Letter to Friedrich Engels, December 26, 1860

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 26 December 1860


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 for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41
Keywords : Letter, Friedrich Engels


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 26 December 1860

DEAR Frederick,

Herewith a cutting of the advertisement for Herr Vogt from the Genfer Grenzpost;[1] the enormous LETTERS are themselves indicative of the love Brass feels for Vogt. By the by, in the last 5 numbers of the Grenzpost there are some very good articles.

Up till now, or so Petsch told me yesterday, 80 copies have been disposed of in London. On the other hand, he complains, 'not a single one'[2] in Manchester.

Otherwise, to the best of my knowledge, nothing has appeared so far in the German press except in the Reform, which has mentioned the thing (favourably) several times[3] and has promised a long article next week. So far as the Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung is concerned, it's all rather odd. They have been sent 2 lengthy reviews, one by that shit Biscamp, the other by Mr L. Bucher for the supplement. And still not a word. BUT nous verrons?[4]

Well now:

1. L. Simon.[5] The book was almost finished, up to the last page, when, late one evening, being on my way to Hirschfeld's about some proof-correcting, I called in for a moment at friend Rheinländer's OFFICE in the City. With an exceedingly cheerful countenance, he told me that young Höchster (the lawyer's son) had come over from Paris and gone into business here in London. Rheinländer knows the Höchsters, father and son, very well from his Paris days. Young Höchster—I saw him later at R.'s—is an innocuous lad quite without political—I wouldn't say views—but ideas. He was once clerk to a banker—Königswärter[6] or some such (at the moment I'm not quite sure whether I've got this well-known Bonapartist name right), where L. Simon was CHIEF clerc. R. asked Höchster about the gentle Kunigunde. 'Oh,' says he, 'he's not popular at the office. Although CHIEF of the clercs, he's so unsure of himself that he refers everything to the PRINCIPAL, and he's got very little idea of business. He's bad-tempered, and then a lot of his time is taken up with politics. The famous E. About comes to see him nearly every evening, and they work together. I have myself seen them correcting the proofs of one of their joint publications.' On CROSS-EXAMINATION by R., it then transpired that this joint work was La Prusse en I860![7] In Königswärter's Bonapartist office, L. Simon was RATHER boastful about his connection with E. About, and young Höchster, being like a newborn babe in politics, believed he was telling R., against whom, of course, he does not harbour the least suspicion, something that was altogether to L. S.'s credit. What is particularly odd is that later, at the dinner given by Zimmermann (to which Höchster JUNIOR was not invited) R. very artlessly asked old Höchster what he thought of my denunciation of L. S. Höchster aîné[8] declared that for many years past, he had on principle stayed away from politics which had already been his undoing twice. All the same, he said, he found the thing hard to credit; but R. insisted that my source was a very 'reliable' one.

2. Blind has avenged himself in the grand manner. He has notified Petsch et Co. that he will no longer favour them with his custom. Such is 'the blind man's revenge'. Old Zizka!

3. About Freiligrath—who will today derive comfort from the plaster you applied to his snotty snout—and the material basis of his relations with Blind, I have, if I am not mistaken, already written to you.[9] What actually happened was this:

At the time of the Schiller festival (1859), the noble poet, through his agent Blind, first offered the famous cantata[10] to the management at the Crystal Palace.[11] They were to pay him £40 DOWN IN CASH for permission to publish the renowned cantata and, on the day of the Schiller festival, they were to sell it in the Crystal Palace, other sales being reserved by the mercantile poet for himself. The management thanked Mr F. profusely for his kindness and begged him to peddle his cantata himself.

Thereupon the noble chap, ostensibly at his own expense, got Hirschfeld to print 20,000 copies of the tripe. The cost of production was £40. The noble poet's plan was that half the profits should go to the Schiller Institute[12] and the other half to his propriis laribus,[13] which, after deduction of production costs (his retail price was 6d per copy), would have meant that he would CLEAR £210 for himself, and, on top of that, gain kudos in Germany for his magnanimity.

But he had counted his chickens before they were hatched. Perhaps a few hundred COPIES <ALL IN ALL) were sold throughout the whole of England, and these were disposed of only by bringing the utmost pressure to bear on private individuals.

So now he found himself in trouble.[14] Then Blind worried away at the Schiller Committee from morn till night and from night till morn in an endeavour to induce them to bear the printing costs, in which, after fierce altercations, he finally succeeded. Hinc illae lacrimae.[15]

The disposal of the many COPIES left in stock was entrusted by Freiligrath to his blind friend, and last November (1860) this indefatigable little sharper engineered his own Schiller festival in London, so as to get rid of F.'s rubbish. No wonder, then, that F. is now, as before, 'on intimate terms' with his precious Blind.[16] F. knows better than anyone else on which side his bread is buttered, avant tout[17] when it comes to SHOP INTEREST (including, or COURSE, literary fame).

Whilst on this subject, I should mention another DROLLERY characteristic of Blind.

On the quiet, without a word to friend Freiligrath or friend Kinkel (and drawing on the famous £100 fund), the pensive Blind had had printed something preliminary, or a preliminary something on Schiller and Blum.[18] At half past seven in the morning, he, ere others dreamt of evil, placed outside the entrance to the Palace[19] a boxful of his 'radical pamphlets' guarded by messenger-boys borrowed from the Morning Advertiser who pressed the rubbish into the hand of each arrival. Anyone who asked what it cost was relieved, according to his outward APPEARANCE, of 6d, 3d, or as little as Id. Anyone who didn't ask got the rubbish for nothing. And thus, even before Kinkel's speech[20] or F.'s cantata[21] was due to take place, the Badenese slyboots had gone one better and forced his trash onto all and sundry.

Salut. The children at home again. Regards to Lupus,

Your

K. M.

THANKS FOR THE ARTICLE/[22]

  1. ↑ Genfer Grenzpost, No. 12, 22 December 1860.
  2. ↑ In the original the dialectal form 'ooch jar keene nicht'.
  3. ↑ Die Reform, Nos. 148, 150 and 152, 10, 15 and 19 December 1860.
  4. ↑ we shall see
  5. ↑ See this volume, pp. 228, 233.
  6. ↑ Maximilien Koenigswarter
  7. ↑ Ed. About, La Prusse en 1860, Paris, 1860.
  8. ↑ Senior
  9. ↑ See this volume, p. 226.
  10. ↑ F. Freiligrath, Zur Schilierfeier. 10. November 1859. Festlied der Deutschen in London.
  11. ↑ See Note 241.
  12. ↑ See Note 25.
  13. ↑ own hearth
  14. ↑ In the original, 'Holland in Not' (Holland in trouble)—a phrase, dating back to the Netherlands' war of liberation against Spanish oppression (1572-1609).
  15. ↑ Hence these tears (Terence, Andria, I, 1, 99).
  16. ↑ See this volume, p. 226.
  17. ↑ above all
  18. ↑ K. Blind, Schiller. A Sketch of His Career and Works, London, 1859.
  19. ↑ See Note 241.
  20. ↑ G. Kinkel, Festrede bei der Schillerfeier im Krystallpalast, London, 1859.
  21. ↑ F. Freiligrath, Zur Schilierfeier. 10. November 1859. Festlied der Deutschen in London.
  22. ↑ F. Engels, 'Austria—Progress of the Revolution'.
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