Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, June 30, 1887

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 30 June 1887


First published, slightly abridged, in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engls, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906, and, in full, in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow 1935
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE[1]

IN MOUNT DESERT

London, 30 June 1887

Dear Sorge,

Have received letters, etc., up to 16 June. I shall write and tell the Wischnewetzkys[2] to word the note thus: 'to repudiate the silly calumnies to which Aveling has been exposed as a result of his American propaganda tour'.[3] If they don't like that either, I shall tell them to refer to you and you may, if necessary, authorise them to delete the entire note. For I cannot possibly cite Aveling without saying a word about all that nonsense.

Aveling sends the enclosed postcard re Time.[4] The copies will have gone to Rochester.

The business of Scribner's advertisement for Capital has the appear- ance of a deliberate piracy.[5] Thanks for the information; I shall pass it on to Sonnenschein. So far as I know, Scribner is not Sonnenschein's agent in New York.

That the members of the Executive should have believed they had bought Liebknecht's silence with the electoral funds[6] was predictable and not altogether unjustified. Luckily Liebknecht's first boastful letter had put him wholly in my power[7] and of this, when he tried to with- draw, I made the most determined use.

Over here Hyndman has been continually defaming Aveling,[8] in which he is strongly abetted by Aveling's reticence about such things. If we could catch the fellow out just once, he'd have cause to remember it. However, he is gradually bringing about his own demise. He's so wretchedly envious that he cannot tolerate a rival and is openly or secretly at war with all and sundry. And Aveling is at last eager for the fray and Tussy will see to it that he stays that way.

You mustn't forget what I told you about la Schack. The creature wants to come back and is partout determined to cut a figure over here. So it's better to know exactly what she's up to. The affair between her and the Wischnewetzkys caused the Kautskys and Avelings much glee; may very well have had something to do with her going over to the Anarchists so as to prove that she had finished with us. Liebknecht writes to say that, in a letter to Dresden, she came out with the shock- ing news that Aveling already had a previous wife from whom he was not divorced, and that he lived with Tussy without being married to her! So profound a secret is it in this country that any Englishman harbouring doubts on this score and desirous of making the Avelings' acquaintance, is informed of it by them in writing so that he cannot claim to have been kept in the dark and received under false pretences.

One day she was sentimentalising away to old Lenchen, saying how very much in love with one another the Avelings seemed to be, if only they always remained so, etc. 'Well, supposing they don't,' Lenchen burst out, 'they'll just part company again, and that will be that.' Which brought Madame Tittle-Tattle up sharp—she hadn't expected Lenchen to take such a practical view of things.

I have written to Lafargue[9] telling him to send the Socialiste to you at Rochester, but have had no reply.

I trust the warm weather will put you to rights again. It is doing me a power of good. During these four weeks of drought I have had all my windows wide open and lived so to speak in the open air; I find it as good as a visit to a spa and am also hoping it will make my eyes better again.

I am sick to death of Father McGlynn and George is turning out to be a proper founder of sects. Not that I really expected anything else; considering how recent the movement is, however, this was a transi- tional stage that could hardly have been avoided. Such people must be given the length of their tether; the masses will learn only from the consequences of their own mistakes.

I wish you a good recovery and good weather in Mount Desert!

Your

F. Engels

  1. ↑ A passage from this letter was first published in English in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Letters to Americans. 1848-1895. A selection, New York, International Publishers, 1953.
  2. ↑ The whereabouts of this letter is unknown.
  3. ↑ The separate edition of Engels's article The Labor Movement in America (see note 12) contains a brief footnote (see present edition, Vol. 26) in which Engels refers to the relevant articles by Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx-Aveling (see note 89). In this connection Engels states his attitude to the anti-Aveling campaign launched by the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party (see note 3). The passage to this effect which Engels gives in his lettes worded in the footnote as follows: 'I am all the more pleased to refer to these excellent articles since this offers me an opportunity simultaneously to reject the wretched slanders concerning the Avelings which the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party has had the impudence to circulate'. The footnote was not reproduced in the separate American edition of this work, but it was included in the separate German edition put out in New York in 1887.
  4. ↑ Sorge had informed Engels that he had not received the three issues of Time containing the Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx-Aveling's series of articles on their tour of America, which they had sent him.
  5. ↑ In a letter of 16 June 1887 Sorge informed Engels that an advertisement for the forthcoming publication by Scribner & Welford (New York) of two volumes of Marx's Capital, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, had appeared in the journal Jahrbucherfur Nationalokonomie und Statistik, 1887, Vol. 14, p477.
  6. ↑ See 'The Socialist League', The Commonweal, No. 73, 4 June 1887
  7. ↑ Aveling's answer to the second circular of the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party (see note 98) was printed in the form of a pamphlet, containing Aveling's statement of 27 May 1887 (a detailed reply to the charges levelled at him); a statement by Eleanor Marx-Aveling of 24 May, confirming her husband's arguments and adding certain details; a statement by Wilhelm Liebknecht in defence of Aveling of 16 May.
  8. ↑ An item headlined 'A Costly Apostle', published in Justice No. 172, 30 April 1887, reproduced the contents of the circulars of the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party of North America attacking Edward Aveling (see notes 32 and 98). Aveling answered in a Letter to the Editor, published in Justice, No. 174. 14 May 1887.
  9. ↑ The whereabouts of this letter is unknown.