| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 28 October 1880 |
ENGELS TO HARRY KAULITZ
IN LONDON
[Draft]
[London,] 28 October 1880 Mr H. Kaulitz
I return herewith Mr Burleigh's letter. As to the matter of Mr Lafargue, you concede the chief point, namely that you have given his name as a reference without his permission. The rest is beside the point.
With regard to Beust,[1] I do not propose to go into the question of when you offered to give the said lessons elsewhere. This much is certain: that after our return from Bridlington Quay[2] you again offered to give lessons to Beust, that you promised, in the presence of myself and Schorlemmer, to set about the thing in the manner stipulated, that you did the opposite of what you had promised, and that Beust, far from attacking his 'very dear friend Kaulitz' behind his back, told him in Trafalgar Square exactly what he thought of him, adding quite rightly that all three of us had been convinced from the outset that you wouldn't do a single thing you had promised. I should have written you off there and then had it not been for the fact that I avoid making private matters a cause for breaking with people with whom I have been in any way connected politically.
Concerning the tittle-tattle in the Central News, I will not labour the point as to whether it was you or Most who disseminated it, since I am not permitted to divulge my sources, and since, on the other hand, I lay no store at all by the agent's letter.
If one is compelled to make a decision such as mine in regard to yourself, one bases it not on this or that particular indiscretion, but rather on the other's whole mode of behaviour, observed over a considerable period. And in any case your almost daily intercourse with Most and Co., which you freely admit, is quite enough to supply, in place of the fact you contest, another that is no less convincing.
Yours very truly