[London,] 5 October [1859] 

Dear Engels, 

In view of the way things are managed here (Speck has gone 
bankrupt and disappeared; Garthe, the cashier, is in Brighton) 
and always have been managed so far as the Volk is concerned, it 
is impossible to obtain an accurate account 4s To foreign [out-of- 
town] susscrisers during the pre-Lessner period. Biskamp maintains 
that, with the exception of the very first issues, Thimm was always 
sent a dozen copies. 

Hollinger is suing me for £12 and a couple of shillings arrears 
in respect of Das Volk, together with the type for the last issue, 
which did not appear. The dirty dog is trying to make out all of a 
sudden that I’m the ‘proprietor’, although the whole business, I 
won't say foundered (for your philistine here is a_ hopeless 
proposition), but closed down with a deficit because I wasn’t the 
proprietor and was unable to knock the slipshod management into 
shape despite all the time I spent on it. Still less did I ever give the 
chap a legal guarantee. I think his account is wrong, for apart 
from the other moneys received, the fellow had had £7 from me 
for the 3 penultimate issues alone (his account covers the last 2 
issues).— The 15/- for Lessner did not go through his hands but 
was paid direct by me.— However, I’m not going to engage in any 
controversy on the subject since I. would thereby immediately 
acknowledge his right to sue me. The dirty dog will swear on oath 
and get one of his type-setters to swear on oath that I gave a 
guarantee. (Even were this the case he should have sued Biskamp 
first.) I shall call in Biskamp, etc., to give counter-evidence. Had I 
the means, I should have avoided all public proceedings, not by 
paying Hollinger, but by buying the debt he incurred with one 
Lisle, Hollinger’s Lanptorp and owner of the press. Hollinger owes 
this man some £60 and has never paid him a farthing. 

But circumstances being what they are, there can be no question 
of anything of the kind. 

Unless I bring off some sort of coup—and I simply cannot see 
how I can do so—my position will become completely untenable. 
Freiligrath made another attempt at negotiating a bill. But 

yesterday evening, at the same time as threatening letters from the 
LANDLORD, etc., etc., a letter arrived from him saying it was definitely 
no go. The enclosed letter from Lassalle, which I answered by 
return,’ looks like good news to me. The thing? appears to be 
selling despite the conspiration de silence. Otherwise I wouldn’t have 
received this indirect request from Duncker. J shall, by the by, be 
totally incapable of going on with the thing *” until I’ve CLEARED up 
the worst of the domestic mess d’une maniére ou d’une autre. Your 
articles on my affair have been reprinted in German papers from 
New York to California (with the tiny little Volk we hooked the 
whole of the German-American press). To show you the kind of 
rubbish that’s appearing in Germany, I enclose a cutting of the 
advertisements in the Vienna Presse. Il suffit to reap the index. (By 
THE By, 1am giving lectures about the first instalment to a select circle 
of artisans.‘ It seems to interest the chaps a great deal.**) 

Lastly, a report on two ‘great men’.°*” 

Ad vocem R. Schramm. Some while ago this pitiful blockhead 
was in Ostend, whence he sent a contribution to the Hermann* 
Not that I’m in the habit of reading that trashy sheet; I heard 
about this through Freiligrath. In his contribution R. Schramm 
declares that one could gauge the depths to which the Germans 
had sunk simply by listening to their conversations on the beach. 
Thus he had, for instance, overheard two ladies chattering away in 
broad Wuppertal accents and one of them had addressed the 
other as ‘Mrs Engels’. So that’s the kind of revenge this wretch 
takes! But by way of retribution the blockhead recently lost £2,000 
(teste' Freiligrath), having, like a fool, entered the ‘precious stones 
business’. This had, moreover, frustrated his scheme of starting a 
German paper of his own in London (was to have come out this 
month). To the chap’s intense annoyance and as a riposte to his 
childish Mauicz, I got Biskamp to see that the Fracrs—non- 
appearance of the paper, gem trade and loss of money—were 
published in the Weser-Zeitung. 

Ad vocem K. Blind. With regard to this homme d’état, I must go 
into greater detail. 

About a fortnight after my return to London from Manchester, 
Biskamp told me that Blind had proposed, through Hollinger, 
that he (i.e. Das Volk) amalgamate with Blind and company but 

a See this volume, pp. 497-99. - > K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political 
Economy. - < one way or another - 4 F. Engels, ‘Karl Marx. A Contribution to the 
Critique of Political Economy’.-© It suffices-{ Marx has: Knoten.- & As to - 
h [C. Schramm,] ‘Ostende 31. August’, Hermann, No. 36, 10 September 1859 
(‘Vermischte Nachrichten’). - i witness 

that I, and the communist element generally, must go. In our 
stead —sensible socialism. At that time I had, as you know, written 
nothing for the Volk save for a pleasantry or two.* However, I 
forthwith wrote Blind, not a letter, but a communication of about 10 
tines “** in which I called him amongst other things an ‘homme 
d’état’ and an ‘important man’, and alluded to his henchman 
‘Fidelio’? (i.e. Hollinger). Next day along comes Liebknecht, and 
tells me that Blind and Hollinger are sitting in the pub on the 
corner. The former, he said, was expecting me. I therefore went 
there with Liebknecht. Blind gave his word of honour that there 
was nothing in the thing. That swine Hollinger ditto. Hence I 
could only believe them. However, the meeting gave me a chance 
of finding out about other machinations of Blind’s. Inter alia, the 
conversation came round to Vogt. Blind assured me on his word of 
honour (as he had already assured Freiligrath, though omitting his 
word of honour) that he had neither written the anonymous Zur 
Warnung nor launched it upon the world. I said this surprised me, 
since it contained no more than what he had told me by word of 
mouth on the occasion of Urquhart’s meeting on 9 May. I 
reminded him that he had assured me at the time that he 
possessed tangible evidence, knew the name of the man to whom 
Vogt had offered 30,000 or 40,000 gulden, but ‘unfortunately’ could 
not divulge it, etc. Well, Blind hadn’t the face to deny this but 
expressly admitted it more than once in Liebknecht’s and 
Hollinger’s presence. 

Writ! A few weeks ago the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung wrote 
to Liebknecht, who had sent them Zur Warnung. Liebknecht came 
to me.*” I told him to go and find Blind, and that I should await 
the homme d’état ‘in the pub at Blind’s corner’. Blind was at some 
resort—St. Leonard’s, I think. Liebknecht wrote to him; wrote 
once, twice. At last a letter from the homme d’état. In the coolest 
and most ‘diplomatic’ manner the latter regretted that ‘I’ should 
have called to see him in vain. Liebknecht, he went on, must 
understand that he (Blind) had no desire to intervene in the 
affairs of a ‘paper with which he had absolutely nothing to do’ and 
in a matter with which he had absolutely nothing to do. As for 
Liebknecht’s allusions to ‘remarks’ let fall ‘in the course of a 
private conversation’, these could only be attributed to a ‘complete’ 
misunderstanding. And that, or so the ‘homme d’état’ imagined, was 
that. 

* Marx means his reviews published in the section ‘Gatherings from the 

Press’. - » Fidelio—the assumed name of Leonore, heroine of Beethoven’s opera 
Fidelio.