{London,] 19 March 1877 
[41 Maitland] Park Road 

Dear Mrs Wollmann, 

I have delayed replying in order to seek advice on so important 
matter from one of my friends, a former businessman.* He 
returned to London only yesterday, after a long absence. 

With the income you mention you can live decently in London, 
though only, needless to say, on a modest bourgeois basis. In fact 
London is today probably the cheapest capital in Europe, thus 
offering the advantage that, provided you keep up the usual 

a Frederick Engels 

appearances, you can run your house in any way you wish, and 
that no one, not even the rich, need be unduly sociable. The city’s 
enormous size and population relieve one of many considerations 
which are more or less obtrusive elsewhere. So far as education is 
concerned, in all the public schools—and these, even from the 
financial viewpoint, are the only ones I would recommend—they 
also have German teachers. In some respects the schools them- 
selves are less adequate than those in Germany, in others they are 
to be preferred. But in any case. and particularly for a boy who is 
to prepare himself for the struggle with tire, England is a far more 
useful training school than Germany, that great barracks, servants’ 
hall and nursery.* 

As regards German teachers for private tuition, there is very 
heavy competition among them, and so the cost of Lessons is not 
high. 

Here, as in America and on the European Continent, there is a 
business crisis which in my view has yet to reach its peak. After 
that point has been reached, we shall enter the most favourable 
period of all for the launching of new businesses. But the sooner 
you ‘move to London, the longer and more leisurely will be the 
time available to your husband to take the preparatory steps. 

I need hardly tell you that both my daughters and I welcome 
your move to this country as an unexpected stroke of luck. 

My kindest regards to Fleckles and the dear children, 

Yours very sincerely, 
Karl Marx 

Should you wish to leaf through some of Capital, it would be 
best to start with the last section,” p. 314. In the scientific 
exposition the arrangement is prescribed for the author, although 
some other arrangement might often be more convenient and 
more appropriate for the reader.