Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 30, 1870

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 30 August 1870


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. IV, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

Ramsgate, 30 August 1870

DEAR FRED,

Tomorrow morning back to London by STEAMER. In the first place, it is very expensive to pay for 5 people to stay here since the English have thronged to all the seaside resorts on account of the war.

In the second place, RELATIVELY to the price the accommodation is damned 'draughty'. The worst pains have stopped, but I am[1] almost paralysed in a certain place, so that I must consult the doctor yet again.

More details from London.

Your

K. M.

The Spectator—8 DAYS SINCE—said that your articles[2] were the only significant ones in the English press, but regretted that the AUTHOR WAS SO CHARY OF HIS WORDS AND HIS FACTS. Apropos. Borkheim was here yesterday on a visit from Margate. He seemed put out because he wanted to write your articles, and had approached the Pall Mall before us. He took his leave with a long face.

  1. ↑ L. Blanc, 'Lettres de Londres. 14 août 1870', Le Temps, No. 3460, 19 August 1870. - Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I, Act III, Scene 1.
  2. ↑ Between the end of July 1870 and February 1871, Engels wrote a series of 59 articles published in The Pall Mall Gazette under the title Notes on the War (see present edition, Vol. 22). In these articles, written in the form of military surveys, Engels analysed the events of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 from the angle of historical materialism. With the exception of the first three articles, signed 'Z', they were published unsigned.