| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 19 March 1877 |
MARX TO MRS WOLLMANN
IN KARLSBAD
[London,] 19 March 1877
[41 Maitland] Park Road
Dear Mrs Wollmann,
I have delayed replying in order to seek advice on so important matter from one of my friends, a former businessman.[1] He returned to London only yesterday, after a long absence.
With the income you mention you can live decently in London, though only, needless to say, on a modest bourgeois basis. In fact London is today probably the cheapest capital in Europe, thus offering the advantage that, provided you keep up the usual appearances, you can run your house in any way you wish, and that no one, not even the rich, need be unduly sociable. The city's enormous size and population relieve one of many considerations which are more or less obtrusive elsewhere. So far as education is concerned, in all the public schools—and these, even from the financial viewpoint, are the only ones I would recommend—they also have German teachers. In some respects the schools themselves are less adequate than those in Germany, in others they are to be preferred. But in any case, and particularly for a boy who is to prepare himself for the STRUGGLE with LIFE, England is a far more useful training school than Germany, that great barracks, servants' hall and nursery.[2]
As regards German teachers for private tuition, there is very heavy competition among them, and so the cost of LESSONS is not high.
Here, as in America and on the European Continent, there is a business crisis which in my view has yet to reach its peak. After that point has been reached, we shall enter the most favourable period of all for the launching of new businesses. But the sooner you move to London, the longer and more leisurely will be the time available to your husband to take the preparatory steps.
I need hardly tell you that both my daughters and I welcome your move to this country as an unexpected stroke of luck.
My kindest regards to Fleckles and the dear children,
Yours very sincerely,
Karl Marx
Should you wish to leaf through some of Capital, it would be best to start with the last section,[3] p. 314. In the scientific exposition the arrangement is prescribed for the author, although some other arrangement might often be more convenient and more appropriate for the reader.