London, 31 March 1893 
Dear Mrs Bebel, 

August’s presence '*’ has made me conscious of the shameful fact that I 
have long owed you an answer to your kind letter, so I have at once taken up 
my pen lest you should continue to have cause to resent my tardiness. 
August, I can assure you, is exceptionally well and takes his raw eggs in 
brandy with admirable punctuality. The fact that his stomach is in excellent 
fettle was proved conclusively last evening at the Mendelsons and still more 
so later on at home, for after that good but truly enormous supper he slept 
more soundly than any of us. 

We are expecting Burns here today and thus, for the first time in history, 
three Socialist members of parliament from Germany, France* and England 
will come together. That such a meeting should be possible, a meeting of the 
three deputies of the three leading parliaments of Europe—three Socialist 
Party leaders representing the three dominant nations of Europe—is in itself 
proof of what enormous advances we have made. I only wish that Marx were 
alive to witness it. 

Well, now it is also time to remind you of your promise to visit us here in 
the summer and take me back with you to Germany. '*’ True, August is 
afraid that a possible dissolution of the Reichstag might upset everything, but 
that is something I cannot see, for if there is in fact a dissolution, it will 
happen this month, i.e. in April (which will be upon us tomorrow), while the 
elections will be held in June at the latest, ’° in which case a holiday will be 
more necessary than ever—for August as well as for yourself—and if you 
were to see the fine weather we have here and all the greenness of spring 
which also brings with it a mass of flowers that lasts until the end of June, 
you would assuredly come, dissolutions and fresh elections or not. So, as 
always, I shall count on your keeping your word and shall also accompany 
you to Berlin, for since last autumn our respective trips have been 
indissolubly linked. 

“Paul Lafargue 

And now for yet another matter. August had taken it into his head to return 
on Monday." But over the past ten years or so Easter Monday has become a 
proper holiday over here—one of the four so-called Bank Holidays. |” It is a 
real popular festival. That being the case, all the railways are busy with extra 
trains and excursion parties, all the stations are filled to overflowing and all 
the regular trains are neglected by the management, since what matters is the 
extra profit. These Bank Holidays are the only days in the year when it is 
somewhat dangerous to travel on English trains, and consequently no one 
travels on those days unless he has to. We therefore implored August to 
abandon his plan and not leave until Tuesday, which he has promised to do. I 
am positive you will agree that he shouldn’t travel on a day when arrivals 
and departures are never punctual and when all the accidents that didn’t 
occur during the previous three months have a habit of occurring all on one 
day. 

And now I shall take a hearty swig in honour of your coming visit—for 
we are at this moment enjoying our morning glass of ale. 

With warm regards, 

Yours, 
F. Engels