Dear Mohr,

I am eager for the communication. Meanwhile, herewith some Paris gossip.

Yesterday I wrote to Freiligrath about Kinkel. The good man himself gave me the occasion for it. I had given him, on the occasion of the exchange transactions, some marginal glosses on the political and economic world situation, and these inspired him to the remark: “the Hermann will certainly be followed one day by a Neueste Rheinische Zeitung.” How he hit upon that Kinkelish rag is to me utterly incomprehensible, unless he wished to provoke me into making a remark about Joh. Gottfr., and he got it, too. I must say the way he brought this lousy little paper into any sort of connection with us vexed me greatly. The day before yesterday I wrote him a letter twice, but it was too harsh; I was too angry, left the matter lie until yesterday. I have treated him very decently, but Mons. Gottfr. very roughly; I told him that K. exploits him as a poetic reference, since his own poet-fame, scratched together by his wife’s begging advertisements, would not otherwise hold up; that the Hermann has only increased the contempt I have always felt for this hollow, affected, sleeked monkey; and that I have not forgotten the infamies which the ‘hound’ committed in America against you and me and for which he is too cowardly to answer. The letter is 3 pages long; as I said, F. cannot complain about the way I treat him, but indirectly and through the flower he gets quite a lot to hear. I am curious what he will do.

Here again a Wuppertal poet and distant relative has descended upon me, who in London of course immediately called on F. F. wrote me he seemed to be a nice fellow. I answered him he was at least robust, healthy, and neither vain nor affected, qualities which among present-day German poets outweigh a good deal of talent. To this fellow Fr. has said he has a salary of a thousand pounds.

The smuggling of the ‘Hermann’ into F.’s letter has damnably annoyed me, but he’ll never play such a trick on me again, you can swear on that.

Best greetings to your wife and children.

Yours,

For fun’s sake, I enclose one of the discarded draft letters to F.