Letter to Jenny Marx, April 14, 1858

From Marxists-en
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 14 April 1858


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40
Keywords : Letter, Jenny von Westphalen


ENGELS TO JENNY MARX[1]

IN LONDON

Manchester, 14 April 1858

Dear Mrs Marx,

I trust that Moor is at last on the road to recovery and will soon be able to return unhampered to his labours on political economy.[2] I was also plagued with toothache last week. By Sunday it had gone, only to return with added virulence this evening just as I was settling down to sort out some preliminary stuff on the conquest of Lucknow[3] for the Tribune. Whether I shall succeed in these circumstances seems very doubtful. At any rate I shall try and read up the subject this evening and if possible concoct something, even if not much, tomorrow midday while I'm at the office. But it would at any rate be a good idea if Moor were to have a sujet in petto[4] so that, if the worst comes to the worst, there's something to send the fellows.

I still find working in the evenings very tiring and, if I go on for too long or for two evenings running, I get over-excited and suffer from insomnia, particularly when I've had a lot of writing to do during the day. And I also feel very stupid and lethargic in the evenings until I wake myself up by forcing myself to concentrate on some subject. My memory is better on the whole, although every day I still find that things I have done or heard the day before vanish so completely from my mind that they might never have happened, and it's only when I've been reminded of individual details that it all comes back to me. Otherwise I am physically strong and healthy again, able to stand up to strains and stresses and—sauf le[5] TOOTHACHE—to any kind of weather.

Lupus is still very lame and is having to spend more on CABS in one week than he usually does in a year. But he is improving visibly and in a week's time he'll probably again be able to stand a certain amount of walking. He sends everyone his best wishes.

How do you like the Bernard trial[6]? The French mouchards[7] and their worthy confrère MR Rogers are cutting a pretty figure.

Yesterday's Morning Post drew a very nice picture of the trial's physiognomy. That Chevalier Estien was excellendy portrayed.[8]

I have today received from DEAR Harney 3 more Independent[9] from which it transpires that his arch-enemy, Seigneur Godfrey, has begun a fresh libel suit against him.[10] The man will soon be thinking himself as 'greet' as the 'greet'[11] Lassalle.

'OUR FAITHFUL ALLY[12]" is now weighing on English commerce like a nightmare. Nobody wants to speculate or buy more than his immediate requirements because the whole of Philistia is expecting war, revolution or even more oudandish things in France.

Very best wishes to the girls and Moor,

Yours ever,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ This is the reply to Mrs Marx's letter to Engels of 9 April 1858 (see this volume, pp. 569).—307
  2. ↑ In the summer of 1857 Marx began to write a series of economic manuscripts in order to sum up and systematise the results of his extensive economic research started in the 1840s and continued most intensively in the 1850s. (In the first half of the 1850s he filled 24 paginated and several unpaginated notebooks with excerpts from the works of bourgeois economists, books of statistics, documents and periodicals.) These manuscripts were preliminary versions of an extensive economic work in which he intended to investigate the laws governing the development of capitalist production and to criticise bourgeois political economy. Marx oudined the main points of this treatise in an unfinished draft of the 'Introduction' (one of the first manuscripts of the series) and in letters to Engels, Lassalle and Weydemeyer (see pp. 298-304, 269-71, 286-87, 376-78). Further economic study prompted Marx to specify and change his original plan. The central place in the series is occupied by the extensive manuscript, Critique of Political Economy (widely known as the Grundrisse), on which Marx worked from October 1857 to May 1858. In this preliminary draft of his future Capital Marx expounded his theory of surplus value. After the first instalment had been prepared for publication in 1859 under the title A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx added several more manuscripts to the series in 1861. The manuscripts of 1857-61 were first published in German by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU in 1939 under the editorial heading Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Rohentwurf). These manuscripts and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One are included in Vols. 29 and 30 of the present edition.—217, 224, 226, 238, 244, 249, 256, 270, 287, 307, 499, 566.
  3. ↑ F. Engels, The Fall of Lucknow'.
  4. ↑ subject up his sleeve
  5. ↑ save for the
  6. ↑ Surgeon Simon Bernard, a Frenchman living in London, was tried as an accomplice in Felice Orsini's attempt on the life of Napoleon HI (manufacture of bombs and so on). The trial took place in London from 12 to 17 April 1858. Bernard was acquitted by the Central Criminal Court on 17 April.—307, 309
  7. ↑ police spies
  8. ↑ 'Trial of Simon Bernard', The Morning Post, No. 26298, 13 April 1858.
  9. ↑ The Jersey Independent
  10. ↑ Many remnants of feudalism still survived in Jersey at the time. Local big landowners, lawyers and bankers (François Godfrey in particular) controlled all administrative institutions and the Royal Court. The radical Reform League (consisting of local traders, small shipowners and bank clerks), founded by Harney in September 1857, and The Jersey Independent edited by him, came out against their arbitrary rule and encroachments on the interests of tenants.— 196, 264, 308
  11. ↑ Engels has grauss —South German for gross (great).
  12. ↑ Napoleon III
Retrieved from "https://wikirouge.net/texts/en/w/index.php?title=Letter_to_Jenny_Marx,_April_14,_1858&oldid=107579"