Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 24, 1882

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 24 August 1882


First published in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 4, 1931 and printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 46


MARX TO ENGELS

IN GREAT YARMOUTH

Lausanne, 24.August 1882 Hôtel du Nord

DEAR [Fred],[1]

Yesterday, on from Dijon to Lausanne,[2] wet and relatively cold. Nine o'clock at night arrived at Lausanne in the rain. First ques- tion I asked the waiter: 'How long has it been raining here?' Reply: 'Only been wet for 2 days' (i.e. since the day I left Paris). C'est drôle![3]

Today we shall look round in Vevey, Montreux, etc., for some- where to stay. In the meantime write to Lausanne, poste restante. I should like to have a timely supply of extra MUNITION so that some may always be available against any and every eventuality. Address letters to Dr Charles Marx, not Karl Marx.

Longuet remained true to his own self till the day of my departure. For during both my previous visits to Argenteuil,[4] Longuet kept promising the translator of Capital, that poor devil Roy, to arrange a meeting with me; on neither occasion was Longuet able to find a suitable time. And on this occasion, when Longuet again started to maunder on about my meeting Roy, I told him he might arrange it at any time during the last 4 weeks. Eh bien![5] Not until the day of my depar- ture when I had to pack, pay a farewell call on Dr Dourlen and still had a great deal to discuss with Jennychen, etc., does Longuet go off to Paris without my prior knowledge, pick up Roy and bring him back to déjeuner[6] (1 o'clock) in Argenteuil. There was a chilly north- east wind and, as a result of my obligatory CONVERSATION with POOR Roy in the garden, I caught cold. THANKS TO Longuet!

Apropos. A German who is Paris correspondent to a lot of bour- geois German newspapers wrote to me as my most humble and obe- dient servant, saying that, while honesty demanded I should know that he was not a Social Democrat, still less correspondent to newspa- pers ofthat complexion, people in all circles of German 'society' were anxious to have official news of my health; therefore requested TO INTERVIEW me at Argenteuil, etc.

O F COURSE, I DID NOT REPLY TO THAT SOFTSAWDER PENMAN. Love to all.

Moor

I shall go and see OLD Becker[7] and Wrôblewski in Geneva as soon as my cough has eased up again.

  1. ↑ illegible
  2. ↑ In May 1877, a congress of the Swiss Workers' Union in Neuenburg accepted Johann Philipp Becker's proposal for a merger with the Grütli-Verein, a petty-bourgeois organisation, to form a single Social-Democratic party. A commission established for the purpose and including members of the two organisations drafted a joint contract and a programme for the Social- Democratic party in Switzerland, which in fact coincided with the Gotha Programme adopted by the German Social-Democrats in 1875. In June 1878, a meeting of the Grütli-Verein deputies in Lucerne rejected the contract and adopted the programme subject to further revision. The planned merger did not take place (see also present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 218-19).
  3. ↑ Funny!
  4. ↑ A reference to Hippolyte Buffenoir's articles printed under the heading 'Aus Frankreich' in the Vorwärts, Nos 124, 128, 129, 132, 133, 140 and 145, on 21 and 31 October, 2, 9, 11 and 30 November and 12 December 1877. In connection with the elections to the French Chamber of Deputies on 14 October 1877, Buffenoir acted as co-author of the manifesto issued by a group of the so-called autonomous socialists of Paris on 9 October 1877.
  5. ↑ Well!
  6. ↑ luncheon
  7. ↑ Johann Philipp Becker