Letter to Laura Lafargue, June 16, 1885

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 16 June 1885


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 36, Moscow, 1964
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE

IN PARIS

London, 16 June 1885

My dear Laura,

Well, you have the same troubles as I have myself! Visitors, on the whole agreeable in themselves, but damned in the way when you have more work to do than they. Here I have been settling down every evening for the last week to write to you, and either visitors or urgent business correspondence steps in. And even now, at half past one in the morning, I have to snatch a few moments to write to you a few lines which will cut a sorry figure alongside of your amiable and lively letters! Well it cannot be helped and you must put up with my scrimmage.

The particulars about Lawroff s dead man might be found out, I think, without much difficulty. But what am I to do in the matter?

Percy is as good as anybody to find that out, but of course he must be paid for his work at the common London price.[1]

Tussy was not here last Sunday[2] — they[3] went on the river somewhere with a chap who has a boat and a tent and they both want as much fresh air as they can get. The British Museum is a nice place enough but not to live opposite to. So I shall not see them before next Sunday.

Kautsky has received and translated Paul's article about le coeur du coeur du monde, qui vient de cesser de battre (coeur No. 1 I mean).[4]

Very glad the Germans send some money for the French elections. Though I am sorry that it is the Hamburgers who have done it; because this is intended as a bribe for Liebknecht, to induce him to take their side (the kleinbürgerliche Seite) in the present storm in a — pot now going on amongst the German parliamentarians.[5] I believe this storm will blow over, for the present at least, but it's a symptom. If the Socialist Law was abolished and we had elbow-room, and if the 3rd book of the Kapital was finished I should not care a bit to have it out at once. As it is, I am for a temporising policy. But the split will come some day, and then we shall give the Spiessbürger[6] the necessary kick. By the bye I see also from the New York Sozialist that there too money has been collected for the French elections.

Poor Paul! I am afraid he will have to pass la belle saison[7] in quod. Once nailed,[8] I do not see how anything but an acte de grâce of old Grévy could get him out. At all events he has now had about one month of it and his elasticity must carry him over the rest.

From Petersburg I hear that the whole of the proof-sheets have arrived and that 18 sheets out of 33 are already translated.[9] This work is almost too quick to be good.

You have no idea how comfortable John Bull feels under his ministerial crisis.[10] Not a bit of excitement. Evening papers, special editions, etc., do not sell at all. The Grand Old Man, as they call Gladstone, disappears from the political foreground quite unnoticed. The ingratitude of this world is shocking indeed. The fact is, Whigs and Radicals have found out, just before the new elections by a revolutionised constituency,[11] that they cannot get on together any longer. So there is hope that after the autumn elections Tories and Whigs will coalesce. And then we have all landed property on one side, all industrial capital on the opposite side, and the working class compelled to face them both — the basis of a revolutionary situation.

Today there is a grand review in heaven. Frederick Charles is inspecting the hosts of the Lord of hosts.[12] I am afraid he will find very great fault with their Parademarsch and send word to old William that they are not yet fit to parade before him. If the Archangel Michael could only have been sent to do duty for a few years with the Prussian Guards!

Nim complains of rheumatism and threatened to drop beer but I told her that was rubbish, and I think she will believe me. Pumps and her children are very well. Percy has the usual rows with his parents. The cheque £10.- is enclosed. And herewith — sur ce—I remain your old affectionate

F. Engels

  1. ↑ See this volume, p. 273.
  2. ↑ 14 June
  3. ↑ Eleanor Marx Aveling and Edward Aveling
  4. ↑ the heart of hearts of the world which has ceased to beat (the heart...); see P. Lafargue's obituary on the death of Victor Hugo published anonymously in Die Neue Zeit, No. 8, 1885.
  5. ↑ The Hamburg party organisation, which supported the Social-Democratic group in the Reichstag in its conflict with the editorial board of Der Sozialdemokrat (see Note 374), donated 1,000 francs to the French socialists' election fund.
  6. ↑ philistines
  7. ↑ the fine season
  8. ↑ On 21 May 1885 Paul Lafargue was sent to Ste Pélagie prison, Paris, for two months for failing to pay a fine of 100 francs imposed on him in April 1883 by a jury in Moulins as punishment for his public speeches (see Note 9). To begin with, Lafargue was kept in the cell reserved for criminals, but later transferred to the part of the prison where the political detainees were kept.
  9. ↑ To speed up the Russian translation of the second volume of Capital Engels sent Nikolai Danielson the proofs of the German edition as they were printed. The volume appeared in January 1886.
  10. ↑ Engels is referring to the resignation in June 1885 of the Liberal cabinet under Gladstone due to the refusal of the majority in parliament (Conservatives and Irish members) to vote for the government proposal to increase taxes on spirits. The real reasons for the resignation were the failures in colonial policy — the concessions to Russia when it came to dividing up spheres of influence in Central Asia (see Note 378) and the major defeats inflicted on the British forces by rebels in the Sudan— as well as the government's refusal to grant Irish self-administration in the framework of the British Empire.
  11. ↑ In 1884 the third parliamentary reform was carried out in England, as a result of which the suffrage was extended to include small farmers and the farm workers who were homeowners or householders. Suffrage was not extended to the poorer rural and urban sections of the population (tenants and domestic servants), nor to women. The first elections under the new electoral law took place in November-December 1885, with the electorate having a numerical strength of two million higher than at the previous poll (see Note 487).
  12. ↑ A short quote from this letter was first published in English in: R. H. Dominick III, Wilhelm Liebknecht and the Founding of the German Social Democratic Party, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1982.