AT LE PERREUX 
London, 20 January 1892 

My dear Laura, 

Last night I had a letter from Paul from Bordeaux in which he 
writes me to send you a cheque to pay the propriétaire.“ Now I should 
only be too glad to help you over this mauvais quart d’heure,’ but the 
fact is, January and February are my worst months in the year, 
Christmas pumps one out almost completely, and I have next to 
nothing to come in before 1-5th March. In fact I do not yet see my 
way how to get over this awkward time myself, as besides the usual 
Christmas expenses, I had some considerable extra advances to make. 
Old Harney I had to lend money when he was ill, and Tussy and Ed- 
ward have mortgaged with me the proceeds of four agreements with 
Sonnenschein, on which I advanced them a pretty round sum which 
comes in from Sonnenschein only gradually and at rather uncertain 

* bastard-° Yours sincerely -° landlady-* bad spell 

times—certainly not now when I want it most. In fact I am hard up 
myself. But if you can manage to find some one who, on my giving 
him my cheque for the amount, dated say March 5th, so that it cannot 
be presented before that date, will advance you the needful, then you 
can have my cheque with pleasure. I should think Deville might do 
that, as my cheque is absolutely safe. In that case please let me know 
what the amount is, for Paul merely speaks of ‘un chéque’. 

My article* in the Almanach is appearing in Italian in the Critica 
Sociale and yesterday I was at last able to send to Bebel the German 
text of it— with a rather lengthy postscriptum on the Russian famine, 
which insures peace for a time and deprives my article of its most ac- 
tual actualité. 

The fight with Hyndman & Co. goes on here—at present the 
Kommunistischer Arbeiterverein is the chief theatre, and 
there is a chance of Gilles being beaten and kicked out, and then 
Hyndman will have made with his German speculation (backing 
Gilles) even a worse four’ than in his French speculation on 
Brousse.?°° 

Hyndman you know is candidate for Parliament in Chelsea. When 
his meetings in Sloane Square were stopped by the police he was fined 
ls. and paid it, and gave up Sloane Square. Now he makes the Fede- 
ration ?° fight for a far worse place in Chelsea called the World’s End 
(the name is enough to show it’s no place for public meetings). Well 
they have had some 15-18 men summoned and sentenced, and now 
they tried to get the other bodies out to fight their battle, under the 
name of ‘the right of public meeting in danger’. For Hyndman said, if 
he could keep this going on till the dissolution, fzs seat was safe. But it 
won't come off. The Gas Workers said they would send speakers to be 
arrested and tried, if Hyndman on that occasion took the chair ?°°; and at 
a meeting last week where Burns, Edward and Tussy were, Hyndman 
was terribly taunted with his cowardice, and finally the whole at- 
tempt to rescue Hyndman by the intervention of the other Societies 
and Trades Unions was practically dropped. Croesel, one of our best 
Germans here, told Hyndman to his face he was a liar, in public del- 
egate meeting, and he pocketed it. 

Now I must go and see Ede Bernstein who has had the influenza, so 
good-bye. Louise says as Paul is always away you might use your 
spare time to write something for the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung — you see she 
is awfully ambitious to make the Viennese paper beat the Stuttgart 

4 F. Engels, ‘Le Socialisme en Allemagne. -? blunder 

one * which however won’t be difficult — that was first edited by Frau 
Ihrer, and damned badly, and now poor Clara Zetkin has it, and the 
first two Nos are certainly very poor and very slow. So if you have 
something to tell about ces charmantes frangaises and their movements, 
all the better. 

I hope your animal family is going on all right— we have the in- 
fluenza all round us, but so far our two servants here have only got 
a touch of it, Louise suffers from what my poor wife‘ used to call 
‘pains all over’ (general muscular rheumatism) and I am not yet 
caught. 

Ever yours, 
F. Engels