London, 30 April 1852 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Frederic, 

You will receive at the same time as this letter a colossal parcel 
from America. Today I have also had a letter from Cluss, of which 
I give excerpts below, as I shall be needing it until next week, 

Dronke has arrived here sain et sauf.? I like him better than I - 
had feared. He has grown taller and has broadened out as well. 
This has also made him more self-possessed. For the present he 
hob-nobs with Anschiitz, who welcomed him with open arms. He 
is going to start up a small business, having contracted in Paris to 
sell cigar cases and purses over here. 10% commission. And, 
through Anschiitz, he will at once acquire the necessary connec- 
tions for this TRADE. 

He tells me that the ‘worthy’ Techow has sent character sketches 
of us to Switzerland in which he roundly inveighs against us and 

4 safe and sound 

you in particular. You have aroused the professional jealousy of 
the military, et je pense* that one day you will justify leurs 
pressentiments.” Further: from Geneva, Schily demanded that the 
gentlemen come to terms with us. This elicited an authoritative 
statement signed by Willich, Techow, Schapper and Schim- 
melpfennig in which, inter alia, it was pointed out that 1. there 
had been a complete break with this wholly impotent party; 
2. there are police spies in our midst who have been reporting 
everything to the Prussian government. 

I don’t know whether I have already told you, or whether you 
heard during your stay here,''? that Messrs Kinkel et Co. possess a 
mere 3,000 dollars in cash all told, that all respectable people such 
as Léwe of Calbe have all withdrawn, that relations between 
Willich on the one hand and Kinkel and Reichenbach on the other 
are very strained, and that the whole dungheap is in process of 
disintegration. 

You will receive the memorandum on Germany.* 

Yesterday the curs held a meeting of guarantors here and 
elected a definitive committee. Mr Ruge wrote a letter of protest. 
Willich was not present. From the start Reichenbach refused to 
have anything more to do with the filthy business. The committee 
will be paid. Those elected are Kinkel, Willich (doubtful that he’ll 
accept), Lowe of Calbe (will in any case refuse), Fickler, Ronge, 
Schiitz of Mainz and one other. They will make up the total from 
out of their own midst. In his letter, Ruge attacks Kinkel as an 
agent of the Prince of Prussia“ and a freemason. 

Here is a passage from Cluss’ letter: 

Huzel (not to be confused with Huzzelwitt), Cluss’ friend, 
[present as a guarantor] at Kinkel’s Cincinnati congress™ writes 
_and tells Cluss inter alia: 

‘Kinkel tried to floor me with vulgar invective against Marx and Engels. I 
succeeded in doing what I wanted, namely in cornering him so effectively that I 
shall have him at my mercy for some time to come. He tried to cover himself by 
obtaining my word of honour not to say anything about the incident or to write 
anything that would get him “into a stink”... In a letter to Anneke a certain 
Tellering scolds like a fishwife at Marx...’. 

Cluss himself goes on: 

‘In New York, at the inimitable meeting which I reported in my last letter, the 
numerous gymnastic clubs /20 constituted themselves a separate body and declared 

4 and I think -> their presentiments -¢ See this volume, p. 90.-4 Cf. this 
volume, p. 573. 

their support for my protest* and for Weydemeyer’s article? against Kinkel’s 
memorandum 121 

Apropos. I gave Bangya a few pen-sketches of the great German 
men in London for him to pass on to Szemere.'” This letter, I 
know not how, has been read to a German publisher without my 
name being mentioned. He is now asking for ‘character sketches’ 
of these gentlemen and, according to Bangya, is prepared to pay 
£25 for a few sheets. Anonymous or pseudonymous, of course. 
Well, qu’en penses-tu?“ We would really have to do a humorous 
piece of this kind together. I have some doubts. If you think I 
should take this crap on, you will have to make a compilation from 
my letters and anything else you have which may contain 
fragments on the peculiarities of these curs. At all events you 
would have to send me a few notes about Willich ‘in action’ '” and 
‘in Switzerland’. 

Among the things I am sending you, you will find the draft of 
an advertisement for an illustrated book of battle reports by old 
Szerelmey. He wants it gingered up a little and done into English 
as an advertisement, in return for which he promises each of us a 
copy of his work. Je crois que ¢a vaut la peine de faire un petit puff.’ 

As soon as I set eyes on Mr Carey’s first work in print I 
foresaw that he would bring out an economic work on the 
‘harmony of interests’.' 

Mais que dis-tu, mon cher, to the fact that, in the Janus we sent 
you, Ruge seeks—and how he seeks, mon Dieu!—to appropriate 
communism as the latest product of his ‘humanist thought’. 

Have you read the cock-fight between Harney and Jones?’ If 
not, I shall send you their mutual philippics." Both of them, the 
one voluntarily, the other involuntarily, descend to the level of 
German émigré polemics. 

Your 
K. M. 

a A. Cluss, ‘An den Garanten-Congress des deutschen Anleihens in Cincinnati. 
Washington, Jan. 23’, Turn-Zeitung, No. 6, 1 March 1852. - > J. Weydemeyer, ‘Die 
revolutionare Agitation unter der Emigration’, Turn-Zeitung, No. 6, 1 March 
1852. - < what do you think of it? -¢ I think it warrants the trouble of a little 
puff. - © H. Ch. Carey, Essay on the Rate of Wages...-£ H. Ch. Carey, The Harmony 
of Interests... In a letter of 15 April 1852 Cluss wrote Marx about the second edition 
of this book. - 8 But what, my dear fellow, do you say - » G. J. Harney, ‘To the 
Readers of The Star, and the Democrats of Great Britain and Ireland’, The Star, 
No. 753, 17 April 1852 and E. Jones, ‘An Appeal for the Judgment of the People’, 
Notes to the People, No. 52, 24 April 1852, 

5—-2736 

Have you ever read more egregious nonsense than B. Bauer’s 
article in the Tribune: ‘The Decline of England’? The passage most 
characteristic of the incorrigible old theologian runs as follows: 

‘While the English Parliament has hitherto persecuted the Romish policy, and 
availed itself of the popular impulses for the establishment of its sovereignty— 
while, in the old Romish spirit, it has taken advantage of internal domestic differences, 
as for example, the differences. of High Church, of Scotch Presbyterianism, and of Irish 
Catholicism, for the formation and development of its aristocratic art of 
Government, [...] it has now become a party to the Continental struggle between 
the peoples and the Governments, and it appears as the advocate for Con- 
stitutionalism at the very moment when that is approaching its undeniable 
downfall.’ 

If that’s not champion drivel, I don’t know what is.