Letter to Friedrich Engels, October 30, 1861

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 30 October 1861


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 30 October 1861

Dear Engels,

Circumstances have finally CLEARED to the extent that I have at least got firm ground under my feet again and am no longer in a state of complete suspense. As you know, shortly after my return from Manchester[1] and as soon as I thought the moment opportune, I again started writing for the Tribune at weekly intervals. Last week included, I had sent them 6 articles.[2] Then, in the last mail, the first 2 articles[3] actually came back in print, the first of them (over 3 columns on English opinions on the UNITED STATES) in a PROMINENT PLACE and particularly REFERRED TO on the front page of the paper. To this extent, then, the matter is in order and hence I am assured of £2 per week.

Secondly: I had, as you know, already written to the Vienna Presse from Manchester, asking for 'information'.1 About 3 weeks ago I got an answer which was politically entirely satisfactory to me. (In the meantime, the paper has modified its attitude to Schmerling.) At the same time, Friedländer (on behalf of Zang, the proprietor) asked for 2 sample articles. These[4] I sent off and yesterday morning I got an answer to the effect 1. that the articles had appeared with due prominence on the front page,[5] 2. that I was engaged on a regular basis from November, £1 per article, lOsh. per news-letter.

As regards the Tribune, I must first of all find some way of drawing bills, for it can hardly be arranged through Freiligrath in future.

For the rest, this twofold engagement holds out an assured prospect of putting an end to the harried existence led by my family over the past year, and also of finally completing my book.[6] Thanks to you, I was able to placate the more pressing of the blackguards at the beginning of September, but even so, the harassment was still quite intolerable, and in October it again reached a crescendo. I am writing today to my old lady[7] to find out whether anything can be squeezed out of her. I shall likewise see if I can raise something from a LOAN SOCIETY. My chief concern, of course, is to put my affairs into some sort of order, pending the availability of amounts WORTH DRAWING from New York and Vienna, and above all to have leisure in which to work during the interval that must necessarily elapse. In the MEAN TIME, we have pawned everything that was not actually nailed down and, what is even worse, my wife is seriously unwell. When it was simply a case of enduring the pressure of day-to-day adversities, she did this bravely, but she has been cast down by the complete absence of prospects. In the meantime, the favourable news from Vienna and New York has already evoked a favourable reaction.

Borkheim had strangely misled both himself and me over Kolatschek's Stimmen der Zeit. True, No. 39 carried a contribution running to a printer's sheet headlined 'K. Vogt und K. Marx', but it was written by the student Abt, the 'lowest of the low', whom you will remember from Geneva. Having taken due note of the actual content of my pamphlet[8] in the first 2 pages, he devotes the remaining 14 to railing in the most rabid and villainous fashion against me and, notably, Schily and Imandt, on account of the 'Bristlers'.[9] He concludes by saying that, if I don't recant, he will attack me 'at the only vulnerable spot he knows' and compromise me in a manner 'that I shall regret'. Needless to say, I didn't take the slightest notice of the scoundrel. But something very odd must have happened to put Mr Kolatschek at Abt's mercy, for, as Abt says, he had had the scrawl as far back as January and had refused to print it until September.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

Don't forget to send me as detailed a report as possible on the status quo in Manchester.

  1. ↑ Marx was Engels' guest in Manchester from the end of August to the middle of September 1861.
  2. ↑ Marx means, in particular, the articles 'The American Question in England', 'The British Cotton Trade', 'The London Times and Lord Palmerston', and 'The London Times on the Orleans Princes in America' (see present edition, Vol. 19). The other two articles were evidently not published.
  3. ↑ K. Marx, 'The American Question in England' and 'The British Cotton Trade', 1861.
  4. ↑ K. Marx, 'The North American Civil War' and 'The Civil War in the United States', Die Presse, Nos. 293 and 306, 25 October and 7 November 1861.
  5. ↑ An editorial introductory note to Marx's article 'The North American Civil War', published in Die Presse on 25 October 1861, said: 'We have received from London a first communication on the North American Civil War from one of the leading German journalists, who knows Anglo-American relations from long years of observation. As events on the other side of the ocean develop, we shall be in a position to present communications, deriving from the same competent pen, which will outline the salient features of the war.'
  6. ↑ This refers to Marx's work on the second instalment of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, which he started on completing his polemic writing, Herr Vogt (see Note 38). In the period 1861 to 1863 he produced a vast manuscript (200 sheets of print), the second rough draft of Capital
  7. ↑ Henriette Marx
  8. ↑ Herr Vogt
  9. ↑ Marx means elections to the US Congress. An extraordinary session of it opened on 4 July 1861.