| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 19 August 1892 |
Dear Victor,
That's what comes of exuberance. Instead of gallivanting round with you and yours in Lunz or Vienna, I have got to stay here in Ryde, miserably cosseting what Heine called 'my not altogether healthy body'; though walking and drinking are forbidden, boredom evidently is not. I had so very much looked forward to seeing Vienna at last, to being with you and all the others and, in particular, to becoming personally acquainted with your wife[1] and children, and now this confounded business crops up. Besides, I had also intended to obtain the opinion of a Viennese or — possibly also — a Berlin doctor on this somewhat obscure case and to ask you, after acquainting you with the facts, which specialist you would recommend. For over here there are as many medical faculties as there are hospitals, and the only men whom family doctors recommend are those from the hospital where they themselves did their training; this is not altogether a bad thing because they are the men they know best, but it narrows down the field of possible consultants very considerably and reduces the medical world of London to the dimensions of a small German university town. Accordingly, this sudden relapse is, in addition, positively detrimental to me.
Well, if there's one consolation — it is that to postpone is not to defer indefinitely, and what has misfired one year may perhaps come off the next. At all events this has taught me a lesson which I shall not soon forget. To be completely done out of my summer trip — and what a trip! — is bad enough and I shall have cause enough to rue it this winter, for I know all too well that the slight change of air from London to Ryde[2] does not have anything like the same effect on my old carcass as a trip to the Continent and to the Alps in particular. My health will not be as good this year as it was after the trips I made, first to America,[3] then to Norway[4] and, last year, to Scotland and Ireland.[5] But I hope we'll get over it, in which case we shall definitely fix things up next year. For I have got to go to Vienna and, if possible, also to the Austrian Alps; the Swiss Alps harbour too many Swiss and have already been turned into too much of a showplace, so I really would prefer Anzengruber's peasants. And, by then, or so I hope, I should find you and your wife in perfect health, while I myself would again be in case to go climbing about in the mountains. Until next year, then!
While here I've been dabbling in early Christianity and am reading Renan[6] and the Bible.[7] Though shockingly superficial, Renan is a man of the world and as such his outlook is wider than that of the German scholastic theologians. Otherwise his book is a novel and what he said of Philostratus is equally applicable to himself, namely that it could be used as an historical source in the same way as, say, the novels of Alexandre Dumas père could be used as a source on the period of the Fronde.[8] In matters of detail I have caught him making the most shocking howlers. Moreover, he plagiarises the Germans with unparalleled effrontery.
Louise will have passed on to you the information I sent her the day before yesterday about the cotton operatives in Lancashire and their sudden conversion to the eight hour day.[9] The same sort of thing is happening daily. Yesterday meetings of delegates representing entire districts again voted unanimously in favour of the 48 hour week, while in other districts the motion was carried in all cases with a majority, usually of two thirds. This has finally broken the back of the opposition in the working class.
The Russians are unfortunate. First they have a famine which will recur again this year, if in more chronic form, and then the cholera. And now, when their friend Gladstone has come to the helm here, he has to appoint Rosebery, who refuses to have any truck with Gladstone's Russophilia, as his Foreign Secretary.
August wants me to go to Berlin if at all possible. Well, I should like to, but can it be done? For the past ten days I have hardly set foot outside the garden gate and don't yet know whether I am really on the mend. For the fact is that, if I bestir myself just a little too soon or a little too much, I may find myself back where I started. And I have got to make up my mind in ten days or a fortnight at the latest — well, we shall see.
So give my regards to all our friends and above all to your wife and children, and tell them how sorry I am not to have been able to come over this year. But next year I hope to make up for it. And warm regards to yourself from your crippled old
F.E.
I shall be staying here at least until the 31st of this month.[10]
August 19, 1892
I am studying early Christianity here, reading Renan and the Bible. Renan is terribly shallow but, as a man of the world, has a wider view than the German University theologians. Otherwise, his book is a novel, to which his comment on Philostratus can equally be applied: one can use it as an historical source just as one would use, say, the novels of Alexandre Dumas père on the Fronde period. On individual points I have caught him out in dreadful mistakes. Moreover he cribs from the Germans with unbounded impudence.