Letter to Jenny Longuet, October 30, 1872

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 30 October 1872


First published, in the languages of the original (English and German), in: Friedrich Engels. 1820-1970. Referate. Diskussionen. Dokumente, Hanover, 1971
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


ENGELS TO JENNY LONGUET[1]

IN OXFORD

London as usual, October 30th 1872

My dear Jenny,

You must consider me an awfully cruel individual to think that I should be capable to poison, by malice prepensée, even with one drop of vinegar, the sweetness of your honeymoon.[2] If Mottershead or Guillaume said such a thing of me, I should not wonder, but you! Indeed I never thought that there was in one of the numbers that little entrefilet[3] about a certain great man[4] whom I better not name, and if I had seen it I should have kept the number back or used Russian censorship to tease you a bit.

Your account of Oxford people only gives a sad confirmation to the sad fact that landladies are the same all the world over, indeed one does not know which are the worst, landladies or landlords. It's the difference of retail and wholesale which distinguishes the landlady of Stanhope House from the Marquis of Westminster,[5] the principle is the same.

Now the Lafargues are here[6] and you no doubt now and then feel inclined to come over here, I hope you will recollect that there is always plenty of accommodation, both for you and for the Longuet of all Charlies, at our house, and he shall find a bed where he can stretch himself without laying crossways. And as I am on this subject, an idea strikes me. To-morrow night seven sharp we shall have the whole of your house, Lafargues and Ellen[7] and all, here for dinner, and would it not be a nice surprise if they found you here? I could not well write about this before, as the thing was only finally settled to-day, Mohr being so very uncertain on account of his hard work; but I know you're quite capable of making up your mind even to-morrow morning, and so I hope you will come. And as there are generally such things to be had as return tickets available for three or four days, you might stay a few days here, and perhaps Longuet finds time to come on Saturday to take you back on Sunday or Monday morning. If you leave by 2.30 train (if my old railway guide be still correct) you will be here in very good time, and indeed we might go across to Maitland Park[8] before dinner and see how they are getting on. I hope you will ruminate this suggestion to-morrow morning over breakfast and find it excellent.

As to the purs, impurs and demipurs[9] I see very little of them, the purs are going to publish a pamphlet[10] containing all their grievances but it is still a mystery to me whether they will say much about us. At all events they are going to organise une société indépendente où toute tendence anti-révolutionnaire serait exclue.[11]

Last Sunday[12] Mohr delivered a lecture before the Knoten.[13] I brought a German chemical manufacturer, friend of Schorlemmer'sg ('not unlike your brothers, but otherwise a typically easy-going son of the Palatinate', as Schorlemmer described him in his unsealed letter!) who permitted himself one or two objections but was pretty well rebuffed by Lessner and a few other working men.

So I am counting on your innate energy to make a bold decision and come here tomorrow; that would be an enormous pleasure.

My wife[14] and Pumps[15] join me in sending you both our best wishes.

Your old

F. Engels

This page has, of course, been written in German especially for Longuet's benefit. Lafargue is quite good at German and could follow Mohr's lecture fairly well.

  1. ↑ This is a reply to Jenny Marx-Longuet's letter of 27 October 1872. Thanking Engels for sending her two issues of La Emancipacion with a critical article about Proudhon, Jenny wrote that 'Proudhon's unworthy disciple and mutual friend of ours' had read it with a bitter smile, which was a hint at Charles Longuet.
  2. ↑ The wedding of Jenny Marx and the French socialist Charles Longuet took place on 10 October 1872. The newly weds settled in Oxford.
  3. ↑ note; presumably 'Proudhon y las huelgas', L'Emancipación, No. 68, 5 October 1872.
  4. ↑ P. J. Proudhon
  5. ↑ owner of residential areas in London
  6. ↑ The Lafargues arrived in London from The Hague, where they had gone from Spain to attend the International's congress.
  7. ↑ Helene Demuth
  8. ↑ the area where the Marx family lived
  9. ↑ pure, the impure and the semi pure
  10. ↑ Internationale et révolution
  11. ↑ an independent society from which all anti revolutionary tendencies would be excluded
  12. ↑ 27 October. Thus far English in the original. The rest of the letter is in German.
  13. ↑ Knoten (boors, louts, yokels), a label Marx and Engels often used in their letters to describe the members of the German Workers' Educational Society in London. The subject of Marx's lecture has not been established.
  14. ↑ Lydia Burns
  15. ↑ Mary Ellen Burns