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Letter to the Choir Club of the Communist German Workers' Educational Society. Tottenham Street
Author(s) | Frederick Engels |
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Written | 28 November 1891 |
Printed according to the manuscript
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 27
See Note 132. The text beginning with the words "Both Marx and I... " was first published in English in: Marx, Engels, Lenin, The Communist View on Morality, Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, 1974, p. 66.
TOTTENHAM STREET
122, Regent’s Park Road, N.W.
November 28, 1891
Dear Comrades,
Mrs. Kautsky has just informed me that my friend Lessner has told her you intend to bring me musical greetings this evening on my seventy-first birthday. However I had already arranged to spend the evening with a friend, [1] and since others will be coming too, it is absolutely impossible to reverse my plans now; very regretfully, I shall not be able to be at home this evening.
I am therefore obliged, dear comrades, to convey to you by letter my most sincere thanks for your so kind and honourable offer, and at the same time my regrets that I was not informed earlier of your plans. Both Marx and I were always opposed to all public tributes to individuals, except in a case where a greater purpose could be served; and most particularly against such tributes as would centre around ourselves in our lifetime. Had I had the slightest indication that such an honour was planned for me, I would have hurried to request, humbly but most urgently, that the singers should refrain from carrying out their intention. To my regret I only learned of this today , and being so reluctantly faced with the necessity of frustrating your plans, as well meaning and honourable as they are, I can only best make amends by assuring you that the few years I may expect to survive at the outside, and the whole strength of which I still dispose, I shall continue to devote unstintingly to our great cause, as I have done for nearly fifty years now—the cause of the international proletariat.
Sincerely yours,
Frederick Engels
- ↑ Eleanor Marx-Aveling. — Ed