Letter to Friedrich Engels, December 11, 1873

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 11 December 1873


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. IV, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO ENGELS

IN LONDON

Harrogate, 11 December 1873

Dear Engels,

The halves of the notes have arrived, for which BEST THANKS. I have received a letter from Sorge[1] ; he requests you urgently to send off the still missing 25 copies of the Alliance[2] to New York.

While you had fog up there, there was real spring weather down here, and air of a purity such as we are not accustomed to having in England.

Roderich Benedix comes as no surprise to me.[3] If he and those like him understood their Shakespeare, where would they get the courage to display their own 'wares' to the public?

Things are going badly for Bazaine.[4] The Orléans have no cheaper way to exhibit their own patriotism than by such an act of brutality against a Bonapartist general. The Due d'Aumale is a modern Cato.

I have just written to Gumpert,[5] saying that we shall arrive in Manchester at 12 noon on Monday.[6]

Salut.

Your

K. Marx

  1. ↑ of 26 November 1873
  2. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men's Association.
  3. ↑ Marx refers to Benedix's book Die Shakespearomanie.
  4. ↑ The French Marshal François Achille Bazaine, who during the Franco-Prussian War surrendered the Metz fortress to the Germans on 27 October 1870, was put on trial on the charge of high treason. The trial took place in Versailles between 6 October and 10 December 1873. Due d'Aumale chaired the tribunal of military officers. Bazaine was given a death sentence, which was commuted to one of twenty years' imprisonment. After eight months in prison Bazaine fled to Spain in August 1874.
  5. ↑ This letter by Marx has not been found.
  6. ↑ 15 December