London, 12 December 1890 

Dear Adler, 

I was on the point of writing to thank you and your wife for the 
telegram when I got your letter of the 9th with Aveling’s dishonoured 
cueque.” In its place I am sending you the enclosed cheque on the lo- 
cal branch of the same bank for £10 4/- to include expenses, and this 
CHEQUE Will not be dishonoured. 

It’s the slapdash literary Bohemian in Aveling that leads to’ this 
kind of thing, especially when the said Bohemian insists on having 
a bank account. ‘So young and already a Bohemian’ might also be 
said of him. Incidentally the pair of them will soon be arriving to 
lunch with me, when I shall be able to give him a thorough dressing- 
down for this piece of carelessness and her for the frightful adulation 

* This phrase is in the Rhenish dialect in the original.-” See this volume, p. 71. 

she expended on me in the Sozialdemokratische Monatsschrft.* She's 
right in only one respect, namely my beard’s being curiously lop- 
sided—there are, incidentally, perfectly good reasons for this 
which, however, I shall spare you. 

Many thanks for your hints about Louise. It is also my wish that she 
should remain with me and if this should fall through, I shall find it 
very hard to part with her. But I should have a constant feeling of un- 
easiness if I thought she had sacrificed other duties and other pros- 
pects on my account. Well, the matter will probably be decided in 
a week or two. If she stays, she will have to return to Vienna at least 
once this winter so as to get everything straightened out there. 

As regards the danger of overwork, this was, I should say, very real 
in Vienna. Here, on the other hand, it is hardly likely to arise. She is 
not to do any actual house-work, indeed could not do so—if only on 
account of the maids who would not in that case regard her as 
a proper tapy. All she has to do is to direct and supervise. She is, be- 
sides, acting as my secretary; I dictate to her or give her things to copy 
out so that I can spare my eyes, and then there are various subjects 
I shall be studying with her—chemistry to begin with, then French; 
she also wants to do Latin and that presents no difficulty. After lun- 
cheon we sleep, and at night, to give my eyes a rest from reading, we 
play cards from 11 to 12; I also sleep better if my mind is empty. 
I know, by the way, what an urge she feels to sacrifice herself for oth- 
ers and it is és, in particular, that is preventing me from urging her 
to stay here. On the evening of the day before yesterday we discussed 
the matter at length when the chief obstacle seemed to be her mother 
to whom she only wrote yesterday about her intention to remain 
here. The answer to this will, of course, be of crucial importance. But 
imagine the state I’d be in if I had to tell myself that I had reft Louise 
away from a new, congenial and promising career, only to place her 
in a position in which she could not rid herself of the feeling of having 
done her mother an injury? 

So, far from taking any kind of umbrage at your remarks on this 
subject, I am on the contrary most grateful for what you have said. 
For the only occasion on which Louise will depart from her instinc- 
tive candour is when she is intent on concealing her selflessness. And 
so it behoves us all to keep a close watch on her. 

* E. Marx - Aveling, ‘Friedrich Engels’, Die Sozialdemokratische Monatsschrift, No. 10- 
11, 30 November 1890. 

Warm regards to your wife and children about whom Louise tells 
me many amusing stories, and likewise to yourself from Louise and 

Your 
F. Engels