Letter to Friedrich Engels, November 2, 1858

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 2 November 1858


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 2 November 1858

DEAR Frederick,

Montalembert[1] WILL DO. Yesterday I wrote about Quasimodo's goings-on with the Portuguese.[2]

Enclosed you will find works by the great Blind, who now functions as a 'united' friend of the people. The £100 has also been remitted to him by Kinkel. Keep the stuff. You will observe that Pyat and Mazzini still stand head and shoulders above these German democrats in the matter of style, etc. Blind has also set his hand over here to the trade he learnt on the Mannheimer Abendzeitung. He gets a couple of acquaintances in Hamburg to send to English papers letters (composed by himself) in which mention is made of the stir created by his anonymous pamphlets. His friends then write more letters, this time to the German press, saying what a fuss has been made by the English papers, etc. That, you see, is what it is to be a man of action.

Paid a visit to 'unhappy' Pieper in hospital. Has a syphilitic boil on his forehead. Otherwise the same old Pieper. Probably won't be cured before the end of December, when he proposes to take a trip to Hanover.

[3]

I have the most damnable toothache and so can't write any more today.

Regards to Lupus.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ F. Engels, 'The Prosecution of Montalembert'.
  2. ↑ A reference to the conflict between France and Portugal caused by the seizure of the French merchant vessel Charles et Georges by the Portuguese authorities in Mozambique on 29 November 1857. The vessel had on board a number of East-African Negroes who were to be shipped, allegedly as free emigrants, to the French island of Réunion. The Franco-Portuguese talks continued for almost a year but brought no results. On 13 October 1858 Napoleon III, whom Marx calls here Quasimodo (a character from Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris), sent a special Note to the Portuguese Government demanding the return of the confiscated vessel and the release of its captain. The demand was backed by the despatch of two French warships to the Portuguese capital. Portugal was compelled to yield. Marx touches on the subject in his article 'The French Slave Trade' published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 1 December 1858 with considerable editorial changes (see present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 621-23).—351, 357
  3. ↑ K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.