AT LE PERREUX 

London, 14 March 1892 

My dear Laura, 

I have a whole heap of your letters before me, such a heap that 
I hardly dare look at it without being ashamed of myself— but you 
have no idea how I have been worked, interrupted, tracassé, embété* 
etc. etc. by all sorts of people. My best working time— January to 
April—has been frittered away and I have not had a moment to 
even look at the 3rd volume” which I was determined to advance 
a good bit — and over the critical point — by Easter. All vanity of va- 
nities. Now, my time up to a week after Easter is already engaged (by 
10 April I shall have Bebel here for a fortnight or so, before that time 
I must go to Ryde to see Pumps who has had a sore time of it, Percy 
had 1) influenza, 2) pneumonia and 3) and last is now laid up with 
pleurisy) and it will cost a damned effort of energy and a determina- 
tion to reply to no letters whatever and do no work for no matter 
whom if I want to use May and June for the 3rd volume. 

But damn all this, you don’t want to hear my grumbling. I am glad 
there are prospects of a daily paper for Paris,*?* that will make up for 
many a mishap in other parts of the world. ‘Though mishaps to our 
party are getting few and far between, unless we provoke them our- 
selves. We have such capital allies. Young William ‘° brags about his 

* harassed, annoyed -° of Capital-° William II 

ally God who so arranged all things from the creat{ion of the] * 
world, that they must turn out to the grea[test] glory of the Prussian 
monarchy in general and young William in particular. But the poor 
boy does not see that all the time he is a better ally fo us than God ever 
was or will be to him; and even if he was to see it, he could not help it, 
it’s the nature of the beast! 

My article? of the Almanach* and Neue Zeit has now been translat- 
ed into Italian (Critica Sociale— got me into a row with that confusio- 
nario Villustre’ Bovio‘), Roumanian (Revista Socialdé*?*) Polish 
(Przedswit) and English (New York People). 

We have just come back (3.30 p.m.) from Highgate, the cemetery 
is in a disgusting state of soft clay, we had half a hundredweight stick- 
ing to each foot. On the gr[ave] Tussy (I suppose) had planted 
a small cypress, and one of the old crocus bulbs has come out in flow- 
er. The sprig of ivy which Motteler had brought from Ulrich von 
Hutten’s grave on Ufnau Island in the Lake of Zürich, and which we 
planted after poor Nimmy’s burial, having trained it on our balcony, 
had already been robbed of its best part last summer, but what is left, 
now grows well and is rooted deeply in the soil, so that no further de- 
secration is possible. 

Here we are also busy about the Ist of May. It is a beautiful play of 
intrigues woven and cut to pieces and woven afresh, Penelopean fash- 
ion. The 8 Hours Committee ?°° (Edward, Tussy and their friends) 
tried to be first in the field but the Trades Council,!°* that reaction- 
ary relfict of the] Old Trades Unions, was o[ut befor]e them. Now 
the Trades Council and the S. D. F.?° are for the [nonce] friends, as 
against all the rest; at present they do not compete one with the other, 
and have common interests in putting down all ‘outsiders’. So when 
the 8 Hours Committee proposed to act with the Trades Council, in 
the same way as last year, they got a complete rebuff. But then the 
8 Hours Committee secured the Park' for themselves, before the Trades 
Council had thought of it, and then again offered co-operation with 
the Trades Council which was again haughtily declined. Then both 
bodies addressed the Metropolitan Radical Federation (of Radical 
clubs *3°) to co-operate with them; and the M.R. F. decided to medi- 
ate, but under all circumstances to act with the 8 Hours Committee to 
whom the whole movement from the origin was due. So that the 

@ Manuscript damaged.- ‘Socialism in Germany’-‘ Almanach du Parti Ouvrier- 
“ notorious muddlehead -° See this volume, p. 354.-' Hyde Park (see also this vol- 
ume, pp. 370-71.) 

Trades Council and the Social-Democratic Federation, as usual over- 
estimating their strength, have put themselves in an awkward posi- 
tion: either they must knuckle under, or have a separate demonstra- 
tion, and bear the responsibility of the split. At all events our demon- 
stration is now an assured success, whatever the others may do. 

Hyndman gets more foolish every day. His blind hatred of the Ger- 
mans makes him support the Berlin ‘Unabhängige’*** and keep as 
his German chief of staff that outrageous scamp Gilles who is evi- 
dently in the pay of the German Embassy and has been, with a lot of 
malcontents, turned out of the German Communist Club here (our 
old ‘Verein’). So that he has now lost even the little foreign sup- 
port he had; in Germany they used to have some little regard to his 
position as leader of at least a section of English socialists, but he has 
forfeited that; in France his friends Brousse and Co. are so down, that 
even Hyndman himself had to protest against their ‘hygienic’ prog- 
ramme for their next congress.*2° One does long for a good strong 
breath of revolutionary air to sweep away all these pettifogging Jam- 
merkerle“ — but it is coming, slowly, slowly as everything does come 
among these ‘verdammten* Schleswig-Holsteiners’ (as Marx called the 
English) but when it comes it is safe. 

I intended to enclose a line to Pau[]. I ha]d a letter from him from 
Marseilles-— but it’s getting dinner-time, and I am afraid of being 
stopped in the midst of it. I am afraid their new alliance with Granger 
and Co. will not turn out to their satisfaction. First of all, these men 
have shown that they are absolutely un[reliable] when they passed 
over to Boulanger, and we can only expect being betrayed by them 
on the first occasion. Secondly, Paul says we must reap where Boulan- 
ger has sown. Exactly so, but reap the masses and discard the leaders, as 
the plan was with the Possibilists $; but these leaders have no masses 
behind them, and are themselves highly undesirable bedfellows. 
Thirdly, they have crept into the Chambre under false pretences and 
are sure to be kicked out next election, so that it seems to me our 
friends are leaning upon an already broken reed. And as to foreign pol- 
icy, fourthly, these men are pledged Chauvinists— otherwise they 
could not have got elected—and if Paul and friends form a party 
with them, they may be outvoted, kicked out, or driven to a split on 
the first occasion. I hope I may be wrong, but I am afraid I am not. 
The passage to Boulanger of these fellows was an unpardonable trea- 

b ¢ 

miserable people -* damned 

* Independents-° Society - 

son, and I’d rather have Vaillant than the whole lot of them — indeed 
I thought it a blessing that they had made themselves impossible. 

Louise will write to you as soon as possible. She has been rather out 
of sorts for the last 8 days and is only just coming round again. To- 
morrow I must go to see old Harney at Richmond where he is ill with 
the windpipe and his rheumatic gout. And then you want me to say 
something to the Parisians about the 18 March.**° I’ll be hanged if 
I know what! Mais nous verrons!* Ever yours affectionately, 

F.E. 
[Ki]nd regards from Louise.