89 Mornington Street, Stockport Road Manchester, 10 July 1869.

Dear Kugelmann,

As the enclosure proves, I do keep my word after all, & would have kept it long ago had not the following occurred: 1) I did still have the enclosed photograph of Lupus, but none of myself, & it was only after frequent sittings last winter that I got a tolerable one; 2) then, however, I found that the one of Lupus had been mislaid & could not find it despite all searching. So I 3) had the photographer who had the negative make another 24 prints of Lupus, but as it was very faded they turned out miserably & I did not like to send any of them. Finally 4) I found the original again, & les voici, both of them.

From Marx I have learned with regret that you had to undergo an operation & now intend to spend the summer living for your health, which is certainly very useful & in some respects also pleasant. Hopefully it will put you quite back on your feet again, but will probably be the occasion for our friend Schorlemmer, who has been in Germany for a fortnight & intended to come through Hanover in about 10–12 days & look you up, not to find you there.

Marx will probably come to Germany at the end of this month or the beginning of next month with his daughter Jenny; how things will go with me I do not yet know, and for the following reasons: On 30 June of this year my contract with my previous associate expired. According to my original estimate I had, at the beginning of the contract, counted on having knocked so much out of the noble commerce by its expiry that I could live on it, though very modestly by local standards, // & so bid adieu to business. This, to be sure, had not wholly come to pass, but after various negotiations with my associate we finally agreed that I allow him to use my name in the firm for 5 years and undertake not to compete with him during these 5 years, in return for which he pays me quite a tidy round sum, so that I am nevertheless at the point I wanted to reach. Since the 1st of the current month I have therefore left the business, & at last my time is my own again – i.e. for the moment purely theoretically, for until the settlement balance has been drawn up & the necessary documents put in order by the solicitors, I cannot get away from here & must still lose a great deal of time getting these matters in order. In the course of next month, however, I think I shall be finished, & if you let me know where you will be around that time, it might well be possible for all of us to meet somewhere in Germany.

What a joy it is for me to be rid of the damned business and able to work again myself, I surely needn’t tell you. Especially, too, that this could happen just now when events in Europe are assuming an ever more acute form, & the thunderstorm may quite unexpectedly break loose one fine day. The Lassallean sect seems, not without dialectical irony, to be wanting to find its real dissolution precisely in its nominal reunification. Schweitzer may for the moment still hold together the majority of the people, but no party or sect tolerates a constantly repeated throwing out of its leaders. In the process, all sorts of curiosa from the dirty linen of this extremely unclean clique will come out this time, which can only harm Schweitzer. The dissolution of the Lassallean sect, & on the other hand the separation of the Saxon and South German workers from the leading-strings of the “Volkspartei” – these are the two basic conditions for the re-formation of a genuine German workers’ party. The Lassalleans will now attend to their part themselves & devour one another, but the South German republican petty-bourgeois narrow-mindedness that Liebknecht has systematically dinned into the workers is much harder to get rid of. The very stupidity of writing on his paper: Organ of the People’s Party, i.e. of the South German philistines! If Bebel had only a little theoretical education such a thing could not occur; he seems to me a very capable fellow who just has this one failing. And there is Liebknecht going and demanding that we should directly take sides for him & the Volkspartei against Schweitzer! It being self-evident, of course, that 1) we have far less in common with the Volkspartei as a bourgeois party than with Schweitzer’s Lassalleans, who are at least a workers’ sect, & 2) that Marx, in his capacity as secretary of the Intern. A. Ass. for Germany, is obliged to treat with decency every leader whom a sufficient number of workers place at their head & elect to parliament. From now on, please always send your letters to my address given above. Recently Marx sent me your work on the treatment of exanthematous disease by ventilation. In my opinion you go in for ventilation far too moderately. Here, without more ado, the bedroom window is kept open 3–12 inches wide, without a folding screen &c., and care is only taken that the patient is not in a direct draught. Summer or winter alike. On top of that, extractum carnis & port wine in strong doses, otherwise almost no medicine. My maid was treated in this way last November for typhoid fever, Marx’s two unmarried daughters last summer for scarlet fever. I had supposed this method of treatment had long been generally adopted in Germany too; according to your account, however, the old method of keeping patients warm and stinking seems still to prevail.

Let me hear from you soon.
With best regards,
Yours,
F. Engels.