| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 9 July 1853 |
ENGELS TO MARX
IN LONDON
Manchester, Saturday, 9 July [1853]
Dear Marx,
At four o'clock this morning my old landlady roused me from my slumbers saying there was a gentleman wanting to speak to me. Dragging myself out of bed, I went to the door where I found a little man with a CAB, a colossal trunk and a travelling bag, who told me his name was Jacobi and that you and Pieper had sent him to me. Marx and Pieper! I thought. Who the devil can this Jacobi be? Is he the illegitimate son of one in Königsberg[1] or what? Until finally the little man pulled your letter out of his pocket, somewhat taken aback at not being instantly welcomed with open arms, stranger though he was—whereupon it occurred to me that he was, as your letter confirmed, the communist trial Jacobi to whom I hadn't given a thought, believing him long since well and truly lodged in a Prussian prison cell. Que faire?[2] I took him in, together with his belongings and, drunk with sleep, chatted with him for half an hour before offering him my sofa to sleep on, for the house was CRAMMED FULL of people. Luckily my old man is out of town until tomorrow and so, this very morning, I took the good party martyr by the collar, engaged lodgings for him and forbade him to show his face here until my old man's departure raises the interdict.
This warlike[3] Westphalian way of behaving, the doltishness of spending a whole week in London and then choosing a train that arrives in the middle of the night and, on the pretext of not knowing what's what, turning a man's house upside down and imposing himself, all this was no more calculated to predispose me in his favour than was the discreet question put to me at the very outset as to how I stood with my old man. Further exchanges have raised the fellow in my estimation a little, but not very much. He proposes to call on Borchardt with letters from you and Kinkel (almost beats Marx and Pieper), to burst in on little Heckscher without ceremony and without an introduction in the hope that the latter will immediately provide him with all possible informa- tion about his TRADE and, for sheer joy at the prospect of fresh 'scientific' intercourse, make half his practice over to his new competitor—and other such philistine conceits. His foolishness in going to Kinkel will do him more harm than good. Kinkel gives him letters not to Mr but to Mrs Schunck, a piece of effrontery which is also a gross and direct breach of English etiquette, and again, if Mr Kinkel, who was fed and paid cash for his buffooneries on German literature, if Monsieur Gottfried, I say, believes he can send letters of recommendation (other than fund-raising licences) d'égal à égal[4] to these merchants, he's damned well mistaken. Apart from that, Monsieur Jacobi, à ce qu'il me paraît,[5] is not the man to make his fortune here.
As soon as my old man has left, I'll send you some money. I can't very well take anything before that, since I run the risk every day that he will check my accounts, which alone would be enough to provoke a lively argument of the kind I prefer to settle in writing.
The idea that I am not writing because of 'pique' made me laugh. De quoi donc?[6]
Regards to your wife and children and do your best to stick it out, at least until my hands are free again—within the week, I hope.
Your
F. E.