| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 31 May 1881 |
ENGELS TO JENNY LONGUET
IN ARGENTEUIL
London, 31 May 1881
122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
My dear Jenny,
Many thanks for your kind letter, it is really too good of you to sit down and write to us in the midst of the trouble you have to pass through. But let me at once pass to the main thing. I have every reason to hope that unless unforeseen accidents occur, you still will soon have your Mama[1] with you. Mohr told me on Sunday that the doctor[2] thinks she is getting strong enough for the journey. There are great changes in her state from time to time, sometimes she goes about in the day and even to theatres in the evening, but at other times she suffers from very bad pains and scarcely leaves her bed for a couple of days. But these attacks seem to pass off as they come and not to leave her visibly worse. Still she is upon the whole losing flesh and this seems to be the only constant symptom which if not arrested may turn out serious. What the nature of the complaint is I am totally ignorant of and am apt to conclude that the doctors are equally in the dark, anyhow they don't seem to agree at all about it. When Tussy wrote to you, your Mama was just suffering from one of these attacks, and I believe there was a slight misunderstanding about what the doctor said, namely that she was then temporarily not in a fit state to travel. The doctor himself wishes her very much to go, as he anticipates a good effect from the change.
Now about Mohr's Turkish baths, they need not frighten you, he is taking them merely for the sake of his rheumatically stiff leg which bothers him in walking. As to his cold, the present warm weather will soon reduce it to an infinitesimal quantity and a change to the seaside will finish it off— that is my opinion. I have just taken him up to Hampstead Heath, I hope the walk will do him good. Your Mama was out, so she cannot be so very bad just now.
I am glad that amidst all the petites misères de la vie de campagne[3] you still are well pleased with house, garden and climate which after all are the main thing, to the rest you will either gradually find remedies or — get used to them. My especial envy is directed of course to the wine cellar and the cellars generally for which we may sigh in vain here in London.
You must indeed have risen tremendously in the eyes of old Collett since you and Longuet have got Clemenceau round to the only 'correct' view about Tunis. 149 I can very well imagine the old man's enthusiasm at seeing the truly orthodox policy preached in a large Paris daily. Fancy the old buffer, who all his life has defended the power of the Crown, now talking of a saviour of the Republic.
We are going on here much in the usual way, excepting that we have Mrs Pauli here who brings her eldest step-daughter to Manchester where she is going to stay some time with an old friend of Pauli's. She is not quite so stout as she was but quite as lively. Last Sunday by a godsend we got some Waldmeister,[4] and with the help of a dozen of Moselle we brewed three bowls of Maitrank[5] which were duly emptied by a — rather numerous — company. There were fourteen of us, and they were very jolly. Lenchen was there also and told me this morning it had not very well agreed with her: 'she never had such a Katzenjammer[6] in her life' (please don't let it out!). Mrs Pauli is very sorry she cannot see you here this time and wishes to be most kindly remembered to you.
Hartmann called yesterday with the news that he is off to America, it is a good thing for him, he could never settle down here properly until he got work for a short time in Siemens' electric factory in Woolwich but that is at an end now too. He talks of coming back in a few months.
Pumps is going on as usual, suffers now and then from headaches, my only complaint is an increasing left-ear deafness, I hope the summer may cure it.
Kind regards to you and Longuet. Pumps sends her love and I join her in it.
Yours affectionately,
F. Engels