Letter to Laura Lafargue, July 7, 1892

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 7 July 1892


First published, in the language of the original (English), in: F. Engels, P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. Ill, Paris, 1959
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49


ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE

AT LE PERREUX

London, 7 July 1892

My dear Laura,

I went at once to Manchester[1] on the telegram of Schorlemmer's death, on Friday last week 1st July we buried him and on Saturday I returned. The last weeks of his life he remained in the same half-conscious and very oblivious, but absolutely painless state in which I had found him when there in the beginning of June, and on Monday morning 27th June[2] he expired quietly and without any struggle. A post mortem entirely confirmed the diagnosis of Gumpert: a carcinomatous tumour in the right lung, of the size of a small orange, sufficient, by its pressure on the vena cava and the plexus brachialis to account for the deficient action of the brain and the partial paralysis and oedema of the right arm. The large vein of that arm contained a considerable thrombus, there were distinct though small carcinomatous places in the brain, and the heart was beginning to show fatty degeneration. Under these circumstances we may congratulate ourselves that he was spared longer and perhaps acute sufferings.

Gumpert had got him in May already to make a will, he left everything to his mother. The manuscripts he left may cause some trouble. The most interesting one is on the history of chemistry, 1) Ancients, 2) Alchemy, 3) Jatrochemistry,[3] up to the 17th century; a fragment of the 3rd part not completed, but still full of new views and discoveries. Then a lot of work on organic chemistry. But as he has two works in the press at the same time: 1) his own organic chemistry,[4] 2) his and Roscoe's big book[5] ; — it will be pretty hard to distinguish which belongs to which. One of his executors is a chemist (Siebold) but hardly knows enough about the theory of the science to distinguish. And Roscoe's red-hot after the ms., as he knows too well that he cannot finish the book. I have told the executors in my opinion they might let Roscoe have what belongs to the Roscoe-Schorlemmer book on binding himself to let the heirs participate in the profits of the pending volume (German and English) in the same way as Schorlemmer himself would have done. As Roscoe was elected yesterday for Manchester, he will no doubt pounce upon the executors at once, so I wrote them yesterday giving a full account of what I considered ought to be done in the matter.

A short notice I wrote in the Vorwärts[6] I send you today. Here we are in the midst of the elections.[7] They go remarkably well for us — under the circumstances. First, the immense Liberal Wave which was to carry Gladstone triumphantly to power, is all bosh. He will probably get a small majority, and it is not even certain whether there will be a majority for anybody. This will make both official parties dependent, for the next election, which may come very soon, upon the working men. Secondly the new working-class movement enters Parliament triumphantly. On Monday[8] Keir Hardie was elected with 1,200 majority in the East-End (West Ham)—last member a Tory[9] with 300 majority! Yesterday John Burns at Battersea with 1,600 majority — last member a bourgeois Liberal[10] with only 186 majority. And then at Middlesborough in Yorkshire J. H. Wilson, secretary of the Sailors and Firemen's Union (a Streber[11] but deeply engaged and mortgaged to new Unionism[12] ) beat both a Liberal and a Tory! These are the only éclatant victories in the whole election and all gained by working men: in two cases the Liberals dared not oppose one of their own, and in the third when they did, they were battus à plate couture[13] ! And third: wherever a working man's candidature had been well selected and prepared, it either considerably diminished the Liberal majority, so as to warn them to be more careful and not to risk losing the seat next time, or it made the Liberals lose the seat. Thus in 2 divisions of Glasgow, Cunninghame-Graham was beaten, but so was his Liberal competitor. Thus in Salford, Hall, an S. D.F.[14] man, but said to be good, had only 554 votes, but these deprived the Liberal of his seat. And thus, 3 Liberal seats lost merely because they would thrust bourgeois members upon working-class constituencies.

The election has done already what I maintained was all we had a right to expect from it: give fair and unmistakable warning to the Liberals that the Independent Working Men's Party was approaching, that it cast its shadow before it, and that this was to be the last general election carried on between two parties only, the Ins and the Outs. And therefore I am quite satisfied, especially so, as we shall get a parliament with which no stable government is possible.

From your silence I conclude that Bonnier is right when he writes to Tussy [:] le journal pend toujours à un fil[15] [16] Let us hope the fil[17] will not snap but on the contrary grow into a rope and even a hawser.

Love from Louise. Prosperity and eloquence to M. le député.[18]

Ever yours

F. Engels

  1. ↑ Engels visited Manchester for Carl Schorlemmer's funeral between 29 June and 2 July 1892.
  2. ↑ In the original '29 June', which is a slip of the pen.
  3. ↑ Jatrochemistry (iatrochemistry) was a school in natural science and medicine which saw the main cause of diseases in the obstruction of chemical processes in the organism and looked for chemical means of treatment. Its rise (16th century) and development are associated with the names of Paracelsus, J. B. van Helmont and F. de la Boë Sylvius.
    The Jatrochemists studied many processes in the human organism and discovered and introduced into medical practice a large number of chemical compounds. Jatrochemistry played an important part in overcoming the dogmas of medieval medicine. It ceased to exist as an independent medical school in the second half of the 18th century.
  4. ↑ C. Schorlemmer, The Rise and Development of Organic Chemistry.
  5. ↑ C. Schorlemmer, Ausführliches Lehrbuch der Chemie, Bd. IV; H. E. Roscoe and C. Schorlemmer, A Treatise on Chemistry.
  6. ↑ F. Engels, 'Carl Schorlemmer', Vorwärts, No. 153, 3 July 1892.
  7. ↑ The summer 1892 parliamentary election in Britain was won by the Liberals. The campaign brought success to the workers' and socialist organisations, which had put up a considerable number of independent candidates. Three of them—James Keir Hardie, John Burns and John Havelock Wilson — were elected.
  8. ↑ 4 July
  9. ↑ Georges Banes
  10. ↑ O.W. Morgan
  11. ↑ careerist
  12. ↑ This refers to the New Trades Unions, which were called into being by the rise of the British working-class movement in the late 1880s and early 1890s. One of the biggest among them was the Union of Gas Workers and General Labourers, founded in 1889 (see Note 164). In contrast to the 'old' unions which, as a rule, consisted of workers of only one trade, the new ones were based on the production principle (workers of different trades in one industry could belong to the same union). The new unions opened their doors to unskilled workers, who hitherto had remained outside the union movement. An important part in the formation of the new unions was played by British socialists, who had the direct assistance of Engels. He characterised the New Trades Unions in his article 'May 4 in London' and in his 'Preface to the 1892 English Edition of The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 257-69).
  13. ↑ beaten hollow
  14. ↑ The Social Democratic Federation, set up in August 1884, consisted of English socialists of different orientations, mostly intellectuals. For a long time the leadership of the Federation was in the hands of reformists led by Hyndman, an opportunist sectarian. In opposition to them, the revolutionary Marxists within the Federation (Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Edward Aveling, Tom Mann and others) worked for close ties with the revolutionary labour movement. In the autumn of 1884 — following a split and the establishment by the Left wing of an independent organisation, the Socialist League (see Note 49) — the opportunists' influence in the Federation increased. However, revolutionary elements, discontented with the opportunist leadership, continued to form within the Federation, under the impact of the masses.
  15. ↑ On 20 August 1890 Le Figaro launched a series of articles under the title 'Les Coulisses du boulangisme', signed x. The author was the ex-Boulangist journalist Mermeix.
  16. ↑ The paper is in a perilous state.
  17. ↑ thread
  18. ↑ Paul Lafargue