| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 8 March 1892 |
ENGELS TO JULIE BEBEL[1]
IN BERLIN
London, 8 March 1892
Dear Mrs Bebel,
Unfortunately I have only today got round to answering your kind letter of 18 February, though at the same time I am sad to note that you have definitely decided to give your daughter[2] at St Gallen rather than us the pleasure of your company. Well, we can't blame you for preferring to visit Mrs Simon and console ourselves with the hope and the firm expectation that we shall be all the more certain of seeing you here in the spring (or summer?) of 1893. For in summer our fireplaces are screened off, plum puddings strictly forbidden, fogs only occur very rarely and so you'll see England looking her best, even though a malicious Frenchman once said that the English summer amounts to nothing more than three very hot days and a thunderstorm, after which it is all over. Next year I trust you will give us an opportunity to prove that this is a wilful exaggeration. You will also find that you can get on perfectly well over here, even though you speak no English.
But whether I come to Germany, as you surmise, will depend on all kinds of things over which, in view of these critical and changeable times, I have no control. Gone are the good old days of the new course's calflove for anyone who aroused Bismarck's wrath, and there is no knowing what may not happen between now and the summer. So for the time being I shall leave everything in the lap of the gods and wait and see where fate may lead me this summer, whether to Germany, to Norway, to the Canary Islands, where they would also like to see me, or somewhere else. My one regret, should there be no real prospect of my making a pleasant summer visit to Germany, would be to miss yet another chance of making your personal acquaintance. I do so long to set eyes once again on a real, honest to goodness German proletarian woman, which is how people have always described you to me. My wife[3] was also of genuine Irish proletarian blood and her passionate feeling for her class, a feeling that was inborn, was of immeasurably greater value to me and has been a greater standby at all critical junctures than anything of which the priggishness and sophistry of the 'heddicated' and 'sensitive'[4] daughters of the bourgeois might have been capable. But my wife has now been dead for twelve years and more, while August is fortunate enough to have you still at his side; that is the difference.
Louise has just written another quite outrageous letter to August. You have absolutely no conception of how cocky the little woman has become now that she is once again standing on her own feet. You ought to be here sometime when we take our morning glass of Pilsener beer, and listen to our laughter and the kind of nonsense we talk. I'm happy that I can still join in such youthful tomfoolery; after all, one ages in so many ways that it is a real joy to find one has not yet lost the ability to laugh. And I really cannot thank Louise enough for all she is doing to ensure that my old Rhinelander's joie de vivre doesn't wither and die. And now once again my warm regards and the sincere hope that you will continue in good health.
Yours sincerely,
F. Engels