London, 1 December 1884 

Dear Lottchen, 

Your telegram arrived this morning shortly before ten. I had been 
prepared for this news for some time, ever since Hermann wrote to 
me in some detail about Emil’s condition* and especially since the 
week before last when your brother-in-law Colsman visited me. We 
talked a great deal about Emil, Colsman being fully conversant with 
the medical circumstances of the case. There was, I gathered, 
no more hope, the verdict had been given and the consummation 
could only be a matter of weeks. And yet I had not expected that it 
would be so quick. It has happened, and we must resign ourselves 
to it. 

It has been a period of your life, dear Lottchen, such as you will 
never,again experience; a line has been drawn through a whole chap- 
ter of happiness, now irrevocably brought to an end. I know how 
bleak and empty the world must seem to you at this moment, and 
I know that in your heart of hearts you wish that chance may enable 
you presently to be laid to rest beside your Emil. That is natural and 
is what anyone who stands beside the bier of a beloved spouse would 

* See this volume, pp. 218-19. 

wish. But remember that my mother had to endure this too. She had 
41 years of happiness and then was widowed. And there are few 
women who loved their husbands more ardently than she my father. 
And yet with her children and among their children and children’s 
children she acquired a new lease of life and lived among us, at any 
rate not unhappily, for the next 14 years. And she was older than you 
are and all her children were grown-up and provided for, whereas 
you still have several for whom there are duties to fulfil of a kind only 
a mother can fulfil and which weigh all the more heavily for their 
now being fatherless. 

T always had a particularly intimate relationship with Emil and, 
however far our views may have diverged, one thing we still had in 
common was our preoccupation with scientific matters, irrespective of 
whether or not they had any immediate practical application. One 
episode I shall never forget. When, after father’s death, I had to cope 
with a most difficult state of affairs while physically so indisposed that 
I was incapable of making one single urgent decision in a sound 
frame of mind and with faculties unimpaired, there was Emil, clear 
of eye, firm of resolve and in full command of the situation, to extri- 
cate me and bring the negotiations in Manchester, upon which my 
whole future depended, to a successful conclusion. *?° If I now 
live here in London, a man of independent means, this is thanks not 
least to Emil. 

Nor would my uncertain state of health deter me from leaving to- 
night to pay my dear brother my last respects. But there is the possi- 
bility, indeed probability, that my presence would lead to harassment 
by the police and nothing in the world would induce me to expose 
you and the others to such a thing at this particular moment. After 
all, was not a universally renowned chemist,* naturalised English- 
man and member of the British Royal Society, harassed in Darm- 
stadt, his native city, a few months ago simply because he had attend- 
ed Marx’s funeral, harassed to the extent that he at once departed? 
What might I not expect? Once again I shall doubtless have to regard 
myself as a political refugee for the time being. 

Well, dear Lottchen, one thing I do know and that is that you 
women are stronger and pluckier than we men. Whatever you en- 
dure, if endure it you must, you do so better than we do. You, yourself, 
with the marvellous self-control that I have often envied, will be able 

* Carl Schorlemmer~ > See this volume, p. 209. 

to overcome even this most grievous blow, the grief we all of us share 
with you and of which you must bear the brunt. 
A kiss from me for the children. With all my love. 

Your trusty old 

Friedrich