Letter to Laura Lafargue, January 20, 1892

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 20 January 1892


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 38, Moscow, 1965
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49


ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE

AT LE PERREUX

London, 20 January 1892

My dear Laura,

Last night I had a letter from Paul from Bordeaux in which he writes me to send you a cheque to pay the propriétaire.[1] Now I should only be too glad to help you over this mauvais quart d'heure[2] but the fact is, January and February are my worst months in the year, Christmas pumps one out almost completely, and I have next to nothing to come in before 1-5th March. In fact I do not yet see my way how to get over this awkward time myself, as besides the usual Christmas expenses, I had some considerable extra advances to make. Old Harney I had to lend money when he was ill, and Tussy and Edward have mortgaged with me the proceeds of four agreements with Sonnenschein, on which I advanced them a pretty round sum which comes in from Sonnenschein only gradually and at rather uncertain times—certainly not now when I want it most. In fact I am hard up myself. But if you can manage to find some one who, on my giving him my cheque for the amount, dated say March 5th, so that it cannot be presented before that date, will advance you the needful, then you can have my cheque with pleasure. I should think Deville might do that, as my cheque is absolutely safe. In that case please let me know what the amount is, for Paul merely speaks of 'un chèque'.

My article[3] in the Almanack is appearing in Italian in the Critica Sociale and yesterday I was at last able to send to Bebel the German text of it[4] — with a rather lengthy postscriptum on the Russian famine, which insures peace for a time and deprives my article of its most actual actualité.

The fight with Hyndman & Co. goes on here — at present the Kommunistischer Arbeiterverein[5] is the chief theatre, and there is a chance of Gilles being beaten and kicked out, and then Hyndman will have made with his German speculation (backing Gilles) even a worse four[6] than in his French speculation on Brousse.[7]

Hyndman you know is candidate for Parliament in Chelsea. When his meetings in Sloane Square were stopped by the police he was fined Is. and paid it, and gave up Sloane Square. Now he makes the Federation fight for a far worse place in Chelsea called the World's End (the name is enough to show it's no place for public meetings). Well they have had some 15-18 men summoned and sentenced, and now they tried to get the other bodies out to fight their battle, under the name of 'the right of public meeting in danger'. For Hyndman said, if he could keep this going on till the dissolution, his seat was safe. But it won't come off. The Gas Workers said they would send speakers to be arrested and tried, if Hyndman on that occasion took the chair[8] ; and at a meeting last week where Burns, Edward and Tussy were, Hyndman was terribly taunted with his cowardice, and finally the whole attempt to rescue Hyndman by the intervention of the other Societies and Trades Unions was practically dropped. Croesel, one of our best Germans here, told Hyndman to his face he was a liar, in public delegate meeting, and he pocketed it.

Now I must go and see Ede Bernstein who has had the influenza, so good-bye. Louise says as Paul is always away you might use your spare time to write something for the Arbeiterinnen-Leitung — you see she is awfully ambitious to make the Viennese paper beat the Stuttgart one[9] which however won't be difficult — that was first edited by Frau Ihrer, and damned badly, and now poor Clara Zetkin has it, and the first two Nos are certainly very poor and very slow. So if you have something to tell about ces charmantes françaises[10] and their movements, all the better.

I hope your animal family is going on all right — we have the influenza all round us, but so far our two servants here have only got a touch of it, Louise suffers from what my poor wife[11] used to call 'pains all over' (general muscular rheumatism) and I am not yet caught.

Ever yours,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ landlady
  2. ↑ bad spell
  3. ↑ F. Engels, 'Le Socialisme en Allemagne.'
  4. ↑ F. Engels, 'Der Sozialismus in Deutschland'.
  5. ↑ Engels means the German Workers' Educational Society in London, which was founded by Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll, Heinrich Bauer and other members of the League of the Just in 1840. After the establishment of the Communist League, its local branches played the leading role in the Society. In 1847 and 1849-50, Marx and Engels took an active part in its work. On 17 September 1850, they and a number of their followers retired from the Society because most of its members had sided with the adventurist sectarian minority (the Willich-Schapper faction) which was challenging the Marx- and Engels-led majority in the Central Authority of the Communist League. Marx and Engels resumed their work in the Society in the late 1850s. When the First International Working Men's Association was founded, the Society — then led, among others, by Friedrich Lessner — became its member. The London Educational Society was closed by the British government in 1918.
  6. ↑ blunder
  7. ↑ Henry Mayers Hyndman supported Paul Brousse when the French Possibilists split up in October 1890.
  8. ↑ At a joint session of the freedom of speech committee and representatives of socialist and workers' organisations on 24 January 1890, the delegates of the Union of Gas Workers and General Labourers declared that they were not going officially to participate in meetings at the World's End.
  9. ↑ Die Gleichheit
  10. ↑ these charming French ladies
  11. ↑ Lizzy Burns