AT LE PERREUX 

London, 13 June 1891 

My dear Laura, 

Tam sure I do not know how to thank you for the trouble you have 
taken with Ravé’s blundering work. '9° I was rather surprised at your 
heroism in tackling it altogether; I sent you his specimen of Bebel, * 
and my notes, showing exactly the same class of mistakes and slovenly 
renderings — though not in such perfection — as in your anthology. 
May ‘la génération infame’ pursue him like the Erinnyes pursued Ores- 
tes! 

Anyhow, I have just finished the introduction to the new edition 
which I shall send to Kautsky for the Neue Zeit if he likes to have it.” 
But before sending it off there is one point on which I should like to be 
sure. I state Bachofen’s new discoveries to be these: 1) hétairisme as he 
calls it, 2) Mutterrecht,© as its necessary corollary, 3) women conse- 
quently held in high esteem in ancient times, and 4) that the transi- 
tion to monogamy, where the woman belonged exclusively to one 
man, involved the violation of the ancient traditional right of the 

2 A. Bebel, Die Frau in der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft and La Femme dans le 
passé, le présent & Vavenir. Traduction frangaise par Henri Ravé.-” See this volume, 
pp. 199, 204.-° mother right 

other men to the same woman, a violation which had to be atoned 
for, or the toleration of which had to be purchased, by surrendering 
the woman for a limited period of time. * 

Now as to this point No. 4 I am not quite certain. You have no idea 
what thieves these prehistoric bookmakers are, and therefore all I re- 
collect that somewhere 1 have found Bachofen quoted as the discoverer 
of this fact, and I believe even a reference to Mutterrecht, preface 
p. XTX. But I cannot find it again. Now as you have my copy of Bacho- 
fen with you, would you mind (unless you remember it without look- 
ing) referring and letting me know whether I am, generally speak- 
ing, justified in attributing this discovery to Bachofen? It is so long 
since I have looked at the book, and as in defence of Morgan’s claims 
I have to be rather severe on a lot of his exploiters, I should not like 
them to catch me in the wrong box. As soon as I have your answer, 
the ms. can go off and then Ravé can have a proof-sheet to go on with. 

I had to read the whole literature on the subject (which entre nous‘ 
I had not done when I wrote the book— with a cheek worthy of my 
younger days) and to my great astonishment I find that I had guessed 
the contents of all these unread books pretty correctly — a good deal 
better luck than I had deserved. My contempt against the whole 
set-— Bachofen and Morgan excepted — has considerably increased. 
There is no science where cliqueism and camaraderie are more 
dominant, and as the set is small, it can be carried on internationally 
and with success. Giraud Teulon‘ is as bad and as great an approp- 
riator of other people’s ideas as any Englishman amongst them. The 
only amusing fellow is Létourneau.* What a charming specimen of 
the Parisian philistine! And with what splendid self-complacency he 
proves to his own most intense satisfaction, that not only all the pre- 
historic tribes and present savages, in spite of all their ‘exces’ généti- 
ques’' as he calls it, are Parisian philistines at least, but so are, too, 
even the animals of the brute creation! The whole animated world 
one immense ‘Marais’ and boulevard du Temple, peopled by either 
contributors or readers of what the Siècle used to be under Louis Phi- 
lippe, and the greatest authority on les origines du mariage et de la fa- 
mille-— Paul de Kock! 

* The text of Point 4) is in German in the original.-” J.J. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht. 
Eine Untersuchung tiber die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen 
Natur. -° between ourselves-% See this volume, p. 193.-* Ch. Létourneau, L’évolution 
du mariage et de la famille. In: Bibliotheque anthropologique, Vol.VI.-' sexual exces- 
ses- aristocratic district in Paris 

De* Létourneau (evidently of the breed of le petit étourneau d’ Amé- 
rique —icterus pecoris—— qui change de femelle au jour le jour,” p. 33) to 
Rave i n’y a guére un pas.“ Ravé has a publisher, Carré, rue St André 
des Arts, could not that man be got to publish the new edition of the 
Misére de la philosophie? To hear Ravé, he seems very enterprising in 
our line. 

I send you The Workman’s Times regularly. It is the only working- 
class paper belonging to working people. It was started by the Northern 
Factory hands etc. and originally published at Huddersfield; now its 
headquarters are in London. It is a non-political paper, that is to say 
at goes in for the formation of an independent working men’s party and Labour 
representation in all elective bodies. It is over-crowded with detail in- 
formation, but giving facts. There is a regular crop of ‘Labour’ pa- 
pers: The Trade Unionist, by Tom Mann— soft like Mann himself, 
who, for a Mann, ‘ has one n too much in English and one too little in 
German; nice sincere fellow as he otherwise is, as far as a man without 
backbone can be so. Then The Worker’s Cry, by Frank Smith, late So- 
cial Wing, Salvation Army. 75° Then The Labour World, founded 
and abandoned by Michael Davitt and brought to speedy grief and 
extinction by Massingham, once of The Star. I shall send you speci- 
mens of these if they live. 

Longuet’s behaviour seems indeed worse than incomprehensible. 
At all events it is a good job for poor Mémé‘ that she is with you 
again. For the rest you leave us in the dark. Sz Longuet s’est refait une 
jeunesse auprés de Marie, Marie a-t-elle réussit & se refaire une virginité en 
méme temps?‘ And how are the boys getting on? What’s to become of 
them while he is gallivanting at Caen? How about the Conseil de Fa- 
mille? etc., etc. 

Louise keeps rummaging up all the papers, pamphlets, newspaper 
cuttings, etc., etc., brought over here from Maitland Park." The let- 
ters are in tolerable order. Lassalle’s will be published in Germa- 
ny ?°°; Bernstein is now using them for an introduction to Lassalle’s 
works !78 to be published by the party. The Lassalleans will not like 
it, but since Liebknecht has taken Lassalle’s party so much in the Vor- 

* From-? little American starlings—icterus pecoris—who change females every 
day. - © there’s only one step-* A pun in the original: Engels compares the English 
‘man’ with the German ‘Mann’.-° Jenny Longuet, daughter of Jenny and Charles 
Longuet-‘ If Longuet has recaptured his youth next to Marie, has Marie managed to 
recapture her virginity at the same time?- Jean, Edgar and Marcel Longuet - 
h Marx’s last residence 

warts, | am determined to have it out, and to use their own Lassalle- 

veneration as the peg whereupon to hang a criticism of the man. 
Sam Moore suffers off and on from African fever here — has gone 

into the country. Very little news from Jollymeier. Salut a Paul. 
Grüsse von Louise. 

Dein alter* 

F.E.