| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 11 January 1893 |
ENGELS TO PHILIPP PAULI
IN FRANKFURT AM MAIN
London, 11 January 1893
Dear Pauli,
I entirely agree that we should each of us send a contribution to Perkin for the Schorlemmer LABORATORY[1] means that I should decide upon the sum without any prior agreement or knowledge of the actual circumstances. What we should offer depends on altogether too many circumstances of which I am completely ignorant. The comité in Manchester will surely be sending, or have sent out, some sort of appeal indicating roughly the amount to be raised, and an initial list of the first subscriptions, etc., etc. After all, one has got to know all this if one is to have any idea how high or low one should, or alternately should not, go.
Would you therefore be so good as to inquire from Perkin what has been done in this respect and, if you think fit, ask him to inform me of it so that we have some kind of yardstick to go by.
It's a disgrace that these university chaps should be such jackasses! I even had to put pressure on Roscoe to get him to write the article for Nature.[2] And the Germans—how proud they could be of Schorlemmer! But he didn't belong to the you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours clique and that's why, now he's dead, he has to suffer for the fact that he was no Panamite of academic learning. Panama left, right and centre, nothing but Panama, even in academic chemistry!
Cordial regards to your wife and children, and likewise to yourself, from
Your old friend,
F. Engels
Pumps and her family came to stay over Christmas and the New Year; the new baby is a very delicate little thing yet, despite the cold, they all got back safe and sound to Ryde.