London, 12 January 1882 

Dear Emil, 

After sundry disturbances and unforeseen events, among which the 
eating and drinking that goes with the festive season, 1 have com- 
posed myself sufficiently to send you, Lottchen, Elisabeth and her 
fiancé’ my heartiest congratulations on their engagement. I would 
never have thought, when travelling to Manchester with August 
Erbsl6h in the late autumn of 1842 ? (I’ve only seen him once or 

* and all the rest-° Charlotte and Elisabeth Engels, Carl Alexander Erbsloh 

twice since then in Barmen), that his son would marry a niece of 
mine. Admittedly, neither of the two young people had been so much 
as thought of at that time. It is a subject that lends itself to all kinds of 
suitable and unsuitable remarks— which, however, I shall refrain 
from making since anyone can easily do that for himself and the 
young couple will in any case be much too preoccupied with present 
and future to have time for utterly useless comments on a past that is 
antecedent to their births. 

Apart from that, I shall soon be moved to hope that engagements 
in our family, along with their more immediate and more remote 
consequences, will come at rather less frequent intervals, though ad- 
mittedly in a family as numerous and prolific as ours these cases mul- 
tiply proportionately to the square of the distance in time from a start- 
ing-point that lies over 60 years behind us, and there’s no going 
against a natural law such as that. 

I’m keeping quite well on the whole, except that I’m rather deaf 
in my left ear and regularly catch coid during the winter, but I got used 
to that years ago. At all events, the mild winter will help you shake off 
the effects of pneumonia, or at any rate alleviate them. Today it 
turned so warm again that I had to take my greatcoat off, despite a 
bit of Scorcn mist. 

Love to you all, especially to Lottchen and the happy couple. 

Your 
Friedrich 

I shall be glad to see Emil? here.