Letter to Karl Marx, August 25, 1876

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 25 August 1876


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


ENGELS TO MARX

IN KARLSBAD[1]

Ramsgate, Friday, 25 August 1876

Dear Moor,

Your letter arrived here on Tuesday and is now circulating among your daughters.[2] No one here envies you your 28 hours of roving between Cologne and Karlsbad[3] ; on the other hand, there's been much wagering as to the amount of Bavarian 'liquid' that helped to see you through your many vicissitudes.

A week ago on Monday Lenchen[4] arrived here from Hastings where she had been spending Sunday with Jenny and the Lafargues; despite being rather seedy, she went into the water, thereby incurring a frightful headache that lasted two days; a second attempt only made matters worse, so she had to give it up. She went home on Tuesday, and the day after that, the day before yesterday, your wife turned up here; she is noticeably better than she was—six weeks ago at any rate. She does a great deal of walking, her appetite is good and she seems to be sleeping very well. After being fortified by me at the station with a glass of port, she and Lizzie are loafing about on the SANDS and rejoicing at not having to write any letters. Sea-bathing has done Lizzie a power of good and I hope that this time it will last the winter through.

At this moment Ramsgate is populated almost exclusively by small GREENGROCERS and other quite small SHOPKEEPERS from London. These people stay here a week, for as long as the RETURN TICKET is valid, and then make way for others of the same ilk. It's the former day-trip public which now takes a week off. At first sight one would think they were working men, but their conversation immediately betrays the fact that they are RATHER ABOVE THAT and belong to quite the most disagreeable stratum of London society—they're the kind who, in speech and manner, are already preparing themselves, after the inevitably impending bankruptcy, for the no less inevitably impending career of COSTERMONGER. And now, let Tussy imagine her old friend Gore on the SANDS of a morning, surrounded by 30 or 40 dames de la halle[5] of that ilk.

In view of the ever denser stultification induced by the seaside, the most suitable reading has, naturally enough, been Mr Dühring's natural philosophy of reality.[6] Never have I encountered anything so natural. Everything occurs naturally since everything is regarded as natural that occurs naturally to Mr D., which is why he invariably takes his departure from 'axiomatic propositions', for what is natural requires no proof. As far as banality goes, the thing is absolutely unprecedented. Poor though it is, the part dealing with nature is by far the best. Here, at any rate, there are still some withered remains of dialectical phraseology, but no sooner does he touch on social and historical conditions than the old metaphysic prevails in the form of morality, and then he gets well and truly onto the wrong tack and turns helplessly round and round in circles. His horizon barely extends beyond the area covered by the common law of the land and, for him, Prussian officialdom represents 'the state'. We shall be returning to London a week today and then I shall at once settle down to work on the fellow. The nature of the eternal truths he preaches will be apparent to you from his three bêtes noires—tobacco, cats and Jews—and they get it hot and strong.

Tussy's letter to Lenchen has just arrived here; I shall forward it to London directly.

With their hullaballo about TURKISH ATROCITIES,[7] The Daily News and old Russell have done the Russians a signal service and splendidly paved the way for the latter's next campaign, which may begin as soon as the liberal gents have taken the helm here. The liberal provincial press is even now sounding the alarm and, since OLD Dizzy[8] has retreated to the HOUSE OF LORDS,[9] it will no doubt be the liberal ranters who will lay down the law in the next session in the COMMONS. Not a word is said, of course, about the infamies perpetrated by the Montenegrins and Herzegovinians. Luckily the Serbs are getting knocked for six—even Forbes, who, by the way, is again the one solitary rational war correspondent, speaks with unmistakable admiration of the superior military prowess of the Turkish troops—and it isn't so easy for the White Tsar[10] to intervene.

Your wife and Lizzie send much love to Tussy as also to yourself.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ A reference to the French edition of the first volume of Capital. An attempt to translate Marx's principal work into French was first made by Charles Keller, a member of the Paris Section of the International. Between October 1869 and April 1870, he translated about 400 pages which he sent to Marx for editing. After the defeat of the Paris Commune, however, Keller was forced to emigrate to Switzerland, where he embraced Bakuninist views, after which Marx terminated co-operation with him.
    In December 1871, Paul Lafargue assisted Marx in concluding a contract for the publication of Capital with the progressive French journalist and publisher Maurice Lachâtre. The contract was signed on 15 February 1872. Under it, Capital was to appear in 44 instalments, one printer's sheet each. The work appeared between 1872 and 1875 in two instalments at a time, but was sold in series of five instalments each, making nine series in all.
    The last instalments having come out, the series were stitched together and sold as separate books.
    The first volume of Capital was translated into French by Joseph Roy. Marx did not think much of the effort and made a vast number of alterations, in fact, revised the book. As he himself said, the authorised French translation had an independent scientific value alongside the German original.
    In this edition, the first volume of Capital is published in Engels' authorised English translation with the interpolations from the French edition given in the Appendix (see present edition, Vol. 35).
  2. ↑ Jenny Longuet and Laura Lafargue
  3. ↑ See this volume, pp. 135-36.
  4. ↑ Helene Demuth
  5. ↑ market women
  6. ↑ E. Dühring, Cursus der Philosophie...
  7. ↑ In April 1876, a national liberation uprising began in Bulgaria. It was brutally suppressed by Turkish troops in May. The press in many countries expressed its indignation at the 'Turkish atrocities'.
  8. ↑ Disraeli
  9. ↑ On 12 August 1876, Disraeli was made Earl of Beaconsfield, and from that moment on became leader of the Tories in the House of Lords.
  10. ↑ White Tsar (Alexander II)