Letter to Karl Marx, February 7, 1860

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 7 February 1860


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 7 February 1860

Dear Moor,

Received the circular addressed to Collet.[1] Comes altogether à propos, yesterday's Daily Telegraph having carried two columns about Vogt's shit[2] and the Brimstone Gang.[3] If it amounts to no more than what's in the Telegr., then Izzy has been frightened by a fart. To 'parry the thrust', all one has to do is hold one's nose.

Mr Ronge is up here. He hurried along to Siebel, saying he wished to be introduced to me!! Furthermore, he asked whether I also belonged to the Brimstone Gang—IN FACT, if it weren't for him, S., and if it weren't for S., I myself, wouldn't have heard about the nonsense in the Telegr.

S., who's an out-and-out charlatan and knows it, is dead keen to be of service to us in this business. He's got masses of connections and, best of all, is quite above suspicion. The fellow knows that the whole robber band, Kinkel and Co., are just as much humbugs as he is, and in us he has at last found people who are totally impervious to his humbug, inde[4] an unbounded admiration.

Oughtn't we to scan the daily press for the circular tomorrow? Vale.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ K. Marx, 'Prosecution of the Augsburg Gazette.'
  2. ↑ [K. Abel,] 'The Journalistic Auxiliaries of Austria', The Daily Telegraph, No. 1439, 6 February 1860. See also this volume, pp. 74-76.
  3. ↑ The original Brimstone Gang (Schwefelbande) was a students' association in Jena University in the 1770s whose members were notorious for their brawls. Later the expression Brimstone Gang came to be applied to any group of ill repute. In Geneva in 1849-50 it was also the jocular name for a small company of German refugees, inoffensive and happy-go-lucky idlers. In his pamphlet Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung, Vogt included Marx and his party associates in the 'Brimstone Gang', although they had nothing to do with it (for details see this volume, pp. 70-71 and Marx's Herr Vogt, present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 28-37).
  4. ↑ hence