Letter to Friedrich Engels, April 16, 1859

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 16 April 1859


First published abridged in Der Briefwech- sel 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, 16 April [1859]

Dear Engels,

I trust that by the time you get this note your toothache will have gone. It's a fiendish thing.

MEANWHILE I have made arrangements which, within a short time, will double my income and thus put an end to the habitual misery. Friedländer, Lassalle's cousin (sometime editor along with Eisner and Co. of the Neue Oder-Zeitung), present editor of the Presse in Vienna (which, en passant, has 24,000 subscribers), offered, in January 1858, to appoint me correspondent to his paper.[1] I turned this down at the time because he stipulated that only Bonaparte, not Palmerston, be attacked. Now he has renewed the offer, ALL CONDITIONS LAID AsiDF. Since, however, this will as a rule involve only 1 article (20 frs) per week, it is comparatively unimportant. But I am at the same time to be their despatcher of telegrams (in French), 10 frs per telegram, and this, though time-consuming, is lucrative.

The only point that remains to be settled is that of instructions to a banking house in London, since telegraphing necessitates considerable expenditure. Negotiations—before the terms were SETTLED—extended over 3 weeks. It was only yesterday that I sent a definite answer to a letter received the same day from Vienna. So it will be 8-10 days before the thing gets under way.

MEANWHILE the interest on our most valuable silver, watches, etc., is due for payment next Tuesday. By private TRANSACTIONS with the PAWNBROKER my wife has already put off the date of foreclosure for 3 weeks, but Tuesday is the ultimus terminus. So my request that you send m e a few pounds goes hand in hand with the hope that this will definitely be the last time and the tax upon you will cease for good.

Be so kind as to send 1 copy[2] for me. As soon as you are in possession of several, Freiligrath and Pfänder ought each to have one.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ In his letter of 17 December 1857 to Marx, Lassalle enclosed a letter from his cousin Max Friedländer to Marx inviting him to contribute to the Vienna newspaper, Die Presse. Friedländer became one of its editors in 1856. Previously he had taken part in publishing the democratic paper Neu« Oder-Zeitung, to which Marx also contributed throughout 1855. Not knowing the political line of Die Presse at the time, Marx did not agree, one of the reasons being probably the condition imposed by Friedländer: to criticise Napoleon Ill's policy and abstain from attacking Palmerston. In 1859 negotiations with Friedländer were resumed and lasted for a long time. Their success was hampered, on the one hand, by Lassalle's pro-Bonapartist statements during the Italian war of 1859 which evoked dissatisfaction on the part of Friedländer, who for a time thought that Marx approved of these statements, and on the other hand, by the editors' tendency to be duped by the pseudo-constitutional demagogy of the new Austrian government of Schmerling, which put Marx on the alert. Only in October 1861 when Die Presse criticised the government did Marx agree to be its London correspondent.—226, 227, 269, 272, 416, 418, 455, 571
  2. ↑ F. Engels, Po and Rhine.