MARX TO ENGELS” 
Ryde, 15 July 1874 
11 Nelson Street?’ 
Dear Fred, 

It is really shameful of me not to have written to you before, 
but, as is well known, it is very hard to find time when one is 
absolutely idle. This island is a little paradise, above all for the 
gentlemen who have everywhere turned the best-situated land into 

a Gertrud and Franziska Kugelmann 

4* 

their own parkland. We have made a tour round the island by 
Boat, have been in Ventnor, Sandown, Cowes, Newport and also 
on a number of walks. It is too hot to pursue the latter with any 
thoroughness, although compared to London, the temperature is 
doubtless very moderate. 

Religion seems to thrive here among the natives, but apart from 
that they are practical people. “Vote ror STANLEY, THE RICH MAN’, we 
found on posters all over the district. The Town Council of Ryde, 
on which various members of the Ryde Pier and Railway Company 
have seats and whose proceedings replace those of the House of 
Commons in the local press, is a true model of Josainc. 

Our LANDLORD is a SCRIPTURE READER FOR THE POOR, and his theological 
library, ABOUT Two DOZEN volumes, adorns our sitting-Room. Although 
he is a member of the Church or England, I found Spurgeon’s 
sermons among them. In Sandown, where I took a hot bath, I 
found a similar library in the bathhouse, and one can scarcely 
move an inch without seeing posters advertising pious MEETINGS. 
And in fact, the press here is very poor and seems to seek its chief 
distraction in the church. It would be quite interesting to 
investigate how what was originally a community of fishermen 
became reduced 1n no Time to this state of religious self-abasement. 
It is certainly not the result of ‘over-population’, since all told 
there are not even 100,000 genuine inhabitants. 

My health is improved, above all no pills required. But my head, 
despite everything, is still not completely right. 

Laurachen gave us great pleasure with her visit last Saturday.’ 
Unfortunately, she had to return again on Monday evening. When 
we went down to the pier to see her off, we witnessed the arrival 
from Brighton of a Temperance gang back from an excursion. 
Half of them were drunk. As an old Englishman next to me 
remarked, it was ‘THE WORST LOT HE HAD EVER MET WITH IN HIS LIFE’, and 
neither have I ever actually experienced such a mob of stunted, 
loutish and smutty-minded idiots all at once, the women as ugly as 
sin, all of them ‘young people’. For foreigners this sample Of FREEBORN 
Britons would have been an amazing sight. 

It is a matter of great regret that the Emperor of Russia” didn’t 
break his neck in Saxony. You will have seen from the newspaper 
reports that if the Russians promised to give Bismarck a European 
sanction for his Articles of War at the Brussels Congress, what 
they really intended was to take up the issue of maritime RIGHTS” on 
the basis of their earlier preparatory work in Paris (1856).° If 

a 11 July - > Alexander II -¢ See this volume, p. 18. 

Gladstone had been Premier instead of Disraeli, the trick would 
have worked. As things stand, the congress can only be a FAILURE. 

The abortive assassination attempt on Bismarck” seems, for all 
that, to have momentarily turned his head. Would he otherwise 
have talked, despite the waters at Bad Kissingen, among other 
things, of ‘the freedom’ that he himself and those who fell in the 
war have fought to acquire for Germany? The handsome William? 
for his part must consider it against all etiquette that no one thinks 
it worth the trouble to take a shot at him any more. 

In France it is the fear of dissolution that makes the fellows so 
coy. MacMahon is obviously by no means as resolute as he 
pretends to be, despite his Royal Prussian Order in Council. He is 
too well aware that a coup d’état would make him dependent on 
the Bonapartists and would put a speedy end to his septennium.”” 
On the other hand, he is afraid of a dissolution without previously 
regulating or ‘organising’ his authority as Marshal. If the Rurals*? 
put their interests before their ideological fancies, they will make it 
‘possible for him to rule’ despite his reluctance. But has anything 
as comic as this conflict and its heroes ever been seen in world 
history? If the Republic pisses its way to survival, certainly no one 
will have been more innocent of the deed than the professional 
republicans themselves. 

With best regards to Mrs Lizzy and Pumps. 

Your 
Moor