MARX TO THOMAS ALLSOP”? 

[London,] 23 December 1873 
1 Maitland Park Road, N.W. 

My dear and honoured friend, 

I felt very anxious about your protracted silence, Mr Leblanc 
being unable to inform me of your whereabouts and your doings. 
I am sorry to see from your letter that my apprehensions were not 
quite unfounded, but the mild climate of Penzance and your 
robust constitution will, I hope fervently so, soon rid you of the 
cough which, by the by, sways it now all over the country. It is, in 
the current phrase, quite a seasonable nuisance. 

My youngest daughter* and myself have for three weeks stayed 
at Harrogate  whither our medical adviser had sent us. The 
quiet life, breezy air, mineral waters and pleasant walks of the 
place have gone far to restore the health of the two patients. 
When we arrived, the season had already gone, so that we 
occupied our hotel ‘in single blessedness’,“ being only disturbed 
and somewhat amused during the last days of our sojourn by the 
dropping in of a Church of England parson, a worldly wise old 
man, with no smack of cant about him, of fluent and trivial talk, 
with conventional varnish of manners and caring indeed for 
nothing save his belly. He was the true model of a modern 
Christian, using that word itself only with respect to the dishes our 
hotel-keeper provided and saying for instance: this is no Christian 
mutton chop, if that same chop happened to lack some virtue or 
other. The man had overrun most countries of Europe and was in 
himself a recording office of all the merits and demerits of its 
several hotels, always hunting in vain for that paragon of 
mankind—a perfect man—cook. At the same time he never tired 
of bitter sarcasms against the overstrained pretentions and the 
extravagant living of the miners of the black country,’ being 
himself an incumbent at Durham. This man gave me and Eleanor 
constant occasion to think and speak of you, because a more 
striking contrast could hardly be fancied—you, so to say an 

a Eleanor Marx - b Eduard Gumpert - © Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, 
» Act I, Scene 1. - 4 the coal-mining and iron-working areas of Staffordshire and 
Warwickshire 

anticipation of what the men of the new society will be, and he, 
the parson, a stereotyped mould of what the men of the old 
society have contrived to become. 

I send you to-day three further parts of the Capital? which, on 
the whole, are less abstract than the preceding ones. If they 
contribute to enliven your hours of seclusion, I shall feel most 
happy. In general, I must say that my views commence to spread 
amongst the workmen of the Continent and that there the upper 
classes and the official representatives of political economy make 
much noise about them and feel rather annoyed at them. 

In poor Spain things might still right themselves if French 
reaction gets not the upper hand. With all their shortcomings 
there is mettle in the Spaniards. The downbreak of the Spanish 
working class rising—which was unripe and _ senseless ”’—will 
prove useful if its leaders have been taught by dearly bought 
experience to emancipate themselves from highflown but hollow 
French phraseology and to apply themselves to the study of the 
real conditions of the movement. We have some excellent men at 
Madrid and Valencia. At Lisbon we have a nucleus of really 
superior workers. 

In the United States our propaganda has been much accelerated 
by the crisis. It has acted as our recruiting officer. 

In Germany we are pretty sure to send at the coming elections 
at least a dozen intelligent and energetic workmen to parlia- 
ment.”* The sudden and mighty industrial development in that 
country is our best agent. Bismarck and the middle class intend 
striking a blow at the proletarian press, the ‘respectable’ press 
confessing its inability to cope with it, but the old king? is rapidly 
sinking and his successor‘ cannot dare inaugurate his regime by 
unpopular measures. 

In Russia, what with the social disorganisation consequent upon 
the emancipation of the serfs” and the awful growth of financial 
disease, what with the popular discontent at the loss of the Russian 
prestige through the Prussian achievements and the hesitations of 
a weak home-policy making half-concessions to-day to compensate 
them by ultra-reactionary measures to-morrow, the elements of a 
general convulsion are accumulating. 

Thus, my dear friend, the world is moving with all that. What 
are the feeble efforts of upper class France at a moment where the 

a of the second German edition of Volume I of Capital - > William I - © Crown 
Prince Frederick William 

552 $26. Marx to Allsop. 23 December 1873 

foundations of the very stronghold of European reaction, of 
Russia, are shaking? 

With my and Mrs Marx kind regards to Mrs Allsop and our best 
wishes for the coming year, I remain, my dear and honoured 
friend, 

Yours most sincerely, 
Karl Marx 

Engels sends you his compliments and will immediately write to 
you.