Letter to Paul Lafargue, June 28, 1891

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 28 June 1891


First published, in English, in Labour Monthly, No. 9, London, 1955
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49


ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE

AT LE PERREUX

Ryde, 28 June 1891

My dear Lafargue,

I have been staying here with Pumps for the past two days and shall remain until Thursday 2 July when I return to London. 264

Meanwhile Louise has sent me your letter of the 25th. 265 Fortu- nately I have a blank cheque which I can send you herewith made out for £20. Good luck! The preparations you have made for your defence strike me as excellent and I trust you will secure a seat in the Chamber without being sentenced.

Now for something else. Enclosed you will find a letter from Field (Star, 23 June) together with Burrows' reply,[1] evidently written by Hyndman. Is it true that, as Field maintains, you authorised him to do the idiotic thing he has done? We cannot believe it. But in any case you will see what a letter from you to this Field has given rise to, a let- ter that in itself may well be perfectly innocent. This Field, a good lad, but bursting to play a part of some sort — even at the cost of do- ing a disservice to the cause he wishes to serve — purports to be acting

for your Party and, consequently, for ours. As an 'authorised' agent he makes appeals to the TRADES UNIONS, etc., and, if he is known at all, it is as a former collaborator of Champion who is now more despised than ever, thanks to his exploits in Australia!

The ground had therefore been too well prepared not to be exploit- ed by Mr Hyndman. Witness his reply. Every idiotic utterance of Field's, every weak point in his letter is adroitly seized upon and all Field has done is to boost the Possibilists.3

Nobody here can take up the gauntlet. In the first place we don't know what transpired between you and Field. And then The Star, if they did accept a reply from us (which is doubtful, indeed more than doubtful), would close the correspondence after they had given Bur- rows another say. And Field has placed us in such an idiotic situation that we have no choice but to hope that the correspondence in The Star will be forgotten as quickly as possible.

In any case, if you want us to go on working successfully over here on behalf of the congress, you must forbid Field immediately and cate- gorically to publish anything whatsoever that purports to be author- ised by the foreign secretary of the Workers' Party.[2] And don't give anyone here a pretext to publish anything whatsoever authorised by you without having first consulted us. Otherwise we should do better to beat a retreat and leave everything to chance. To be placed under Champion's protection — that would be the last straw!

All was going well over here. We were working away quietly, if un- remittingly, and a to-do in the press (we have no newspaper, remember) is the last thing we want if we are to succeed. However we have a right to expect that our own friends won't put a spoke in our wheel. We got all we wanted at Brussels, not without some difficulty, but we got it and we put it to good use. And that ought to be enough for you without the French Marxist party's affecting to play the part of con- venor of the congress and arrogating to themselves a role to which they are not entitled. Anyhow, let us know what you wrote to Field so that we can try, if only by word of mouth, to mitigate the unfortunate effect of Field's stupidity.

Tussy still has Laura's letter about Longuet. I shall get it back on my return. Our thanks to Laura for this important information. At all events, the matter is about to be taken in hand although, having read the clauses in the Code, we doubt whether the Conseil de Fa- mille can do very much other than appoint a guardian. Tussy must have written to Laura.

We have old Harney here. He has spent a month in Ventnor where he got rid of his chronic bronchitis but had a recurrence of rheumatic gout. We brought him here yesterday in a cab. He is full of aches and woes, poor devil, but perks up whenever the aches subside. He will be returning to Richmond in a day or so.

Pumps has a small but pretty house with a garden FRONT AND BACK, heaps of fruit of every kind, vegetables, even potatoes; greenhouse with vines laden with grapes, etc. It is splendid for the children, but will Percy manage to do any business? His brothers don't appear to be in any hurry to back him up with the necessary materials. Anyway we shall see.

Pumps, Percy and Harney send their best wishes to you and Laura as do I.

Yours ever,

F.E.

  1. ↑ On 23 June 1891 The Star carried an article by Arthur Field headlined 'Internatio nal Labour Congress'. The author declared that the secretary of the French Workers' Party for international relations had empowered him to elucidate all the details of the preparations for the Brussels Congress to the British labour organisations.
    On 25 June there appeared in The Star, under the same heading, Herbert Bur rows' reply stating that a secretary of the French Workers' Party had no business to concern himself with the problems of a congress convened by the Possibilists (see Note 3).
  2. ↑ Paul Lafargue