Letter to Louis Bauer, February 5, 1850

TO LOUIS BAUER IN LONDON

[Rough copy]

[London,] 5 February [1850]
20 Queen's Road

I am only now answering your letter of 30 January because I am not inclined to let you prescribe 'time limits' for what I do.

In reply to your letter the following:

1. When Schramm wrote that my debt to you was not yet 'due', it only meant that one cannot be sued for a SURGEON'S bills until six months have elapsed, certainly not that the debt does not exist.
2. Far from having conceded to Mr Heidemann that your bill was not 'too steep', I told him the contrary, as he himself admitted on 22 January in the letter to my wife. Nevertheless I informed him that I was willing to pay. As I told him, I hoped that by January I should be in possession of the necessary amount although I could not guarantee this. The impertinence of Mr Heidemann in sending a woman a demand for payment under a black seal, which she mistook for the announcement of a death, moved me to have him informed in writing that I wished to have no further contact with him.
3. As to your bill, I now insist that you itemize it. I fail to understand how you could have disbursed £1 on my behalf. You travelled out to me in Chelsea at my express request on only three occasions, once by cab. As to the confinement,^[1] accoucheurs over here (except in the case of the bourgeois) charge for 9 days—while you attended my wife on only 4 days out of the 9, as Willich can testify—one GUINEA. Where, then, do you get £4.10 from? By the way, I am told that, immediately upon receipt of my letter, you held a confabulation with Heidemann and decided 'to fleece' me. So first of all an itemized bill, which I shall then pay.

K. Marx