Letter to Friedrich Engels, June 3, 1864

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To Engels in Manchester

[London,] 3 June 1864

Dear Frederick,

Herewith

1. A scrap of paper sent me today in a wrapper from Brussels by jackass Kertbeny;

2. Cutting from the Rheinische Zeitung containing an obituary of Lupus — written by Elsner, now one of the editors of the Breslauer Zeitung, from which the Rheinische has reprinted it;

3. Another cutting from the Rhein. Zeit., in which I would draw your attention to the article ‘Der feudale Sozialismus';

4. Letter from one Klings of Solingen to one Moll over here. To enable you to understand this letter, I should explain that Moll (and also a companion of his) is a working man from Solingen, who (along with the aforesaid companion) has evaded a 4 months’ prison sentence (the result of Lassalle’s performances last year). Klings, ditto a working man, is Baron Izzy’s authorised representative in Solingen.

The two Solingen refugees came to see me here; they informed me of their enthusiasm for Izzy and how the workers had harnessed themselves to his carriage when he was last in Solingen. They assumed as a matter of course that we two were hand-in-glove with Izzy (who, when last in Elberfeld, made a speech about Lupus). Klings, they said, was a former member of the League, as were all the working men who were leaders of Izzy’s movement in the Rhine Province, and that, now as ever, all were our resolute supporters. He also showed me Klings’ letter, and I asked whether I might have it to send to you. To this he assented. So, don’t return it. I did not, of course, enlighten the chaps as to our relations, or rather non-relations, with Izzy, but got others to drop some pretty vague hints.

Now the men are hanging about here, unemployed. 50 talers are to be sent them from Solingen, the local Workers’ Society is giving them £2; we shall be collecting a bit more here, and it would be a good thing if Manchester could contribute a pound or two. The fellows must be conveyed to America, since they are factory hands (Solingen cutlers, etc.) and are quite unsuitable for London handicrafts.

‘What’s come over me?’ I asked myself more than once while reading Izzy’s Lohnarbeit und Kapital. For in its essentials it seemed to me familiar, literally so (if embellished in the Izzian manner), yet not cribbed direct from the Manifesto, etc. Then, a couple of days ago, I happened to look at my series of articles on ‘Wage-labour and Capital’ in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1849) which were in fact merely a printed version of lectures I had delivered in 1847 at the Brussels Workers’ Society. There I found my Izzy’s immediate source and, as a special act of friendship, I shall reproduce the whole caboodle from the N. Rh. Z. as a note or appendix to my book — on false pretences, of course, and without any mention of Izzy. He won’t enjoy it in the least.

The books have arrived, ditto the wine, for which many thanks. Tussy asks me ‘To give you her love and to tell you that your cotton has somewhat improved.’

Borkheim has made about £2,000 — under the patronage of Oppenheim, the ‘Jew Süss’ of Egypt. Oppenheim, to whom, according to the account B. himself gave me, he played more or less the part of jester in the land of the pyramids, wanted to keep him there on the spot. But Europeans die there like flies, so B. arranged instead to be entrusted from time to time with a little bit of business by Abul Haim, as Oppenheim is called by the Arabs. This summer he will again visit Constantinople to that end.

The girls and madame send you their kindest regards.

My compliments to Liccy.

Salut.

Your
K. M.

Apropos.

Wherever honours are being handed out, there friend Freiligrath is sure to be. Cf. Elsner’s obituary. Remember Harney’s funeral oration for Schramm. And now New York has seen the publication by a local society of a very sumptuous Record of the Revolution in which all the events, documents, etc., of the present Civil War are registered from the time it first started. Well, this record has been sent gratis to some 20 or 30 people (including various European libraries), among them the Queen Of England, J. Stuart Mill, Cobden. Bright, and — Freiligrath. He informed me of this, with the phrase that the Yankees had ‘afforded him great pleasure and done him a great honour’, and gave me the accompanying letter to read along with the printed list of the fortunate few. I should dearly like to know what the good fellow has done, might do, or intends to do for the Yankees. But loi generale: Freiligrath is to receive the honneurs on behalf of the German nation because the worthy citizen adopts So worthy and neutral an attitude, ‘and, come to that, hasn’t really learnt anything’.