottish by background, and so a related question is whether there might an English-speaking, British or Scottish aspect here. The different educational and aspirational background of English-speaking migrants in South Africa generally and Scots particularly was noted earlier. However, the same background existed for the North American/English-speaking migrants whose very different letter-writings have been discussed by Gerber and others. One possibility is that there could be a Presbyterian or Calvinist aspect here, although many letter-writers in the South African collections were neither Scottish nor had Presbyterian connections but still wrote letters with similar characteristics. This brings the South African context of arrival and settlement into center-frame, and particularly some connected features of its mode of production.

The Forbes scriptural economy was the product of a large network focused around expediting the economic and business interests of those concerned. Its customary writing practices were primarily about ‘the business’ and resulted in letter-writing with a particular organization and shape, around focused purposive concerns, shared economic activity, and contained affect. It was propelled by the Forbes’ multi-focal entrepreneurial involvements in the wider settler economy. The writing practices involved were not personal preferences, but resulted from shared matters in hand, particularly concerning the family/household as a wide-ranging economic and business entity in which the scriptural economy was central, not an optional extra.

South Africa’s particular settler economy and its mode of production helped shape this, through institutionalizing the provision of cheap labor, advantageously positioning settler farming households in relation to inter/national markets, and enabling entrepreneurial activities to develop largely unfettered, with the flows of letter-writing essential and not adjunct to the activities involved. The specific settler colonial context made a significant difference, and from this it can be concluded that exploring letters (and recent variants) sent from and to a range of (historical and contemporary) migratory contexts is a central task for epistolary scholarship.

Archival sources

All letters referred to and referenced in full in the Endnotes are part of the Forbes Collection, National Archives Repository, Pretoria, South Africa.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgements

Whites Writing Whiteness research is supported by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as a Professorial Research Fellowship (ES J022977/1). The ESRC’s support is gratefully acknowledged. No financial interest or benefit has arisen from this research.

Additional information

Funding

Whites Writing Whiteness research is supported by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as a Professorial Research Fellowship [ES J022977/1]. The ESRC’s support is gratefully acknowledged. No financial interest or benefit has arisen from this research.

Notes

1. Different temporal ends to the collection can be posited. The family figuration of letter-writing largely concludes in 1922, when Kate Forbes died. However, between then and 1930 there are some additional letters, although concerning more distant family members. Between 1930 and 1938, there are handfuls of letters but with the writers and recipients not traced to the Forbes family figuration, although almost certainly connected in some way. The very last document is dated 1938, when the collection was donated to the National Archives Repository of South Africa. Consequently 1922 has been used as the cut-off date for the analysis here.

2. The various archiving activities of Kate, Dave junior and a succession of estate managers were involved. The collection is organized in a confusing and at times muddled way, with some boxes covering periods of years and then writers within this, but in a higgledy-piggledy fashion with regard to specific date order; other boxes contain bundles of letters by particular writers with no date order; some have wide mixtures of dated letters and writers but in no order at all; yet others contain partially or entirely undated letters placed in no order. Systematic work on the collection could not occur until all items were entered into a database then on to the VRE (Virtual Research Environment) that manages Whites Writing Whiteness project (http://[email protected]) data. The extant letters it seems have been structured by various ‘local’ factors rather than any deliberate destructions. The main keepers of letters were Kate and David Forbes senior and their son Dave junior when at home at Athole. The main gaps are (i) the ‘actual’ letters sent to Lizzie Forbes, Jemima Condie and Jemima’s children in Scotland, although many drafts especially of the former survive; (ii) letters to James senior and Jim junior, who both lived in a mobile peripatetic way because of their economic and business involvements and did not keep their letters; (iii) similarly Dave junior when on duty as the manager of the Swazi coal mine; (iv) letters to Lizzie Forbes after 1903; (v) letters by Sarah Purcocks Straker after 1899; (vi) all letters during the South African War (1899–1902); (vii) most letters around the decline and death of David senior in 1905; (viii) letters following Kate Forbes’ last illness then death in 1922.

3. See http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk. This research includes a number of large family and organizational collections, as well as case studies of particular networks. Family collections researched thus far are those of the Findlays, Forbes, Pringles, Schreiner-Hemmings, Whites and Godlontons, with combined contents of around 23,000 letters, plus many other documents. Other family collections are being added. The organizational collections are the South African part of London Missionary Society papers, and the papers of the Cecil Rhodes-controlled group of businesses. There are also case studies focused on particular letter-writers or topics.

4. Something that occurred regarding settlers in North America and also Australia and New Zealand too.

5. On affect, see Cancian (2010); Gerber (2006); for a view similar to that discussed here, see Fitzpatrick (1994).

6. For a counter-view, see Stanley (2015a).

7. For interesting discussions using a Bourdieusian framework, see Davis (2010); Erel (2010, 2012); Noble (2013); Nowicka (2013); Plüss (2013); Pöllman (2013).

8. See Davis (2010); DeHaan (2010); Middleton (2010).

9. The literature indicates these migrants included a higher proportion of people of an educated ‘respectable’ and ‘middling sort’, with a higher than usual literacy level, although not necessarily much formal schooling.

10. See note 1 concerning the end-date of the collection. All letters discussed are from the Forbes Collection, National Archives Repository, Pretoria, South Africa.

11. South Africa was not a unified political entity until 1910. Before then, there were four settler colonies: the two Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, and two British colonies, Natal and the Cape.

12. And at times also South Australia, where other kin had migrated.

13. The most substantial African settlements were in the South African settler colonies of the Cape and Natal, recognizing that Britons were a minority of white migrants apart from in Natal, and also there were more black migrants from elsewhere in southern Africa than those from white European backgrounds. See Conway and Leonard (2014); Family and Colonialism Network (2014); Harper and Constantine (2010, pp. 111–147); Murdock (2004); Richards (2004).

14. The best-known are Benjamin Moodie’s 1817 emigration scheme, taking around 200 Scottish indentured laborers to the Western Cape; the well-known ‘1820 Settlers’ of some 4000 government-sponsored British migrants to the Eastern Cape; Edward Brenton’s schemes for child emigration between 1832 and 1841; and Joseph Byrne’s ‘Emigration and Colonisation’ venture that took around 2500 British migrants to Natal between 1849 and the early 1850s; with a late-1850s smaller initiative by Alexander McCorkindale through his (variously named) Glasgow and South African Company also taking migrants to Natal (Harper, 2003; MacKenzie, 2007, pp. 157–161).

15. The first generation of Forbes siblings were Alexander (1825–1866), David (1829–1905), Lizzie (1831–1916), James (1835–1896) and Jemima (1837–1889). The Forbes men have appeared in a number of published accounts, although the family tradition of recycling personal names across generations and different parts of the family has led to sometimes inaccurate attributions. For the most interesting, see Bonner (1982); Crush (1987); MacKenzie (2007, pp. 146–149).

16. Now Mpumalanga.

17. For detailed discussion of the factors underpinning the scale and structure of Scottish migrations, see especially Harper (2003); also Brock (1999).

18. The children of Kate and David senior who survived to adulthood were, in birth order, Nellie, Alexander junior (Alex), David junior (Dave), James junior (Jim), Catherine (Kitty) and Madge. Alex junior died of malaria in 1885. The Forbes daughters had equal shares in the economic and finance aspects with their brothers, although for them this resided mainly in land and crops rather than stock until after their father’s death in 1905, when they became important farmers.

19. Settler colonialism involves domination over an indigenous people, with settler colonists founding a social and political order, rather than joining a pre-existing one, as most migrants do (Lambert & Lester, 2006; Lester, 2001; Stanley, 2015b).

20. This eventuated from the earlier period when both white and black engaged in peasant farming of a pastoral or small-holding kind, via the rapid creation by white settlers of cheap black labor as the equivalent of new technology. See Bundy (1988); Stanley (2015b).

21. See Cavanagh (2013); Markelis (2006); Mosley (1983); Versteegh (2000); and on the Forbes, Stanley (2015b). This has been described as proto-capitalism (Krikler, 1993, pp. 128–131). However, it is more accurately seen as thoroughly if not entirely imbued with capitalist forms of production (Denoon, 1983, 1995), with black labor being both the ‘engine’ and also the recurrent ‘technology’ that enabled many such farms to only partially mechanize production methods (Stanley, 2015b).

22. See here note 15. Natal was chosen because David was a good shot, and hunting and trading among the Zulu were envisaged as providing better economic opportunities than elsewhere.

23. Few letters to or by Alexander Forbes senior are extant and only a small number of Jemima’s.

24. The dearth of archival collections suggests this was less so regarding migrant groups from elsewhere in Europe and Russia, and less so again respecting the longer-term resident Boer farmer population of mixed Dutch and other origins.

25. There are, for example, many letters to and from children at school in the Findlay collection and significant numbers in the Forbes collection, and also from marriages in and out in the Pringle and Schreiner-Hemming collections.

26. Rather than absence as a permanency, ‘interruption of presence’ signifies that letter-writing occurs with the expectation of future meetings. This is a general characteristic of letter-writing, not just of the Forbes or other South African letter-writers.

27. In birth order, Nellie, Alex, Dave, Jim, Kitty and Madge.

28. In birth order, Nellie, Susie, Lizzie and John Condie.

29. There is no easy means of referring to this complex entity, for none of the available conceptual categories such as family, household, domus and so on stretch far enough. In relation to the wider Whites Writing Whiteness project and its analytical purposes, it is most usefully thought about in Norbert Elias’ terms as a figuration. See Elias (1994); Ladurie (1980 [1978]); http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/forbes-domus-figurations/.

30. Stanley (2015b); see also http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/action-research/the-scriptural-economy/.

31. See Stanley (2015c) on methodological aspects of working with very large letter collections, using the Findlay Papers as an exemplar. See also Cochran and Hsieh’s (2013) work on the letters of the (partly migratory) Liu family of Shanghai, Rothschild’s (2011) epistolary history of the Scottish Johnstone family living in different areas of the British Empire, and Hougaz’s (2015) work on the stories of multi-generational Italian-Australian business dynasties.

32. Discussion of materials concerning the Forbes, Findlay, Pringle and Schreiner-Hemming collections will be found at http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/.

33. They included Forbes siblings, partners, offspring, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, friends, employees, neighbors, business connections, shop owners, merchants, tax inspectors, vets, bank managers, magistrates and others. A central sub-set was David Forbes senior, his sisters Lizzie Forbes and Jemima Condie and brothers Alexander senior and James senior; David’s wife Kate, their children Alex junior, Dave junior, Jim junior, Nellie, Kitty and Madge; Kate’s parents David and Anne Purcocks, her sister Sarah and brothers George, Vincent and David; and Kate and Sarah’s maternal aunt Mary McCorkindale and her husband Alexander. The women involved wrote as much as, and when the full range of Forbes documents of life are considered more than, the men, contra the contention otherwise in the migrant letter literature.

34. They were not together. Jim was still in Europe at this time, and while Alexander and David sometimes worked together, they also at times engaged in different economic pursuits in different areas.

35. In part, Jemima’s indecisiveness was because she worried about leaving Lizzie with no immediate family in Scotland; see National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/6, Jemima Forbes to David Forbes senior, 3 October 1859.

36. Just before Alexander’s early death from an abscess on the liver, following a grueling trading trip, Lizzie had been anticipating his return, with this a likely reality rather than fantasy as shown by later extended returns by both David and James. These visits included Kate Forbes on three occasions, and the three or four year residency in Scotland of David and Kate’s daughters Nellie, Kitty and Maggie Forbes while at school. There were also later lengthy visits to South Africa by two of Jemima’s children, Susie Condie (who contemplated migration) and John Condie (who did migrate, to Cape Town).

37. When the letters commenced in 1850, there was very little visual imagery available to guide the imagination, as even engravings of ‘ordinary’ South Africa were then rare.

38. They included Lizzie relaying to Kate the events of her working life and friendships, business matters, reports of fashion and later, after Kate’s first ‘return’ visit to Britain, news of people known in common, with Kate reciprocating similarly.

39. Although they made at least one lengthy trip to Britain and Lizzie met them, there are very few letters to her Forbes nephews Dave junior and Jim junior extant.

40. See Stanley (2015d); the randomly selected years are 1854, 1866, 1876, 1885, 1893, 1908, 1917 and 1921.

41. There would also be issues in confining analysis to temporal considerations and general flows. First, there are over 400 partially or wholly undated letters that cannot be included in such an exercise. As many are by James senior and Dave junior, a temporal approach underestimates their presence and significance in the collection as a whole. Secondly, there are distributional skews resulting from who was a keeper of letters and who was not, and a cross-sectional analysis can compound the effects because the absences that propel letter-writing tend to be bunched in particular time-periods rather than evenly distributed across years. An example here is that David senior was on a lengthy prospecting trip during 1887 and his letters to Kate (a letter-keeper) survive, but not any to James senior (who was not), although James was his major collaborator in such ventures and the indications are that David wrote frequently to him. Thirdly and as noted above, letters are written by individuals, and a temporal approach on its own conveys little of the specific writing practices and variant usages of the different letter-writers. Relatedly, correspondences are part of a relationship between a letter-writer and their addressee, something also difficult to convey in a temporal examination of so many letters as exist in the Forbes collection. Thus the two-part strategy adopted.

42. After the death of David Forbes in 1905, relatively few letters by Lizzie are extant. However, mentions in letters by others indicate that the flow continued, so these seem to have been mislaid or lost.

43. Lizzie Forbes’ letters pass on information about events in southern Africa that her family there might not have heard about. And after the establishment of the Forbes Henderson mining company, they comment on share prices and fluctuations, particularly regarding family investments and shareholder meetings Lizzie or family friends attended. Kate Forbes’ letters survive mainly as drafts, while their contents can also be gauged through Lizzie’s often quite detailed responses. Over time, Kate became the record-keeper and accountant of the farming side of the Forbes’ economic undertakings and in this capacity produced lists, inventories, accounts of financial incomings and outgoings documenting the economic fabric of the Athole Estate, as well as drafting important letters for others and making handwritten copies of key incoming communications. Although there are fewer letters by her in the collection than by, for example, her son Dave junior, overall the majority of Forbes documents are in her hand. Kate’s last letter to Lizzie in 1916 was returned with news of her death.

44. See National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/51, Lizzie Forbes to Kate Forbes, 2 August 1862. Verbatim extracts of all Lizzie Forbes letters quoted from or referenced will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/). The transcription conventions followed are that: nd shows that no date was provided for a letter by the author nor can it be surmised from a post-mark, a question-mark in front of a ?word indicates a doubtful reading, while ^insertion^ marks text inserted by the writer and deletions are also by them, with … indicating a researcher-omission of text, and comments [in square brackets] being researcher-provided elucidations.

45. It also comments about her brothers’ trading trip, whether it had produced ‘good returns’ and that improved trade would make ‘money easier got’. This reflects Lizzie’s wish that they should buy farms because she considered (correctly) that hunting and trading entailed considerable danger.

46. Extracts from these and other Lizzie/Kate letters discussed will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/). All transcriptions are verbatim.

47. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 11/245, Lizzie Forbes to Kate Forbes, no date but ?1890; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 9/290, Lizzie Forbes to Kate Forbes, 1 September 1899.

48. The backcloth was that James senior had always been ‘unsteady’, not settling, fathering a number of illegitimate children (financially supported by Lizzie on behalf of ‘the Estate’), liking the good life and drinking too much.

49. While there, James senior lived in Edinburgh, London and the Highlands; he seems also to have made a return trip to South Africa and back, around his mining interests.

50. Lizzie Condie had spent most of her short life being ill and looked after by her aunt; she had at this point recently been committed to an asylum, but probably had a brain tumor.

51. This was between Britain and the Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State and began on 1 October 1899. During the War, the Forbes were evacuated from Athole. They returned in mid-1902 to find Athole largely destroyed.

52. ‘There’ aspects are still present although background, concerning the death of Paul Kruger (ex-President of the Transvaal), linked with Sir Alfred Milner ‘putting right’ Swaziland land concessions for mining rights, something all the Forbes had financial stakes in.

53. Extracts from all James Forbes senior letters discussed will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness / In Progress / Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/). A high proportion of his extant letters are undated or minimally dated with just a day and the addresses they were sent from are usually perfunctorily indicated.

54. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 11/29, James Forbes senior to David Forbes senior, 5 December 1882.

55. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/252, James Forbes senior to David Forbes senior, 14 June 1888.

56. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/141, James Forbes senior to DF junior 29 December 1890; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/261, James Forbes senior to DF senior, 12 January 1895.

57. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/171, James Forbes senior to Nellie Forbes, 26 February 1892. Its detailed comments also confirm that Nellie was fully knowledgeable about these business matters.

58. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 9/11, Kate Forbes to James Forbes senior, 26 February 1896. Initially it was supposed James had typhoid, but this was instead the final stages of stomach cancer exacerbated by liver failure from his alcoholism. James died in early March 1896. David senior traveled to Johannesburg and looked after him during his last few days.

59. Mary McCorkindale’s key correspondents in the collection were Kate Forbes, Sarah Purcocks, David Forbes senior and Joshua Straker (who married Sarah in 1880). Most are to Kate, who carefully kept them as a group separate from her other letters.

60. Now Zinkwazi.

61. Extracts from this and other Mary McCorkindale letters will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/).

62. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection Annex 7/261, Mary McCorkindale to Kate Forbes, 14 March 1860.

63. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection Annex 7/278, Mary McCorkindale to Sarah Purcocks, 25 October 1869.

64. After Kate’s marriage in 1860, the 10-year-old Sarah kept the accounts and did other business tasks for her mother, wrote letters for her parents, then as a 13-year-old sorted out her parents’ housing problems; later, she also ran what was in name her father’s farm at Westoe.

65. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/107, Mary McCorkindale to Kate Forbes, 24 December 1868.

66. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection Annex 7/295, Mary McCorkindale to Kate Forbes, 8 August 1875; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection Annex 7/315, Mary McCorkindale to David Forbes senior, 10 August 1877.

67. One of the few is to Anne Purcocks in 1865, detailing a sea-voyage and visit to Cape Town. See National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/161, Mary McCorkindale to Anne Purcocks, 12 March 1865.

68. Extracts from Dave Forbes junior letters will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/). His first letter was written when he was 13, when with his brother Alex junior he had been commandeered for commando duty.

69. Dave junior had obtained a concession for this, then sold it, although retaining its wood and water rights.

70. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/252, Dave Forbes junior to David Forbes senior, 25 June 1888; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/1, Dave Forbes junior to David Forbes senior, 19 September 1890.

71. His father David senior agreed, but also thought that selling out because of his insider knowledge before a price collapse occurred would be unethical.

72. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/1, Dave Forbes junior to David Forbes senior, 19 September 1890.

73. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 9/46, Dave Forbes junior to Madge Forbes, 22 July 1896.

74. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 10/176, Dave Forbes junior to Kate Forbes, 10 February 1912.

75. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 15/147, Kate Forbes to J. Macintosh, 17 January 1910.

76. Dave junior’s letter to Kate of 22 July 1908 is indicative in its to-ing and fro-ing of business and farming matters. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 10/143, Dave Forbes junior to Kate Forbes, 22 July 1908.

77. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 10/176, Dave Forbes junior to Kate Forbes, 10 February 1912.

78. There are relatively few letters by Jim junior and fewer still from Nellie, Kitty and Madge Forbes, probably mainly because Jim farmed at nearby Tolderia and the sisters were ‘at home’; those that do exist have the characteristic writing practices noted.

79. After David senior’s death, official communications were sent to Kate and Dave junior because the two were executors of the David Forbes Estate.

80. Containing bound duplicates made by a ‘manifold writer’ carbon device.

81. Kate Forbes and Dave junior were the family archivists. They were also major letter-writers and also wrote other kinds of documents of life, including in Kate’s case a farming diary, and in Dave’s a memoir. Dave also ensured the preservation of the family papers as a collection.

82. Extracts from these and other David Forbes senior letters will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/). David senior wrote many letters before 1860, but the recipients by and large did not keep them; the earliest extant is to Kate, written a short time after their marriage.

83. In broad chronological order, these were for trading and hunting, land surveying, trekking, diamonds digging, gold prospecting, and business trips including but not only to Britain.

84. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/82, David Forbes senior to Kate Forbes, 16 December 1866; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/81, David Forbes senior to Kate Forbes, 26 December 1866.

85. This was Bishop John Colenso, both a travel writer and in 1861 author of a controversial commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. This rejected the idea of external punishment, a foretaste of even more controversial religious pronouncements from him later.

86. Kate and David had nursed the dying Alexander.

87. None would have arrived with their respective addressees until probably February.

88. Georgie was one of a number of Forbes children who died very young.

89. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/127, David Forbes senior to Kate Forbes, 7 June 1871.

90. As in a 13 July 1871 letter commenting that ‘I am doing it without consulting you’; National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/129, Kate Forbes to David Forbes senior, 13 July 1871.

91. A focus on the correspondence between David senior and James senior and to a lesser extent him and Dave junior shows the existence of family economy networks that David was part of but Kate was not, specifically regarding prospecting and mining.

92. Extracts from all Sarah Purcocks Straker letters referenced or quoted will be found at Whites Writing Whiteness/In Progress/Migrant Letter (http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/migrant-letter/).

93. Sarah was widowed in 1883, when Joshua Straker died from heart disease. Westoe was given by or leased from David Forbes senior. Nominally, until his death in 1899, her father David Purcocks senior ran it, but in practice this had been Sarah from when she was a young woman.

94. From the recurrence of breast cancer, following earlier medical treatment.

95. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/75, Sarah Purcocks to Kate Forbes, 23 April 1866.

96. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/94, Sarah Purcocks to Kate Forbes, 29 May 1867.

97. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 7/230, Sarah Purcocks to Kate Forbes, 1 August 1886.

98. Sarah had financial interests in the trusts established under the wills of Mary McCorkindale, David Purcocks senior, and also David Forbes senior.

99. National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/115, Sarah Purcocks Straker to Kate Forbes, 16 July 1889; and National Archives Repository South Africa, Forbes Collection 8/35, Sarah Purcocks Straker to Kate Forbes, 4 May 1890.

100. Letters by Bella Pryde, an acquaintance of Nellie, Kitty and Madge Forbes employed locally as a governess, are very demonstrative. This was disapproved of, with comments made about its inappropriateness.

101. For instance, Anne Purcocks was functionally literate, her husband David was not literate at all, and the three Purcocks sons varied.

102. For instance, Anne Purcocks was a lodging-house keeper in Zinkwazi, and Mary McCorkindale had her own investments and later took over the McCorkindale Estate.

103. Susie Condie became a specialist nurse, and better professional training opportunities in Europe seem to have been involved in her decision. Her brother John Condie went to Cape Town for a trial period and decided to stay.