| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 12 January 1882 |
MARX TO ENGELS
IN LONDON
Ventnor, 12 January 1882
1 St Boniface Gardens
Dear Engels,
I am going to try spending one more week here (the 3rd as from today); so far there's been no improvement in the weather — if anything the reverse. On Monday, Tussy is going up to London for a theatrical performance she is taking part in, after which she will come back here.
By the time I left London, I had to pay out SOMEWHAT LESS THAN £20 of the £40 you gave me on unavoidable expenses. Here my lodgings cost me 2 GUINEAS a week and with coal and gas but excluding other EXTRAS, ABOUT £2 15s.; remaining weekly expenditure ABOUT 4 GUINEAS. Considering the climatic performance this hole has put up, it's a tidy sum. Including travelling expenses, I have spent ABOUT £17 and have still got £5. This will not suffice for the last week (incl. Tussy's INCIDENTAL London TRIP and our probable return together next week). So I'd be grateful if you could let me have SOME £ by Monday NEXT, if it can be done.
As for future plans, the first consideration must be to relieve Tussy of her role as my companion (when I again set forth I shall be able to dispense with an escort altogether). The girl is under such MENTAL PRESSURE that it is undermining her health. Neither travelling, nor CHANGE OF CLIMATE, nor PHYSICIANS CAN DO ANYTHING IN THIS CASE. All one can do for her is to do as she wishes, and let her take a course of theatrical LESSONS with Madame Jung. She has an ardent desire to open up a career for herself, or so she imagines, as an independent, active artist and, once this has been conceded, she is undoubtedly right in saying that, at her age, there's no more time to be lost. Not for anything in the world would I have the girl think she is to be sacrificed as an old man's 'nurse' on the altar of family. In fact, I am convinced that pro nunc'[1] Madame Jung is the only doctor for her. She is not open with me; what I say is based on observation, not on her own statements. Nor is the above assertion in any way incompatible with the fact that the most disquieting symptoms, which notably occur at night, are of an alarmingly hysterical nature, or so Miss Maitland[2] told me (she spent 2 days here). But for this, too, no remedy is available just now save an absorbing and congenial pursuit. I have certain conjectures about her affairs of the 'heart', but that is too delicate a subject to admit of discussion in black and white.
I have had a letter from the Sorge family, written by the old man, countersigned by Mrs Sorge and Sorge jun.,[3] in which they invite me TO TURN OVER A NEW LEAF, i. e. go and settle with them in New York. Well meant, at any rate!
In the Arbeiterstimme in which C. Schramm, invoking myself, attacked Karl Bürkli,[4] Bürkli now attacks Schramm,[5] for whose benefit he demonstrates that everything he [Schramm] has adduced is quite beside the point since I nowhere consider the kind of money he, Bürkli, proposes, namely 'interest-bearing mortgage bank certificates'. Bürkli does, however, express surprise that I should make no mention of the Pole, August Cieszkowski [Du crédit et de la circulation, Paris, 1839), although in his Système des contradictions économiques that 'rough diamond Proudhon' frequently, if respectfully, takes issue with Cieszkowski (the 'prior inventor' of Bürkli's bank certificates). The said Cieszkowski — a count, as Bürkli, NATIVE of Switzerland, remarks, and a ['doctor of philosophy' and 'Hegelian'][6] INTO THE BARGAIN, if not actually a 'fellow-countryman of Marx', i.e. as 'deputy for Posen' in the 'Prussian' National Assembly — the said count, etc., did in fact once call on me in Paris (at the time of the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher), and such was the impression he made on me that I neither wanted nor would have been able to read anything whatever of his contriving. Nevertheless, it's a notable fact that the inventors of 'real' credit money, which was meant to serve as a means of circulation at the same time, as opposed to what they call 'personal' credit money (e. g. present-day bank-notes), should have chanced their hand — albeit in vain — as far back as the founding of the Bank of England, and this in the interests and at the behest of the landed aristocracy.[7] At all events, Bürkli is under a delusion as to the 'historical' date of birth of the Cieszkowskian 'idea', independently rediscovered by himself.
What has struck me from the first about the Bismarck-William manifesto is the confusion as between Prussian king and German emperor! In the latter capacity, the laddie has, after all, no historical antecedents whatsoever, nor yet Hohenzollern traditions (on which a start has now been made with the 'Prince of Prussia's' ostentatious trip to England — to study the Constitution!). After the nauseous protestations, expiring in submissive love, of your Mommsens, Richters, Hänels et tutti quanti,[8] it was charming of Bismarck to play this card — however silly his manner of doing it. With any luck we shall yet see something happen.
Your
K. M.