Engels to Marie Engels  
in Mannheim  

Dear Marie,  

In future, don’t write to me about Barmen again; Mother always lets the letters lie until she herself writes, and that often takes a very long time. But what I wanted to tell you: though you mustn’t write home about it, for I want to surprise them with it next spring—I am now wearing a huge moustache and shall shortly add an Henri-Quatre and a goatee. Mother will be astonished when a long, black-bearded fellow suddenly walks across the Bleiche. Next year, when I go to Italy, I too must look like an Italian.  

Little Sophie Leupold has written this, who has just visited me in the office while the Old Man and Eberlein, who eats here in the house, are at a grand dinner. Oh, I could tell you interesting things about this dinner, about engagements not yet announced and stolen kisses, but that’s nothing for a girl at boarding school. You’ll learn it early enough when we are home again. Then I’ll sit down in the garden, and you’ll bring me out a large jug of beer and bread and butter with sausage, and then I’ll say: Look, my dear sister, because you’ve brought me the beer out now? and because it’s such a fine summer’s evening, I’ll also tell you about the grand dinner that was celebrated Anno 1840, on the 29th of October, in Bremen, at Martini Number Eleven, in the Royal Saxon Consulate. But for now I can only tell you that quite enormous quantities of Madeira, port, Pouillac, Haut-Sauternes and Rhenish wine are going to be drunk today at midday. For although only five gentlemen are there, they all drink very well, almost as well as I do. – At present we have Freimarkt, and even though I haven’t the honour of being presented to Her Royal Highness, a Grand Duchess, and many most serene princesses, we’re still having fun. Fortunately I’m so short-sighted that I haven’t the faintest idea what the few high, highest and all-highest personages who have had the honour of driving past me look like. The next time an all-gracious one is presented to you, do write and tell me whether she’s pretty, otherwise such personalities don’t interest me at all. Our noble Ratskeller is now fitted out as beautifully as can be, you sit so very nicely among the casks. Last Sunday we had a moustache commers there. I sent out a circular to all young men capable of wearing moustaches, saying that it was high time we thoroughly abominated the philistines, and that this could be done in no better way than by our wearing moustaches. Whoever therefore had enough courage to defy philistinism and wear a moustache should put his name down. I soon had a dozen moustaches together, and then the twenty-fifth of October, the day on which our moustaches were one month old, was fixed for a joint moustache jubilee. However, I had a pretty good idea of what would happen, bought a little moustache pomade and took it along; there it turned out that one fellow, it’s true, had a very handsome beard, but alas completely white, while another had received orders from his principal to hack off the criminal thing. Never mind, this evening we had at least to have some, and anyone who had none had to paint one on. Then I stood up and proposed the following toast:  

A moustache has at all times been worn  
By all brave men far and wide,  
And those who for their fatherland swung the sword,  
All wore black and brown moustaches.  
Therefore in these warlike days  
Let us all wear a proud moustache.  
The philistines indeed have not countenanced it  
And have cut off their moustaches,  
But we are no philistines,  
So we shall let our moustache grow thick,  
Long live every good Christian  
Who is endowed with a moustache,  
And may all philistines perish,  
Who have decried and banned moustaches.  

These doggerel verses were drunk to with great enthusiasm, and then another fellow came forward. His principal would not give him a house key, so he had to be home by ten o’clock, otherwise the house was locked up and they wouldn’t let him in again. Many a poor devil here fares likewise. This one declared:  

Perish all principals,  
Who do not hand over the house key!  
May they find hairs and flies  
In their supper bowl,  
And toss sleeplessly in their beds!  

Thereupon another toast was drunk. This went on until ten o’clock, when those without house keys had to go home, but we fortunate ones, who have house keys, remained seated and ate oysters. I ate eight of them, but I couldn’t manage any more; I can’t as yet stomach the stuff.  

Since you are so fond of figures, and even wish to reward me for it with the yellow envelope order, I shall have the grace to regale you with the remark that current exchange is now 106 1/2 per cent, whereas a year ago it stood at 114. The louis d’or are falling so much that anyone who had a million talers here in Bremen a year ago now has only nine hundred thousand, hence a hundred thousand talers less. Isn’t that enormous?  

You still haven’t written me a word about the scrap for Ida; did you get it and hand it over or not? It would be most awkward for me if I had not sent it off and it had been left lying about here and fallen into the Old Man’s hands. So write to me, and that means the long six-page letter you promised me. I shall know how to repay you. Here on the envelope you will again be regaled with a few arithmetical calculations which you may take to heart. The fact that I have had to copy out this letter again is the fault of Mr. Timoleon Miesegans in Bremen, the same one whom the Old Man threw out of the house a couple of years ago. With respect and devotion,  
Friedrich  
Bremen, 29 Oct. 1840