Letter to Laura Lafargue, March 21, 1887

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 21 March 1887


First published, in the language of the original (English), in F. Engels, P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. II, Paris, 1956
Reproduced from the original in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE[1]

IN PARIS

London, 21 March 1887

My dear Laura,

I have received Fortin 's Ms.[2] which, I am afraid, will have to rest a bit in my drawer, as I must still nurse my eye. Of course the inflammation was merely symptomatic of the real affliction, a weakness brought on by over-exertion of the eye especially at night-time, and that can be cured by nothing but the removal of the cause; in consequence Nim and I pass our evenings now at card-playing and I find it acts, but has to be contin- ued yet a bit. If Paul continues his work at the Bibliothèque etc. in the usual way, I am afraid he will have to suffer for it, though of course his doctor ought to know.

To settle business first: I enclose cheque for £12, and further inform you that nothing has been heard here from Longuet. I sent him a post- card[3] about the copy of Capital addressed to La Justice, asking if he had got it; no reply either.

The gifles[4] - between the Voie and the Cri may amuse the Parisians but I should be very sorry to see our friends there sinking to the level of saltimbanques at foires[5] forcing themselves upon the attention of the public by quarrels and fights provoked for that purpose. If that will go down in Paris, it will certainly not anywhere else, and it is certainly not the way to raise our Parisian friends in the esteem of the working class out of France. I can conceive Goullé boxing Labruyère's ears while they had the Voie to give their own account of the affair,[6] but the repe- tition by Goullé and Deville after the paper was dead, and they had to take refuge in the Radical, seems to me utterly out of all common sense. The version of the Cri reaches all the foreign socialist papers; that of the Radical does not, unless forwarded express. And whether or not, this mode of settling disputes after the manner of the German Knoten[7] before 1848 will give foreigners a very poor idea of the lead- ers of French Socialism and makes one almost regret the duelling prac- tices of the Second Empire journalists, as being only ridiculous. The sooner the whole affair is forgotten, the better it will be for our people.[8]

Old William, if not actually dead, seems to be dying—vide enclosed cut from the Weekly Dispatch.[9] And the dynamite shells of St Petersburg seem after all not to have missed their aim. Vide the abject declaration which through Reuter (!!) the Russian government have sent round Europe.[10] The Czar[11] goes on his knees before revolution, and even the Russophile Daily News[12] says this abject document can be compared only to the abject telegram of Alexander Battenberg to the Czar.[13] This thing looks indeed like the beginning of the end in Russia, and that would be the beginning of the end in Europe too. What a fool that Czar must be! Not to see that when he ordered the plot to kidnap and, if necessary, to kill that poor ass Alexander Battenberg, he justified the same proceedings against himself, and called upon his own enemies to apply to him his own methods!

Pumps is expected back from Eastbourne to-morrow. Edward lectured yesterday morning—for the first time since his quinsy—in an East-End Radical Club[14] ; he is making a very useful and probably successful campaign amongst the East-End Radicals to engage them to cut loose from the Great Liberal Party and form a Working Men's party after the American fashion. If he succeeds he will get both Socialist Associations[15] into his wake; for here he gets hold of the real spontaneous working men's organisations and gets at the heart of the working class. So far his prospects are good. Tussy and he are going to move this week into their new place in Chancery Lane but as they must clear out from 38 St George Square to-morrow, they will perhaps have to stay a few days with us.

Love from Nim.

Affectionately yours

F. Engels

  1. ↑ This letter was first published, in the language of the original (English), in F. Engels, P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. 2 (1887-1890), Paris, Ed. sociales, 1956.
  2. ↑ Two French translations of Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte were made, almost simultaneously, by the French socialists Paul Lavigne and Edouard Fortin. Fortin's translation, sent to Engels somewhat earlier (see Engels' letter to Paul Lavigne of 1 December 1885 in Vol. 47 of the present edition) and edited by Engels at Fortin's request, was published first in Le Socialiste, the newspaper of the French Workers' Party, in January-November 1891 and appeared in book form in Lille the same year.
  3. ↑ No information is available concerning this postcard.
  4. ↑ slaps
  5. ↑ clowns at a fair
  6. ↑ See 'L'Exécution d'un Mouchard' in La Voie du Peuple, No. 35, 17 March, 1881
  7. ↑ louts, here the uneducated section of the working-class movement
  8. ↑ Rumours published in the last issue of the Voie du peuple (17 March 1887) caused a quarrel and even an exchange of seconds between Albert Goulle, who contributed to this newspaper, and Georges de Labruyere, a contributor to the Cri du peuple. The two then accused each other of trying to evade the duel. In publishing its version of the incident, the Cri du peuple, while careful to avoid referring to the Voie du peuple by name, suggested that its demise had been due to the lack of readers. On 20 March 1887, Le Radical published Albert Goulle's and Gabriel Deville's answer to the Cri du peuple.
  9. ↑ This presumably refers to an item published in the 'Topics of the Day' column of the Weekly Dispatch on 20 March 1887 denying the rumours about the death of William I.
  10. ↑ On 13 (1) March 1887 a group of members of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will), led by Alexander Ulyanov, Lenin's elder brother, made an attempt on the life of Alexander III in St Petersburg. The police arrested and handed over for trial thirteen people, five of whom, including Alexander Ulyanov, were executed, while the rest were given long prison terms. The official declaration of the tsarist government referred to by Engels maintained that 'some foreign newspapers' were exaggerating the role of the constitutional party and that 'the most influential classes in Russia do not consider that ... the time is ripe for the introduction of constitutional government.' It also declared that the Russian government was 'carefully studying state socialism, which is being successfully implemented in Germany by Prince Bismarck', and expressed the Tsar's hypocritical regret at 'the need for costly precautions to safeguard his personal security'.
  11. ↑ Alexander III
  12. ↑ 'The Nihilist Conspiracy'. The Daily News, 21 March 1887
  13. ↑ Engels refers to the political crisis in Bulgaria brought about by the overthrow, on 9 August 1886, of Prince Alexander Battenberg by a group of Russophile military conspirators (see note 109). In an attempt to regain the throne, Battenberg sent an obsequious message to Alexander III promising every support to the Tsar's 'noble intention to bring Bulgaria out of the grave crisis'. The closing sentence read: 'Since it was Russia that gave me my Crown, I am prepared to return it into the hands of her sovereign.'
  14. ↑ Radical Clubs began to emerge in London and other cities in the 1870s. They consisted of bourgeois radicals and workers. In the Clubs of London's poorer areas, such as the East End, the workers predominated. The Clubs criticised the Irish policy of Gladstone's Liberal government and urged an extension of the suffrage and other democratic reforms. From the early 1880s they engaged in socialist propaganda. In 1885 London's Radical Clubs united in the Metropolitan Radical Federation.
  15. ↑ The Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League