[London,] 10 January 1861 

Dear Engels, 

Yesterday I received the enclosed scrap of paper and thus can 
no longer avoid paying the agents £2 5/- for the books.** In 
addition, the Transport thereof to my house will cost about 10/-. Duty 
has been waived. I'd certainly not write to you about this nasty 
matter, but dura necessitas,* since I haven’t a farthing. 

Overleaf you will find a copy of a scrawl penned by H. Beta at 
Gottfried Kinkel’s behest on the subject of Herr Vogt. 

Your 
K. M. 

Magazin für Literatur des Auslands. 1861. No. 2. 

‘Herr Vogt-—by Karl Marx. In the early years of the “refugees”, many a little 
sum was doubtless expended on getting secret police to smell out frightful secrets 
and conspiracies. While the labour was great, the yield was rather pitiful. But as 
regards the fear inspired in many a refugee by the secret police, it was indeed quite 
desperate. Some men actually went mad as a result. Others, it is true, liked to boast 
about this fear, and to let all and sundry know that almost every state in Europe 
had assigned special spies to them. Boasting it was, not hypochondria. The devil in 
person eluded the notice of these small fry, even when he had them by the scruff 
of the neck. They ate and drank with him, entertained him as a friend at their 
tea-tables, and never noticed that his only object was to betray them,—not for 30 
pieces of silver, not he! He was prepared to pay, and pay a lot, for the printing of 
this pamphlet with his own money. For ten years now the said Mr Karl Marx would 
seem to have laboured and snooped and nabbed letters and copied them so that he 
might appear on his own account and for his own delectation as the first among all 
your Vidocgs and Stiebers. All the long-forgotten rubbish and mistakes perpetrated 
by the emigration ten years since have been made use of, copied, extracted from 
friends over a cup of tea—not that one would wish to pillory the latter. In the 
space of ten years, any man, whether a refugee or not, is liable to write something 
nonsensical or over-hasty in private, counting on the discretion of friends, on its 
being swept away in the flow of time. But when friends carefully glean these 
occasional slips and snippets and deck them out with whimsy, thus raising a cloud 
of dust and filth, as in Mr Marx’s pamphlets, when, for example, things uttered in an 
agitated hour ten years since>—(voila Godofredum)‘—are printed in bold so that 
one sees Mr Marx's desire to make a ribaldry, a disgusting little anecdote out of 

« hard necessity - * Marx's italics. - © That’s Gottfried (Marx’s remark). 

146. Marx to Ferdinand Lassalle. 16 January 186] 245 

them,—then indeed everyone deserves to be pilloried. Mr Marx is a master of 
constructive denunciation. Vidocq, Ohm, Stieber, etc., are mere lambs by 
comparison. Many will delight in wading through this churned-up filth, for it is 
masterly calumny?; but we would urge caution on our readers: in the simian 
wilderness there are malicious baboons who, for want of other weapons, resort to 
ordure with which they bombard friend and foe alike. Beware: Throughout almost 
the whole of his 190 pages Mr Marx engages in this type of strategy, a type which 
eschews all expenditure on ammunition. Read it, by all means, but keep close at 
hand a basin of water and strong soap, not forgetting your smelling bottle! 

H. B, 

Such is Gottfried’s Beta (Betziche), former editor of Drucker’s 
How Do You Do, and Gottfried’s eulogistic arse-crawler in the 
Gartenlaube, etc. A fine crew! What a style and what nonsense!