Letter to Karl Marx, September 8, 1851

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 8 September 1851


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, pp. 451-452


TO MARX IN LONDON

[Manchester,] Monday, 8 September [1851]

Dear Marx,

My brother[1] is going away tomorrow and then I shall at last get some peace again. All this while I haven't had a moment to myself, and it was quite impossible to get the banknote off to you before Saturday, both pieces going by the same post, since there's only one DELIVERY on Sundays. As this involves the risk of its misappropriation, herewith the PARTICULARS of the note-its number was E/X 01780 and it was dated Leeds, 15 July 1850. So if it hasn't reached you, go at once to the bank and STOP PAYMENT; there's still time enough. It was a five pound note.

On Friday evening I suddenly got a letter from my old man in which he tells me that I'm spending far too much money and must make do with £150. Naturally I shan't stand for this ludicrous imposition, all the less so that it is accompanied by the threat that, if necessary, the Ermens will be instructed not to pay me more than that amount. I shall, of course, at once write and tell him that the moment he attempts to put his scandalous plan into practice, I shall turn my back on the office for ever and immediately hie me to London again. The man's completely mad. The whole thing's all the more absurd and preposterous in that this point was agreed verbally between us long ago, and I have given him absolutely no pretext for it. I think that, with the help of my brother and mater, I shall be able to settle the matter, but at first shall have to retrench a little, having already spent £230 summa summarum and, from now until November when I shall have been here a year, I had better not to go too far beyond that sum. Anyhow this fresh piece of knavery is most disagreeable and vexes me considerably, the more so because of the mean attitude my old man has adopted. Admittedly he is making far less money here than he did last year, but that's due entirely to the bad MANAGEMENT of his partners, over whom I have no control.

What's this fresh piece of knavery in Paris[2] ? This time it's the hippopotamus[3] clique that seems to have got into trouble; to judge by the names of the Germans arrested, they are all former Weitlingians from the 1847 period and earlier.[4] A number of little betrayals seem to have been involved. The Swabian saviour[5] appears to be one of the lucky ones. Tant mieux pour lui. If you hear anything, let me know.

According to the German papers, the Cologne people[6] will not be brought before the next-October-assizes.

More tomorrow or the day after.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ Probably Hermann
  2. ↑ In September 1851 arrests were made in France among the members of local communities belonging to the separatist Willich-Schapper group, which was responsible for the split in the Communist League in September 1850. The group's petty-bourgeois conspiratorial tactics, ignoring realities and aiming at an immediate uprising, enabled the French and Prussian police, with the help of the agent-provocateur Cherval (real name Cramer), who headed one of the local communities in Paris, to fabricate the case of the so-called Franco-German conspiracy. In February 1852 the accused were sentenced on a charge of plotting a coup d'état. Cherval was allowed to escape from prison. The provocative character of the trial was exposed by Marx in Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne and Herr Vogt (see present edition, vols. 11 and 17).
  3. ↑ Karl Schapper
  4. ↑ The reference is to the supporters of Weitling's Utopian egalitarian communism in the Paris communities of the League of the Just (later, the Communist League), whose sectarian tendencies Engels had to fight.
  5. ↑ The reference is probably to Willich.
  6. ↑ i.e. the arrested members of the Central Authority of the Communist League set up in Cologne in October 1850