{Manchester,| 4 October 1852 
48 Great Ducie Street 

Dear Marx, 

Encl. £2. 10. -. Give the 10/- to Dronke, who has searched out a 
very valuable Slav book for me—the amount by which he beat 
the fellow down is his commission for the discovery; puisqu'il’tl est 
commergant, il faut le traiter selon les principes du commerce.“ But tell 

zur schnellen Erlernung der vier slavischen Hauptsprachen. - © Since he’s a businessman 
he has to be treated in accordance with business principles. 

him to go and post the book to me at once in a plain wrapper like 
a newspaper, with 6 srames if it weighs less than a pound, and 12 
stamps if it weighs more, N.B., if it’s 1 volume; otherwise 6 stamps 
for each volume, in which case it would be best to send it in a 
parcel, unstamped, by Pickford & Co. or Carver & Co. If you can 
discover Carver & Co’s office (I believe they are known down 
there as Chaplin, Horne & Carver or Chaplin, Horne & Co.), it 
had best go through them to Friedrich Engels, care or Ermen & 
Engels—they are our carriers. Indeed, this is always the best way 
to send me parcels. 

As soon as I can see my way somewhat more clearly this month, 
you shall get more. There are a few debts to be paid, how many I 
don’t yet know. On this will depend how much I can send you. 

Weerth is in Bradford. He won't be here for a week, yet. 

Le roman Pindar prend une tournure tout a fait bourgeoise” The 
poor boy is already suffering from remorse. Because I have given 
him no news of his wife and mother since the fifteenth of September, 
he is bombarding me with letters and threatening to write to them 
direct for news! The fellow seems to imagine that J spend all my 
days there, as though the Finnish features and Scandinavian- 
Germanic heart of his cold-blooded better half were as bewitching 
to me as they were and still are to him. By his evasion,’ Master 
Pindar had once more gone up a little in my estimation, but these 
letters bring him right down again. He is a Slav through and 
through, sentimental in his frivolity and even in his beastliness, 
servile and arrogant; and he has nothing of the Englishman save 
in exaggerated—-being a Russian, he must exaggerate— 
taciturnity. Recently the fellow had grown somewhat more 
garrulous, yet when the long-closed sluice gates finally opened, 
nothing came out but fadaise* On top of that the lovelorn Pindar 
has exceedingly unsavoury appetites and likes nothing better than 
to discuss unnatural discoveries. He’s wholly uncultivated and 
withal pedantic, knowing absolutely nothing except a language or 
two; en matiére de science? even the most ordinary mathematics, 
physics and other school subjects, and especially in history of the 
most elementary kind, he is utterly ignorant. Ce n’est que son silence 
acharné qui ait pu faire croire qu'il soit profond He is ni plus ni 
moins’ than a little Russian bourgeois with the appetites of the 

4 Pindar’s romance is taking an altogether bourgeois turn. - > running 
away - © fiddle-faddle - 4 in the field of science - © It’s only his obstinate silence 
which has lent him a semblance of profundity. - f neither more nor less 

Russian nobility, lazy, dilettante, soft-hearted, would-be blasé and 
at the same time, alas, a born pedagogue. For as long as I could, I 
tried to maintain a good opinion of the fellow, but it can’t be 
done. What can one say of an individual who, on reading Balzac’s 
fiction for the first time (and the Cabinet des antiques and Père 
Goriot at that) considers it infinitely beneath him and dismisses it 
with the utmost contempt as something commonplace and quite 
unoriginal, yet a week after running away, and apparently in all 
seriousness, writes from London to his deserted wife in the 
following platitudious terms: ‘My pearest Iba, APPEARANCES ARE AGAINST 
ME, BUT BELIEVE ME, MY HEART IS STILL ENTIRELY Yours!’ There you have the 
fellow in a nutshell. Though the Swede may possess his heart, as is 
proved also by his letters to me, he intends that no one but the 
Frenchwoman shall be presented with his cock. So far as he is 
concerned, the real piquancy of the whole affair lies in this clash, 
this Slavonic, sentimental, vulgar contradiction. The Swede, 
however, has much more sense; she tells anyone who will listen 
that he can do what he likes with his heart provided he keeps his 
carnality at home. Besides, the fellow’s lack of ideas and worldly 
wisdom contrast ludicrously with the spiritual pretensions he 
harbours as a Russian. He has understood neither the Manifesto* 
nor Balzac; of that he has given me ample and frequent proof. He 
doesn’t know German, no doubt of that, since he fails to 
understand the simplest things. I also greatly doubt whether he 
knows French. Once the mystére with which he held one’s interest 
has gone, nothing remains but une existence manquée. Yet in his 
letters the fellow tries to spin out the mystere that has long since 
been unveiled; it’s ridiculous. You'll see! Within three months 
gospodin Pindar will be back again, bon fils, bon époux, bon bourgeois, 
plus taciturne que jamais,’ and will continue as before to squander 
what remains of his mother’s fortune without making the slightest 
attempt to set his hand to anything or study anything. And a 
fellow like that goes and runs away with an experienced 
Parisienne—she’ll make him rue the day. 

The latest story about the truthful Willich’s falsehood is good 
indeed.“ 

aK. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. - > wasted existence - 
¢ Mr-4a good son, a good husband, a good bourgeois, more taciturn than 
ever - © See this volume, p. 195. 

I am also writing to Dronke so that the book will not get lost.” 

Your 
F. E.