Letter to Karl Marx, August 26, 1879

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


ENGELS TO MARX

IN RAMSGATE[1]

Eastbourne,[2] 26 August 1879

Dear Moor,

Have at last got your letter[3] and, with it, your exact address which I needed if I was to send you all the rubbish ad vocem party organ.[4] Since, for Hirsch's sake, I couldn't put off replying to Höchberg, I wrote him the enclosed note,[5] which is unlikely to gratify him.

As you will see from Bebel's letter it contains exactly the same arguments as Liebknecht used in his last letter.[6] From this it may be deduced that Liebknecht has not shown him my last letter[7] although expressly instructed by me to do so. I now intend, as soon as you have sent the stuff back to London, 1. to instruct Bebel to make sure that letter is shown to him, so that he may see that all this palaver has already been answered, 2. to set out side by side for his benefit all the contradictions contained in the various letters written to C. Hirsch, so that he may see what a beastly mess they've gone and made of things again with their free and easy ways. If this is put to him properly, Bebel is, I think, just the man to take advantage of it. I shall, of course, first submit the letter to you for approval, likewise to Hirsch, cujus res agitur.[8]

We were all very glad to hear that Jenny is doing well. I altogether agree that, if at all possible, she should go on feeding the child herself,[9] give up the School[10] and thus at last rid herself of the BOTHER with NURSES and SERVANTS, the root of that trouble being after all her constant and enforced absence from home. As for you and your wife, you must stay at the seaside for just as long as you possibly can. You both have a lot of leeway to make up and ought not to come back until your head and her digestive organs have again condescended to function pretty well normally. It's not as though there's any hurry now and, besides, the weather is gradually becoming, if not brilliant and settled, at any rate more changeable in a nicer way than of late. It seems much the same where you are as it is here. Jollymeier would be ALL RIGHT if he could have a week of constant sunshine.

I hope, when I again see Tussy, to find her in an improved state of health as a result of sea bathing. If you'd only written and told us, she could have come over here on Saturday and gone on bathing until the day after tomorrow! In the event, it wasn't till Sunday morning that I learned from the Lafargues that you were in Ramsgate and not where she was at all.

By the way, my three weeks at the seaside have nothing like satisfied me, I'm chewing over all manner of plans for the time when Jollymeier, whom London will probably suit better than the sea, is once again fit to travel. Do you think it would be a good idea if, in about 14 to 18 days' time and WEATHER PERMITTING, we three were to shake off the Eternal-Feminine[11] for once and go and play at being BACHELORS somewhere or other for a week or two?

Warmest regards from all of us to all of you.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ A seaside resort in Kent.
  2. ↑ Between 5 and 7 August 1879, Engels, accompanied by Carl Schorlemmer, left for a holiday in Eastbourne. He returned to London on 28 August.
  3. ↑ See previous letter.
  4. ↑ This refers to the preparations for the publication of the illegal newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat in Zurich, the new central printed organ of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. The need for such a newspaper emerged after a ban on the entire party press, above all the Vorwärts, following the introduction of the Anti-Socialist Law in October 1878 (see Note 462). In July-September 1879, extensive correspondence on the political line of the new paper and its editors was maintained between August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Louis Viereck (in Leipzig), Carl Hirsch (in Paris), Eduard Bernstein, Karl Höchberg, Carl August Schramm (in Zurich), and Marx and Engels (in London). The campaign Marx and Engels conducted for a sound political line of the party's future central printed organ is fully expounded in their Circular Letter to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Wilhelm Bracke and Others of 17-18 September 1879 (see this volume, pp. 394-408).
  5. ↑ See next letter.
  6. ↑ Marx and Engels included a concise exposition of Liebknecht's letter to Engels of 14 August 1879 in the Circular Letter (see this volume, p. 396). Engels' reply is not extant.
  7. ↑ Engels' letter to Liebknecht of 20 August 1879 mentioned here has not been found (see this volume, p. 372). August Bebel, who wrote to Engels on the same day, could not possibly have known what it was about.
  8. ↑ who is the interested person
  9. ↑ On 18 August 1879, Marx's daughter Jenny Longuet gave birth to a son, Edgar, in Ramsgate.
  10. ↑ From 1874, Charles Longuet taught French at the King's College in London, and Jenny Longuet—German at Clement Dun's school. In 1880, after the Paris Commune members had been amnestied, Longuet returned to Paris.
  11. ↑ From the final couplet of Goethe's Faust: 'The Eternal-Feminine entices us on'.