34

Engels to Marie Engels
in Mannheim

My very dear Saurt,

I have just received your letter, and since I have nothing to do just now, I am going to scrawl you a few lines. Our office has undergone a significant improvement. It used to be terribly tedious, having to rush to the desk straight after dinner, when one is so frightfully lazy; and so, to remedy this evil, we have put up two very fine hammocks on the packing-room floor, in which we loll after table, smoking a cigar, and sometimes have a short nap. I am convinced you will find this arrangement highly practical. From Roth I also received a letter this morning; he is coming back next Sunday after an absence of 4 months. For your information: 1,700 marks Banco at 137 per cent are 776 taler 24 grote louis d’or. I have just double-checked, and it is quite correct. Enclosed a copper. An old wine connoisseur who is given sour wine to drink. The one next to him is the commercial traveller from whom he bought the sour wine. I shall also portray for you how the young gents here do their hair:

1 Schwester

Die 
Kerls 
sehen 
x aus wie
) die
f4 Kälber.

Damn it! When I had written this, I went home and ate, and when I came back I lit a cigar so as to lie in the hammock. But it collapsed under me on the spot, and when I went to hammer in fresh nails, the infamous Dersbiem called me; and now I cannot get away from the office again.

Heaven be praised! I had my midday rest after all! I stole out of the office, taking cigars and matches with me, and ordered beer; then I pushed up to the topmost packing-room floor, lay in the hammock, and rocked myself most gently. Thereupon I went down to the middle packing-room floor and packed two cases of Platillas, consuming a cigar and a bottle of beer and sweating profusely, for it is so warm today that, despite a barely shaken-off cold, I want to take to the Weser again. The other day I bathed and had a fellow row behind me, and I swam across the Weser four times in one go, a feat no one in Bremen is likely to match.

Damn it! For two reasons, first it’s raining, second my amiable young principal! refuses to leave the office, and so I have to let my cigar go out again. But I’ll soon chase him off. Do you know how I manage it? I go into the kitchen and call out loudly: Kristine, a corkscrew! then I open a bottle of beer and pour myself a glass. If he has as much as a half-groat’s worth of honour in his body, he has to shove off, for that is as much as: Clear out, Don Guillermo!

So you now speak such splendid English? Well, just wait, when you come home again I shall teach you Danish or Spanish, so that you can speak to me in a language the others don’t understand. Danske Sprag fagre Sprag, y el Español es lengua muy hermosa. Or would you rather have Portuguese? O portugues he huma lengoa muito gragosa, e os Portuguezes saö nacad muito respeitavel. But since you are not yet so far advanced, I shall spare you that for now.

Here you can see my hammock, containing myself, how I smoke a cigar.

I have just heard that another 500 cases of sugar, that is 250,000 pounds, have been sold; that can sweeten many a cup of coffee! Who knows whether you may not get the sugar in your cup from the same case from which I have had to draw samples! But your sugar on the Rhine all comes from Holland, where it is made from rags, not calico rags, but rag sugar.

Soon there is to be a grand manoeuvre at Falkenberg, 3 hours from here, at which the Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck and Oldenburg troops, together an entire regiment strong, are to perform their tricks. They are touching troops, three of them together have not as much moustache as I do when I have not shaved for three days; on their coats you can count every thread, and sabres they have none, but speck-eels. A speck-eel is, namely, a smoked eel, but with the soldiers it is the leather scabbard for the bayonet, which they wear instead of the sabre. Those unfortunate wretches, you see, run the risk of running the bayonet through each other’s phiz on the march when it is on the musket, and so they are sensible enough to carry it on their backs. They are miserable cartridges, Kashubians and Ledschaken.

By God, my matter has all run out,
I know not what to write about,
Yet I will fill this page, on my word,
Though with the tongs I’d drag it in, absurd.
And since in verse one cannot say so much,
Nor scanty matter broadly spread as such,
I’ll end this letter now with sorry rhymes;
Yet fear that Pegasus will rear betimes
And fling me violently upon the sand.

The sun sinks down, around the land grows dark,
And only in the west through cloudy veil
The sunset’s fiery blaze still leaves its mark.
It is a grave and sacred fire, grown pale,
That on the tomb of one day glows full bright,
Which brought us many things we love and hail.
Now it has died, and cloaked in dark of night
With bright star-glances, over earth’s domain
The night draws silently its mantle tight.
And all is still; to nest, to bush, in train
The birds, the beasts withdraw, and even the flies
Have finished dancing their last tired refrain.
Of life the cheerful door now closed lies,
As once upon the third creation day,
When only trees were made to deck earth’s guise,
And not yet in the green copse, at their play,
The beasts were grazing – thus it is once more,
Only in branches whispers wind’s old lay;
That is the Spirit of the Lord, whose roar
Pours down in mighty songs with mighty sweep,
And frights away the storm-clouds from their shore.
He bloweth ever, ever young, and deep,
But as for me, my lungs for rhyme must sleep.

Punctum. If you understand that, you are educated and can have a say.

Adiós Your
Friedrich

Bremen, 20 Aug. 40

The 25th Aug. Roth arrived back the day before yesterday.