Dear Frederick,

Herewith a cutting of the advertisement for Herr Vogt from the
Genfer Grenzpost*; the enormous LeTrers are themselves indicative of
the love Brass feels for Vogt. By the by, in the last 5 numbers of
the Grenzpost there are some very good articles.

Up till now, or so Petsch told me yesterday, 80 copies have been
disposed of in London. On the other hand, he complains, ‘not a
single one’? in Manchester.

Otherwise, to the best of my knowledge, nothing has appeared
so far in the German press except in the Reform, which has
mentioned the thing (favourably) several times‘ and has promised
a long article next week. So far as the Allgemeine Augsburger
Zeitung is concerned, it’s all rather odd. They have been sent
2 lengthy reviews, one by that shit Biscamp, the other by
Mr L. Bucher for the supplement. And still not a word. Bur nous
verrons“

Well now:

1. L. Simons The book was almost finished, up to the last page,
when, late one evening, being on my way to Hirschfeld’s about
some proof-correcting, I called in for a moment at friend
Rheinlander’s orrice in the City. With an exceedingly cheerful

countenance, he told me that young Hochster (the lawyer’s son)
had come over from Paris and gone into business here in London.
Rheinlander knows the Héchsters, father and son, very well from
his Paris days. Young Héchster—I saw him later at R.’s—is an
innocuous lad quite without political—I wouldn't say views—but
.ideas. He was once clerk to a banker—KO6nigswarter*? or some
such (at the moment I’m not quite sure whether I’ve got this
well-known Bonapartist name right), where L. Simon was curr
clerc. R. asked Héchster about the gentle Kunigunde. ‘Oh,’ says he,
‘he’s not popular at the office. Although cuir of the clercs, he’s so
unsure of himself that he refers everything to the principa., and
he’s got very little idea of business. He’s bad-tempered, and then a
lot of his time is taken up with politics. The famous E. About
comes to see him nearly every evening, and they work together. I
have myself seen them correcting the proofs of one of their joint
publications.’ On cross-Examination by R., it then transpired that this
joint work was La Prusse en 1860. In Königswarter’s Bonapartist
office, L. Simon was ratuer boastful about his connection with
E. About, and young Höchster, being like a newborn babe in
politics, believed he was telling R., against whom, of course, he
does not harbour the least suspicion, something that was
altogether to L. S.’s credit. What is particularly odd is that later, at
the dinner given by Zimmermann (to which Hochster junior was
not invited) R. very artlessly asked old Héchster what he thought
of my denunciation of L. S. Héchster ainé declared that for many
years past, he had on principle stayed away from politics which
had already been his undoing twice. All the same, he said, he
found the thing hard to credit; but R. insisted that my source was
a very ‘reliable’ one.

2. Blind has avenged himself in the grand manner. He has
notified Petsch et Co. that he will no longer favour them with his
custom. Such is ‘the blind man’s revenge’. Old Zizka!

3. About Freiligrath—who will today derive comfort from the
plaster you applied to his‘snotty snout—and the material basis of
his relations with Blind, I have, if I am not mistaken, already
written to you.’ What actually happened was this:

At the time of the Schiller festival (1859), the noble poet, through
his agent Blind, first offered the famous cantata‘ to the management at the Crystal Palace.?*° They were to pay him £40 pown in casn
for permission to publish the renowned cantata and, on the day of the

*- Senior - 4 See this volume, p. 226.-¢ F. Freiligrath, Zur Schillerfeier.
10, November 1859. Festlied der Deutschen in London.

Schiller festival, they were to sell it in the Crystal Palace, other sales
being reserved by the mercantile poet for himself. The management
thanked Mr F. profusely for his kindness and begged him to peddle
his cantata himself.

Thereupon the noble chap, ostensibly at his own expense, got
Hirschfeld to print 20,000 copies of the tripe. The cost of
production was £40. The noble poet’s plan was that half the
profits should go to the Schiller Institute’? and the other half to
his propriis laribus,? which, after deduction of production costs (his
retail price was 6d per copy), would have meant that he would
clear £210 for himself, and, on top of that, gain kudos in Germany
for his magnanimity.

But he had counted his chickens before they were hatched.
Perhaps a few hundred corres (att 1x att) were sold throughout the
whole of England, and these were disposed of only by bringing
the utmost pressure to bear on private individuals.

So now he found himself in trouble.” Then Blind worried away
at the Schiller Committee from morn till night and from night till
morn in an endeavour to induce them to bear the printing costs,
in which, after fierce altercations, he finally succeeded. Hine illae
lacrimae.

The disposal of the many copies left in stock was entrusted by
Freiligrath to his blind friend, and last November (1860) this
indefatigable little sharper engineered his own Schiller festival in
London, so as to get rid of F.’s rubbish. No wonder, then, that F.
is now, as before, ‘on intimate terms’ with his precious Blind.’ F.
knows better than anyone else on which side his bread is buttered,
avant tout’ when it comes to snop interest (including, oF course,
literary fame).

Whilst on this subject, I should mention another proitery
characteristic of Blind.

On the quiet, without a word to friend Freiligrath or friend
Kinkel (and drawing on the famous £100 fund), the pensive Blind
had had printed something preliminary, or a preliminary something on Schiller and Blum.‘ At half past seven in the morning,
he, ere others dreamt of evil, placed outside the entrance to the
Palace a boxful of his ‘radical pamphlets’ guarded by messenger-boys borrowed from the Morning Advertiser who pressed

* own hearth - > In the original, ‘Holland in Not’ (Holland in trouble)—a phrase,
dating back to the Netherlands’ war of liberation against Spanish oppression
(1572-1609). - © Hence these tears (Terence, Andria, I, 1, 99). - 4 See this volume,
p- 226. - © above all -! K. Blind, Schiller. A Sketch of His Career and Works, London,
1859,

the rubbish into the hand of each arrival. Anyone who asked what
it cost was relieved, according to his outward appearance, of 6d, 3d,
or as little as Id. Anyone who didn’t ask got the rubbish for
nothing. And thus, even before Kinkel’s speech* of F.’s cantata”
was due to take place, the Badenese slyboots had gone one better
and forced his trash onto all and sundry.

Salut. The children at home again. Regards to Lupus,

Your
K. M.

THANKS FOR THE ARTICLE.°