Letter to Karl Marx, March 10, 1853

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 10 March 1853


First published considerably abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, Berlin, 1929
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 10 March 1853

Dear Engels,

Received the £5. This week I was within an inch of kicking the bucket. From hepatitis, or something very similar. This is hereditary in my family. My old man[1] died of it. During the 4 years I have been in England there hasn't been a sign of the thing and I thought it had gone for good. But now the worst is over and, what is more, sans médecin![2] But I am still somewhat knocked up.

Yesterday I received the following pleasing letter from Basle:

'Basle, 7 March 1853. 9 o'clock in the morning.

Dear Marx,

I have just heard that the whole consignment of Revelations,[3] amounting to 2,000 copies, which has been lying in a village on the other side of the border for the past 6 weeks, was intercepted yesterday while being conveyed elsewhere. What will happen now, I do not know; first of all, a complaint lodged by the Baden government with the Federal Council, then, no doubt, my arrest or at least commitment for trial, etc. In either case, a terrific shindy! This briefly for your information; further communications, should I be prevented from making them myself, will reach you through a third party. When writing to me, address the envelope: "Mad. Brenner-Guéniard, magasin de modes, Basle" and, on the sealed enclosure for me, simply write "For Jacques". I shall deposit the manuscript on the coup d'état[4] in a safe place. Adieu. Before long, I hope, I shall be able to tell you more than I now know. Let me have a safe address; yours and Bamberger's are probably known.

Yours

Jacques[5]

Well, qu'en pensez-vous, mon cher maître renard?[6] Has the 'Suisse'[7] sold me to the Prussian government for cash? 6 weeks in a village on the other side of the border, the affectation of fear, not a word

  1. ↑ Heinrich Marx
  2. ↑ without a doctor
  3. ↑ K. Marx, Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne.
  4. ↑ K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
  5. ↑ Schabelitz
  6. ↑ What do you think of it, dear Master Renard?
  7. ↑ Swiss