Letter to Philipp Pauli, August 11, 1876

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 11 August 1876


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVI, Moscow, 1935
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


ENGELS TO PHILIPP PAULI

IN RHEINAU

Ramsgate, 11 August 1876
11 Camden Square

Dear Pauli,

On Friday[1] I duly proceeded to Cologne as planned and would have gone on overnight to London via Ostend had not the confounded midge bite on my left hand swollen to truly colossal proportions. So I went to an hotel in Cologne and held my hand in iced water for about an hour, which relieved the worst of the inflammation; on Saturday to England via Flushing. At Chatham I found a train going to Ramsgate and came straight here.[2] When I arrived in London on Tuesday I found Schorlemmer at the Marxes preparing to leave for Darmstadt on Wednesday, where he will doubtless arrive today.

It's still very fine here, moderately hot summer temperatures and a cool wind off the sea, on top of which the bottled beer is excellent and salt water bathing 'a proper treat',0 as Nadler's seamstress would say.[3] His stuff has made me laugh a lot; the small town patriot of '48 is particularly well portrayed.[4]

The crossing from Flushing was once again as smooth as glass; I'm heartily sick of it by now; a bit of tossing about is all part of

[5] [6]

the game, otherwise one has no idea of having been at sea. But that's something I can have whenever I want here aboard the pleasure boats which sail every afternoon.

We are staying here until Monday fortnight and in London shall, I trust, retire from the very idle life we've been a-Ieadin' of.

The trip and the sea-bathing have done my wife a great deal of good, so I have reason to hope that I shall also be able to get her through the winter in passable health. Both she and I send our kindest regards to you, your wife and the children, and in the hope that Rheinau's gnat population will shortly diminish I shall close because of incipient table-laying.

Yours ever,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ 4 August
  2. ↑ Engels was on holiday in Ramsgate between 24 July and 1 September 1876. In early August, he and his wife took Mary Ellen Burns back to her boarding house as her holidays were over. On 5 August, he returned to Ramsgate.
  3. ↑ Engels is referring to the poem 'Die hochdeutsche Nähdersmädle' included in a selection written in the Palatinate dialect: K. G. Nadler, Fröhlich Pah, Gott erhältst, Frankfurt a.M., 1851, p. 144. Engels used this book in his work The Frankfort Period (see present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 81-107).
  4. ↑ Engels probably means, above all, the poem 'Herr Christoph Hachstrumpf..." in Nadler's book (see Note 181).
  5. ↑ See this volume, p. 116.
  6. ↑ Engels has e wohres LaubsaV (dialect).