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Special pages :
Letter to Karl Marx, June 22, 1869
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913.
To Marx in London
Manchester, 22 June 1869[edit source]
Dear Moor,
I don’t know whether you have such fine weather there as we have here, but daylight has been so exhausted that, on the longest day, we had to turn the gas on at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And it is devilish to read or write when you don’t know whether it is day or night.
Tussy [Eleanor] is very jolly. This morning the whole family went shopping; tomorrow evening they want to go to the theatre. She has read right through [Goethe’s] Hermann und Dorothea, not without difficulty because of the idyllic philistines’ twaddle. Now I have given her the younger Edda, which contains several nice stories; then she can read from the elder one the songs of Sigurd and Gudrun. She also plays the piano sedulously. I have also read Danish Kjämpeviser with her.
So that is Wilhelm’s entire success: that the male-female line and the all-female line of the Lassalleans have united! He really has achieved something there. Schweitzer will naturally be re-elected in view of the precipitacy with which the business has been conducted — and then he will, once again, be the chosen one of general suffrage. Wilhelm is also preserving an obstinate silence about this event.
The Urning you sent me is a very curious thing. These are extremely unnatural revelations. The paederasts [homosexual paedophiles] are beginning to count themselves, and discover that they are a power in the state. Only organisation was lacking, but according to this source it apparently already exists in secret. And since they have such important men in all the old parties and even in the new ones, from Rosing to Schweitzer, they cannot fail to triumph. Guerre aux cons, paix aus trous-de-cul [war on the cunts, peace to the arse-holes] will now be the slogan. It is a bit of luck that we, personally, are too old to have to fear that, when this party wins, we shall have to pay physical tribute to the victors. But the younger generation! Incidentally it is only in Germany that a fellow like this can possibly come forward, convert this smut into a theory, and offer the invitation: introite [enter], etc. Unfortunately, he has not yet got up the courage to acknowledge publicly that he is ‘that way’, and must still operate coram publico‘ from the front’, if not ‘going in from the front’ as he once said by mistake. But just wait until the new North German Penal Code recognises the droits du cul [rights of the arse-hole] then he will operate quite differently. Then things will go badly enough for poor frontside people like us, with our childish penchant for females. If Schweitzer could be made useful for anything, it would be to wheedle out of this peculiar honourable gentleman the particulars of the paederasts in high and top places, which would certainly not be difficult for him as a brother in spirit.
At the end of the week, Schorlemmer will be going to Germany for 4 weeks via Grimsby and Rotterdam.
The strikes here in the cotton factories have been over since this morning, when the Oldhamites went back. So overproduction has no restraints any more.
Close of post. Best greetings.
Your
F. E.