| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 8 November 1882 |
MARX TO ENGELS
IN LONDON
[Ventnor,] 8 November 1882
DEAR FRED,
What do you think of Deprez' experiment at the Munich Electricity Exhibition? It was almost a year ago that Longuet promised to procure Deprez' works for me (notably his demonstration that electricity makes it possible to convey energy over considerable distances by means of a simple telegraph wire). For a close friend of Deprez', Dr D'Arsonval, is a contributor to the Justice and has published this and that about Deprez' investigations. Longuet, as is his wont, is always forgetting.
I greatly enjoyed looking at the 'PAPER' you sent in which Sherbrooke and Rivers Wilson parade as 'TRUSTEES IN LONDON FOR THE BONDHOLDERS'. In yesterday's Standard, HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATES, Gladstone was severely rapped over the knuckles on account of the said TRUSTEES,[1] since the above-named Rivers Wilson also occupies a senior (i. e. well-paid) position in the English PUBLIC DEBTS administration. Gladstone, clearly much embarrassed, at first attempted TO POOH-POOH [the matter] but, upon notice being given of a MOTION of censure over Rivers Wilson, Gladstone mendaciously denied all knowledge of the Galveston and Eagle etc. Railway Co. OUR SAINTLY GRAND OLD MAN[2] is playing a role no less glorious over the 'extradition' from Gibraltar. It was not for nothing, one recalls, that this same Gladstone, together with one Graham, etc., underwent his apprenticeship in the captious official oligarchy under Sir Robert Peel.
No one could be better suited for the clumsy, lying, stupid equivocation and lame excuses that characterise the Egyptian affair than Sir Charles Dilke. He has neither the pietistic casuistry of Gladstone, nor the quizzical levity of the quondam[3] Palmerston. Dilke is simply an ill-mannered parvenu who imagines himself great by reason of his boorishness.
Since I take The Standard here, I too discovered therein the telegram from Frankfurt to which you allude.[4]
Apropos. I should be glad if Bernstein could send me the Jahrbuch containing the article by Oldenburg[5] (at least I think that's what the author is called) on my theory of value. Although I don't actually need it, it would nevertheless be better if I had before my eyes what was argued at the time. When I wrote to the little Dutch parson[6] the whole thing was quite fresh in my mind. Since then there has been all the business of my illness and also the loss of my wife — a long period of intellectual twilight.
A violent wind rages ceaselessly here, particularly of an evening and at night; first thing in the morning it's usually wet, or at any rate GLOOMY; during the day there are always fine intervals which have to be snatched; at the same time the weather is unsettled, capricious. Last Sunday,[7] for instance, at 4 o'clock, I went up onto the Downs where I walked along the cart-track past Bonchurch, the topmost of whose houses, ascending in terraces, are almost on a level with the track (the lowest are right down by the sea); the track goes meandering on, sometimes up, sometimes down, between the hilly part of the Downs and where they dip down to the sea. (When I was here last time with Tussy[8] I didn't venture up as far as the track.) Here one can spend hours sauntering along, enjoying hill and sea air at one and the same time. It was as warm as summer; the sky pure blue, with only small, translucent white clouds; all at once a cold shower, SKY SUDDENLY OVERCAST. To this, no doubt, I owe the muscular rheumatism (afflicting the left side of my chest, close to the old corpus delicti[9] ) which on Monday night became so severe that on Tuesday, overcoming my reluctance, I sent for a doctor. In reply to my questions, my OLD SPINSTER MacLean told me that there were 2 doctors who called at her house. *The greatest, the most fashionable man-was 'J. G. Sinclair Coghill, Physician to the Royal Hospital for Consumption'.* I asked * whether he be the old fogey whose coach I had had the displeasure of meeting almost daily before the door of her house. Indeed,* he was the man. For he comes to see a permanent lodger here, an *old lady 'with whom nothing serious it was the matter', but 'she liked to see the doctor at least 3 times in the course of a week'.* This johnny I declined. However, the 2nd doctor who was consulted by her other lodgers was, she said, a young man called Dr James M. Williamson. It was him I called in; * indeed he is a nice young fellow, nothing priestly about him.* In fact, he could prescribe nothing save a LINIMENT for me to rub in. (So long as this muscular rheumatism persists it will hamper me, inducing as it does a feeling of discomfort, especially when I cough.) For the rest, he is apologetic about the bad weather. As regards the cough which has, particularly of late and also while I was in London, assumed an increasingly irksome, spasmodic character, I am my own health officer and hope I shall soon rid myself of it without the aid of a DOCTOR of medicine.
In order not to be too dependent on capricious variations in wind and temperature when loitering out of doors, I am again forced to carry a RESPIRATOR with me, in CASE OF NEED.
A great commotion has been caused here by a letter that appeared in The Standard[10] and the Globe TO THAT EFFECT that Ventnor is a CENTRAL HEAD OF TYPHOID FEVER and that a number of persons have fallen victim to it of late. Official and unofficial replies to this 'LIBEL' have now appeared in the local press. But the funniest thing of all is that the Ventnor municipal panjandrum wants to start a LIBEL-CASE against the writer of the letter!
Salut.
Moor