452 33 – Engels to Marie Engels – 4 August 1840

33

Engels to Marie Engels

in Mannheim

Dear Marie,

I must tell you right away that I shall forbid myself all good advice from your pen for the future. You must not imagine, my dearest little goose, that now you are at boarding-school you could already try your hand at being wise; besides, if I should feel like it, I can get a huge pile of books full of good advice from the Pastor! The beer in our office still stands there till it’s drunk up, and since you started to preach against it, our beer-drinking club has only improved, for we now have brown beer first and white beer second. That’s what comes of pert little boarding-school misses meddling in the affairs of their gentleman brothers.

I shall therefore not frank my letters. Simply address them: Mr F. E. in Bremen, that’s enough. But leave the parson out of the address. The other day, from the 27th to the 30th of July, we celebrated the July Revolution, which broke out in Paris ten years ago; we spent one evening in the Ratskeller and the others in Richard Roth’s dive. The fellow still isn’t back. There we drank the finest Laubenheimer in the world and smoked cigars — if you’d seen them, you’d have learned to smoke just for their sake. My cigar case still hasn’t reappeared. And an acquaintance of mine has come back who has been in ‘Pinselfahnien’ and ‘Kaltermoria’ and saw ‘Mister Sippi’ (that’s supposed to mean Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Mississippi). This fellow is a Solingen man, and the Solingen people are the most unfortunate people in the world, for they can’t get rid of their Solingen German. The lad still says: ‘in sommer it is ver’ fine weather,’ and for Karoline he always says Kalinah.

It’s sad; I’ve almost not a groat left in my pocket and a mass of debts, both my own and cigar business debts. There’s the fellow badgering me from whom I last bought St Catherine’s plums for you, which I haven’t yet paid for; there’s the bookbinder still not paid; there the three months by which I must pay for the cigars I bought have long since elapsed; and Strücker sends no bill of exchange, and the Pastor is away travelling and can’t give me any money. Tomorrow, though, he’s coming back, and then I’ll put six louis d’or in my purse, and when I’ve eaten a piece of cake in a coffee-house for three groats, I’ll toss a double pistole on the counter: ‘Can you change that?’ And then they’ll say ‘alas, no’, then I’ll rummage through all my pockets for the three groats and walk out the door, proud of my double pistoles.

When I’m back in the office, I chuck a pistole on to the desk of the red-headed youngest clerk: ‘Derkhiem, see if you can’t get some change,’ and then the fellow is extremely happy, for he has an excuse to stay away from the office for an hour and loaf about, an innocent pleasure he loves dearly. For small change is very scarce here, and anyone who has five thalers in small change in his pocket is monstrously pleased.

The other day a priceless joke happened here. In the Zekons a cook was wanted. So a sturdy lass comes into the publishing office and says: ‘Listen here, I read in the paper that they’re looking for a cook.’ ‘Yes,’ says the clerk. ‘What must she be able to do then?’ asks the wench. ‘Well, she must play Kloveer (Klavier) and dance and French, and sing, and sew, and embroider – she must be able to do all that.’ ‘Thunder’s strike,’ says the wench, ‘that I can’t do.’ But when she sees the whole office laughing, she asks: ‘Se wet (wollen) mek wol tom besten hebben? Thunder’s strike, I’ll not let meself be mokeeren!’ And with that she leaps at the clerk and tries to thrash him; she was, of course, gently shown the door. The other day the old man! threw a carter out of the door. The fellow had Prussian gold to collect and wouldn’t accept the louis d’or at 5⅓ thalers. We were wrangling with him, when the old man came: ‘What kind of a carrying-on is this here, damn it all,’ and he seized the fellow by the chest and threw him into the gutter. Whereupon the carter came back quietly and said: ‘So it weren’t meent (gemeint), now I’ll take the Lujedor after all.’

At the moment I have no other envelope for the letter than this spoiled coffee bill, which to you, as a true coffee sister, will doubtless be welcome.

Farewell? and write soon.

Your brother

Friedrich

Bremen, 4 Aug. 40