Letter to Laura Lafargue, December 1, 1890

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 1 December 1890


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
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49


ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE

AT LE PERREUX

London, 1 December 1890

My dear Laura,

Enfin![1] I have got that 70th birthday behind me. On Thursday Bebel, Liebknecht, and Singer arrived. On Friday letters and telegrams en masse, the latter from Berlin (3), Vienna (3), Paris (Roumanian students and Frankel), Berne (Russische Sozialdemokraten), Leipzig Stadt und Land,[2] Bochum (Klassenbewusste Bergleute[3] [4] —miners), Stuttgart (Sozialdemokraten, Württemberg's), Fürth, Höchst (Paulis), London (Arbeiterverein),[5] [6] Hamburg. The fraction[7] sent me a splendid album with their 35 portraits, Dietz a book of photos of some excellent Munich pictures, the Solingers a knife with inscription, etc., etc. Enfin j'étais écrasé![8] Well, in the evening we had the whole lot here, embellished by and bye by little Oswald and four delegates from the Arbeiterverein (one of whom speechless drunk) and we kept it up till half past three in the morning and drank, besides claret, 16 bottles of champaign—the morning we had had 12 dozen oysters. So you see I did my best to show that I was still alive and kicking.

But it's a good job. One can celebrate one's 70th birthday only once. It will take me a devil of a time to reply to all those letters—even those I must reply to personally. That is the prose following upon the poetry of life, and to break my fall I begin by writing the only one I can write with true pleasure—this one to you.

Louise Kautsky came on the Tuesday after you left and has since then made me extremely comfortable. As to the future, we have not yet talked about it. I want her to see how things will settle down before asking her to come to a definite resolution. We are getting on very well with Pumps; my lecture and a few hints, repeated later on, that her position in my house depends very much upon her own behaviour, seem to have had some effect. We'll hope it may last.

Bebel looks rather delicate and a deal older than when I last saw him. Singer too is getting gray, and of course Liebknecht too, though he looks fat and content de lui-même;[9] he complains awfully about the few capacities among the younger generation, and the impossibility consequently of getting good men for his paper,[10] but otherwise he is very well satisfied with things in general and the Berliners in particular. To-morrow the Reichstag opens, and we had the greatest trouble to keep Singer and Bebel here to meet Burns, Cunninghame-Graham, Thorne and others at Tussy's. And now we have kept them here, a damnable fog is setting in (2 p. m.) which even prevents me from writing and may, if not dispersed in time, nullify the whole intended international conference.[11]

Interrupted by fog—forbidden to write by the gaslight—donc,[12] conclusion.

Ever yours,

F. Engels

Dites à Même que mon nase se porte parfaitement à l'extérieur mais qu'à l'intérieur il y a un rhume de cerveau.[13]

  1. ↑ At last!
  2. ↑ town and country
  3. ↑ The Anti-Socialist Law, initiated by the Bismarck government and passed by the Reichstag on 21 October 1878, was directed against the socialist and working-class movement. The Social-Democratic Party of Germany was virtually driven into the underground. All party and mass working-class organisations and their press were banned, socialist literature was subject to confiscation, Social-Democrats made the object of reprisals. However, with the active help of Marx and Engels, the Social-Democratic Party succeeded in overcoming both the opportunist (Eduard Bernstein et al.) and 'ultra-Left' (J. Most et al.) tendencies within its ranks and was able, by combining underground activities with an efficient utilisation of legal means, to use the period of the operation of the law for considerably strengthening and expanding its influence among the masses. Prolonged in 1881, 1884, 1886 and 1888, the Anti-Socialist Law was repealed on 1 October 1890. For Engels' assessment of it see his article 'Bismarck and the German Working Men's Party' (present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 407-09).
  4. ↑ class conscious miners
  5. ↑ In all likelihood, this refers to Karl Kautsky's letters of 7 and 25 November 1890. The letter of 7 November has not been found. That of 25 November concerned Kautsky's help in the work on Volume IV of Capital.
  6. ↑ workers' society
  7. ↑ the Social Democratic group in the German Reichstag
  8. ↑ In a word, I was overwhelmed.
  9. ↑ pleased with himself
  10. ↑ Berliner Volksblatt
  11. ↑ The meeting took place at Edward and Eleanor Avelings' house in London on 1 December 1890. It was attended by German Social-Democratic leaders Wilhelm Liebknecht, August Bebel and Paul Singer and British socialist and labour leaders Robert Cunninghame-Graham, John Burns, Bill Thorne, Ben Cooper, Maxwell and Morrison Davidson, as well as by Engels and the Avelings. Cunninghame-Graham published an account of the meeting, 'Eight Hours "Blokes" in Council', in People's Press, No. 40, saying that 'the object of our meeting was to combine the attack against surplus value, to endeavour to bring about friendly relations between the sweated of all nations, and to push on the general eight hours day by legislative action...'.
  12. ↑ therefore
  13. ↑ Tell Même that outwardly my nose looks perfect, but there's a cold inside.