ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE $!? 

London, 15 March 1883 
11.45 p.m. 

Dear Sorge, 

Your telegram arrived this evening. Many thanks. 
To keep you regularly informed about Marx’s state of health was 

impossible because of his perpetual ups and downs. But here, briefly, 
are the main facts. 

In October ’81, shortly before the death of his wife, °13 he went 
down with pleurisy. Having recovered from that, he was sent to 
Algiers in February °82 and, the weather during the journey being wet 
and cold, arrived there suffering from another bout of pteurisy. The exe- 
crable weather persisted; he had only just recovered when, because of 
the approach of hot summer weather, he was sent to Monte Carlo 
(Monaco). Arrived there suffering from another, though milder, bout 
of pteurisy. Further execrable weather. Cured again at last, he went to 
Argenteuil near Paris, to stay with his daughter, Madame Longuet. 
There he availed himself of the nearby sulphur springs at Enghien for 
the treatment of his long-standing bronchitis. And there, too, the 
weather continued to be really appalling, but the cure did some good. 
Next, 6 weeks in Vevey, whence he came back here in September, ap- 
parently almost restored to health. He had been authorised to spend 
the winter on the south coast of England. And he himself was so sick 
of a wandering and idle life that renewed exile in southern Europe 
would probably have damaged his morale as much as it would have 
benefited his physique. With the onset of London’s foggy season he 
was sent to the Isle of Wight where it rained continuously and he 
again caught cold. Schorlemmer and I had intended to visit him ear- 
ly in the New Year, but then reports reached us which necessitated 
Tussy’s going there at once. Immediately afterwards came the news 
of Jenny’s death *°° —- whereupon he came back here, again suffering 
from bronchitis. After all that had happened and at his age this spelt 
danger. On top of that there was a host of complications, in particu- 
lar an abcess of the lung and a tremendously rapid loss of strength. 
Nevertheless, the illness as a whole was taking a favourable course, 
and only last Friday the doctor en chef* in whose hands he was—— one 
of the leading younger doctors in London who had been specially re- 
commended to him by Ray Lankester— held out the rosiest hopes. 
But anyone who has ever examined lung tissue under a microscope 
knows how great is the danger, when a lung is festering, of the wall of 
a blood vessel becoming perforated. And that is why, every morning 
for the past 6 weeks, as I turned the corner, I was mortally afraid 
that the blinds might have been lowered. Yesterday, at half past two 
in the afternoon, his best time for receiving visitors, I arrived to find 

* Donkin 

the household in tears; it seemed as if he was nearing his end. I asked 
for news, tried to get to the bottom of the matter and to offer consola- 
tion. There had been a slight haemorrhage, followed, however, by 
a sudden collapse. Our good, old Lenchen, * who has looked after him 
better than a mother would after her child, went upstairs, came down 
again: he was half asleep, she said, and invited me to come up with 
her. When we went in, he lay there sleeping, never to wake again. His 
pulse and breathing had stopped. In the space of two minutes he had 
passed away painlessly and peacefully. 

All events, however terrible they may be, that come about with nat- 
ural inevitability, bear within them their own consolation. So it was 
here. The art of medicine might, perhaps, have been able to secure 
for him a few years of vegetable-like existence, the life of a helpless 
creature, not dying suddenly but inch by inch, a triumphant testi- 
mony to the skill of the doctors. But that is something our Marx could 
never have stood. To live with so many uncompleted works before 
him, with the tantalising desire to complete them and the impossibil- 
ity of doing so— that would have been a thousand times more bitter 
for him than the gentle death that overtook him. ‘Death is not a mis- 
fortune for the one that dies but for the one that survives’, as he used 
to say with Epicurus. And to see this powerful man of genius continue 
to vegetate, a total wreck, for the greater glory of medicine and as 
a laughing-stock for the philistines whom, at the height of his powers, 
he had so often felled to the ground — no! A thousand times better 
that it should be as it is, a thousand times better that we should bear 
him the day after tomorrow to the grave in which his wife lies sleep- 
ing. 

And after all that had gone before, with which not even the doctors 
are as familiar as I am, there could, in my view, have been only one 
choice. 

Be that as it may. Mankind is the poorer for the loss of this intel- 
lect-— the most important intellect, indeed, which it could boast to- 
day. The movement of the proletariat will continue on its course but 
it has lost its focal point, the point to which Frenchmen, Russians, 
Americans and Germans would automatically turn at moments of 
crisis, on every occasion receiving clear, indisputable advice such as 
only genius and consummate expertise can give. Local bigwigs and 
lesser luminaries, if not imposters, will be given a free hand. Ultimate 

@ Helene Demuth-» Epicurus to Menoeceus 

victory remains assured, but the digressions, the temporary and local 
aberrations —— already so inevitable— will now proliferate as never 
before. Well, we have got to see it through — what else are we here 
for? But we’re not going to lose heart, for all that—-not by a long 
chalk. 

Your 
F. Engels