[London,] 15 December 1881 

Dear Sorge, 

Having heard our news from over here by word of mouth from 
your son,° you must surely have been prepared to learn of the death of 
my wife, my unforgettable and beloved partner (on 2 December). 

* Otto Meissner-> Marx’s pseudonym-* Adolph Sorge 

I myself had not recovered sufficiently to pay her my last respects. 
Indeed, I have so far been confined to the house, but am to go to 
Ventnor (Isle of Wight) next week. 

I am emerging from this last illness doubly handicapped, emo- 
tionally by the loss of my wife, physically in that I am left with a 
thickening of the pleura and increased sensitivity of the bronchial 
tubes. 

I shall, alas, have to fritter away a certain amount of time on schemes 
for restoring my health. 

Another edition of the German text of Capital ??’ has now become 
necessary. Most inopportune so far as I’m concerned. 

Your Henry George is increasingly revealing himself to be a 
humbug. 

I trust Sorge jun. arrived in good shape; give him my regards. 

Your 
K. Marx 

The English have latterly begun to take rather more notice of Capt- 
tal, etc. For instance, in last October’s (or November’s, *I am not 
quite sure *) issue of the Contemporary, there was an article by John Rae 
on German sociatism.* (Very inadequate, full of mistakes, but ‘rare’, as 
one of my ENcLiIsH rrienps remarked to me day before yesterday.) And 
why Fair? * Because John Rae does not suppose that for the forty years 
I am spreading my pernicious theories I was being instigated by ‘bad’ 
motives.* ‘I must praise his magnanimity!’ * The fairness of making 
yourself at least sufficiently acquainted with the subject of your criti- 
cism seems a thing quite unknown to the penmen of British philis- 
tinism. 

Before this, in the beginning of June, there was published by a cer- 
tain Hyndman (who had before intruded himself into my house) a little 
book: England for All. It pretends to be written as an exposé of the 
programme of the ‘Democratic Federation’ 1°*—-a recently formed asso- 
ciation of different English and Scotch radical societies, half bour- 
geois, half prolétaires.* The chapters on Labour and Capital are only 
literal extracts from, or circumlocutions of, the Capital, but the fel- 
low does neither quote the book, nor its author, but to shield himself 
from exposure remarks at the end of his preface: 

* J. Rae, ‘The Socialism of Karl Marx and the Young Hegelians’, The Contemporary 
Review, Vol. XL, October 1881.-° See this volume, pp. 102-03. 

‘For the ideas and much of the matter contained in chapters IT and III, I am 
indebted to the work of a great thinker and original writer, etc., etc.’ 

Vis-a-vis myself, the fellow wrote stupid letters of excuse, for in- 
stance, that ‘the English don’t like to be taught by foreigners’, that 
‘my name was so much detested, etc.’ With all that his little book — 
so far as it pilfers the Capital— makes good propaganda, although 
the man is a ‘weak’ vessel, and very far from having even the pati- 
ence — the first condition of learning anything — of studying a matter 
thoroughly. All these amiable middle-class writers —if not special- 
ists have an itching to make money or name or political capital 
immediately out of any new thoughts they may have got at by any 
favourable windfall. Many evenings this fellow has pilfered from me, 
in order to take me out and to learn in the easiest way. 

Lastly, there was published on the 1st December last (I shall send 
you a copy of it) in the monthly review Modern Thought an article: 
‘Leaders of Modern Thought: No. XXII1— Karl Marx. By Ernest 
Belfort Bax.’ 

Now this is the first English publication of that kind which is pervad- 
ed by a real enthusiasm for the new ideas themselves and boldly 
stands up against British philistinism.This does not prevent that the 
biographical notices the author gives of me are mostly wrong, etc. In 
the exposition of my economic principles and in his translations (i. e. 
quotations of the Capital) much is wrong and confused, but with all 
that the appearance of this article, announced in large letters by pla- 
cards on the walls of West End London, has produced a great sensa- 
tion. What was most important for me, I received the said number of 
Modern Thought already on the 30th of November, so that my dear 
wife had the last days of her life still cheered up. You know the pas- 
sionate interest she took in all such affairs.*