Letter to Karl Marx, October 4, 1852

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To Marx in London

[Manchester,] 4 October 1852

48 Great Ducie Street

Dear Marx,

Encl. £2. 10. -. Give the 10/- to Dronke, who has searched out a very valuable Slav bookb for me—the amount by which he beat the fellow down is his commission for the discovery; puisqu’il est commerçant, il faut le traiter selon les principes du commerce. But tell him to go and post the book to me at once in a plain wrapper like a newspaper, with 6 STAMPS if it weighs less than a pound, and 12 STAMPS if it weighs more, N.B., if it’s 1 volume; otherwise 6 STAMPS for each volume, in which case it would be best to send it in a parcel, unstamped, by Pickford & Co. or Carver & Co. If you can discover Carver & Co’s office (I believe they are known down there as Chaplin, Home & Carver or Chaplin, Home & Co.), it had best go through them to Friedrich Engels, CARE OF Ermen 8c Engels—they are our CARRIERS. Indeed, this is always the best way to send me parcels.

As soon as I can see my way somewhat more clearly this month, you shall get more. There are a few debts to be paid, how many I don’t yet know. On this will depend how much I can send you. Weerth is in Bradford. He won’t be here for a week, yet.

Le roman Pindar prend une tournure tout à fait bourgeoise. The poor boy is already suffering from remorse. Because I have given him no news of his wife and mother since the fifteenth of September, he is bombarding me with letters and threatening to write to them direct for news! The fellow seems to imagine that I spend all my days there, as though the Finnish features and Scandinavian-Germanic heart of his cold-blooded better half were as bewitching to me as they were and still are to him. By his evasion Master Pindar had once more gone up a little in my estimation, but these letters bring him right down again. He is a Slav through and through, sentimental in his frivolity and even in his beastliness, servile and arrogant; and he has nothing of the Englishman save in exaggerated—being a Russian, he must exaggerate— taciturnity. Recently the fellow had grown somewhat more garrulous, yet when the long-closed sluice gates finally opened, nothing came out but fadaise. On top of that the lovelorn Pindar has exceedingly unsavoury appetites and likes nothing better than to discuss unnatural discoveries. He’s wholly uncultivated and withal pedantic, knowing absolutely nothing except a language or two; en matière de science even the most ordinary mathematics, physics and other school subjects, and especially in history of the most elementary kind, he is utterly ignorant. Ce n’est que son silence acharné qui ait pu faire croire qu’il soit profond. He is ni plus ni moins than a little Russian bourgeois with the appetites of the Russian nobility, lazy, dilettante, soft-hearted, would-be blasé and at the same time, alas, a born pedagogue. For as long as I could, I tried to maintain a good opinion of the fellow, but it can’t be done. What can one say of an individual who, on reading Balzac’s fiction for the first time (and the Cabinet des antiques and Père Goriot at that) considers it infinitely beneath him and dismisses it with the utmost contempt as something commonplace and quite unoriginal, yet a week after running away, and apparently in all seriousness, writes from London to his deserted wife in the following platitudious terms: ‘MY DEAREST IDA, APPEARANCES ARE AGAINST ME, BUT BELIEVE ME, MY HEART is STILL ENTIRELY YOURS!’ There you have the fellow in a nutshell. Though the Swede may possess his heart, as is proved also by his letters to me, he intends that no one but the Frenchwoman shall be presented with his cock. So far as he is concerned, the real piquancy of the whole affair lies in this clash, this Slavonic, sentimental, vulgar contradiction. The Swede, however, has much more sense; she tells anyone who will listen that he can do what he likes with his heart provided he keeps his carnality at home. Besides, the fellow’s lack of ideas and worldly wisdom contrast ludicrously with the spiritual pretensions he harbours as a Russian. He has understood neither the Manifesto nor Balzac; of that he has given me ample and frequent proof. He doesn’t know German, no doubt of that, since he fails to understand the simplest things. I also greatly doubt whether he knows French. Once the mystère with which he held one’s interest has gone, nothing remains but une existence manquée Yet in his letters the fellow tries to spin out the mystère that has long since been unveiled; it’s ridiculous. You’ll see! Within three months gospodin Pindar will be back again, bon fils, bon époux, bon bourgeois, plus taciturne que jamais, and will continue as before to squander what remains of his mother’s fortune without making the slightest attempt to set his hand to anything or study anything. And a fellow like that goes and runs away with an experienced Parisienne—she’ll make him rue the day.

The latest story about the truthful Willich’s falsehood is good indeed.

I am also writing to Dronke so that the book will not get lost.

Your

F. E.