Bridlington Quay, 22 August 1868 

Dear Moor, 

Best thanks for the Lanterne and the B. Becker.* The closer one 
comes to see the details of the Lassalle tragicomedy, the more the 

a B. Becker, Enthüllungen über das tragische Lebensende Ferdinand Lassalle’s. 

comical side emerges. This man was ruined by his 1rrepressip.e 
reflection upon himself, his permanent self-contemplation. ‘How 
do I appear to myself?’ was the eternal refrain. Poor Baron Izzy! 
Comic at that exalted moment when he commissioned his alter ego, 
Rustow, to bed the beautiful Helen* per procura” if necessary —he 
well knew how little danger this involved—as at that other 
moment when the Wallachian‘ shot away his genitals. Poor Izzy! 
To be gelded by a shot from a Wallachian.? You always found it so 
comical that his gob had been stopped, but now this as well. 

Seiler! That is the impression of the whole story. Sebastian 
Seiler, the only worthy historiographer of this tragicomedy—he 
will hang himself that he missed this putrid scene. En attendant it 
is quite amusing that the ‘testamentary successor of Lassalle’!”’ 
declares him an aristocrat, traitor and cad, and is forced to 
appropriate all those things that we formerly had published against 
him himself and against Schweitzer.’ Bastards! 

On Wednesday or Thursday! I shall go back to Manchester 
from here and shall then visit my mother for a week— probably in 
Ostend. I am still waiting for a letter from her, and have no idea 
where I stand in the meantime.’” 

Naturally I would have sent the money for the loan from the 
insurance company only to you, if you had not from the start 
shoved the whole affair away from you and onto Borkheim, so 
that I had to turn to him simply to find out how much had to be 
paid. That I could, of course, only do with the simultaneous 
remark that I would send the sum to him, since he was indeed 
standing surety for the money. As I already wrote to you, it would 
never have occurred to me to send the money to that jackass 
Schyler.* But I expect to see you before then, in London at the 
end of next week. 

Your 
F. E.