Manchester, 16 Oct. 1862.
Dear Mohr,

All last week and this week I have been preparing myself every day to write to you, but the damned cotton affairs have prevented me. Ces messieurs had, during my absence, of course, left everything lying that they possibly could, so that I had my hands full.

Lupus sends word that he has received the things correctly. The case is highly amusing. These poor lying Prussians who always make fools of themselves as soon as they produce something in writing!

You will have received the £10 note that I sent you on the day of my departure? I stuck too long again in Barmen & Engelskirchen, having rambled about for a fortnight on the Moselle, on the Rhine, & in Thuringia. I went straight via Brussels & Luxembourg to Trier, from there on foot as far as Kochern, etc. I was not in Cologne at all.

The appointment of Bismarck was received by the bourgeoisie with ringing laughter. Altogether the fellows were extraordinarily cocksure and, to some extent, audacious. They have honest William at last fixed on a money question and know that in the long run he must give way to them on that; but they imagine the course of affairs to be remarkably idyllic and think if they let the chap wriggle for a while, he will have to come to them of his own accord. They’re in for a surprise. In any case, things must come to a crisis by the spring. For the rest, it’s enough to make one die laughing what an enthusiastic effect a money question has on the philistines. Schultze-Delitsch and Co. become positively witty, and only Virchow remains ‘serious is the man’ (ernscht ischt der Mann); but then, alongside him Heinrich Bürgers also still comports himself with appropriate dignity in Weimar, banging the drum for the imperial constitution of the year dot. I must say Schultze-Delitsch, who after all was and wanted to be nothing but a lousy petty bourgeois, that savings-bank little man, seems positively respectable to me when I compare him with those dogs like Bürgers and the great Miquel, who are saving the Fatherland in Weimar through the Prussian point.

About Kinkel I am now clear as well. He is the pure caricature of an upholsterer in Koblenz who is a model Rhinelander unique in his way, with all the prejudices and bigotries of the race, cursing the Prussians, hating the French, sympathising with Austria, Catholic and democratic in one breath, but can march damn well; the fellow marched with me over the Kochemer Berg. If Kinkel saw this chap, whose ape he is from top to toe in bodily form, he would fall on his backside from fright.

What do you think of America? The financial crash, which cannot fail to come with these stupid paper-money measures, seems near. Militarily the North will no doubt get something on its legs again now.

How is little Jennychen?

Many greetings to your wife & the girls.

Yours
F. E.