Letter to Karl Marx, about March 10, 1866

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 10 March 1866


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

[Manchester, about 10 March 1866]

CONFIDENTIAL! Excerpt from a letter to Freiligrath,[1] who asked me for information on some commercial philistine and, at the same time, expressed his regret at your illness and wished you well:

'Marx needs to rest from working at night and from worry, as well as sea-air and good living. That will put him back on his feet all right. Such troubles are spared to plump bourgeois like Blind. Instead, the poor man has the misfortune that for all the levers and thumbscrews he applies, nobody speaks of him other than Blind himself. Such fellows have their carbuncles on the insides of their skulls. But enough of the "DELIBERATE LIAR".

'How are you actually doing now? I hear the bank in London[2] has closed down. A good thing too, for you, in the long run, the liaison with Fazy and Co. could have compromised you later in some unforeseen way.[3] I am sure you will soon pick up a decent position again.'

In haste.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ The full text of Engels' letter to Freiligrath cited below has not been found. Like the letter TO MARX, it may have been written on about 10 March 1866 as a reply to Freiligrath's letter to Engels of 8 March 1866. In his letter Freiligrath expressed his anxiety about Marx's health, undermined by systematic night work, and wrote that a long rest in the countryside would restore his strength.
  2. ↑ a branch of the Bank of Switzerland
  3. ↑ At the elections to the Geneva Cantonal Council in August 1864 the radical James Fazy, who headed the canton's government in 1846-53 and 1855-61, suffered a crushing defeat because of the exposure of his financial machina tions as President of the Banque Générale Suisse. After the elections Fazy's followers made an armed attack on some of those who voted against him. When Swiss government troops arrived in Geneva, Fazy had to flee to France.