{London,] 31 March 1851
28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

While you busy yourself with military history, I am conducting
a little campaign in which I am likely to be vanquished By np sy,

a G, Struve, Grundztige der Staatswissenschaft, Bd. 1-4. - » K. Rotteck and K. Welcker,
Das Staats-Lexikon. -K. Rotteck, Allgemeine Weltgeschichte für alle Stande.

and from which neither Napoleon nor even Willich—the com-
munist Cromwell—would have been able to extricate them-
selves. ‘

You should know that I had to pay £31.10 shillings to old
Bamberger on 23 March, and £10 to the Jew, Stiebel, on the
sixteenth, all on current bills. I first got Jenny to ask my
mother-in-law” outright. The answer to this was that Mr Edgar‘
had been sent back to Mexico with the remainder of Jenny’s money,
and I couldn’t extract a single centime.

Then I wrote to my mother, threatening to draw bills on her
and, in case of non-payment, to go to Prussia and get myself
locked up. I had really intended to take the latter course if such
should be the case, but this device ceased to be feasible from the
moment the jackasses began to fill the press with their jeremiads
about the workers deserting me, my declining popularity and
the like. As it was, the thing would have looked like a piece
of political histrionics, a more or less deliberate imitation
of Jesus Christ-Kinkel. The time-limit I set my mater was
20 March.

On 10 March she wrote and told me they intended to write
to our relations; on 18 March she wrote to say the relations
had not written which was intended to mean the matter was
concluded. I at once replied, saying that I stood by my first
letter.On 16 March, with Pieper’s help, I paid Stiebel his £10. On 23
March, after I had made a number of fruitless moves, the bill for
old Bamberger was inevitably protested. I had a frightful scene
with the old man who, moreover, was frightfully abusive about
me to the worthy Seiler. Through his sanxer in Trier the idiot had
asked for information about me from the banker, Lautz. This
fellow, my mater’s banker and my persona] enemy, naturally wrote
and told him the most absurd things about me and, on top of that,
thoroughly stirred up my mater against me.

As regards old Bamberger, I had no alternative but to make out
two bills for him, one on him in London to run for 4 weeks from
24 March, the other, payable in Trier in 3 weeks, on my mater in
order to cover the first. I at once advised my mater of this. Today,
at the same time as your letter, one arrived from my mater in
which, full of moral indignation, she addresses me in the most
insolent terms, declaring positivement that she will protest any bill I
draw on her.

a Simon Bamberger - Caroline von Westphalen - Edgar von Westphalen

So when 21 April comes round I shall have to expect the very
worst from a thoroughly incensed old Simon Bamberger.

At the same time my wife was brought to bed on 28 March.Though the confinement was an easy one, she is now very ill in
bed, the causes being domestic rather than physical. And thereby I
have verbalement not a farthing in the house, so that tradesmen’s
bills—butcher’s, baker’s and so forth— keep mounting up.

In 7 or 8 days’ time, I shall have a copy of the will from
Scotland.” If anything’s to be made of it, little Bamberger‘
is the one to do so, if only in his own interest. But I can’t rely
on it.

You will admit that this is a pretty kettle of fish and that I am
up to my neck in petty-bourgeois muck. And at the same time one
is also said to have exploited the workers! and to aspire to
dictatorship! Quelle horreur!Mais ce nest pas tout. The manufacturer who, in Brussels,
loaned me money from Trier, is dunning me for it because
his iron-works are doing badly. Tant pis pour lui! I can’t do as he
asks.

But finally, to give the matter a tragi-comic turn, there is in
addition a mystére which I will now reveal to you en trés peu de
mots.However, I’ve just been interrupted and must go and help
nurse my wife. The rest, then, in which you also figure, in my
next.

Your
K. M.

Apropos, how do merchants, manufacturers, etc., account for the
portion of their income which they themselves consume? Is this
money too fetched from the Banxer or how is it arranged? I’d be glad
to have your answer to this.