[Manchester,] Sunday, 10 October 1852 

Dear Marx, 

I am fed up with the perpetual delays over the pamphlet.’ 
Month after month we are told it will appear and it never does. 
One excuse after another is trotted out and then dropped. Finally 
it is said to be definitely coming out at Michaelmas. La Trinité se 
passe, Marlbrough ne revient pas.’ Quite the contrary, for now we 
hear the man is dead and Bangya doesn’t know what has become 

aK. Marx and F. Engels, The Great Men of the Exile.-» Trinity goes by but 
Marlbrough does not return (from a French satirical song composed during the 
War of the Spanish Succession). 

of the manuscript. It’s too maddening. We must at long last insist 
on being told the plain truth. The thing’s getting more suspicious 
every day. I don’t, and you certainly don’t, want our joint work to 
fall into the wrong hands. We wrote it for the benefit of the 
public, and not for the private delectation of the police in Berlin 
or anywhere else, and if Bangya proves intractable, I intend to act 
off my own bat. Our clerk Charles,* whom you know, is going to 
the Continent next week, via Hamburg and Berlin. I have asked 
him to inquire carefully into the matter in Berlin and, if the week 
he is spending there should not suffice, to enlist the help of our 
local agent. But I'll wager that we'll see what’s at the bottom of this 
stink. What is all this about Eisermann or Eisenmann, the 
bookseller of whom there is no trace whatever in the directory of 
booksellers? But tracking down the ‘editor of the former 
Constitutionelle Zeitung’ should not prove difficult. If things 
aren’t in order, it is absolutely essential that we make a public 
statement, and that in all the more widely read German papers, so 
that the same trick won’t be played on us as was played on Blanqui 
with the piéce Taschereau.”* As for Bangya’s mystery-mongering, 
it is, in this instance at least, utterly uncalled-for, and having, for 
my part, had enough of tergiversation, I shall now take what steps 
I think fit. 

Papa Kinkel is coming up here to give German lectures under 
the auspices of third and fourth rate poetical Jews. Cela sera beau. 
The secretary of the Athenaeum” tried to induce me to subscribe 
with the remark: ‘WHEREVER THERE WAS SOMETHING LIKE A CHEQUERED LIFE, 
WERE IT ONLY AN ESCAPE FROM A SHIPWRECK OR SO, THERE WAS ALWAYS A NATURAL AND 
FAIR GROUND FOR SYMPATHY, Voila les arguments qu’on emploie pour lui 
mendier un auditoire.” 

No other news. Write and tell me if you hear anything more 
about the affair of the pamphlet, but it’s hardly likely to affect my 
decision respecting Charles. Warmest regards to your wife and 
children. 

Your 
F. E.