Ramsgate, Friday, 25 August 1876 
Dear Moor, 

Your letter arrived here on Tuesday and is now circulating 
among your daughters.” No one here envies you your 28 hours of 
roving between Cologne and Karlsbad >; on the other hand, there’s 
been much wagering as to the amount of Bavarian ‘liquid’ that 
helped to see you through your many vicissitudes. 

A week ago on Monday Lenchen‘ arrived here from Hastings 
where she had been spending Sunday with Jenny and the 
Lafargues; despite being rather seedy, she went into the water, 
thereby incurring a frightful headache that lasted two days; a 
second attempt only made matters worse, so she had to give it up. 
She went home on Tuesday, and the day after that, the day before 
yesterday, your wife turned up here; she is noticeably better than 
she was—six weeks ago at any rate. She does a great deal of 
walking, her appetite is good and she seems to be sleeping very 
well. After being fortified by me at the station with a glass of port, 
she and Lizzie are loafing about on the sanps and rejoicing at not 
having to write any letters. Sea-bathing has done Lizzie a power of 
good and I hope that this time it will last the winter through. 

At this moment Ramsgate is populated almost exclusively by 
small GRrEENGRocers and other quite small shopkeepers from London. 
These people stay here a week, for as long as the RETURN TICKET is 
valid, and then make way for others of the same ilk. It’s the 
former day-trip public which now takes a week off. At first sight 
one would think they were working men, but their conversation 
immediately betrays the fact that they are RATHER ABOVE THAT and 
belong to quite the most disagreeable stratum of London 
society—they’re the kind who, in speech and manner, are already 
preparing themselves, after the inevitably impending bankruptcy, 
for the no less inevitably impending career of costermonger. And 
now, let Tussy imagine her old friend Gore on the sands Of a 
morning, surrounded by 30 or 40 dames de la halle’ of that ilk. 

In view of the ever denser stultification induced by the seaside, 
the most suitable reading has, naturally enough, been Mr Dih- 

a Jenny Longuet and Laura Lafargue - > See this volume, pp. 135-36. - © Helene 
Demuth - 4 market women 

ring’s natural philosophy of reality.* Never have I encountered 
anything so natural. Everything occurs naturally since everything 
is regarded as natural that occurs naturally to Mr D., which is why 
he invariably takes his departure from ‘axiomatic propositions’, for 
what is natural requires no proof. As far as banality goes, the 
thing is absolutely unprecedented. Poor though it is, the part 
dealing with nature is by far the best. Here, at any rate, there are 
still some withered remains of dialectical phraseology, but no 
sooner does he touch on social and historical conditions than the 
old metaphysic prevails in the form of morality, and then he gets 
well and truly onto the wrong tack and turns helplessly round and 
round in circles. His horizon barely extends beyond the area 
covered by the common law of the land’ and, for him, Prussian 
officialdom represents ‘the state’. We shall be returning to London 
a week today '” and then I shall at once settle down to work on 
the fellow. The nature of the eternal truths he preaches will be 
apparent to you from his three bétes noires—tobacco, cats and 
Jews—and they get it hot and strong. 

Tussy’s letter to Lenchen has just arrived here; I shall forward it 
to London directly. 

With their hullaballo about Turxisy atrocrties, The Daily News 
and old Russell have done the Russians a signal service and 
splendidly paved the way for the latter’s next campaign, which 
may begin as soon as the liberal gents have taken the helm here. 
The liberal provincial press is even now sounding the alarm and, 
since OLD Dizzy? has retreated to the Houser or Lorns,! it will no 
doubt be the liberal ranters who will lay down the Jaw in the next 
session in the Commons. Not a word is said, of course, about the 
infamies perpetrated by the Montenegrins and Herzegovinians. 
Luckily the Serbs are getting knocked for six'”°—even Forbes, 
who, by the way, is again the one solitary rational war correspon- 
dent, speaks with unmistakable admiration of the superior military 
prowess of the Turkish troops—and it isn’t so easy for the Bani 
Uapb~ to intervene. 

Your wife and Lizzie send much love to Tussy as also to 
yourself. 

Your 
F. E.