Letter to Friedrich Engels, September 28, 1861

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 28 September 1861


First published abridged in Der Briefwech- sel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 3, Berlin, 1930
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 28 September 1861

DEAR Frederick,

Our youngest[1] has had jaundice ever since I got back[2] ; her condition had been unsatisfactory long before that. Yesterday the yellowness was gone from her eyes, and there is every indication that she is on the mend.

I sent one article to the Tribune the week before last and one this week.[3] In two weeks' time we shall know (meanwhile I am continuing with one article per week) whether things can go on in this way.

The Vienna 'Presse', or so I gather from what the Times CORRESPONDENT wrote yesterday,[4] has finally revised its attitude towards Schmerling and hence it may now be possible to establish a connection with the paper.

In the issue of Kolatschek's Stimmen der Zeit that arrives in London this Monday (or so Kolatschek has written and told Borkheim) there is a special supplement on Herr Vogt.[5]

Very many thanks for the Manchester Guardians (most useful to me just now) and the BRITISH ASSOCIATION PUBLICATION.

At the beginning of this week, a young officer by the name of E. Oswald—dressed in Garibaldi OFFICER UNIFORM—called here with an introduction from Schily. A former Prussian lieutenant, he joined Garibaldi as a volunteer, and was promoted lieutenant under Medici. After the disbandment of Garibaldi's army, he went to Paris, where he took employment as a worker, in a factory to make ends meet. He is now over here and intends to go to America to join in the struggle. What he needs are funds to get him there. A sailing vessel leaves here every week for New York, and the fare is only £6. Borkheim is prepared to put up £5 on his own account and that of one or two acquaintances. So it's up to a few liberal philistines (Borchardt, etc.) in Manchester to raise a further small sum, partly to provide the passage money. The £6, however, does not include food. Borkheim turned d'abord[6] to Kinkel with a view to obtaining Oswald's travelling expenses from the revolutionary funds.[7] But Gottfried said: quod non. (When in Zurich, Borkheim had succeeded by this means in procuring the money for Anneke's passage to America.) Nor will the American Embassy give a single FARTHING. Oswald seems to me to be an excellent young man and entirely unassuming into the bargain. Once he got to New York, a recommendation from me to Dana would be very useful to him. However, something must be done about it quickly, for his stay in London simply means faux frais de production.

Oswald says that, as a soldier, Türr isn't worth twopence either. A mere intriguer. Garibaldi kept him on, primarily because he had been recommended by an Italian friend of Garibaldi's, previously associated with Türr, but more especially by virtue of his function as the 'REPRESENTATIVE OF HUNGARY'. Whenever Garibaldi employed him in any kind of independent military role, he was dissatisfied with him. Rüstow, too, evidently took little or no part in the affair. Officially his duty was that of 'historiographer' of the war. Oswald says of Garibaldi that he is essentially a guerrilla leader, but would be unable to cope with a larger army on a larger terrain. His strategical advisers are Cosenz and Medici.

When are you going to Germany?[8]

Best regards from all the family. Regards to Lupus, Gumpert, etc.

Your

K. M.

Have seen Meyen's sample issue of the Berliner Reform. Pure or rather filthy rubbish.

Apropos. Have just had a letter from my niece,[9] who says that August Philips in Amsterdam has still not received the Lassalle.[10] Perhaps you would find out whether it was sent off by the office.

  1. ↑ Eleanor Marx
  2. ↑ Marx was Engels' guest in Manchester from the end of August to the middle of September 1861.
  3. ↑ 'The American Question in England' and 'The British Cotton Trade' written on 18 and 21 September 1861.
  4. ↑ Report from Vienna. 23 September 1861, The Times, No. 24049, 27 September 1861.
  5. ↑ See this volume, p. 324.
  6. ↑ first
  7. ↑ This refers to the so-called German-American revolutionary loan which Kinkel and other petty-bourgeois refugee leaders sought to float among German refugees and Americans of German extraction in 1851 and 1852. The funds raised were to be used for starting an immediate revolution in Germany. To publicise the loan, Kinkel went on a tour of the United States in September 1851, but it ended in failure. Marx and Engels denounced the whole undertaking as a futile and harmful attempt to produce a revolution artificially at a time when the revolutionary movement was at a low (see, in particular, Marx's Herr Vogt. present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 313-15).
  8. ↑ Engels went on holiday to Germany on about 3 October 1861 and stayed with his family in Barmen till the end of the month.
  9. ↑ Marx's cousin, Antoinette Philips
  10. ↑ F. Lassalle, Das System der erworbenen Rechte.