A LONDON INTERLUDE 99
Weitling was absorbed quickly into the life of London's West
End. He realized a few pounds from the sale of some of his earlier
writings and friends in France and Switzerland sent him small
amounts from time to time derived from the sale of the Garantieen.
Once they raised a collection of 500 francs for him. Small amounts
occasionally came from sympathizers in Germany also, such as
Georg Schirges, editor of Gutzkow's Telegraphen in Hamburg.^6
To supplement these uncertain sources of revenue, Weitling
worked a little at his trade and pressed women's straw hats on a
machine which he developed.^7 He did not go to the Prussian con
sulate to collect the passage money for America which had been
promised, and he rejected a proposal to issue a journal. English
socialists took notice of his presence but did little to help him meet
his living expenses.
Weitling himself was so absorbed in an invention for a lathe, in
the preparation of the manuscript for the Gerechtigkeit, and in
the outline for a universal language, that he had little time for other
things. Strangely enough, though he remained in London for
nearly a year and a half, he did not seize that opportunity to study
the progress of industrialism in England or to become identified
with the Chartist movement. Instead, having been only moder
ately successful with his plans to revolutionize society, he turned
to attempts to revolutionize science by working on inventions and
a world language.
According to the not too reliable reports which Prussian agents
sent regularly to Berlin, Weitling spent many evenings in a Ger
man coffeehouse on Leicester Square and lived better than would
be expected from a man of so little visible means of support. Oc
casionally he attended gatherings of German and French com-
eign Communists for it. I am sorry to be obliged to refuse your request. Perhaps
in the next spring it will be, if the circumstances permit it. I will close, fearing
you might not seize the understanding of this foreign style... ." Signed—"Your
Brother, W. Weitling, Oct. 14, 1844, Bateman's Building, Soho, London." (Letter
in possession of Terijon Weitling.)(^6) Marx-Engels Archiv, II (1927), 593.
(^7) Barnikol, Weitling der Gefangene, 209-33.