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Special pages :
Letter to Elisabeth Engels, February 27, 1861
| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 27 February 1861 |
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41
ENGELS TO ELISABETH ENGELS
IN BARMEN
Manchester, 27 February 1861
Dear Mother,
I would have liked to answer your dear letter straight away, but with Emil's[1] being here, have been so taken up with current business that it has been quite impossible. Well, he left yesterday morning and will probably reach Engelskirchen tonight. Dear mother, you have no need to worry about the possibility of my bearing any grudge against my brothers[2] over the matter of the firm; it wouldn't occur to me. It was extremely disagreeable for me to have to withdraw from the family business in this way, nor could I find it agreeable when something I looked upon as a right to which I was entitled was lightly passed over for all kinds of reasons that had no bearing whatever on that right, my assent being, so to speak, demanded as a matter of course.[3] I do not suggest that things haven't been arranged as well as, if not better than, they might have been had my claim been taken into consideration, but this is precisely what no one has taken the trouble to explain to me, and you cannot deny that, in the circumstances, it was expecting rather much of me to sign the thing. But having done so, I regard it as settled and you can count on me not to bear any of my brothers the slightest grudge about that. We shall need one another often enough and, besides, you know that I'm not in the least inclined to play the noble soul of whom no one takes note. I am sure Emil didn't notice any ill-temper on my part, still less any manifestation of annoyance towards himself, nor indeed could he have done, since I have now resigned myself to the thing and my only wish is that the business in Engelskirchen should yield good results for the four of us.
So, do not grieve over it, mother dear. For myself, the thing is over and done with, so much so that even the painful sensation I undeniably experienced, when I signed it, is likewise over and done with, disposed of and forgotten. If, I thought, this one aspect of the thing is disagreeable to me, then how many more such moments—far more disagreeable ones—must you have gone through in the course of the negotiations? And then I rejoiced at being able to put a stop to it all with one stroke of the pen. I might acquire a hundred other businesses, but never a second mother.
I am very well, by the way. Emil enjoyed himself here very much, and will have written to tell you that we have just about finished with Gottfr., so that that affair, too, will at last be in order. Well, goodbye, and mind you keep fit and look after yourself properly. My warmest regards to Hermann, the Rudolfs, the Blanks, and the Boellings.
With much love,
Your son
Friedrich