Manchester, 10 November 1867

Dear Mohr,

What touching helplessness in the good Kugelmann’s letter! And his knowledge of human nature in the face of Warnebold! The fellow worms every last thing out of him and is, into the bargain, a Prussian spy! You must at least enlighten K. about the hound to the extent that the Prussians no longer get wind of our every doing and dealing. The hound is abusing your trust, which releases you from all obligations towards him. Yesterday I saw Siebel in Liverpool. The poor devil will, I fear, go under after all. The illness has made rapid progress since I last saw him, he ruined himself in Barmen, had pleurisy three times in succession, coughs very badly (what he calls spasmodic coughing and which recurs quite periodically), yet lately he has again grown better and stronger in Honnef on the Rhine. Unfortunately I could speak to him alone only for a short time, besides his wife there were always some relatives present. Nevertheless we did get the main things sorted out. D’abord: Siebel, although he wrote to Meissner asking him to send a copy by post immediately upon publication, has to this day neither received nor seen a copy. Herr Rittershaus, who does not lift a finger, has on the contrary received one, and Siebel believed you had sent him none at all, but one to R., which may have piqued him. I naturally set him straight on that point; a few lines from you to him, which you can enclose with mine, will, however, be welcome. Now you must call Herr Meissner to account at once for this negligence. The affair has cost us 20 short notices which S. would have got into all the papers straight away, but could not because he did not have the book. Furthermore, I must have a copy here no later than 22 November to send to S. in Madeira, where he will then make up for what can be done. But what is one to say to such dawdling? And these are the Germans who demand self-government and cannot look after their own business! Of the 2 or 3 articles I brought with me we at once sent 2 to the Frankfurter Börsenzeitung and to the Düsseldorfer Zeitung – the latter will do Herr Heinrich Bürgers good, with his sage misgivings: my article – a very simple report, without any judgement, written for a national-liberal paper – is too risky for the brute! He took the 3rd away with him, it will probably go to the Barmer Zeitung. In addition, notices will appear in all sorts of illustrated and other newspapers as soon as S. has the book itself. Further, the Weser Zeitung will at once receive a feuilleton article by him and one about the book, and will only have the choice of taking both or none. (With the feuilleton articles S. baits the editors; they are in need of such material and he often lets them put the honorarium into their own pockets.) Other ideas will occur to him as soon as he has the book. Ad vocem Freiligrath: The worthy man had about £6,000 in debts, £4,000 at the Swiss Bank, advanced on shares of the Mansfield Co., which are no longer worth anything, and the rest debts of honour. The committee has settled these debts at 5, some at 10 per cent dividend. Thus F. has gone bankrupt in optima forma. The collection will amount to about 30,000 thalers. F. had been constantly lying through his teeth to the committee, concealing his debts, pretending his wife knew nothing about it and ought not to know anything about it, so that in the end they became very rude to him; even on the day when he knew that a letter would arrive from London stating the sum of the debts of honour to be £2,000, he still said it was only £1,500, etc. In short, he had behaved in a mean and cowardly way. I said I was firmly convinced that good Ida knew all about it quite precisely, to which he replied: how then could she have given parties in Barmen last summer? Imagine: Ida goes begging and, out of the money not yet paid over, already gives parties to those she begs from! I am surprised I have not yet received an acknowledgment from Tussy for my contribution to the Freiligrath funeral fund. That is not businesslike.
Your F. E.