| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 3 July 1852 |
MARX TO ENGELS
IN MANCHESTER
[London,] 3 July 1852 28 Dean Street, Soho
Dear Engels,
I am late, but I have come.[1] How the delay came about, you will see from the tale recounted below:
In London, the manuscript[2] was copied out at once. By Monday noon[3] it was all ready and complete. I dictated it by turns to my wife and Dronke. At midday on Wednesday I received the money. Bangya deducted the £7 about which you know. Add to that what was owed Dronke for his collaboration. This left an amount that did not even suffice for household needs. Strohn's CIRCUMSTANCES were such that he could not pay. And then came a run of exceptional ill-luck.
Klose's wife, long ailing and wasting away in hospital, was discharged by the dirty dogs at the precise moment she was entering her final crisis, and died in his house three days ago. Not a centime available, funeral expenses, etc. Freiligrath could do nothing, having just bled all his acquaintances in order to help send Heilberg's wife and child back to Breslau, keep Heilberg himself alive and, finally, get him into hospital. Thus the thing devolved on me, and a vast amount of time and trouble it cost me before it was settled. Maintenant[4] all is peace and quiet again.
The 'gang' are racking their brains over our pamphlet. Notably the Meyen-bug,[5] who is in a cold sweat. He is 'quite unable to recall the least trespass against us'. Willich has had me sounded as to whether the Brüningk affair appears in it. The thought makes him exceedingly uneasy.
The true course of this curious happening would now appear to be as follows:
First, as you know, Willich denied it outright. His 2nd version ran: 'Mrs Brüningk has sought to corrupt him politically. Used Mr von Willich left and right, and other such means of corruption.' It was with 'moral intent', therefore, that he created a diversion in the region of her private parts.
But now our partisan leader has put yet another construction on the case. 'The Brüningk woman (or so Imandt once told him) is a Russian spy. She tries to entrap young refugees. Old Willich stood in her way. Hence the anecdote intended to ruin him in the eyes of the émigrés. How political, deliberate and diabolical was this trumped-up "anecdote", emerges from the very fact of its having been Mrs Brüningk's own husband who circulated the rumour of the outrage for the sole purpose of discrediting Willich.'
But that is not all. The chivalrous Schimmelpfennig maintains that Willich invented the spy story to conceal the insubordination of his 'cazzo'.[6] As things now stand, the issue remains undecided between these two worthies, and Willich, taking refuge in one lie after another, is well and truly compromising himself.
The cuckold Brüningk reminds me of a nice joke I found a few days ago in one of Machiavelli's commedia:
Nicia (cuckold): Chi e San cu cu? Ligurio: E il più honorato santo che sia in Francia.[7]
Willich and Kinkel mightily worried about how best to effect a revolution on £1,200. Schurz, Schimmelpfennig, Strodtmann, etc., are drawing further and further away from Kinkel.
Not even 100 horsepower could drag Willich away from the coffre-fort.[8]
Kinkel, knowing that Imandt and I see each other, calls on Imandt a week ago and says, 'What a pity it was my Economy had not yet come out, so that one might at last have a positive basis to go on.' Imandt questions him about Freiligrath's poem.[9] 'Never read such things,' retorts Godofredus.
The most ludicrous thing about it is that, having existed for years solely by abusing us the curs now declare it beneath 'our dignity' and 'station' to write such t-t-tittle-tattle. Les drôles![10]
However, a new prospect has opened up before the wretched Willich-Kinkel, the pair who are to effect the revolution. Messrs Rodbertus, Kirchmann and other ambitious ministerial candidates have dispatched a legate to London. For these gentlemen, in imitation of the French, want Vogt to set up a German Carbonari association. Connections with even the most extreme of parties. Paper money is to be issued in Germany to defray the costs. Since they are, however, anxious to emerge more or less unscathed, it is the émigrés, and of 'all' parties, who are to underwrite this paper.
Schapper has been sounding me and making contrite admissions through Imandt. Replied that he must first break publicly with Willich, and then we should see. That was the conditio sine qua.[11]
You will have read about the new arrests in Paris.[12] The boobies (this time the Ruge clique) naturally had to come up with yet another pseudo-conspiracy. Their correspondent in Paris, as I was informed some considerable time ago, is one Engländer, a notorious police spy (in Paris) who, of course, immediately passes all their letters to the service. Not content with that, the French police have sent Simon Deutsch over here to pump Tausenau. Louis Napoleon must have a conspiracy, cost what it may.
But he has got one on his hands about which as yet he seems to know nothing. That of the Orleans family, whose agent Mr Bangya (with the assent of the Hungarian 'radicals') has now become. The plan: Bonaparte is to be caught out one evening with his drab, to whom he goes slinking behind the Englishwoman's back. A senior police officer has been suborned. Two generals are said to have been won over. Nemours himself was in Paris a fortnight ago. Large sums paid out for the distribution of anti-Louis Napoleon pamphlets.
What do you think of it? If one of the Orleans were again to visit Paris and we happened to know when, should we, d'une manière ou d'une autre,[13] denounce the vrai prince to the faux prince?[14] Let me have your views on the matter.
Cherval, the cur, has also handed over to the Prussians the letter sent him by Pfänder.
Au revoir
Your
K. M.
Not a word from that blessed Weydemeyer. Bonaparte will probably be in America before my pamphlet about him[15] reaches Europe. If possible, send me an article for Dana soon.[16]
Herewith the introduction to the Dubbii amorosi by Pietro Aretino, the forefather (but wittier) of Cassagnac.
Prefazione. Magnifico utriusque Ser Agnello, Voi qui scribere scitis quare, quia, Espelle, volte fatte co'l cervello, Di Bartolo e Baldo notomia, E le leggi passate co'l castello, Nella vostra bizarra fantasia, Questi dubbii, di grazia, mi chiarite Ch'oggi in Bordello han mosso un gran lite.
Vi sono genti fottenti, e fottute; E di potte e di cazzi notomie. E nei culi molt' anime perdute, etc.[17]