Letter to Friedrich Engels, January 17, 1855

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 17 January 1855


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
This letter was published in English for the first time abridged in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Literature and Art. Selections from Their Writings, N. Y., 1947, p. 106
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

London, 17 January 1855

Dear Frederic,

I could not, OF COURSE, write to the Tribune yesterday nor can I do so for some time à venir[1] because yesterday morning, between 6 and 7 o'clock, my wife was delivered of a bona fide TRAVELLER[2] — unfortunately OF THE 'SEX' par excellence. If it had been a male child, well and good.

Did you know that red Wolff[3] is one of the Augsburger's London correspondents? I found out by chance, namely by reading an article in the said paper[4] containing all manner of fatuous elucubrations on 'house' and 'home' and 'abroad'—all this to throw light on the 'ordure' with which the British troops are contending at Balaklava. I saw Freiligrath and told him that in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung I'd read some nonsense of which only Lupus Rufus could be capable. Freiligrath thereupon confirmed that Wolff was the 'REAL, IDENTICAL Kobes'.[5]

I now have Heine's 3 volumes at home. Amongst other things he retails at some length a lie to the effect that I, etc., went to console him after he had been 'attacked' in the Augsburg A.Z. for having accepted money from Louis Philippe[6] / The good Heine deliberately forgets that my intervention on his behalf took place at the end of 1843 and thus could have no connection with FACTS which came to light after the February revolution of 1848.[7] [8] BUT LET IT PASS. Worried by his evil conscience,—the old dog has a monstrous memory for such things,—he is trying to ingratiate himself.

I expect something from you on FRIDAY,[9] then. I can't write any more today, having to send out a mass of cards giving notification of the baby's birth.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ to come
  2. ↑ Eleanor
  3. ↑ Ferdinand Wolff, also referred to below as Lupus Rufus meaning in Latin 'red wolf
  4. ↑ 'Ein Beitrag zur Charakteristik der Engländer', Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 9, 9 January 1855.
  5. ↑ A comparison with the German journalist Venedey lampooned by Heine in his poem 'Kobes I' in 1854.
  6. ↑ Heine, 'Retrospektive Aufklärung', August 1854 (Vermischte Schriften, Bd. 3. Th. 2, S. 144).
  7. ↑ Marx and Heine met and became friends in Paris at the end of December 1843. Marx supported Heine in his disputes with the radical petty-bourgeois opposition who attacked Heine for his criticism of Ludwig Börne, one of their prominent representatives
  8. ↑ In reply to attacks in the Allgemeine Zeitung in April 1848 Heine stated in the supplement to No. 144 of the same paper, on 23 May 1848, that he was compelled to accept the pension his French friends (the historian Mignet, in particular) succeeded in obtaining for him as he was in great straits owing to the prohibition of his books in Germany
  9. ↑ 19 January 1855