Letter to Laura Lafargue, August 9, 1887

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 9 August 1887


First published, in the language of the original (English), in F. Engels, P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. II, Paris, 1956
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE

IN PARIS

Eastbourne, 9 August 1887
4 Cavendish Place

My dear Laura,

We have now been here more than a fortnight[1] and nothing to complain of but the heat. This is indeed an exceptional summer as the sneaks in Nature call it: 'the Jubilee Anticyclone'. I have taken some light work with me for a rainy day but the rainy day will not come and the work remains fast asleep in my drawer. Jollymeier was here with us for a week and Fritz Beust a fortnight—he had to begin teaching again the day before yesterday in Zürich—there was considerable and quite undisguised flirtation between Pumps and him and nobody was prouder of it than Percy. Oh les maris![2]

Whoever translated that preface of mine for the Socialiste[3] did it exceedingly well. I never was so well done in French. One or two passages make me suspect that it was done from the German, at least in part.

The determined stand our people have made against Russophilism and Katkoffolatrie has evidently had a good effect. I see the Justice is coming round, and Kropotkin has tackled Rochfort. Guesde's article in l'Action shows that he knows more about the matter of Russia than I dared to hope for.[4]

Otherwise French, like all other, politics are under the influence of the hot weather. Tout rate, même les duels.[5] [6]

I hope that great Polish oculist[7] will be the last and finally successful of Paul's panaceas. When he wrote before of operations, I thought they consisted in the opening out of the lachrymal duct, as this is the most common of all slight operations on the external eye. But most old men with watery eyes suffer from that rétrécissement,[8] and I am almost certain I have got it myself on one eye at least. But that I can get set right, if need be, in London, and before rushing into the arms and tools of that miraculous Pole, I shall await Paul's final report. There is nothing to give you such mountain-moving faith in individual doctors, as a general scepticism with regard to scientific medicine.

I have had Bax here for a week and was daily interviewed by him with the regularity of a clock and the inquisitiveness of an American journalist. But it gave me an opportunity of quiet talk with him on many subjects, and when he has done with his set questions (which, as with most people here, are meant to save them study) and has exhausted his sudden flashes of original ideas about le lendemain de la révolution[9] and so on, he begins to talk sense and more sense than the preliminary conversation led you to expect. Then you find that after all he has a largeness of view that is but too scarce here amongst the sectarians calling themselves Socialists. But as to unacquaintance with the world that is, as to hermit-like simplicity and Fremdheit[10] in the midst of the largest town of the world, an English Stubengelehrter[11] beats his German compeer hollow.

Paul's article on the services publics was very good.[12] It would do good in Germany too, where the Vierecks and Co. are only too eager to use 'Verstaatlichung[13] in the same bamboozling way as Brousse and Co. the services publics.

Sunday evening all of a sudden Charley Rosher arrived—after ten. Had tricycled it—the hottest day of the season—from London; got to Haywards Heath (about 40 miles), done up, had to take the train. Next day diarrhoea and general breakdown. And on the following day, scarcely recovered, he had a telegram that his wife was ill and he was to return at once. A subsequent telegram informed us that she had had a 'Miss Carry'.

Nim was at first, while here, suffering from slight muscular rheumatism—pains all over, as poor Lizzie[14] used to say—but she is all right now and very jolly. So is Pumps and her two children. Percy has to spend most of the week in London. I am lazy and give way to it, as being the best thing under the circumstances to do. And here comes the whole brigade ready for dinner and the children want me to make them paper boats, so it's all up with writing and I close in haste.

Yours affectionately

F. Engels And love from all.

  1. ↑ Engels holidayed in Eastbourne from 23 July to 2 September.
  2. ↑ Oh, those husbands!
  3. ↑ J Guesde's translation of Engels' article The Labor Movement in America, written as a preface to the American edition of Engels book The Condition of the Working Class in England, appeared in the newspaper Le Socialiste, Nos 88, 89 and 90, of 9, 16 and 23 July 1887.
  4. ↑ In connection with the death, on 1 August 1887, of the Russian political writer M.N. Katkov, who advocated an anti-German alliance of Russia with French chauvinistic circles, the French bourgeois press published a series of articles eulogising Katkov as a 'great friend of France'. On the other hand, the socialist press exposed Katkov as a reactionary and champion of the autocracy. In particular, Jules Guesde, in an article headlined 'Republicains et cosaques' (L'Action, 4 August), pointed out that Katkov was responsible for the Tsarist government's reprisals against Polish patriots and that revolutionary France must side with the Russian people, fighting for freedom, rather than with official Russia.
  5. ↑ Everything misfires, even duels
  6. ↑ Speaking at Epinal on 24 July 1887, the former French prime minister Jules Ferry called Boulanger a 'general de cafe-concert'. Boulanger challenged Ferry to a duel, which, however, did not take place, for the seconds could not agree on the terms. On 22 July 1887, the newspaper La France (edited by Francis Laur, a Boulanger supporter) carried an article intended to prove that at the time of the 'Schnaebele Affaire' (see note 99) a group of French monarchist generals incited Boulanger to stage a coup d'etat. Replying in the newspaper L'Autorite on 24 July 1887, one of the Bonapartist leaders, Paul de Cassagnac, described this report as a lie. Laur challenged him to a duel, which also failed to come off.
  7. ↑ Galezowski
  8. ↑ contraction
  9. ↑ the morrow of the revolution
  10. ↑ estrangement
  11. ↑ bookworm
  12. ↑ P. Lafargue, 'Les services publics', in Le Socialiste, 6 August 1887
  13. ↑ nationalisation
  14. ↑ Lydia Burns