Letter to Karl Marx, April 1, 1852

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 1 April 1852


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

[Manchester,] 1 April 1852

Dear Marx,

Got your letter this morning, actually intact. The new address seems to do some good.

The mirth-provoking émigré documents will be returned to you tomorrow. I shall extract some notes from them.

Little Dronke seems to have got himself properly caught in Paris, otherwise we should probably have heard from him. Do you suppose that some people belonging to 'the Marxian sect' really foregathered at the Café D.,[1] as the Kölnische Zeitung alleges?[2] I don't know where these remnants could have come from. In any case it would have been unpardonable of Dronke to have gone to the café and associated publiquement[3] with these people. But if he is still at liberty and there is any possibility of corresponding with him, we must certainly do everything we can now to bring him over to London—he is under an expulsion order and the fellows are quite capable of sending him to Algiers for rupture de ban.[4] So if we can find out more particulars, I shall see to it that I get hold of the £2, for we must certainly bring the little chap to safety. Write and tell me if you hear anything about him.

I am going home now to finish another article for Dana which, if it is ready, will go off to you by the second post. Last week I had a terrible cold and still have it, so that for several evenings I have been capable of absolutely nothing. Otherwise, more would have been done.

Tell Jones that he will be getting something from me next week,[5] —all my articles for him have, alas, been wretched, since the brevity of each and the negligible room available make me regularly forget what I wrote the week before—in addition, I have to write quickly and cursorily, and have no time whatever to collect and arrange material on the latest happenings in France. This constant improvisation becomes demoralising.

Should I not finish the article for Dana this evening, it will be chiefly because I still have to go through the better part of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung for April and March 1849,[6] for on this occasion the Frankfurters[7] must be given a thorough lambasting. The Bauer[8] is not adequate for the purpose.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ du Danemark.
  2. ↑ ' * Paris, 24. März and ' Paris, 24. März', Kölnische Zeitung, No. 74, 26 March 1852.
  3. ↑ publicly
  4. ↑ violation of the ban
  5. ↑ 'Real Causes Why the French Proletarians Remained Comparatively Inactive in December Last', III.
  6. ↑ A reference to the material for Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, XIII
  7. ↑ former deputies to the Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848 49
  8. ↑ B. Bauer, Der Untergang des Frankfurter Parlaments.