London, 13 December 1886 

My dear Laura, 

Well, here we have you at last nailed to a date,*’° and I hope you 
will make it the 23rd, so as to be able to goa bit about town with Nim 
before Christmas and look at the Christmas shops. And to cut short 
any further excuses, I enclose a check for £20.- to enable you to per- 
form your promise. 

Also a letter from Tussy, who was yesterday in Williamsport, Penn- 
sylvania, and will have meetings after that in Baltimore, Wilmington 
and New York — but in New York a whole series from 19th to 23rd, 
and leave on 25th.? Another letter from Edward will be sent to- 
morrow, I have to make a note or two out of it. Please bring all these 
letters with you when you come for I have a strong suspicion that 
they were written with one eye to business, for I find that Liebknecht 
also wrote almost daily his impressions de voyage to his wife, not so much 

for her sake as for that of forming the material basis of a book already 
contracted for. 

Last Wednesday week * Mrs Liebknecht arrived here, an extremely 
German lady, and before 24 hours had passed, she began to unbosom 
herself to Nim with an eagerness that was almost too much for Nim. 
The household seems to be a model German one, Sentimentalitét und 
héuslicher Zwist,” but considerably more of the latter. Nim will tell 
you more anon. On Sunday afternoon Liebknecht dropped in, more 
hungry than usual, fortunately there was a boiled leg of mutton to ap- 
pease his craving. He is quite the old Liebknecht, only Nim who has 
got the deepest inside in his household mysteries affirms that he is 
somewhat more of a Philistine. What Tussy says of him is quite cor- 
rect, his notion of his own importance, capacities and absolute invin- 
cibility is astounding; but at the same time there is an undercurrent of 
a dim apprehension that after all he is not the stupendous man that 
he would like the people to believe him to be; which undercurrent 
drives him to be more in want of other people’s admiration than he 
otherwise would be, and in order to obtain that, to manipulate facts 
considerably in all his tales about himself. But his wife says with truth 
that if he was not so immensely satisfied with himself, he would never 
be able to do the work he does. So we must take him as he is and be 
satisfied with a quiet laugh at much of what he says; he will create 
much mischief in a small way by his diplomatising ways pro aris et fo- 
cis,° but at the decisive moment he will always take the right side. 
They left on Friday for Leipzig. 

Percy is quite well again, he always has these violent attacks, but if 
once over the first assault, he is soon right again. 

The Kautskys are taking a house beyond the Archway — not the 
Archway Tavern but the real Archway farther on. That is to say, 
Scheu takes the house for three years, and takes part of it with his 
daughter, a rather silly girl of about 18 whom he has got over from 
Hungary; and the Kautskys take the other part. They are beginning 
to move into it to-day and hope to have done with it by Saturday. 

I had a letter last week from old Harney, he sailed 12th October, 
much too late for his condition of body, and of course arrived rheu- 
matic and gouty all over. But he could not leave England which he 
adores while he hates America, and if he lives, he says he will come 

@ } December - ° sentimentality and household quarrels-* for our altars and 
firesides (Cicero, De natura deorum, III, 40, 94)