Letter to Karl Marx, August 22, 1868

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 22 August 1868


First published in MEGA, Abt. Ill, Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931. Printed according to the original. Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Bridlington Quay, 22 August 1868

Dear Moor,

Best thanks for the Lanterne and the B. Becker.[1] The closer one comes to see the details of the Lassalle tragicomedy, the more the comical side emerges. This man was ruined by his IRREPRESSIBLE reflection upon himself, his permanent self-contemplation. 'How do I appear to myself?' was the eternal refrain. Poor Baron Izzy! Comic at that exalted moment when he commissioned his alter ego, Rüstow, to bed the beautiful Helen[2] per procura[3] if necessary—he well knew how little danger this involved—as at that other moment when the Wallachian[4] shot away his genitals. Poor Izzy! To be gelded by a shot from a Wallachian.[5] You always found it so comical that his gob had been stopped, but now this as well.

Seiler! That is the impression of the whole story. Sebastian Seiler, the only worthy historiographer of this tragicomedy—he will hang himself that he missed this putrid scene. En attendant[6] it is quite amusing that the 'testamentary successor of Lassalle'[7] declares him an aristocrat, traitor and cad, and is forced to appropriate all those things that we formerly had published against him himself and against Schweitzer.[8] Bastards!

On Wednesday or Thursday[9] I shall go back to Manchester from here and shall then visit my mother for a week—probably in Ostend. I am still waiting for a letter from her, and have no idea where I stand in the meantime.[10]

Naturally I would have sent the money for the loan from the insurance company only to you, if you had not from the start shoved the whole affair away from you and onto Borkheim, so that I had to turn to him simply to find out how much had to be paid. That I could, of course, only do with the simultaneous remark that I would send the sum to him, since he was indeed standing surety for the money. As I already wrote to you, it would never have occurred to me to send the money to that jackass Schyler.g But I expect to see you before then, in London at the end of next week.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ B. Becker, Enthüllungen über das tragische Lebensende Ferdinand Lassalle's.
  2. ↑ Helene von Dönniges
  3. ↑ by proxy
  4. ↑ Janko von Racowija
  5. ↑ In the original, a play on the word Wallach (Wallachian), also German for a gelding.
  6. ↑ Meanwhile
  7. ↑ Paul and Laura Lafargue wrote to the Marx family about their life in France. (Letters of Laura and Paul Lafargue to Karl Marx and his daughter Jenny, of 3 April 1868; to Jenny of 6 April 1868; of Laura Lafargue to her sister Jenny of 9 April 1868; and to her sister Eleanor of the same date).
  8. ↑ A reference is to a number of works by Marx and Engels, including statements in Der Social-Demokrat and Berliner Reform, the pamphlets 'The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party' and 'The "President of Mankind'", which expose Schweitzer's political stand and Bernhard Becker's slanderous attacks (see present edition, Vol. 20).
  9. ↑ 26 or 27 August
  10. ↑ Engels' mother wrote on 2 September 1868 to tell him that she had arrived in Ostend the day before. Engels joined her for about 10 days there. En route he met Marx in London.