Letter to Johann Philipp Becker, between August 16 and 20, 1876

Author(s) Jenny von Westphalen
Written 16 August 1876


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 34, Moscow, 1964
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


JENNY MARX TO JOHANN PHILIPP BECKER

IN GENEVA

[London, between 16 and 20 August 1876]

My dear and esteemed Friend,

You really have heaped coals of fire on my head, and having just looked at the date of your first dear letter and even that of the second I must needs cover myself with sackcloth and ashes. I come to you with a sincere Pater peccavi.[1] As soon as I got your first letter I meant to write straight away; then something intervened and I put it off, and to put off letter-writing is the surest way of killing it dead. One only has to start putting it off and a day turns into a week and a week into a month, and as for the speed with which the moons mount up to a year, that is something the gods and we old people are best qualified to know. The older one gets and the worse the times become, the quicker they pass and the faster the hours fly by. That's how it is with me, at any rate. And there must surely be something to be said in favour of old age. After all it's utterly wretched and miserable to be no longer young, and lively and 'sound'; one senses this particularly when, on top of old age, ill-health supervenes, as has recently happened to me, and this is probably the best plea in my favour for having neglected my duty of writing to so old and well-tried a friend. For months I have suffered from such severe headaches, etc., etc., that I often felt dazed and giddy and if only for that reason could not write. A three weeks' stay in Brighton has more or less set me up again. Last Friday[2] my husband and my youngest daughter[3] left for Karlsbad,[4] both of them unfortunately for reasons of health—or rather ill-health. This exceedingly expensive trip means there can be no question of other excursions or visits to loyal friends near and far, and, greatly though my husband would welcome an opportunity of paying his respects to Mont Blanc and old Becker, he must perforce adhere scrupulously to his cure and eschew any extra trips. Nor shall I myself be able to pack my knapsack this year; and I puff and I blow hot and cold in the diabolical heat. I got a letter from Karlsbad yesterday. After many tribulations they finally arrived at the institute for afflictions of the liver. In Nuremberg they spent hours trotting about in search of a bed.[5]

Nothing to be had, not even in the meanest pothouse. The bakers were holding a convention, while from all directions the trombones and trumpets of the future,[6] the Siegfrieds, Valkyries and Götterdämmerung[7] heroes were pouring into Nuremberg which they had to leave without having sampled its wares. Then they got on the wrong train and it was only after a truly Don Quixote-like series of to-ings and fro-ings, which continued for 28 hours, that they arrived in the country of springs.

Your news was all of it most interesting, and if I don't reply en détail you should put it down to this cruel heat, which must be the scapegoat for a great deal just now. I can't tell you how sorry I am for not having provided you with any material so far.[8] It would seem that there's nothing to be done with the manager. I've written to him so often. My husband had a letter from Borkheim not long ago[9] in which he says he is in fact a bit better. I think the best and safest course would be for you to approach him personally. He knows best where the things are kept and so can give orders for them to be looked out and sent to you. As for the other books, papers, etc., you want, I shall approach our old friend Lessner about them. Engels and my husband no longer have any connection whatsoever with the old Workers' Society[10] which is now very very much run down and has become a rowdy society of louts.

Whatever ingenuity Lessner may have expended hitherto on keeping it together, he is now heartily sick of the thing. But he can be more helpful to you than anyone else, and is an honest, reliable man who in politics has always behaved exceptionally well and honestly. One of the old guard qui meurt mais ne se rend pas[11] ! I shall be visiting our friend Engels in Ramsgate next week[12] and therefore want to settle everything with Lessner beforehand so far as I can. I'm positive you had best deal with Borkheim direct. His address is:

S. Borkheim, Esq. 1 Denmark Place, Hastings

And now, my esteemed friend, goodbye for the present. This time next year, I trust, we shall all be 'over there', i.e. in our 'beloved fatherland'[13] so that we may see all our old comrades again at last. In which case we shall also make a bee-line for Papa Becker. With warmest regards,

Your old friend,

Jenny Marx

  1. ↑ Father, I have sinned (Luke 15:21)
  2. ↑ 11 August
  3. ↑ Eleanor Marx
  4. ↑ Between 15 August and 15 September 1876, Marx, accompanied by his daughter Eleanor (Tussy), was in Karlsbad taking a cure for the third time. Having completed it, he spent a few days with Max Oppenheim in Prague, and then, after brief visits to Kreuznach and Liège, returned to London on 22 September 1876.
  5. ↑ See this volume, p. 135.
  6. ↑ 'The music of the future'—Richard Wagner's music, whose principles he expounded in his Zukunftmusik. Brief an einem französischen Freund (1861) addressed to Frederic Villot, keeper of the French museums, and in his book Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft.
  7. ↑ Wagner's opera
  8. ↑ See Engels' letter to Becker of 17 August 1880 (present edition, Vol. 46).
  9. ↑ on 1 August 1876
  10. ↑ Engels is probably referring to José Mesa's letter of 24 August 1874. The latter wrote that despite his enforced move to Paris he still kept in touch with members of the Spanish section of the International Working Men's Association in Madrid, on which Engels could rely, and supplied a number of addresses.
  11. ↑ 'who will die rather than surrender'.
  12. ↑ See this volume, p. 141.
  13. ↑ Quotation from Max Schneckenburger's poem Wacht am Rhein.