Letter to Friedrich Engels, November 24, 1858

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 24 November 1858


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full 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,] 24 November 1858

DEAR Frederick,

Yesterday I wrote about Prussia.[1] So for Friday you have all the rest of the world at your disposal.

Have received the £1. The 'particular' pickle in which I find myself at the moment arises from the fact that I was compelled to pay out all AT ONCE more than £8 to the newspaper man, who had

[2]

been giving me credit for over a year. I'm stone broke, which in this weather is not COMFORTABLE. In Trier, my sister[3] would now seem to have frustrated my mother's perfectly rational INTENTIONS, or at least to have postponed THEIR REALISATION sine die.

Blind was here the day before yesterday with wife.[4] It was over a year since I had seen this FAMILY. From them I learnt sundry pieces of gossip.

1. Mrs Kinkel threw herself out of the window a week ago last Monday and has since been buried. Gottfried,[5] with a sublimity all his own, attended the post-mortem and delivered an 'oration' at the graveside. Freiligrath is so moved that he'll shun me, as a 'frivolous' man, for a fortnight at least.

2. Fröbel is over here. Has married a rich wife. Is returning to America. According to him Russia and America must share the world between them, a point of view that makes him feel very superior. He enthuses over American 'luxury' and GENTLEMAN- LIKENESS, despises the Germans and gives practical proof of this by engaging in the German slave trade to Central America. It's really too comical that, because deeply impressed by bourgeois society in its American reality, this son of Rudolstadt should believe himself more 'advanced' than the REST OF EUROPE-. Once they HAVE FOUND THEIR BREAD AND CHEESE, all these scoundrels require is some blasé pretext to bid farewell to the struggle.

3. Asinine Ruge, in a piece for Prutz, has proved that 'Shakespeare was not a dramatic poet' because he 'had no philosophical system', whereas Schiller, being a Kantian, is a TRULY 'dramatic poet'.[6] Prutz then wrote a 'vindication of Shakespeare'.[7] In addition, Ruge described Moleschott in the American papers as 'a silly ass', whereupon Heinzen sacked him from the Pionier.

However, the old bounder is now finding a place for his inanities in Börnstein's Anzeiger des Westens.

4. The foolish Ewerbeck returned to Paris two years ago, corresponds regularly with Blind. Had let himself be inveigled by Ribbentrop into marrying Ribbentrop's maid, only to discover that the former was tumbling the latter, after which came divorce, lawsuit, etc. He was assistant in a Paris library, and was sacked by the priests. Writes to say he only has 1,200 frs left, threatens to come to England having read in the Univers, etc., that 'socialism and atheism' are flourishing in the latter country.

5. Dr Freund is said to be so down on his luck that he has allegedly approached people in the street for a shilling.

6. Loutish Landolphe has reappeared in England as a beggar and through Blind's intervention, has been engaged by Dr Bronner at a German school in Bradford.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Between January and May 1856 Engels wrote a series of articles on Pan-Slavism for the New-York Daily Tribune, which did not print them. The manuscripts have not been preserved.
  2. ↑ 'Affairs in Prussia'
  3. ↑ Emilie Marx
  4. ↑ Friederike Blind
  5. ↑ Gottfried Kinkel
  6. ↑ A. Ruge, 'Idealismus und Realismus im Reich des Ideals', Deutsches Museum, Nos. 14, 15, 19, 1 and 8 April, 6 May 1858.
  7. ↑ R. E. Prutz, 'Literaturgeschichte', Deutsches Museum, No. 24, 10 June 1858.