---
Title: Marx to Eleanor Marx, [London,] 5 September 1866
Description: Marx writes jokingly to his youngest daughter, on holiday in Hastings, about the lovesick Lafargue, who has translated his instructions for the Geneva Congress.
Author: Karl Marx
Date: 1866-09-05
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/cartas/originales/1866-09-05%20Marx%20to%20Eleanor%20Marx
---


*Letter from Karl Marx to his daughter Eleanor, then in Hastings, written in London on 5 September 1866 (the place is not given in the letter). The manuscript is kept at the RGASPI (Moscow); the last paragraph is written upside down at the top of the first page. Text from the manuscript, [MEGAdigital](https://megadigital.bbaw.de/briefe/detail.xql?id=M0000169) (MEGA² III/14, letter no. 165), Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, CC BY-SA 4.0, without the editors’ apparatus. [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/cartas/1866-09-05%20Marx%20a%20Eleanor%20Marx)*

5 Sept. 1866.

My beloved master ± ∞ ∓,

I bow to the earth before your immensity, whatever part you may condescend to act, that of the infinitely small or the infinitely grand.

Your letters have enchanted us, and we were really bursting out with laughter on reading that fine passage in which you describe the spontaneous explosion produced by the exhibition spinster.

I am much belaboured by a Gorilla offspring who can hardly stand the separation from a velvet mouse he has put his mind upon. If he knew her as well as I do—he would of course be still more Calypso, qui ne pouvait se consoler du départ d'Ulysse. She may be a Calypso, but he is not an Ulysses, with all that. A spoony fellah rather. However, he deserves some praise at my hands. He has worked hard (from 1 o'clock p.m. to 9) in translating the instructions I had to draw up for the Geneva Congress Delegates. He has worked not less hard as a tailor at certain gymnastic apparatus you are to use. Last, not least, he affects great attention to the scientifick gabble I affect to treat him with, although he and myself are far away from the scene of that mental entertainment.

The day before yesterday the Lormiers were here, and the negrillo too. Old Lormier, on the pretext of having to communicate him some gymnastic trick, told him *“secretly”*, and discreetly, of course, he must stop that fountain of saliva which, while smoking, he is in the habit of inundating the chimney with. When both returned from the kitchen, where the secret communication was taking place, our poor Negrillo looked rather downcast, and behaved like a “good boy”.

In fact, I like the boy. At the same time, I feel rather jealous of his encroachments upon my old “Geheimsecretair”.

Don't forget to write me *immediately* what you have to pay *per week*.

The damned weather. I hope it will still mend.

Address of Mimmelchen: “Mrs. Goodbun. Rose and Crown. Dover”.

Adio, my dear child. Many kisses to you and to the immortal Cacadou.

Yours 0/∞

/ You don't want to write to Mamma, as she probably leaves Dover on Friday morning for another place. /