MARX TO LAURA LAFARGUE ”? 

Ventnor, Isle of Wight, 
14 December 1882 
1 St Boniface Gardens 

Darling Cacadou, 

All your letters have arrived on time and yet, miserable sinner 
that J am, it is only now that I write to you, having learned from the 
General’s letter* just received that Paul> has been arrested. The 
General enclosed Paul’s letter and yours, so that Iam au fait. No 
doubt Paul will be released within a few days. 

Why haven’t I written before? Because I had nothing particularly 
cheerful to report, for you will anyhow have learned from your cor- 
respondence with the General that I myself am not at all in bad 
shape and have only been confined to the house for the past fortnight 
because of a trachea catarrh, nor have I again succumbed either to 
pleurisy or to bronchitis. This, then, is most encouraging, CONSIDERING 
THAT MOST OF MY CONTEMPORARIES, I MEAN FELLOWS OF THE SAME AGE, JUST NOW KICK 
THE BUCKET In gratifying numbers. There are too many young donkeys 
for the old ones to be kept alive. 

Paul has latterly been writing his best stuff* with humour, impu- 
dence, and solidity combined with verve, whereas before that I had 
been troubled by certain ultra-revolutionary turns of phrase, having 
always regarded these as ‘hot air’ —a speciality our people would be 
well-advised to leave to the so-called anarchists who are, in fact, 
props of the existing order, not creators of disorder, and are, by their 
nature, poor, childish creatures— ce n’est pas leur faute, le chaos.* Just 
now they have, as ‘péril social’,; come to the aid of the ‘affaires vé- 
reuses cabinet’. The worst of it is that, even if there were in existence 
a purely impartial ‘examining magistrate’, he would be compelled 
publicly to pronounce them wholly and utterly ‘innocuous’! One 
could forgive these anarchists anything if only they weren’t too ‘inno- 

“ ‘General’ was the Marx family’s nickname for Engels. See this volume, p. 396. - 
> Lafargue-° See this volume, pp. 385, 402.-“ it is not their fault if there’s chaos - 
* ‘social menace’ 

cent’ for words! Not that that means they are ‘saints’. A good joke was 
made by a Pope? upon his being asked by Henry VII (Richard III’s 
victorious antagonist) to translate Henry VI to the community of 
saints; the Pope replied that an ‘znnocens’ (alias ‘tpior’) was not, as 
such, eligible to be nominated a ‘sanctus’ « + 

Here, my child, you would at any rate find better weather than in 
most other districts including, I need hardly say, France and Italy. 
I live the life of a hermit here, consorting with no one, save when Dr 
Williamson’s visits, costing such PER MINUTE,’ bring me in contact with 
the latter. 

Well, child, as soon as your devoirs* permit (for Paul’s GALLANT FIGHT 
WITH THE POWERS THAT BE MAKE THE MAN SYMPATHIC [SIC], TO USE THIS, A FRENCH 
PENNY-A-LINER’S PHRASE) come over here and stay with me! 

*Some recent Russian publications, printed in Holy Russia, not 
abroad, show the great run of my theories in that country. Nowhere 
my success is to me more delightful; it gives me the satisfaction that 
I damage a power, which, besides England, is the true bulwark of the 
old society. 

Yours, 
Nick *