Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 13, 1868

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 13 August 1868


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 13 August 1868

I hope that these lines will reach you before your departure, for there is periculum in mora.[2] Firstly, I must send money to Ramsgate, so they can stay there another week. As their departure was delayed for weeks after your last remittance, smaller domestic debts were paid; on the other hand, my wife had to retrieve watches and other things from the pawnshop so that they could appear RESPECTABLE at the watering place.

Secondly, one of the épiciers[3] who is owed £6 and a few shillings, must be paid this week, since the man is shutting up shop.

Thirdly, I have already received 2 SUMMONS for QUEENS TAXES (about £8). The LOCAL TAXES are paid, as you know. I absolutely cannot put off these sums.

For two further pressing items—the LANDLORD, who is unfortu- nately in London now, and a bill of exchange for £12 payable on the 25th of this month—I shall still perhaps receive money in time from Germany.

I have written to my cousins August and Karl Philips in Amsterdam and Aachen in order to find out whether they are back.[4] It would be a sheer waste of money to go to the continent in order to borrow, before one is sure that the people are there.

For the past week I have not had a wink of sleep and l'illustre Gaudissart[5] Borkheim, who visited me the day before yesterday to take leave, said I really should get rid of my jaundice. He entertained me with the story of the £1,000 he is trying to blackmail out of Oppenheim.

In great haste.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ This letter was first published in English in an abridged form in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Selected Letters. The Personal Correspondence, 1844-1877, Ed. by F. J. Raddatz, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, 1981.
  2. ↑ danger in delay (Titus Livius, Rerum Romanorum ab Urbe condita libri, Book XXXVIII, Ch. 25)
  3. ↑ grocers
  4. ↑ These letters from Karl Marx to his relatives have not been found.
  5. ↑ L'illustre Gaudissart was Borkheim's nickname (after the title character of a novel by Balzac).