Letter to Karl Marx, August 4, 1856

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 4 August 1856


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 4 August 1856

Dear Marx,

The letter that didn't arrive must have melted in the heat. I don't know whether you down there too have suddenly been assailed by this tropical heat which has brought everything to a standstill, apart from the continuous sluicing and bathing of the outer man with water and the inner man with a variety of other fluids. Yesterday I was totally incapable of anything and barely in a condition to go out. I haven't stopped sweating since Thursday, even in my bath; and the sordid work at the office is so exhausting that afterwards one feels utterly down. Moreover the nights are equally stifling.

It's most satisfactory that the Urquhart business should have turned out as it did.[1] There's no doubt that what most impresses the rabble is our resolute manner. I hope it will be possible for the pieces[2] to appear in Urquhart's thing, nous verrons.[3]

I'm daily awaiting a letter from my mater summoning me to London. I am arranging matters in such a way as to be able to leave on Saturday, should the summons come. I shall be moving out of here on Saturday though I haven't yet taken new lodgings,

and still don't know whether I shall do so or spend a week knocking about, since I intend on my return to engage in all kinds of mad escapades.

My brother-in-law[4] has been here—a good chap, communist out of principle, bourgeois out of interest, as he himself most naively puts it, but he always uses we when referring to communist matters; tried to talk me into making tentative approaches to the Prussians about an amnesty, whereupon I, of course, gave a very determined answer and finally he, too, saw that 1. I couldn't do so, and 2. that the Prussians would tell me to shove it, etc.—The man seemed to have few illusions about my frame of mind and certainly had even fewer when he left. However, he was very surprised to find me so cheerful.

I shall write to Mirbach as soon as it gets a little cooler; it's too much to expect just now. 24 degrees Reaumur is no joke when one has to traipse round in clothes proper to the Exchange.

If the Jersey scheme can be carried out—it certainly has its good points and is not entirely impossible—make sure that while in Paris, your wife finds out exactly how things stand regarding route and communications, for otherwise she might get into serious difficulties. I believe that Saint-Malo is the only place in France to which steamers go from Jersey. Get one or two of the crapauds to tell you what the position is. After all, you know several who have been there.

You can give the great Pieper my assurance that I read his great 'filtered' article on Spain in The People's Paper[5] before the original appeared in the Tribune[6] HANG ITT C'est beau.[7] By the way, the P. P. deserves to be relegated to the w.c. Just consider this stinker: WE

REGRET TO LEARN THAT LORD SO AND SO HAS CUT HIS FINGER, etc. You really must get Jones to give his SUBEDITOR a damned good dressing-down for permitting such drivel.

On no account let the rabble in Sheffield sit on the money— they'll have to shell out in any case.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ See previous letter.
  2. ↑ K. Marx, Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century.
  3. ↑ we shall see
  4. ↑ Karl Emil Blank
  5. ↑ W. Pieper, 'The Coup d'État in Spain', The People's Paper, No. 221, 26 July 1856.
  6. ↑ K. Marx, 'The Spanish Coup d'État', New York Daily Tribune, No. 4775, 8 August 1856 (an allusion to the fact that Marx helped Pieper in writing his article for The People's Paper).
  7. ↑ It's fine.