Letter to Friedrich Engels, April 10, 1856

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 10 April 1856


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40
Keywords : Letter, Friedrich Engels


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 10 April 1856

DEAR Frederic,

It is high time I wrote again. I've been prevented from doing so by all kinds of domesticities.

Enclosed 1 letter from Levy to me, from Düsseldorf. T h e T o u r o u t e mentioned in the letter is a French ex-colonel. H e called yesterday while I was out and so I shall not be seeing him for several days as he has gone to Liverpool. He had a longish conversation with my wife, the quintessence of which is contained in enclosure 2,[1] T h e M. mentioned in Levy's letter is Miquel.

In a few days' time you will receive Igor,[2] which has now arrived; Russian-German; the BLUE BOOK[3]; Destrilhes, Confidences sur la Turquie and a cutting from L'Homme, which I have mislaid and hence cannot send today, viz. a letter from a déporté in Cayenne, Tassilier by name, to M. le Ministre de la Marine,[4] in which the frightful abominations to which Boustrapa 4 0 subjects the deportees are revealed.[5] You would have had the BLUE BOOK long ago but first of all the PRESSURE of daily events has several times compelled me to suspend work on my articles[6] on this subject and write about other themes, so that I was unable to do without the book. T h e n the friends whom you know arrived. They wanted to have the NOVELTY just for one day, and had not yet returned it a week later.

As TO THESE KARS PAPERS, The Times, in three fulminating LEADERS,[7]

gave a rehash of the section covering August 1854 to ABOUT February 1855, i.e. did not so much as touch on the really interesting and crucial period. T h e object of this is, of course, to shift all RESPONSIBILITY from the Ministry onto Redcliffe and the Turkish pashas in Asia. T h e best of it is that the English government, as you will see from Destrilhes, forcibly kept at the helm Redcliffe's rotten Turkish ministry, thus partly condoning and partly bringing about the abominations of which Williams complains. That, however, is only a minor matter. By a procedure similar to the one used in Stieber's case[8]—namely, by producing proof of FALSIFIED DATES AND FORGED PASSAGES—I have, in my view, proved irrefutably that the responsibility for planning the fall of Kars and for the systematic execution of that plan, lay with the British GOVERNMENT, which furthermore had the good fortune this time to figure in Bonaparte's eyes as zealous 'in the cause'. I have not, OF COURSE, gone into the military aspect proper, i.e. the DEFENCE OF KARS; I have some MISGIVINGS, however, about the 'stature' of Williams.

Jones, to whom I have shown my manuscript, intends IF POSSIBLE—i.e. if he can get together enough money to take St. Martin's Hall[9]—to LECTURE on the FALL OF KARS at the said venue before the debate on it in Parliament begins.

There is now going on a bitter controversy between the Chartists and the Urquhartites at Newcastle upon Tyne, London, Birmingham, and several other places.[10] As you will have heard, Jones, with Finlen for shadow, has proclaimed himself dictator of Chartism and set up a new organisation which, INDEED, is in process of growing but has, on the other hand, evoked a great storm of indignation against him.[11]

The 'speculation upon speculation'—not in ideas but in shares— which has invaded the Rhine Province and Berlin from France would appear to be proliferating as viciously there as on the other side of the Rhine. Jeremiads about this social MISCHIEF, this infatuation, are appearing in the Ministry's Preussische Correspon- dent, in which the imminence of an 'inevitable' and general financial crisis is SERIOUSLY AND EMPHATICALLY hinted at.

You will know about Heine's death, but not about Ludwig Simon of Trier pissing—passing water, I mean—on his grave in the New York Neue Zeit run by Löwe, quondam lion[12] of the Parliament of the 'Cherman' Nation[13] after its retreat to Stuckert.[14]

This poet or minnesinger of the female Yid, Madame Hohenscheisse-esche or-linden of Frankfurt am Main, is naturally of the opinion that Heine was no poet; he had 'no sensibility', was full of 'malevolence' and calumniated not only Kobes I,[15] but even Berne's[16] lady friend, the great Berne's 'mouse', muse or moose— the Strauss woman.[17]

Down here there is A SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF SMALL TRADESMEN. This SOCIETY publishes a weekly rag[18] for the said protection. In that weekly our friend Seiler 'along with his wife' is pilloried as a 'SWINDLER'.

BUT greater things are afoot. Pieper, thanks to his genius, has again been living a freebooter's existence since January and, despite the not inconsiderable SUBSIDIES provided by me, has been daily on the qui vive vis-à-vis his LANDLADY. NOW it has suddenly occurred to him that all he requires to become a great man is a litde capital. Seiler's SISTER-IN-LAW, die GREENGROCER'S 2nd daughter, a tallow-candle in green spectacles, has long been mortally in love with the said Pieper. H e r entire person green like verdigris rather than veg., and GREENS to boot without ANY MEAT or FLESH WHATEVER. While declaring her to be ugly as the day, Pieper has nevertheless discovered that she is not without intelligence, of which she gives incontrovertible proof by regarding our Hanoverian lambkin as a German Byron manqué. So, the day before yesterday, therefore, Pieper, to whom this person clings, not simply like a burr b u t like a CATERPILLAR, resolved to pour out his heart to Seiler's father-in- law. H e did not wish to d o so in front of his 'beloved' for fear h e might have to kiss her, which indeed is HARD WORK for an occidental unaccustomed TO FEED UPON TALLOW. But in true Pieper-fashion, the declaration of love was combined with—a touch for a loan. Pieper could not disburden his heart to the GREENGROCER without inviting the GREENGROCER to disburden his POCKETS, not to say his till. O n the grounds, that is, of his needing a litde capital, SAY »MO POUNDS, TO CREATE HIMSELF A POSITION as a FASHIONABLE tutor. Meanwhile he intends to let his 'beloved' enjoy the pleasures of widowhood while still betrothed, nor will his compassion ever permit him to marry her. GREENS or n o GREENS, die whole business is most unsavoury, but Pieper imagines he will come out of it as a m a n of honour, i.e. AT A CERTAIN EPOCH LOOMING IN THE FUTURE repay down to the last farthing the advances h e 'hopes' to obtain from his would-be father-in-law, generously leaving him his daughter into the bargain. Since that fateful day h e has been back to my house only once, for a minute, while I was out. Called himself a 'happy man'. Litde Jenny called him 'BENEDICK THE MARRIED MAN',[19] but litde Laura said: 'BENEDICK WAS A

WIT, HE IS BUT A CLOWN, AND A CHEAP CLOWN TOO.' T h e children are constandy reading Shakespeare.

Liebknecht has at last achieved something, to wit, a litde Liebknecht.

By 'His Majesty's supreme and special command' my wife has received a passport from Berlin. In May she will travel to Trier with the whole FAMILY for 3-4 months. Salut. Regards to Lupus.

K. M.

  1. ↑ composed by Madame herself.
  2. ↑ Marx means The Lay of Igor's Host, a monument of old Russian literature describing the ill-starred campaign undertaken by Igor, Prince of Novgorod Severski, against the nomadic Polovtsians in 1185. The work was published in German several times. One edition appeared in Berlin in 1854 under the title Lied vom Heerzuge Igors. As follows from Marx's later letters to Engels, he found the Lay, in the language of the original and in French translation, in F. G. Eichhoff's book Histoire de la langue et de la littérature des slaves..., and later also a bilingual German edition, which he sent to Engels in Manchester.—15, 19, 26, 31, 37
  3. ↑ Papers Relative to Military Affairs in Asiatic Turkey, and the Defence and Capitulation of Kars
  4. ↑ F. A. Hamelin
  5. ↑ Marx drew on Tassilier's letter for his article 'The France of Bonaparte the Little' (present edition, Vol. 14, pp. 615-20). Cayenne, in French Guiana, South America, a place of penal servitude for political prisoners, was dubbed the 'Dry Guillotine' on account of the high mortality among convicts caused by the harsh prison regulations and the unhealthy tropical climate. A translation of Tassilier's letter, sent by Marx to the Chartist People's Paper, was published on 12 April 1856.—31
  6. ↑ A series of articles entitled The Fall of Kars which Marx was writing for The People's Paper. It was based on his article of the same tide written for the New York Daily Tribune.
  7. ↑ 'The Capitulation of Kars', The Times, Nos. 22320, 22322 and 22323, 20, 22 and 24 March 1856.
  8. ↑ Marx refers to his pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne.
  9. ↑ a venue of public gatherings in London. The inaugural meeting of the International Working Men's Association was held there in September 1864.
  10. ↑ Marx means the polemics between the Chartists and the Urquhartites, which had been exacerbated by the publication in Urquhart's Free Press (19 January 1856) of 'The Chartist Correspondence' (see Note 9). The Urquhartites' hostility towards the revolutionary trend in the British working-class movement found expression in attempts to represent the Chartists as demagogues and agents of the Russian Tsar. The Chartists, for their part, described the Urquhartites as reactionaries advocating a restoration of the customs and practices of the Middle Ages. A sharp controversy developed, in particular, over the future of Parliament. The Chartists held that it should be reformed on democratic principles and used as an instrument of social change, whereas the Urquhartites advocated total abolition of the representative system and a return to patriarchal forms of government.—32, 44
  11. ↑ In February and March 1856 Ernest Jones, the Chartist leader, attempted to reorganise the activities of the National Charter Association. Writing in The People's Paper, he suggested that the Association should no longer hold conferences or elect leaders, but that he, Jones, and James Finlen should be recognised for life as the only members of its Executive. Jones believed that this form of centralisation would make for greater efficiency. His proposals were endorsed by the majority of the Chartist members, but led only to a temporary increase in membership (to about 2,000 by the beginning of March 1856) and local activation of Chartist propaganda. At the same time, Jones' attempts to act as the Association's only leader caused serious discontent among Manchester Chartists. Marx and Engels, who maintained close ties with revolutionary Chartists, criticised Jones' efforts to galvanise the Chartist movement by such artificial measures, which, they predicted, could not ensure lasting success.— 32, 34
  12. ↑ Löwe von Calbe
  13. ↑ This refers to the German National Assembly convened in Frankfurt am Main in May 1848 for the purpose of unifying Germany and drawing up an Imperial Constitution. Its mostly liberal deputies turned the Assembly into a mere debating club. In early June 1849 the Right-wing deputies and the moderate liberals left the Assembly after the Prussian King and other German monarchs had rejected the Constitution it had drafted. What remained of the Assembly moved to Stuttgart, where it was dispersed by Württemberg troops on 18 June 1849. The petty-bourgeois democrat Löwe von Calbe was a deputy to the Assembly in 1848-49.—32, 63
  14. ↑ Stuttgart (Marx deliberately uses this word and a number of others in this paragraph in their South German dialectal form).
  15. ↑ Nickname of Jakob Venedey under which he was ridiculed by Heine in his poem 'Kobes I' (Kobes means Jakob in the Cologne dialect).
  16. ↑ Ludwig Börne
  17. ↑ Jeanette Wohl-Straus. Heine described Berne's relations with her in his 'Ludwig Börne'.
  18. ↑ Protection for Trade
  19. ↑ Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, Act V, Scene 4.
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