Letter to Karl Marx, March 29, 1868

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 29 March 1868


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 29 March 1868

Dear Moor,

I am afraid I shall not finish the article for the Fortnightly[1] by Tuesday. The damned Schiller Institute business[2] kept me breathless all the week, until I finally got things cleared up yesterday. If I had failed—and several stupidities on the part of my main adjutant put everything doubtful again—I would have been terribly discredited, made ludicrous for the whole of Manchester; TO BE DONE' IN BUSINESS, TO GET YOURSELF SOLD' is naturally here the worst thing that can happen to you. Now it is a great triumph and gives me the opportunity I wanted to withdraw with honour from official participation in the affair; anyway now enough people will be pushing themselves forward for it. I am doubly annoyed because this business has made it impossible for me to complete the article; but for this I would have had to rush it, and in this case the quality is very important.

Schorlemmer has made a very fine discovery: the law of the boiling points of the hydrocarbons of the series CnH2n+2, i.e. for three of the four isomeric series; of the 4th, too few have yet been described.[3]

I shall be arriving at your place on Wednesday evening at 9, possibly earlier.[4]

Where on earth can the enclosed article come from? And a letter of Bismarck's to cheer you up.

Best greetings.

Your

F. E.

I can find nothing about Wiffa. But in higid, hiwisc, hida you are confusing 2 if not 3 different words.[5]

Anglo-Saxon hiwisce, Old Saxon and Old High German hiwiski, Old Frisian hiskthe, Old Nordic hyski, New North Frisian hiske = familia.

Higid can be the participle of the Anglo-Saxon hegjan, this verb means TO FENCE IN.

Whether hide, which is still encountered locally today as a measure of land, is drawn from this, or is connected with hide cutis, Anglo-Saxon hyde, I cannot determine without an Anglo-Saxon dictionary.

  1. ↑ Engels wrote the review of Volume One of Marx's Capital for The Fortnightly Review much later, in May and June 1868. As can be seen from their subsequent correspondence, Marx and Engels exchanged opinions several times on the content and form of the article. In spite of Professor Beesly's request, the review was rejected by the editorial board and has only been preserved in manuscript form (see present edition, Vol. 20).
  2. ↑ The Schiller Institute, founded in Manchester in November 1859 in connection with the centenary of Friedrich Schiller's birth, strove to be a German emigre cultural and social centre. Engels was critical of the Institute, noted for its tendency to formalism and pedantry, and he initially kept aloof from it. But when certain changes were introduced into its Rules, he became a member of its Directorate in 1864. Later, as the President of the Institute, Engels devoted much time to it and exercised a considerable influence on its activities. In September 1868, while Engels was away from Manchester, the Institute invited Karl Vogt, who was connected with the Bonapartists and was slandering the proletarian revolutionaries, to deliver a lecture. Engels felt that his political reputation would be compromised if he remained President and so he left the Directorate. In April 1870 he was again elected a member of the Directorate of the Schiller Institute, but did not take an active part in it.
  3. ↑ C. Schorlemmer, 'Researches on the Hydrocarbons of the Series C nH2 n + 2', Proceedings of the Royal Society, No. 94, 1867 and No. 102, 1868.
  4. ↑ Sonderburg (now S0nderborg)—the town and fortress on the Alsen Island, one of the strongpoints on the Düppel fortification line captured by Prussian troops on 18 April 1864, during the war of Prussia and Austria against Denmark (see notes 9 and 27).
  5. ↑ See this volume, pp. 553 54.