| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 12 January 1882 |
ENGELS TO EMIL ENGELS
IN ENGELSKIRCHEN
London, 12 January 1882
Dear Emil,
After sundry disturbances and unforeseen events, among which the eating and drinking that goes with the festive season, I have composed myself sufficiently to send you, Lottchen, Elisabeth and her fiancé[1] my heartiest congratulations on their engagement. I would never have thought, when travelling to Manchester with August Erbslöh in the late autumn of 1842[2] (I've only seen him once or twice since then in Barmen), that his son would marry a niece of mine. Admittedly, neither of the two young people had been so much as thought of at that time. It is a subject that lends itself to all kinds of suitable and unsuitable remarks — which, however, I shall refrain from making since anyone can easily do that for himself and the young couple will in any case be much too preoccupied with present and future to have time for utterly useless comments on a past that is antecedent to their births.
Apart from that, I shall soon be moved to hope that engagements in our family, along with their more immediate and more remote consequences, will come at rather less frequent intervals, though admittedly in a family as numerous and prolific as ours these cases multiply proportionately to the square of the distance in time from a starting-point that lies over 60 years behind us, and there's no going against a natural law such as that.
I'm keeping quite well on the whole, except that I'm rather deaf in my left ear and regularly catch cold during the winter, but I got used to that years ago. At all events, the mild winter will help you shake off the effects of pneumonia, or at any rate alleviate them. Today it turned so warm again that I had to take my greatcoat off, despite a bit of SCOTCH MIST.
Love to you all, especially to Lottchen and the happy couple.
Your
Friedrich
I shall be glad to see Emil[3] here.