| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 19 December 1893 |
ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE
AT LE PERREUX
London, 19 December 1893 122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
My dear Löhr, If I have not before replied to your letter of just a month ago, there were 2 causes for it:
1) because I was bound to finish, before Christmas, the final redaction[1]
of Section I-IV of Vol. III,[2] so as to be able to go to press at once after the new year. That is now done. By Easter I hope to have the whole of the Manuscript (2/3rds are still to be finally looked over) in the printer's hands, to be published in September.
2) because I had submitted to Bebel another plan[3] for the German translation, etc. of Paul's articles,[4] and was waiting for a reply. Nothing however has come of it and so, vogue la galère[5] on the present tack, which, as far as I can hear, has taken something like a final shape, and so it may be as well to leave things alone. Liebknecht is rather a queer customer to deal with in these matters of his redaction. We expect him here after the new year.
Now then, ein anderes Bild.[6] Yesterday we forwarded to you a box with the pudding, Paul's cake etc., grande vitesse[7] to be there about Wednesday or Thursday—Continental Daily Parcels Express, carriage paid, which, we hope, will arrive safely and suit your tastes. Bonnier ought to have a slice of the pudding for he came in for the stirring and he did stir it with might and main. He is improving vastly, shaking off his Germanisms and becoming actually French. Some time ago I went over to Oxford for a day, to look at the place and also at poor old Rote[8] Wolff[9] —your earliest admirer, for he admired you before you were 2 years old in Brussels. Poor devil, he is quite cracked again. He had written something about Bucher in the Neue Zeit,[10] and since then whenever a Wolf or Wolff (and you know they are as plentiful as the Smiths and Jones's) is alluded to, he imagines that this is meant for him, and so he makes it out that there is a complete conspiracy to pretend that he does not know Latin—and you know, not to know Latin is the awfullest crime a man can be guilty of in Oxford. But is it not a melancholy irony of fate, that one of the most spirituel[11] of men should end his career in the belief that he is the Massmann, not of a Heine, but of an imaginary conspiracy of second and third rate German literati! Then he is 81 years old—so, apart from other considerations, hardly any hope of recovery from this fixed idea which nobody can root out of his mind.
Your description of Guesde's elated status amused me very much.[12] I had seen something of it from the pompous proclamations he had issued from his new Jerusalem of the North, and was only glad they were not noticed by the bourgeois press abroad; contrasted with the part played by the French delegation at Zürich,[13] they might have served as groundwork for a lot of bad jokes. But le bon sens français quel quefois n'a pas le sens commun,[14] and that is just the beauty of it. Look at the parti socialiste in the Chamber. How long ago is it that Clara Zetkin in the Neue Zeit[15] made out 24 élus[16] ± socialistes, and that of the 12 elected on the Marxist program Paul did not know how many would turn up all right; and now, lo and behold, a parliamentary party of 54 socialist deputies which dashes into the majority like a brigade of cavalry, upsets one ministry and nearly dislocates another,[17] until this victorious career is all of a sudden, by Vaillant's bomb,[18] changed into a concentration to the rear, and the new members of the majority deprived of all the idealistic delusions they had brought with them from the provinces and turned into docile panamitard opportunists.[19]
Upon the whole I think it is rather useful to us. I cannot help imagining that amongst these 54 who have been many of them suddenly converted to what they call socialism, there cannot be that cohesion which is wanted for a serious fight. Let alone the old dissensions between the real old socialists de la veille[20] within the group, dissensions which it will take some time to overcome once for all. If this heterogeneous lot of 54 had been kept in the front rank of the chambre for any length of time, it must, either have split up, or else the old Radical wing—Millerand and Co.—must have become the determining element. As it is, time will be given to the various components of the group to make closer acquaintance with each other, to consolidate the group, and to eliminate, if necessary, one after another those elements which really have joined the group only by mistake. At all events, in the Dupuy—Casimir Périer campaign Millerand and Jaurès took the lead entirely, and that will never do in the long run, though I fully approve of Guesde and Vaillant having, so far, and under the present circumstances, kept in the background.
Paul's letters to the Vorwärts so far are very good, we look for them every week. And they are not quite so badly germanised as I have seen others done.
That Feuerbach must have given you a deal of trouble.[21] But from what I have seen of your work, I feel certain you have 'taken' all obstacles 'flying', to use a bit of hunting language. Have you got a publisher for it?
Will you accept the enclosed cheque £5.- for a Christmas box? Louise is out shopping in a steady rain—that Christmas will cost her dear in colds and toothache.
Love from her and yours ever
F.E.
Kind regards to Paul who I suppose is happy to be out of parliament again.