MARX TO ADOLF CLUSS” 

London, 25 March 18537 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Cluss, 

Your complaints about our (or at least my) laziness in the matter 
of writing are not wuo.ty justified. I used to write—save when 
ill—once a week. It was you who first replaced this with a 
different system, and often just sent newspapers in the interval 
instead of letters. There are aut in att 3 letters from you that have 
remained unanswered. Of those 3, two came on the same day, one 
enclosed with the money sent to Freiligrath, one direct to myself. 
Hence, only 2 unanswered letters.*” If you go back to writing 
once every week, whether at length or briefly, I too will again 
adopt this regular manner. Or rather, I shall do so without waiting. 
But then I shall expect the same of you. 

Schabelitz has now written to me at length. He had printed the 
Revelations pamphlet 2 months ago and, for the space of 5 weeks, 
left it lying at Weil, a Baden village on the other side of the 
border. Instead of posting a reliable man there, the jackass went 
and left everything to the smuggler who, having gradually 
extracted from him a substantial sum of money, ended up by 
giving himself away to the Baden government. The rest you will 
have seen in the last issue of the Tribune.” But you will be even 
more convinced of the interest taken by the Prussian government 
in this pamphlet, and hence of its importance to the ‘Fatherland’, 
when I tell you that the heroic Stieber has not only become 
police superintendent in Berlin but is co-opted onto every 
ministerial council concerned with precautionary measures against 
revolutionaries and revolutionary activities. I am almost beside 
myself with anger at the pamphlet’s temporary suppression. You 
for your part would not appear to have handled matters on this 
occasion with your usual felicity. The Neu-England-Zeitung may 
take a year to get it out by thus printing it in dribs and drabs,*” 
whereas it devotes whole columns to the ‘figure de fouine™ of the 
wretched Ruge who, over here, has still not succeeded in acquiring 

a In the original, 1852.-& K. Marx, ‘Kossuth and Mazzini.—Intrigues of the 
Prussian Government. Austro-Prussian Commercial Treaty.— The Times and the 
Refugees’. - © weasel-like features 

more than a ‘strictly circumscribed train’ of 5 persons. Why didn’t 
you put the thing into the Demokrat, a much more widely read organ, 
to which you yourself contribute? Next time you write you must 
tell me frankly whether or not the thing can be produced as a 
pamphlet in America. It would be for European consumption and 
would be tossed into Prussia via Hamburg. If I were not utterly 
devoid of means I would arrange for it to be printed in Altona 
forthwith. It is not partiality to the little lampoon, but my perfect 
knowledge of conditions in Prussia which prompts me to say that, 
at the present moment, we could deal our beloved Prussians no 
more telling blow. 

Don’t lose sight of that blackguard Willich. He is the most rabid 
of enemies and an idiot into the bargain. 

Pulszky has not come among you simply to engage in high 
politics. He has also been sent across the ocean for the purpose of 
appeasing General Vetter who, having become opisarrecTep, is 
intriguing from America against the ‘creat Kossuth’. To my 
amazement I see in the Daily Tribune, received from you today, 
that it has accepted my attacks upon Kossuth-Mazzini.* I had 
thought this highly improbable, the more so since Greeley’s 
WHITE-RED-BLACK FRIEND, the Jew Pulszky,” is over there. 

Szemere wrote to me from Paris giving me the news I published 
in the Tribune, namely that there had been a lengthy conference 
between Kossuth and his Parisian parrisans about his now ‘Disowned 
PROCLAMATION’© and that they forced the miserable little man to 
make a disavowal. 

Barthélemy, Willich’s friend, whom you will remember from his 
duel with Schramm*” (the latter, by the by, lives in Cincinnati 
whence he has written once), has received a 2 months’ sentence 
for fighting a duel on English soil in the course of which he killed 
Courné*He got off so lightly, despite thé sordid pisctosures which 
were made during the trial, because according to English law, 
seconds are punished as severely as duellists and also because they 
didn’t want to make the poor devil pay the full penalty for what 
he had done. The fellow had the effrontery when in prison to 
have a message sent to Ledru saying that as soon as he came out 
he would shoot him down like a dog. Ledru replied that he would 

aK. Marx, ‘The Attack on Francis Joseph—The Milan Riot.—British Politics.— 
Disraeli’s Speech.— Napoleon’s Will’. - > An allusion to F. and Th. Pulszky, White, 
Red, Black Sketches of Society in the United States During the Visit of Their Guest, Vols. 
1-3, London, 1853. - © K. Marx, ‘Forced Emigration.— Kossuth and Mazzini—The 
Refugee Question.—Election Bribery in England.—Mr. Cobden’s (see also this 
volume, p. 280). 

not exchange shots with such a scoundrel. Barthélemy: He was very 
well able to induce a man to exchange shots with him by boxing 
his ears in the open street, and other such tested methods. Ledru 
(riposte): That being so, he would regale him with his stick. 

The winsome warrior, Schimmelpfennig, has inherited £1,000 
sterling* from the Briiningk woman. Indeed, Monsieur le Lieuten- 
ant had appointed himself to the post of sycophant, nursery-maid, 
fan-bearer, political oracle, companion, admirer, boots, and any 
other agreeable function you may care to name. 

Reichenbach wants to go to America, as does—up to a point— 
Kalb of Léwe,” the first as a farmer, the second as a doctor. 

In the West, the most important, if least conspicuous event, has 
been the burial of Madame Raspail in Paris*. The unexpected 
turn-out of 20,000 proletarians tn Full press utterly dumbfounded 
the Bonapartists. So you can see that the proletarian lion isn’t 
dead. For Ledru, too, the event was a most bitter pill. Raspail is 
his arch-enemy. 

One more racr. Don’t blame me if it is unaesthetic. The ‘blonde 
souveraine’, Montijo-Lola,* is subject to a most repellent constitu- 
tional complaint—incessant farting. It is known as tympop- 
tanomania. Formerly she used to combat the ‘accent’ with 
energetic horse-riding which Bonaparte has now forbidden her on 
the grounds that it is beneath her station. Thus at several ‘réunions’ 
her ‘détonations fortes’* have even brought blushes to the cheeks of 
braided Décembraillards.' And that is saying a great deal. Ce n’est 
quun petit bruit, un murmure, un rien; mais enfin, vous savez que les 
Frangais ont le nez au plus petit vent” 

In a year at the most you will, I think, be with us. Les choses 
marchent.' 

Your 
K. M.