Letter to Friedrich Engels, March 4, 1865

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To Engels in Manchester

[London,] 4 March 1865

Dear Fred,

Our statement is in today’s Social-Demokrat. Although claiming that the statement from these ‘gentlemen’ requires no further comment, Mr Schweitzer has, nevertheless, ‘anonymously’ devoted one of his ‘bloody pretentious’ leaders to us. Lassalle and B. Becker, ‘President of Mankind’, for ever! At all events, I have Mr Schweitzer’s exceedingly humble letter of invitation, etc. in my possession. Siebel has sent 5 newspapers (the Barmer, the Elberfelder, the Düsseldorfer, the Rheinische and the Neue Frankfurter) carrying the statement. The enclosed cutting is from the Elberfelder. I am glad, firstly, that we are ‘out’ and, secondly, that we were ‘in’. If we had not been, we would never have penetrated the ‘mystères of Lassalle’.

I have written to Kugelmann (please send his prescription back to me) about your pamphlet (it looks very good in print; if there is a 2nd impression, only a sentence here and there would need to be altered). Can you send me another 2 copies? I would like to use Eccarius’ good offices to put two short notices in Bender’s rag (London) and in the Hermann, but that will hardly be possible unless I let them have 2 Copies.

The ‘Polish Meeting’ (Wednesday) went off very well, and full, although the bourgeois had done everything they could to wreck it by declaring it ‘inopportune’.

Affairs In France are very complicated. I will tell you about it and send you Schily’s report (I have to translate extracts from it this very day and accordingly inform the subcommittee of it) in my next letter. For the moment, I shall just mention that there is a fight between our original workers’ representatives and the politico-social gentlemen (including the boss of the Association so admired by Moses) as to who is to be in contact with us. The [French], particularly the Parisian workers (although already links with 25 other French cities, too) literally regard the London Council as a workers’ government ‘abroad’.

Major Wolff has returned after serving his sentence in Alessandria.

Apropos: did I tell you that Mazzini later secretly communicated his ‘displeasure’ to Fontana after all (and his predilection for K. Blind, whom he had himself branded as a ‘liar’)?

Your wine came yesterday; received with thanks.

For the past week my brother-in-law from the Cape has been here again; he leaves next Tuesday. My niece, from Maastricht came with him (daughter of my sister, widow Schmalhausen); I shall have to take her back in about a week later.

My old trouble is plaguing me in various sensitive and ‘aggravating’ places, so that sitting down is difficult.

Apropos: is the Lupus affair still not quite wound up? Ditto I never heard a word from Mr Borchardt about the outstanding money he was going to collect in. You will see from the enclosed scrawl, which is just one example, how I am being sent claims of every conceivable kind, things I had totally forgotten about. This is the most recent to have raised its head from the days of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. It is something I have to take into account in every possible way because otherwise the fellows will make a public scandal.

It seems all up with Confederacy.

Salut.

Your
K. M.

I wonder if you could send me the papers from the Manchester press relating to the cotton-crisis?