MARX TO ENGELS
IN MANCHESTER
London, 18 September 1852 28 Dean Street, Soho
Dear Engels,
If you delay sending back the translation[1] for another few days, the possibility of getting it taken will be absolutely nil. Interest in Bonaparte, having again attained a peak,[2] is now giving way to fresh topics, as always happens in London.
The discounting affair has come to naught after a week spent on a wild goose-chase with a rascal from the CITY nommé Poenisch. I therefore wrote to Dana yesterday.[3] At the same time I told him that there were only two more articles, 19 and 20, to come ON GERMANY. As soon as you send me 19[4] I shall write to you again, giving my views on 20, the concluding one. Within the next few days the Customs Union business, too, will have been decided, and without it 20 cannot be finished.[5]
Physically, my wife is lower than ever before, i.e. sheer debility. On doctor's orders she has been taking a spoonful of brandy every hour for the past 3 days. There is however some improvement, inasmuch as she has at least got up today. She has been in bed for a week. Little Laura is convalescent, the others ALL RIGHT. I shall not be able to write at length before next week. This week has been wasted on abortive business errands and the most nauseous wrangling cum creditoribus.
Your
K. M.
With next week's letter I shall also return the documents. Let me have Massol's letter back.
- ↑ The reference is to the first of the two satirical poems by Freiligrath written on Marx's request specially for Die Revolution on 16 and 23 January 1852. The poet ridiculed the so-called German-American loan which Kinkel tried to raise in the USA (see Note 27). Kinkel's activity in America was described by Cluss in his letters to Wilhelm Wolff of 4-6 November and to Marx in mid-December 1851. Freiligrath's poems were published in German in the Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser, Nos. 10 and 27, 7 March and 4 July 1852, printed in Stuttgart and Tübingen. The first poem was also published in English in Notes to the People, No. 50, 10 April 1852. Both the Morgenblatt and Notes to the People carried an introduction, the contents of which were not identical in the two publications. The editors of the present edition have insufficient proof that it was Marx who wrote this introduction, though Freiligrath is known to have asked him to do so (Freiligraths Briefwechsel mit Marx und Engels, Berlin, 1968, Bd. I, S. 42-43). In America the first poem was published by Cluss in English in the newspaper The National Era, No. 282, 27 May 1852 (reproduced from the Notes to the People) with additions to the introduction made by Cluss, relating it to conditions in America. Die Revolution did not publish the poems until June 1852
- ↑ The reference is to the great fuss in the newspapers over Louis Bonaparte's tour of France on 14-16 September 1852, whose purpose was to secure support in the provinces, among the French clergy in particular, for his proclamation as Emperor of France under the title of Napoleon III, which took place on 2 December 1852
- ↑ This letter of Marx's has not been found
- ↑ F. Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, XIX.
- ↑ The Customs Union of the German states was set up in 1834 under the aegis of Prussia because of the need to create an all-German market. During the 1848-49 revolution the Customs Union practically ceased to exist, but in 1853 Prussia managed to revive it and it continued to exist up to 1871. By the 'Customs Union business' Marx means a conference on the subject which was to be convened in Vienna on 30 October 1852