Letter to Friedrich Engels, February 14, 1861

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

To Engels in Manchester

[London,] 14 February 1861

Dear Frederick,

You must really forgive me for not having answered your very kind letter before now. In the meantime, you will have received a communication from philistine Freiligrath.

I have had, and still have, an enormous amount of running about to do. For I intend to go to Holland so as to put my affairs over here in order, otherwise they will get out of hand. There are two things I require for the purpose, a passport and money, both of which I shall manage to get hold of here d'une maniere on d'une autre. (I may have to go as far as Aachen.)

I haven’t written to Lassalle yet. No doubt something in the nature of a weekly would be best, but, then again, what a risk we should run, given the indiscretion of our friend, if he were there on the spot as editor-in-chief, and thus in a position to get us all into hot water! He would, of course, immediately stress that the thing was a party organ, so that we, too, should be held responsible for every imbecility and our position in Germany would be ruined before we had so much as regained it. This requires the most careful consideration.

The conspiration de silence in the German press is having a seriously adverse effect on sales of Herr Vogt. After a good start, they have accordingly come to a stands still The Allgemeine Zeitung seems pretty well determined not to carry Bucher’s review either. At any rate, we shall know one way or another in the next few days, for, if it intends to publish it at all, it can’t go on putting it off much longer. Kolatschek is a certainty.

My wife recommends that you read Hans Ibeles by Johanna Mockel, in which Willich figures as Wildemann, etc., Mrs von Brüningk as Platonina, and that blackguard Kinkel as Don Juan. I myself know nothing about the rubbish save for what my wife has told me. She says that the book provides irrefutable evidence that Johanna Mockel threw herself out of the window because she had been crossed In love. (by the by, my wife’s complexion is still far from smooth and probably won’t be for some time to come.) At any rate, it’s commendable in Parson Kinkel’ that he should make money out of the late Mockel’s confessions by selling them to Cotta, and then consume it with Minna Werner, by whom he already has a child. Parsons are the cleverest of men. However, Johanna Mockel was an acrimonious body and her breath, for all her love of music, was acrid, too.

Have had the Nazione. Very good. Ditto the Volunteer Journal. But not your pamphlet.

Vogt will never forgive Vincke for having put him in the shade so completely. Incidentally, those Prussian swine are making fools of themselves in every respect. Firstly, the blackguards ask Bonaparte to continue his intervention at Gaeta; secondly, the rascals have joined Bonaparte and Russia in declaring themselves in favour of continued French intervention in Syria . Austria opposes this, and, of course, so does Palmerston, for appearance’s sake. And the way they're carrying on at home! The rotten bunch is bound to come a cropper.

Wilhelm Liebknecht has been almost completely laid off by his American newspapers as well. One of the papers for which he wrote was sacked in New Orleans.

Salut.

Your
K. M.