Letter to Friedrich Engels, November 18, 1861

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 18 November 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,] 18 November [1861]

Dear Engels,

Ecce Herum Crispinus![1] Well, this is how matters now stand. On 9 November, I drew £16 on the Tribune for the 8 articles then sent. Out of this £16, I paid £3 apiece on account to butcher, baker, TEAGROCER, OILMAN, MILKMAN, and GREENGROCER. I spent 10/- on coal, which will all be gone by tomorrow. Your £5 went for the most part on the repayment of small cash loans. So, I'm broke, and there are further debts to be paid—the LANDLORD, school fees, the cobbler, and essential purchases for the family against the winter. I write for the Presse almost every day. With the Presse and the Tribune combined I might be able to make SHIFT. But in view of the constantly reaccumulating deficit (not a milliard, admittedly[2] ) and a whole year's loss of income this really can't be done.

Now there has been yet another disaster. As you know, I advanced Petsch & Co. £25 for the printing of Vogt, it being agreed that this was to be repaid out of the SALE of COPIES, before any other deductions. Moreover, they owe me a few pounds for Hinter den Coulissen,[3] the Communist Trial[4] and the 18th Brumaire[5] etc.[6]

On the other hand, I obtained newspapers and books from the fellows to the value of £10 9/-, if only to be in possession of some security.

Koller (an associé[7] ) has now had a row with Petsch, who is not in the business at present. There's a lawsuit pending between the two over the firm's liquidation.

The rascally Koller, whom I pressed about my claim, wrote instead advising me of his suit in the COUNTY-COURT regarding the £10 9/-. I went to see Zimmermann. He told me that my suit would cost me about £30-£60 in a SUPERIOR COURT, and that it would be better if I established my claim in the form of a counter-claim in the COUNTY-COURT, to which I had been summoned by Koller. Nor does he himself practise in the COUNTY-COURTS. SO, to this end, I shall have to see an English SOLICITOR before the week is out (and as soon as possible), which I can't do without CASH.

If I were quit of this wretched situation and did not see my family oppressed by MISERABLE adversities, how overjoyed I would be at the fiasco of the Decembrist financial system, so long and so frequently prognosticated by me in the Tribune. So William the Handsome or handsome William has done some plain speaking in Silesia: 'If you elect democrats, we shall be ruined.' 'Soldiers are the only answer to democrats.'

Salut. Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Ecce Herum Crispinus (Behold, this Crispinus again). Juvenal, Satirae, IV, 1 (figuratively: the same again).
  2. ↑ An allusion to the financial crisis experienced by Bonapartist France in the autumn of 1861, when the national exchequer was one milliard francs in the red. On this see Marx's articles 'Monsieur Fould' and 'France's Financial Situation' (present edition, Vol. 19).
  3. ↑ [G. Lommel,] Hinter den Coulissen. Historisch-politische Bilder aus der Neuzeit, I. Theil. Vom Oktober 1847 bis Mai 1848.
  4. ↑ K. Marx, Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne.
  5. ↑ K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
  6. ↑ The London publisher Albert Petsch was to distribute the unsold part of the Boston edition of Marx's Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne (1853). Several copies of Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, published in New York in 1852, were likewise turned over to Petsch for sale. The two works are in Vol. 11 of the present edition.
  7. ↑ partner