in Manchester  
London, Thursday, 8 January 1863  

18 Jan. 1863.  
Dear Engels,  

The news of Mary’s death surprised me as much as it has distressed me. She was very good-natured, witty, and deeply attached to you.  

The devil knows that nothing but ill luck is now happening in our circle. I also absolutely no longer know whether I am on my head or my heels. My attempts to raise money in France and Germany have failed, and it was naturally to be foreseen that with £15 I could hold back the avalanche only a few weeks. Apart from receiving no further credit, except from the butcher and the baker, which will also cease at the end of this week, I have been dunned for the school fees, for the rent, and by the whole pack. The few who received a few pounds on account have cunningly pocketed them, only to fall upon me with redoubled violence. Moreover, the children have no clothes or shoes to go out. In short, the devil is to pay, as I clearly foresaw when I went to Manchester and, as a last coup de désespoir, sent my wife to Paris. If I do not succeed in raising a larger sum by means of a loan society or life assurance (and I see no prospect of it; with the former society I have tried everything in vain. They require guarantors and they must be provided with receipts for rent and taxes, which I cannot do), then the whole affair here will hardly last another fortnight.  

It is hideously egoistic of me to tell you these horrors at this moment. But the remedy is homoeopathic. One misfortune dispels the other. And, au bout du compte, what am I to do? In all London there is not a single person to whom I can speak out freely, and in my own house I play the silent Stoic in order to counterbalance the outbursts from the other side. But working under such circumstances becomes utterly impossible. Would that, instead of Mary, my mother — who now in any case is full of bodily infirmities and has fairly lived out her life — ...? You see to what strange fancies “civilised” people are driven under the pressure of certain circumstances.  

Salut  
Yours  
K. M.  

How will you now arrange your establishment? It is extraordinarily hard for you, since you had with Mary a home, free and withdrawn from all human dirt, as often as you pleased.