[IN BORSDORF NEAR LEIPZIG **] 

London, 2 January 1886 

Dear Liebknecht, °!! 

Borkheim’s wife died some 8 years ago. No great loss to him—— she 
drank. His son, * aged 19, is a clerk in Dunkirk. To begin with he him- 
self was in business in Liverpool; during the Crimean War a specula- 
tive trip to Balaklava with a load of bits and pieces earned him 
£15,000 all at one go, which, however, he lost because he did the 
same thing again and peace supervened °!?; became a wine merchant 
and discovered that his palate for Bordeaux was probably the finest in 
London; became the agent of a Bordeaux house, built up a clientéle 
for them, but was insufficiently circumspect and, when he sought 
a partnership, was given the push— they no longer needed him. No 
wiser for the experience, he tried to repeat this brilliant performance 
with another house, the result being the same, hence had to start from 
the beginning once more. Again promptly discovered two good con- 
nexions, lived like a lord as always, while at Badenweiler had an 
apoplectic fit (about 10 years ago), which completely paralysed his 
left side, whereupon it transpired that, rather than possessing money, 
he had been borrowing from his friends in order to support his madly 
extravagant mode of life. But in spite of it all he was so much liked 
that people calmly put up with their losses, while the two houses for 
which he had worked paid him a pension to live on. His housemaid, 
with whom there had undoubtedly been some highly intimate goings- 
on, looked after him up till his death——she was able to furnish 

* F. Borkheim 

a boarding-house in Hastings 29° and still do pretty well out of it dur- 
ing the season. A year ago, when the last of his pensions was stopped, 
we succeeded in persuading his Crry friends, all of whom were owed 
money by him, to provide a new and adequate pension. Absurdly os- 
tentatious in his conduct while his luck was in, he behaved like a hero 
when suddenly assailed by the most atrocious ill-fortune. Never 
a word of complaint, unfailingly cheerful, no sign of his having been 
affected by this sudden downfall. Rarely have I met such resilience. 
He spent his time writing his autobiography, first in English, then in 
German; the latter is probably not quite finished. ? If you could 
find a publisher for it as well as some money for the boy, who earns 
a wage of £70 after an upbringing that might almost suggest his 
having been born in the purple, you would be doing a good turn. The 
address is F. Borkheim, aux soins de* Messieurs Bourdon & Cie, 
Dunkerque, France. 

You are on the wrong track with your suppositions about the secret 
insinuations concerning you that have come to my ears. The only 
good friend who might possibly have managed to find some fault with 
you, the one ‘who told you’ this, ‘who told you’ that? —is called Wil- 
helm Liebknecht” and his insinuations have appeared in writing in 
his letters and in print in the Sozialdemokrat and any number of Ger- 
man newspapers. Thanks to this source I have known for years that 
you have a pleasing and insuperable weakness for all the ‘eddicated’ 
elements that hover round the fringes of the party and that you wish 
to win them over, even though 95 per cent of them can only do us 
harm. I further understand from this source that last year you only 
noticed personal differences within the parliamentary group *9 where- 
as now you are already discovering ‘backsliders’. I am also indebted 
to. the above source for the knowledge that this same Wilhelm Lieb- 
knecht is on occasion inclined to forget what has been written if, at 
that moment, it doesn’t suit his book and that he hopes others will be 
good-natured enough to do him a similar favour. Which is not, unfor- 
turiately, always possible. But as to your passion for picking up ‘eddi- 
cated’ elements and glossing over all differences, one must put up 
with such things and does so fairly readily for their being unavoid- 
able. But don’t ask that they be overlooked. And their inevitability 
causes me all the less concern because I know, and shall say as much 

* care of - > See this volume, p. 387. 

at every opportunity, that, come the moment of decision between the 
conflicting elements, you will be on the right side. °'* 
And now a Happy New Year. 

Your 
F, Engels