Letter to Friedrich Engels, April 22, 1854

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To Engels in Manchester

[London,] 22 April 1854 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Frederic,

Pieper, at any rate, is not to blame for the business with The Daily News, because he has had absolutely nothing to do with the émigrés for the past six months. Blind is connected with the Advertiser, not The Daily News. Herzen’s crew — Krapülinski, Worcell, and the blackguardly Golovin — have been positivement connected with the D. N. ever since Urquhart’s influence got them thrown out of the Advertiser. Mr O. von Wenckstern has transferred from The Times to the D.N., but is no longer in London, that judicious paper having sent him as military commissioner to Omer Pasha. The belletristic blighter! It’s more than likely that the fellow has introduced other German blackguards out there. However it is the Russians I chiefly suspect. So wisely managed is The Daily News that, as is shown by the last return of newspaper stamps, its sales have plummeted since 1851 and it now ranks after the Herald in the newspaper hierarchy.

I consider that you should immediately send the article to The Times as it stands and without waiting for one scrap of additional material (I shall see if the ‘Bericht über die Kriegs-operationen’ is available here). The Times will still be short of material next week since the parliamentary recess, though supposed to end on 27 April, will not be over until 1 May. Hence it will be glad of anything it can get and, since the people there possess far more literary and political tact than the bunglers on the D.N. and would be prepared to accept an article from the devil himself if it were interesting enough, ‘fermement’ believe that they would publish it at once. At the same time it would be your revenge on the other rag. But should your approach to The Times misfire — which I doubt— you may be sure that 1. nobody will hear of it, since I shan’t tell a soul; 2. the reviews will be sure to take it. Finally, I would again advise you not to wait, but to send this first article quite unchanged to The Times.

As for Schimmelpfennig, I think it would be doing the chap too great an honour to deal with him in the Tribune. I suggest that, in one of your private letters to me, you let me have sufficient to pass on to Cluss for an article in the Reform.

Of late the Tribune has again been appropriating all my articles as leaders and putting my name to nothing but rubbish. It has appropriated, for example, a detailed account of Austrian finances, an article on the Greek insurrection, etc. On top of that their now ‘congenital’ habit of making a splash with your military stuff. I positivement intend — as soon as Dana has replied to my last admonition — to ask for a higher fee, citing in particular the expenses incurred in respect of the military articles. Don’t you agree? The fellows ought to pay at least £3 per article. They lay out £500 on sending Taylor to India, and the chap’s reports from there are worse and shorter— what could he get to know about a country like that on a quick trip?— than my own sent them from here on the same subject. £3 per article would enable me to get out of the mire at last.

There’s been an odd business with Urquhart — whom, by the by, I have never once met in London since our first entrevue [interview]. The ministerial Globe published on Saturday [a] furious onslaught on him, saying amongst other things that, while he might pick up converts here and there, this wouldn’t go on for long.

‘Where is Mr Anstey? Where Mr Monteith etc. and where that Goliath of the new revolution, Mr Marx?’ ‘All these gentlemen have seen the folly of their ways, and returned to the habits of good society.’

Then, in Thursday’s issue of The Morning Advertiser, ‘an Urquhartite’ declares that:

‘If continuing to pose implicit confidence in Mr Urquhart’s views be proof of folly these individuals have certainly not recovered their reason, and also must still be without the pale of good society.’

And then proceeds to specify:

‘Mr Marx, however, I am happy to say, is as energetic and valuable [a] supporter as ever of Mr Urquhart’s.’

So far I've done nothing about this, but am biding my time. An opportunity will present itself for disowning Mr Urquhart. I find it all the more outrageous as he knows, since I have told him so, that I agree with him in nothing save the matter of Palmerston, and on that point it wasn’t he who showed me the way. Mais il faut attendre [but we must wait] But there is one difficulty. There is a very stupid Urquhartite by the name of Marx, not the one meant by the Globe. If I publicly disown Urquhart, he'll say he didn’t mean me, but the other Marx. Incidentally, it is evident from the Globe that Mr Palmerston has been paying me the greatest attention.

Pieper grows more vapidly complacent every day. Such is his mopping and mowing that his face is more crisscrossed with lines than a map of both the Indies. Old Malvolio! Little Jenny always refers to him now as Prince Charming, the son of Wunderhorn. In my next I shall tell you some comical tales about ‘Prince Charming’ who, as his sister’s letters reveal, regards himself as Byron and Leibniz rolled into one.

Salut.

Your
K. M.