Ventnor, 12 January 1882 
1 St Boniface Gardens 

Dear Engels, 

I am going to try spending one more week here (the 3rd as from 
today); so far there’s been no improvement in the weather — if any- 
thing the reverse. On Monday, Tussy is going up to London 
for a theatrical performance she is taking part in, after which she will 
come back here. 

By the time I left London, I had to pay out somewhat less than £ 20 
of the £ 40 you gave me on unavoidable expenses. Here my lodgings 
cost me 2 Guineas a week and with coal and gas but excluding other ex- 
Tras, about £ 2 15s.; remaining weekly expenditure about 4 GUINEAS. 
Considering the climatic performance this hole has put up, it’s a tidy 
sum. Including travelling expenses, I have spent about £ 17 and have 
still got £5. This will not suffice for the last week (incl. Tussy’s tnci- 
peNTaL London trie and our probable return together next week). So 
I'd be grateful if you could let me have some £ by Monday nexz, if it 
can be done. 

As for future plans, the first consideration must be to relieve Tussy 
of her role as my companion (when I again set forth I shall be able to 
dispense with an escort altogether). The girl is under such MENTAL 
PRESSURE that it is undermining her health. Neither travelling, nor 
CHANGE OF CLIMATE, NOY PHYSICIANS CAN DO ANYTHING IN THIS CASE. All one can 
do for her is to do as she wishes, and let her take a course of theatrical 
Lessons With Madame Jung. She has an ardent desire to open up a ca- 
reer for herself, or so she imagines, as an independent, active artist 
and, once this has been conceded, she is undoubtedly right in saying 
that, at her age, there’s no more time to be lost. Not for anything in 
the world would I have the girl think she is to be sacrificed as an old 
man’s ‘nurse’ on the altar of family. In fact, I am convinced that 
pro nunc Madame Jung is the only doctor for her. She is not open 

* for the time being 

with me; what I say is based on observation, not on her own state- 
ments. Nor is the above assertion in any way incompatible with the 
fact that the most disquieting symptoms, which notably occur at 
night, are of an alarmingly hysterical nature, or so Miss Maitland* 
told me (she spent 2 days here). But for this, too, no remedy is avail- 
able just now save an absorbing and congenial pursuit. I have cer- 
tain conjectures about her affairs of the ‘heart’, but that is too deli- 
cate a subject to admit of discussion in black and white. 

I have had a letter from the Sorge family,?*° written by the old 
man, countersigned by Mrs Sorge and Sorge jun., in which they 
invite Me TO TURN OVER A NEW LEAF, 1.e. go and settle with them in 
New York. Well meant, at any rate! 

In the Arbeiterstimme in which C. Schramm, invoking myself, at- 
tacked Karl Biirkli,* Burkli now attacks Schramm, ¢ for whose bene- 
fit he demonstrates that everything he [Schramm] has adduced is 
quite beside the point since I nowhere consider the kind of money he, 
Birkli, proposes, namely ‘interest-bearing mortgage bank certificates’. 
Biirkli does, however, express surprise that I should make no mention 
of the Pole, August Cieszkowski (Du crédit et de la circulation, Paris, 
1839), although in his Systéme des contradictions économiques that ‘rough 
diamond Proudhon’ frequently, if respectfully, takes issue with Ciesz- 
kowski (the ‘prior inventor’ of Birkli’s bank certificates). The said 
Cieszkowski— a count, as Birkli, native of Switzerland, remarks, and 
a [‘doctor of philosophy’ and ‘Hegelian’]* into THe Baran, if not ac- 
tually a ‘fellow-countryman of Marx’, i.e. as ‘deputy for Posen’ in the 
‘Prussian’ National Assembly — the said count, etc., did in fact once 
call on me in Paris (at the time of the Deutsch-Franzésische fahrbiicher), 
and such was the impression he made on me that I neither wanted 
nor would have been able to read anything whatever of his contriv- 
ing. Nevertheless, it’s a notable fact that the inventors of ‘real’ credit 
money, which was meant to serve as a means of circulation at the 
same time, as opposed to what they call ‘personal’ credit money (e. g. 
present-day bank-notes), should have chanced their hand — albeit 
in vain——as far back as the founding of the Bank of England, and 
this in the interests and at the behest of the landed aristocracy.’ At 

* Dolly Maitland -° Friedrich Adolph, Katharina and Adolph Sorge-° C. Schramm, 
‘Karl Burkli und Karl Marx’, Arbetterstimme, Nos. 52 and 53, 24 and 31 December 
1881.-¢ K. Biirkli, ‘Abschiittelungs halber’, Arbeiterstimme, 7 and 14 January 1882.- 
* manuscript damaged -' See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Part V, Ch_XXXVI (pre- 
sent edition, Vol. 37). 

all events, Birkli is under a delusion as to the ‘historical’ date of 
birth of the Cieszkowskian ‘idea’, independently rediscovered by 
himself. 

What has struck me from the first about the Bismarck-William 
manifesto 24! is the confusion as between Prussian king and German 
emperor! In the latter capacity, the laddie has, after all, no historical 
antecedents whatsoever, nor yet Hohenzollern traditions (on which 
a start has now been made with the ‘Prince of Prussia’s’ ostentatious 
trip to England — to study the Constitution! ?**). After the nauseous 
protestations, expiring in submissive love, of your Mommsens, Rich- 
ters, Hanels 247 et tutte quanti,* it was charming of Bismarck to play this 
card — however silly his manner of doing it. With any luck we shall 
yet see something happen. 

Your 
K. M.