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Special pages :
Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 17, 1877
| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 17 August 1877 |
First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931
Printed according to the original
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45
MARX TO ENGELS
IN RAMSGATE
Neuenahr, 17 August 1877
Hotel Flora
DEAR FRED,
I'd have written to you before now, but when the whole person is, over a period of days, subject to conditions of a binding nature—in my case a posteriori always the immediate effect of the journey and one which drinking the spa waters only serves to consolidate—the said person is rendered singularly incapable of action. There's nothing much to report from here.[1] A veritable idyll; moreover, because the weather is not altogether favourable (although here, despite rain and wind, the air's always admirable), and no doubt also because of the persistent commercial crisis, the number of visitors has dropped from 3,000 to 1,700 or 1,800. Lucky Ahr Valley. No railways as yet; but a survey has already been made for a railway from Remagen to Ahrweiler, and commencement d'exécution[2] is threatened for next year; however, it is not to run down the Ahr Valley, but will branch off left to Trier.
I have discovered a very good doctor here. Dr Schmitz (a native of Siegen), who has sense enough, despite the beautiful house and garden he occupies here, to practise medicine in Italy during the winter (from the end of October onwards). He has knocked about the world a lot, including California and Central America. His appearance and MANNERS are very reminiscent of LITTLE Dronke in his heyday.
He has pretty well confirmed what I suspected and wrote and told you from London.[3] My liver no longer shows any trace of enlargement; the digestive APPARATUS is SOMEWHAT DISORDERED, but the actual trouble is of a nervous kind. Today Schmitz again told me that, after a three-week stay here, I should go somewhere higher up, in the Black Forest, and take my fill of mountain and woodland air. Nous verrons![4] He recommends the same for my wife who, by the by, is having to take medicine and arrived here at just the right moment, before her trouble got any worse. Tussychen's appetite is improving, which is the best sign with her.
Just where Neuenahr is, the hills are rather too far away from the actual spa, at least for those whom Karlsbad has spoiled.
We are much disturbed at not having had a mortal word about the ADVENTURES of the Longuet family.
How is your wife? Better, I hope; is the weather as capricious where you are? Here, in the Ahr Valley, people are not at all used to this sort of thing.
At the spa rooms here (where, like everywhere else, one takes baths as well as drinking the alkaline tipple) there is a READING ROOM in which are available, not only German and Dutch newspapers, but also The Times and Galignani's Messenger, Figaro and the Indépendance belge—more than my requirements, in fact, since I refrain in so far as possible from reading newspapers here. Only, I see to my regret that the Turks are again wasting time—at least in my layman's opinion.
Some wine is drunk here, though it so happens that most of the guests (including myself) are forbidden Walporzheimer and the other red wines of the Ahr.
Schorlemmer had promised to come here; so far, however, I've had no 'intimation' of him, as Richard Wagner puts it.
And now, OLD BOY, with warmest regards from one family to another, I am,
Your
Moor