AT LE PERREUX 
London, 20 December 1892 
My dear Lohr, 
Yesterday we forwarded by Van Oppen and Co’s Express (they have an 

office in Paris too, but I did unfortunately not note the address) the box with 
pudding and cake, and hope it will arrive safe (directed to you, Le 

Perreux). The pudding is not quite boiled out, our copper would not heat last 
Saturday and so, instead of twelve hours’ boiling, the unfortunate pudding 
only got about nine or ten, But if you give it two to three hours’ boiling 
before serving, it will be all right. 

Before crossing the Channel, the Oxford sage’ gave us a call here. I hope I 
quietened his anxiety about the first of May” to some extent, The attempt, in 
1890, to chémer at Hamburg alone cost the party above 100,000 marks ”*, 
and in my opinion it would never do to allow the bourgeois to bleed the 
German party’s cash and credit ‘a blanc just at the moment when a 
dissolution of the Reichstag ”° is in the air, and when every farthing would be 
wanted. 

Panama is delightful, °° The papers you so kindly send me, and old Mother 
Crawford’s letters—though awfully cut down by the respectable people of 
the Daily News—form already a pretty comprehensive dossier which I intend 
to complete up to the—I hope—bitter end. Respectability here, of course, 
triumphs. 

Wenn sich das franzosische Laster erbricht, setzt sich die englische Tugend 
zu Tisch’—and I'll be damned if I do not prefer a thousand times that plain 
open outright French vice to this hypocritical British virtue. Here corruption 
has been brought into a system and has been endowed with a complete code 
of étiquette which you have only to keep within, in order to be perfectly 
bullet-proof against all charges of undue corruption. In France no man would 
stand a chance in a popular constituency, a town especially, who openly 
wanted to get into Parliament for the purpose of furthering his own interests; 
here, anybody who wanted to get in for any other purpose would be 
considered a fool and a Don Quixote. The English Panama is called Building 
Society and has more than one head— the savings of the small people have 
been eaten up in these societies by wholesale, and no great fuss about it.“ One 
M.P. is in here too, Spencer Balfour—he will take the Chiltern Hundreds and 
retire into private life—while lots of M.P.’s make money by selling their 
names as directors of all sorts of swindling companies, which is considered 
perfectly fair so long as it is not pushed to excess. 

On Friday‘ we expect Pumps and her family here, as we have not room 

enough in the house we have taken lodgings next door but one—the old 
Marquis’s house is now a lodging house! I think I wrote to you that on 
November 13" Pumps had a little girl. 

Shall write to Paul after the first rush of the holidays is over. 

Ever yours, 
F. Engels 

[Postscript from Louise Kautsky]* 

My dear Laura, 

Should I do penance, in sackcloth and ashes? But I’d rather not for I regret all my 
misdeeds as it is. Because of my not writing I suffer more than you do. After my return the 
General? was no longer his old self and I had hardly any time of my own, but when I did 
have time I was in no mood for writing. Yet now and again everything turned out very well. I 
look forward to the spring when we’ll be able to talk to our hearts content. My best regards to 
the M.P.© 

With love and kisses 

Your 

Louisa