[London,] 14 July 1857
Dear Engels,

You may be certain that despite all mishaps I and my wife (who,
by the by, is well on the way to recovery) found our own AFFAIRS
less disquieting than your latest report on the state of your health.
While delighted beyond measure that you should be improving, I
am thoroughly alarmed to learn that you intend to return to the
office—and to do so this very week. If nothing else, the whole
course of your illness should have shown you that what you
needed physically was to rest, recuperate and temporarily shake
off the dust of the office. You must go to the seaside as soon as
possible. If, at this crucial moment, you should be so childish
(pardon the expression) as to shut yourself up in the office again,
you will suffer further relapses, and your resistance to the disease
will at the same time be progressively impaired. Such relapses
might ultimately lead to an infection of the lungs, in which case all
attempts at a cure would be fruitless. Surely it is not your ambition
to go down to posterity as one who sacrificed himself on the altar
of Ermen & Engels’ office? One would feel sorry for a person with
your complaint if he were compelled by circumstances to chain
himself anew to his business rather than restore his health. In
your case, however, all that is needed is a vigorous decision to do
what is medically necessary. Only consider how long the trouble
has been dragging on already, and how many relapses you’ve had,
and you will see how necessary it is For SOME TIME To LET Mr Ermen SHIFT
FOR HIMSELF and to restore your health by breathing the sea air and
enjoying relative leisure. I hope you will take the thing seriously
and abandon your former mistaken system of alternating between
medicine bottle and office. It would be unpardonable for you to
persist in it.

I can only relate verbally the circumstances that attended my
wife’s confinement and UNNERVED ME FOR SOME DAYs. I cannot write
about such things.

I have received your articles.* My Best THANKS FOR THEM.

The Indian revolt '” has placed me in something of a quandary.
As far as the Tribune is concerned, I am EXPECTED TO HAVE SOME
SUPERIOR VIEW OF MILITARY AFFAIRS. If you can supply me with a few
general axioms, I can easily combine them with the stuff I’ve
already got together to make a readable article.” The situation of
the insurgents in Delhi and the moves of the British army are the
only points on which a few military generalities are needed. All
the rest is MATTER OF FACT.

Mr Bamberger has kept me dangling for the past fortnight by

‘The Revolt in India’ appeared in the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 5082, on 4
August 1857.

making bogus rendezvous at which he never appears. I shall now
give the laddie up, of course.

Jones’ wife died last April; he seems to be keeping relatively
well.

A letter received from Imandt today. He has the Expectation of a
post which he puts at £300 a year. Regarding Dronke he tells me
that he is said to be living en famille with a woman who is
pregnant by him. It isn’t Miss Smith, however.

Salut.

Your
K. M.