Letter to Marie Blank, November 22, 1852

ENGELS TO MARIE BLANK

IN LONDON

Manchester, 22 November 1852

Dear Marie,

I really must beg your pardon most humbly for not having already long since replied to your first letter. But at the office where I was formerly in the habit of dealing with my private correspondence, I now have so much to do that there can no longer be any question of that, and at home, mon Dieu,^[1] my writing materials are always in such poor shape (as, e.g., my calligraphic experiments at the beginning of this letter go to show) that I can hardly bring myself to grapple with them. Nevertheless, I am doing so this evening in the hope that you will marvel at my sense of duty and regard my bad handwriting as yet another token of my brotherly love.

There was, besides, another reason that prevented me from writing to you. Namely the fact that, when you were in Germany, it occurred to me that there was something I wanted to ask you about; but when you came back I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was. You will understand that such lack of character, or rather such lack of memory, was bound to arouse considerable qualms of conscience in a self-respecting man. In all sincerity I must confess that I could not bring myself to write to you so long as I had not got to the bottom of this weighty matter. But your second letter, and the increased mental activity induced by a WELSH RABBIT and a few glasses of SHERRY, have at last brought me up to the mark again and I now recall what it was I wished to ask you. The matter in question is as follows: Did I, at Christmas or at Easter, leave two cotton shirts at your house? For these have long been missing from my wardrobe and if you have found them I should be quite glad, inasmuch as this would demonstrate that I am not at all a slipshod person.

You ask me what my wishes are. Ma chère soeur,^[2] it's some time since I indulged in wishes, for nothing comes of them. Besides which, I really have no talent for it, for if by chance I catch myself being weak enough to wish for anything, it always turns out to be something I can't have and it would therefore be better for me to get out of the habit of wishing altogether. As you see, even on this subject I cannot help relapsing into the moral tone of Ecclesiastes, so THE LESS WE SAY ABOUT IT, THE BETTER IT WILL BE. If, therefore, you intend to put me under an obligation by providing yet another token of your love this Christmas, my bungling and untutored talent in the matter of wishing is unlikely to be of much assistance to you, though I console myself with the thought that you do not in fact require such assistance, à en juger par le passé.^[3]

I am glad to hear that you are all flourishing. Apart from a couple of colds I, too, have been pretty well on the whole; in particular there was no recurrence of toothache with the change of season and I hope it's now a thing of the past. I am still living in Strangeways, though a few doors further away,^[4] but am considering leaving this district next month and moving a bit closer to Little Germany^[5] ; it really is too lonesome here and this winter I shall, for a change, allow myself a little entertainment, in so far as such a thing is possible in this smoky place. For six months past I have not had a single opportunity to make use of my acknowledged gift for mixing a lobster salad—quelle horreur^[6] ; it makes one get quite rusty. Anyhow, I shall have to write another book next spring, probably in English, about the Hungarian war^[7] or the novels of Mr Balzac, lately deceased, or about something else. This, however, is a great secret, otherwise I wouldn't breathe a word to you about it.

What is Elise^[8] up to? If she's a good cook, and can darn stockings, she might well come over here after Christmas and keep house for me. Now that Gottfried^[9] (or is it Franz^[10] ?) the lute-player has set up house on his own, I am virtually under an obligation to follow suit to outshine him, which is very easy, for Elise would undoubtedly be able to do the honours of the house quite famously, while all your old stick-in-the-mud bachelor has is an ancient, crotchety, six-foot-tall, skin-and-bone, intimidating, snarling, blear-eyed, doddery, unkempt, ex-kitchen maid of a housekeeper, but never a wife, despite his gallantries at concerts, balls and suchlike; pauvre bonhomme que Dieu le bénisse!^[11]

Come to that, it's time I stopped, for I am beginning to say all manner of horrid things about my fellow-men, if not about a member of the firm, and this one ought never to do unless there's something to be gained by it, as the Quakers say.

My greetings to Emil,^[12] Elise and the children and please give my kindest regards to Mr and Mrs Heilgers. The weather was too bad and there was too much work at the office for me to come up for the funeral of the OLD DUKE^[13] ; we only took half a day off. In any case I shall be in town four weeks from now.

With much love,

Your

Friedrich