Letter to Friedrich Engels, March 8, 1851

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 8 March 1851


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38


TO ENGELS IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 8 March[1] 1851

Dear Engels,

No more than a MATTER OF FACT line or two today.

As you will have seen, The Times didn't accept the stuff.[2] Mais ça ne nous regarde plus.[3]

Harney had already written to Schramm the day before yesterday morning. That idle jackass went out at 9 in the morning and didn't return home until one o'clock at night. So he did not find the letter till yesterday.

Harney is publishing his statement.[4] Has written a satisfactory introduction to it. Addresses Schramm as 'DEAR Schramm' and reminds him that he too must abide by his obligations and not have recourse to the POLICE COURT—this document is aimed at the French.

Yesterday the Patrie[5] (and today the Constitutionnel) carried a statement by Messrs Blanc, Barthélémy, Schapper, Willich and all the rest of the committee, in which these gentlemen declare that Blanqui had not sent the toast to any member of the committee. The Patrie's comment is that it had not wished to print the statement without first making inquiries. Whereupon it had been informed by Mr Antoine—Blanqui's brother-in-law—that the toast had been dispatched to Barthélémy, one of the co-signatories, who had acknowledged receipt of same. You can imagine the lamentations in that camp!

Mais ce n'est pas tout.[6]

Yesterday morning, then, Wolff[7] sent Wolff, in company with a real live Englishman, to see Landolphe. The fellow behaved like a discountenanced Grec,[8] first lamenting, declaiming, vapouring, expostulating, arms and legs all over the place, and then relapsing into a state of total and ineffectual pusillanimity. Will be placed on record this evening before the miserable crapauds[9] of Church Street.[10]

Finally, bad news from my mater. She has made everything dependent on Bommel.[11] I shall probably have to hazard a coup de désespoir![12]

Your K. Marx

I have received Willich's letters from Becker.[13] You will get them on Tuesday.

  1. ↑ A slip of the pen in the original: February.
  2. ↑ F. Engels, 'To the Editor of The Times'.
  3. ↑ But that no longer concerns us.
  4. ↑ C. Schramm, 'To the Editor of The Friend of the People', The Friend of the People, No. 14, 15 March 1851 (a protest against the insulting attitude to him and Pieper at the meeting on 24 February 1851).
  5. ↑ La Patrie, No. 66, 7 March 1851.
  6. ↑ But that's not all.
  7. ↑ Ferdinand Wolff
  8. ↑ Greek (here: cheat)
  9. ↑ philistines
  10. ↑ Church Street—a street in London where the Fraternal Society of French Socialist Democrats had its seat. The Society included different elements of the French emigration in London, Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc were among its members. The Society was founded in the autumn of 1850 for the purpose of providing material assistance to French political emigrants (see also this volume, p. 292). 24 February was the anniversary of the February 1848 revolution in France.
  11. ↑ probably Marx's uncle Lion Philips of Zalt-Bommel
  12. ↑ desperate act
  13. ↑ Hermann Becker; see this volume, pp. 273, 282, 308.