AT LE PERREUX 

London, 7 July 1892 

My dear Laura, 

I went at once to Manchester °°’ on the telegram of Schorlemmer’s 
death, on Friday last week Ist July we buried him and on Saturday 
I returned. The last weeks of his life he remained in the same half- 
conscious and very oblivious, but absolutely painless state in which 
I had found him when there in the beginning of June, and on 
Monday morning 27th June‘ he expired quietly and without any 

4 Julie Bebel- C. Schmidt, ‘Die psychologische Richtung in der neueren National - 
Oekonomie’, Die Neue Zeit, 10 Jg. 1891/92, 2. Bd., Nr. 40, 41.-° In the original ‘29 
June’, which is a slip of the pen. 

struggle. A post mortem entirely confirmed the diagnosis of Gumpert: 
a carcinomatous tumour in the right lung, of the size of a small 
orange, sufficient, by its pressure on the vena cava and the plexus 
brachialis to account for the deficient action of the brain and the par- 
tial paralysis and oedema of the right arm. The large vein of that arm 
contained a considerable thrombus, there were distinct though small 
carcinomatous places in the brain, and the heart was beginning to 
show fatty degeneration. Under these circumstances we may congratu- 
late ourselves that he was spared longer and perhaps acute sufferings. 

Gumpert had got him in May already to make a will, he left every- 
thing to his mother. The manuscripts he left may cause some trouble. 
The most interesting one is on the history of chemistry, 1) Ancients, 
2) Alchemy, 3) Jatrochemistry,°?° up to the 17th century; a fragment of 
the 3rd part not completed, but still full of new views and discoveries. 
Then a lot of work on organic chemistry. But as he has éwo works in 
the press at the same time: 1) his own organic chemistry, 2) his and 
Roscoe’s big book“; —it will be pretty hard to distinguish which be- 
longs to which. One of his executors is a chemist (Siebold) but hardly 
knows enough about the theory of the science to distinguish. And 
Roscoe’s red-hot after the ms., as he knows too well that Ae cannot 
finish the book. I have told the executors in my opinion they might let 
Roscoe have what belongs to the Roscoe-Schorlemmer book on bind- 
ing himself to let the heirs participate in the profits of the pending vo- 
lume (German and English) in the same way as Schorlemmer himself 
would have done. As Roscoe was elected yesterday for Manchester, 
he will no doubt pounce upon the executors at once, so I wrote them 
yesterday giving a full account of what I considered ought to be done 
in the matter. 

A short notice I wrote in the Vorwdérts? I send you today. 

Here we are in the midst of the elections.°°* They go remarkably 
well for us—under the circumstances. First, the immense Liberal 
Wave which was to carry Gladstone triumphantly to power, is all 
bosh. He will probably get a small majority, and it is not even certain 
whether there will be a majority for anybody. This will make doth offi- 
cial parties dependent, for the next election, which may come very 
soon, upon the working men. Secondly the new working-class move- 

* C. Schorlemmer, The Rise and Development of Organic Chemistry, H.E. Roscoe and 
C. Schorlemmer, Ausfiihrliches Lehrbuch der Chemie, Bd. I-V; H.E. Roscoe and 
C. Schorlemmer, A Treatise on Chemistry.-' F. Engels, ‘Carl Schorlemmer’, Vorwarts, 
No. 153, 3 July 1892. 

ment enters Parliament triumphantly. On Monday* Keir Hardie 
was elected with 1,200 majority in the East-End (West Ham) — last 
member a Tory ° with 300 majority! Yesterday John Burns at Batter- 
sea with 1,600 majority ——last member a bourgeois Liberal* with 
only 186 majority. And then at Middlesborough in Yorkshire 
J.H. Wilson, secretary of the Sailors and Firemen’s Union (a Streber“ 
but deeply engaged and mortgaged to new Unionism °?°) beat doth 
a Liberal and a Tory! These are the only éclatant victories in the 
whole election and all gained by working men: in two cases the Libe- 
rals dared not oppose one of their own, and in the third when they did, 
they were battus a plate couture.“ And third: wherever a working man’s 
candidature had been well selected and prepared, it either consider- 
ably diminished the Liberal majority, so as to warn them to be more 
careful and not to risk losing the seat next time, or it made the Liberals 
lose the seat. Thus in 2 divisions of Glasgow, Cunninghame-Graham 
was beaten, but so was his Liberal competitor. Thus in Salford, Hall, an 
S. D.F.?° man, but said to be good, had only 554 votes, but these de- 
prived the Liberal of his seat. And thus, 3 Liberal seats lost merely be- 
cause they would thrust bourgeois members upon working-class con- 
stituencies. 

The election has done already what I maintained was all we had 
a right to expect from it: give fair and unmistakable warning to the 
Liberals that the Independent Working Men’s Party °'> was approaching, 
that it cast its shadow before it, and that this was to be the last general 
election carried on between two parties only, the Ins and the Outs. 
And therefore I am quite satisfied, especially so, as we shall get a par- 
liament with which no stable government is possible. 

From your silence I conclude that Bonnier is right when he writes 
to Tussy [:] /e journal pend toujours &@ un fil.'*?% Let us hope the fil 
will not snap but on the contrary grow into a rope and even a hawser. 

Love from Louise. Prosperity and eloquence to M. le député. 

Ever yours 
F. Engels