| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 28 July 1894 |
ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE
AT LE PERREUX
London, 28 July 1894
122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
My dear Löhr, This morning I had a letter from Paul, but much obliged as I am to him for it, yours is older and claims attention first; and indeed I have been trying to find time to write, all the week, and have been stopped day after day by interruptions endless in number and variety. The fact is I am not sure of remaining much longer in 122; I ought to have settled that business last year, but was enjoying myself on the continent, 189 and now have to face the dilemma: either to get the whole house thoroughly overhauled or to look out for another. I have attended to both eventualities, and maybe in a few weeks may know where I am, or at least where I am to be in future.
You ask about Pumps. I have hardly heard from them for months past. Percy had lost, or given up, the agency for his brothers in the Isle of Wight; he had spent a lot of money (not his own) but induced me to become surety for him for a loan to enable him to look out for other agencies in the same line of business, where he said he could make it pay. All at once, in June, I am informed by him that, in consequence of some arrangement with his family, he is going to sell up his furniture and come back to London; on my remonstrating, I am told it is now too late and the plan must be carried out. Then I heard that they were at a school in Kent where their little boy is, and at last, last Monday, they turned up here. As far as I can learn, the family arrangement is all moonshine, at least it leaves him in the same shiftless position as before, After all I have done for them, I am not going to quietly submit to such treatment, and did not receive them very heartily. What Percy is going to do and how this is to end, is more than I know. The children are at schools. Lily at Herne Bay and is said to be getting on well; the boy is near Sittingbourne, very delicate, and ailing again while Pumps was there last week. The youngest girl is with them.
Thanks to you for the article of Jaurès in the Revue Socialiste;[1] it seems awfully shallow as far as I can see, but the man looks after all as if he was learning a bit, so we will not give up all hopes. The Petite République is indeed awful reading—the discursive matter as well as the soi-disant[2] reports of facts, and you will not be astonished to learn that I do no longer long for it, unless it given real news, real reports, or articles from Jaurès (whose evolution I should like to follow) and Millerand. Les élucubrations de MM. Rouanet, Fournière, Viviani etc. ne me laissent que tro froid.[3]
I am really obliged to the Ere Nouvelle for giving you a chance to restore in the French Manifeste,[4] as published by the Socialiste, those passages where the Parisian text revisers, dans l'intérêt et de la langue française et des auteurs du 'Manifeste',[5] had considerably narrowed the horizon of certain expressions. Of course I shall be very glad to see it reprinted as often as you can get it done.
My congratulations to Paul on the Delagrave acquisition. 386 May this lead to further business!
Where do I go this summer? alas all hope of going to Le Perreux is knocked on the head by that beautiful new law! 383 And the worst of it is that this time the old English lawyer's saying becomes applicable to France: the law is there, and what the courts will make of it, is more than we know. My impression is that the government will not lose much time before it sees that a precedent is established of the application of that law to Socialism, and to the inclusion of Socialism under the heading of anarchism. The Cour de cassation[6] is quite capable of that. The German Socialist law 15 kept me from Germany thirteen years, let us hope this new law will not last long enough to prevent me from coming to France once more in my life.
Paul is not quite so enthusiastic about the situation in in France as ce cher Bonnier who considers the whole debate—result and all—an unmitigated triumph for French Socialism; but still his way of looking at the subject seems to me rather couleur de rose. The main advantage I consider indeed to be the irrefutable proof that our party is the only real and serious opposition party in France as well as in Germany; and that the French Radicals 86 are no more serious in their pretended opposition than the German Richters & Co. From that, as Paul says, a real union of all Socialist elements must grow; and the persecution now initiated will hasten it; and if this unification, under the auspices of Jaurès, Millerand & Co, and their lot,[7] means a lowering of the standard of the official expression of the party, un abaissement de niveau intellectuel et politique,[8] this comes from the previous indulging in revolutionary phraseology, as Paul also sees very clearly, and is but the necessary consequence of it.
Love from Louise. Freyberger who sends his kind regards has just been received a member of the Royal College of Physicians, after examination. Salut à Paul.
Ever yours
F.E.