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Special pages :
Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 19, 1876
| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 19 August 1876 |
An excerpt from this letter was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx, On History and People, McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1977. It appeared in English in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45
MARX TO ENGELS
IN RAMSGATE
Karlsbad, 19 August 1876 Germania
Dear FRED,
I am writing to your London address since I don't know whether you are still living at the seaside.[1]
First, our adventures en route.[2] As I had planned, we spent a night in Cologne—left there at 6 o'clock in the morning, our next staging post being Nuremberg. We arrived in Nuremberg at about five in the afternoon, not intending to leave for Karlsbad until the following evening (it was the 14th and we had informed our Karlsbad landlady that we would be arriving on the 15th). Our cases were unloaded and entrusted to a man with a barrow who was to accompany us to the nearest inn, just beside the railway station on the outskirts of town. But at the said inn we were told there was only one room left, and at the same time the landlord conveyed to us the awful tidings that we were unlikely to find accommodation elsewhere since the town was overcrowded, partly as a result of a millers' and bakers' convention, partly by people from all over the world who were on their way to state musician Wagner's Festival of Fools at Bayreuth.[3] And such was the case. We spent ages wandering about the town with the barrow beside us; neither the smallest beer-house nor the biggest hotel could offer us asylum; all we gained was a nodding acquaintance with the (highly interesting) birthplace of German handicraftsmen. So we returned to the station; there we were told that the town closest to Karlsbad, whither we might still be transported by rail, was Weiden. We took TICKETS for Weiden. However, the worthy guard had already had one (if not more) over the eight; instead of making us get out at Neunkirchen, from which there was a new branch line to Weiden, he carried us on as far as Irrelohe (that's roughly what the beastly place is called)[4] and we had to spend two whole hours travelling back (in the direction opposite to that from which we had come) so that we finally arrived at Weiden at midnight. Here again the only hostelry in the place was full to overflowing so that we had to possess our souls in patience on the hard chairs at the railway station until four o'clock in the morning. Altogether, the journey from Cologne to Karlsbad took us 28 hours! Add to which, it was outrageously hot!
Next day at Karlsbad (where it hasn't rained for six weeks) what everybody was talking about, and what we experienced in our own persons, was the excessive heat! Likewise the water shortage; the Tepl looks as though it's been almost completely drained. Deforestation has reduced it to a sorry state; at times of heavy rain (as in 1872) it floods everything, in hot years it disappears altogether.
Incidentally, the excessive heat has let up during the past three days and, even on really hot days, we found wooded glens, long familiar to me, where it was bearable.
Tussychen, who was rather unwell during the journey, is recovering visibly here and, as always, Karlsbad is having a wonderful effect on me. During the past months the horrible feeling of heaviness in the head had shown signs of returning, but now it's completely gone again.
Dr Fleckles passed on a piece of news that astonished me very much. I had asked him whether his cousin, Madame Wollmann from Paris, was here; I met her last year—a most interesting lady. In reply he said that her husband had lost the whole of his own fortune, as well as his wife's, speculating on the Paris Bourse so that the family, now in desperate straits, was forced to retire to some German backwater. The curious thing about this affair is that Mr Wollmann had made a large fortune in Paris as a dyestuffs manufacturer; he had never gambled on the Bourse but had soberly invested the money not required for his business (as also that of his wife) in Austrian state bonds. All of a sudden he went a bit wrong in the head; he regarded the state of Austria as unsound, sold all his bonds, and quite secretly, without the prior knowledge of his wife or of his friends Heine and Rothschild, and in anticipation of a rise, he speculated on the Bourse in—Turkish and Peruvian securities! — until the last farthing had gone down the drain. The poor woman was just in process of furnishing her newly rented hotel in Paris when, one fine day, without any warning at all, she heard that she was a pauper.
Professor Friedberg (at Breslau University, medicine) tells me today that the great Lasker has brought out anonymously a semi-fictitious work entitled Experiences of a Man's Heart[5]. These exceedingly boastful experiences are preceded by a fulsome foreword or introduction by Mr Berthold Auerbach. What Lasker experienced was this: that all women (including a daughter of Kinkel's) fell in love with him, and he proceeds to explain, not only why he didn't marry the whole lot at once, but why he didn't even so much as clinch matters with a single one of them. It's said to be a veritable Odyssey of a milksop's heart. Hot on its heels came a parody (likewise anonymous)[6] so HORRIBLE that, at great loss to himself, Otto's[7] big brother[8] bought up every copy of the Experiences he could lay hands on.
'Duty' calls me from my desk. So until next time, in so far as I am not prevented by the magically stupefying effect of the hot alkaline tipple from scrawling a line or two. My love to Madame Lizzy.
Your
Moor
No Kovalevsky here. What I have got is a stout volume, sent me by Lavrov, about the functions of the 'state' in the future.[9] Anyway I am also putting off reading it till some future time. Just now everything's future here after the drums of the music of the future[10] at Bayreuth.
Swarming with Russians here. Have just heard from my wife that you are still in Ramsgate. I am therefore sending the letter straight there.
- ↑ Engels was on holiday in Ramsgate between 24 July and 1 September 1876. In early August, he and his wife took Mary Ellen Burns back to her boarding house as her holidays were over. On 5 August, he returned to Ramsgate.
- ↑ In late June 1876, Serbia and Montenegro declared war on Turkey in support of the popular uprising which had flared up in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 1875 (see Note 157). However, the ill-prepared offensive of the Serbian army was halted as soon as early July and, after its defeat had opened up the road to Belgrade for the Turkish troops, Russia categorically demanded the immediate cessation of hostilities against Serbia and Montenegro and an armistice. After a ceasefire lasting six weeks, in February 1877 Turkey and Serbia signed a peace treaty on the terms of status quo ante. On 31 March 1877, a conference of European powers in London issued a protocol that enjoined Turkey to conclude a peace treaty with Montenegro, cease its arms build-up, etc. Turkey having rejected the Russian ultimatum to comply with the London Protocol, Russia declared war on it on 24 (12) April 1877, and Montenegro became a Russian ally.
- ↑ The Wagner Festival Opera House opened at Bayreuth with a performance of Wagner's tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (see Note 190) on 13-17 August 1876.
- ↑ The correct name is Irrenlohe.
- ↑ [E. Lasker,] Erlebnisse einer Mannes Seele
- ↑ H. J. Gehlsen, Das Buch vom 'großen' Lasker oder Leiden und Freuden einer schönen Mannes Seele.
- ↑ Otto Bismarck
- ↑ Eduard Lasker
- ↑ [P. L. Lavrov,] Государственный элемент в будущем обществе, Вперед!, Vol. IV, 1876.
- ↑ 'The music of the future'—Richard Wagner's music, whose principles he expounded in his Zukunftmusik. Brief an einem französischen Freund (1861) addressed to Frederic Villot, keeper of the French museums, and in his book Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft.