{[London,] 24 November 1858 

Dear Frederick, 

Yesterday I wrote about Prussia.* So for Friday you have all the 
rest of the world at your disposal. 

Have received the £1. The ‘particular’ pickle in which I find 
myself at the moment arises from the fact that I was compelled to 
pay out all ar once more than £8 to the newspaper man, who had 

a ‘Affairs in Prussia’ 

13%* 

been giving me credit for over a year. I’m stone broke, which in 
this weather is not comfortable. In Trier, my sister* would now 
seem to have frustrated my mother’s perfectly rational INTENTIONS, 
or at least to have postponed THEIR REALISATION sine die. 

Blind was here the day before yesterday with wife.” It was over a 
year since J had seen this ramity. From them I learnt sundry pieces 
of gossip. 

1. Mrs Kinkel threw herself out of the window a week ago last 
Monday and has since been buried. Gottfried,° with a sublimity all 
his own, attended the post-mortem and delivered an ‘oration’ at 
the graveside. Freiligrath is so moved that he'll shun me, as a 
‘frivolous’ man, for a fortnight at least. 

2. Frébel is over here. Has married a rich wife. Is returning to 
America. According to him Russia and America must share the 
world between them, a point of view that makes him feel very 
superior. He enthuses over American ‘luxury’ and GENTLEMAN- 
LIKENESS, despises the Germans and gives practical proof of this by 
engaging in the German slave trade to Central America. It’s really 
too comical that, because deeply impressed by bourgeois society in 
its American reality, this son of Rudolstadt should believe himself 
more ‘advanced’ than the ‘rest or Europe. Once they HAVE FOUND THEIR 
BREAD AND CHEESE, all these scoundrels require is some blasé pretext to 
bid farewell to the struggle. 

3. Asinine Ruge, in a piece for Prutz, has proved that 
‘Shakespeare was not a dramatic poet’ because he ‘had no 
philosophical system’, whereas Schiller, being a Kantian, is a TRULY 
‘dramatic poet’. Prutz then wrote a ‘vindication of Shakespeare’. 
In addition, Ruge described Moleschott in the American papers as 
‘a silly ass’, whereupon Heinzen sacked him from the Pionier. 
However, the old bounder is now finding a place for his inanities 
in Bornstein’s Anzeiger des Westens. 

4. The foolish Ewerbeck returned to Paris two years ago, 
corresponds regularly with Blind. Had let himself be inveigled by 
Ribbentrop into marrying Ribbentrop’s maid, only to discover that 
the former was tumbling the latter, after which came divorce, 
lawsuit, etc. He was assistant in a Paris library, and was sacked by 
the priests. Writes to say he only has 1,200 frs left, threatens to 
come to England having read in the Univers, etc., that ‘socialism 
and atheism’ are flourishing in the latter country. 

a Emilie Marx - > Friederike Blind - ¢ Gottfried Kinkel - 4 A. Ruge, ‘Idealismus 
und Realismus im Reich des Ideals’, Deutsches Museum, Nos. 14, 15, 19, 1 and 8 April, 6 
May 1858. - ¢ R. E. Prutz, ‘Literaturgeschichte’, Deutsches Museum, No. 24, 10 June 
1858. 

5. Dr Freund is said to be so down on his luck that he has 
allegedly approached people in the street for a shilling. 

6. Loutish Landolphe has reappeared in England as a beggar 
and through Blind’s intervention, has been engaged by Dr 
Bronner at a German school in Bradford. 

Salut. 

Your 
K. M.