| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 6 June 1881 |
MARX TO JENNY LONGUET
IN ARGENTEUIL
[London,] 6 June 1881
My dearest Don Quixote,
I am really wrong to have not written before this, but you know my good intentions and weak doings in this line. There passes, however, no day, when my thoughts are not with you and the lovely children.[1]
As to my health you need not trouble you[rself]; I had a nasty cold, almost as sempiternal as was the Stockschnupfen[2] of the late Seguin selig — but it is now rapidly passing away.
As to Möhmchen, you are aware that there is no cure of the illness she suffers from, and she gets indeed weaker. Fortunately the pains are not such as they mostly are in such cases, the best proof of which is that she attends still several times during the week at London theatres. She keeps in fact wonderfully up, but travelling to Paris is quite out of the question. I consider it a most happy event that Lina Schoeler surprised us yesterday and is to stay about a month.
Has Johnny got Reineke or rather Renard the Fox[3] I sent him? and has the poor fellow somebody to read it for him?
To-day (Bank Holiday) and yesterday infernal rainy and cold weather, one of the bad tricks the celestial father has always in store for his London plebeian cattle and sheep. Yesterday he spoiled by the rain the Hyde Park Demonstration of Parnell's.
Hartmann has on Friday last left for New York and I am glad that he is out of harm's way. But foolishly, a few days before his departure, he asked the hand of Pumps from Engels — and this by writing, telling him at the same time that he believed he committed no mistake in doing so, alias, he (Hartmann) believed in his (Hartmann's) acceptance on the part of Pumps — the which girl had indeed rather hardly flirted with him, but only to stir Kautsky. I learn now from Tussy that the same Hartmann had offered himself to her before her voyage to Jersey. But the present case is the worse as the distinguished Perovskaya, the victim of the Russian movement, had lived with Hartmann in 'free' marriage. And she has hardly died on the gallows. From Perovskaya to Pumps — rather too bad this, and Mama is quite disgusted with it and the whole male sex!
Longuet's article on Ireland was good. We all thought there had something happened seeing that for some time he seemed more and more to disappear from the columns of the Justice. Have you seen or heard anything of the illustrious Hirsch? He sent me today two New York papers.
There is only one news worth reporting. A Yankee is said to have invented a coal-cutting machine which would do away with the greatest part of the present labour of the colliers — viz. the 'hewing' of coal in the coal-measures and mines, leaving to the miners only the task of breaking the cut of coal and loading it into trucks. If this invention prove successful — as there is every reason to believe — it will give an immense stir in Yankeeland and do great damage to John Bull's industrial supremacy.
Mama also asks me to tell you that the pretext for Lina's [Schoeler] presence is the wedding of Lisa Green, daughter of the successful admirer of Martin Tupper.
Laura does everything to amuse and cheer Möhmchen. Helen[4] sends you her love. And now kiss many many times for me Johnny, Harra and the noble Wolf. As to the 'great unknown' one/ I dare not make so free with him.
How is your asthma? Does it still cling to you? I hardly understand how you manage to get breathing time with 4 children and only nominal servants.
Farewell, my dear child,
Old Nick