Manchester, 22 November 1852 

Dear Marie, 

I really must beg your pardon most humbly for not having 
already long since replied to your first letter. But at the office 
where I was formerly in the habit of dealing with my private 
correspondence, I now have so much to do that there can no 
longer be any question of that, and at home, mon Dieu,* my 
writing materials are always in such poor shape (as, e.g., my 
calligraphic experiments at the beginning of this letter go to show) 
that I can hardly bring myself to grapple with them. Nevertheless, 
I am doing so this evening in the hope that you will marvel at my 
sense of duty and regard my bad handwriting as yet another 
token of my brotherly love. 

There was, besides, another reason that prevented me from 
writing to you. Namely the fact that, when you were in Germany, 
it occurred to me that there was something I wanted to ask you 
about; but when you came back I couldn’t for the life of me 
remember what it was. You will understand that such lack of 
character, or rather such lack of memory, was bound to arouse 
considerable qualms of conscience in a self-respecting man. In all 
sincerity I must confess that I could not bring myself to write to 
you so long as I had not got to the bottom of this weighty matter. 
But your second letter, and the increased mental activity induced 
by a welsh rabbit and a few glasses of sherry, have at last brought me 
up to the mark again and I now recall what it was I wished to ask 
you. The matter in question is as follows: Did I, at Christmas or at 
Easter, leave two cotton shirts at your house? For these have long 
been missing from my wardrobe and if you have found them I 
should be quite glad, inasmuch as this would demonstrate that I 
am not at all a slipshod person. 

You ask me what my wishes are. Ma chére soeur,’ it’s some time 
since I indulged in wishes, for nothing comes of them. Besides 
which, I really have no talent for it, for if by chance I catch myself 
being weak enough to wish for anything, it always turns out to be 

a My God - > My dear sister 

something I can’t have and it would therefore be better for me to 
get out of the habit of wishing altogether. As you see, even on this 
subject I cannot help relapsing into the moral tone of Ecclesiastes, 
SO THE LESS WE SAY ABOUT IT, THE BETTER IT wIL BE. If, therefore, you intend 
to put me under an obligation by providing yet another token of 
your love this Christmas, my bungling and untutored talent in the 
matter of wishing is unlikely to be of much assistance to you, 
though I console myself with the thought that you do not in fact 
require such assistance, a@ en juger par le passé. 

I am glad to hear that you are all flourishing. Apart from a 
couple of colds I, too, have been pretty well on the whole; in 
particular there was no recurrence of toothache with the change 
of season and I hope it’s now a thing of the past. I am still living 
in .Strangeways, though a few doors further away,” but am 
considering leaving this district next month and moving a bit 
closer to Little Germany*”; it really is too lonesome here and this 
winter I shall, for a change, allow myself a little entertainment, in 
so far as such a thing is possible in this smoky place. For six 
months past I have not had a single opportunity to make use of 
my acknowledged gift for mixing a lobster salad— quelle horreur‘; 
it makes one get quite rusty. Anyhow, I shall have to write another 
book next spring, probably in English, about the Hungarian war '° 
or the novels of Mr Balzac, lately deceased, or about something 
else. This, however, is a great secret, otherwise I wouldn’t breathe 
a word to you about it. 

What is Elise? up to? If she’s a good cook, and can darn 
stockings, she might well come over here after Christmas and keep 
house for me. Now that Gottfried‘ (or is it Franz‘?) the 
lute-player has set up house on his own, I am virtually under an 
obligation to follow suit to outshine him, which is very easy, for 
Elise would undoubtedly be able to do the honours of the house 
quite famously, while all your old stick-in-the-mud bachelor has is 
an ancient, crotchety, six-foot-tall, skin-and-bone, intimidating, 
snarling, blear-eyed, doddery, unkempt, ex-kitchen maid of a 
housekeeper, but never a wife, despite his gallantries at concerts, 
balls and suchlike; pauvre bonhomme que Dieu le bénisse! 

Come to that, it’s time I stopped, for I am beginning to say all 
manner of horrid things about my fellow-men, if not about a 

4 to go by the past - > Strangeways, 48 Great Ducie Street. See this volume, 
p. 201. - © how frightful - 4 Engels’ sister - © Gottfried Ermen - f Franz 
Ermen - 8 may God bless him, poor fellow 

member of the firm, and this one ought never to do unless there’s 
something to be gained by it, as the Quakers say. 

My greetings to Emil,* Elise and the children and please give my 
kindest regards to Mr and Mrs Heilgers. The weather was too bad 
and there was too much work at the office for me to come up for 
the funeral of the Orv Duxe”; we only took half a day off. In 
any case J shall be in town four weeks from now. 

With much love, 

Your 
Friedrich