{[London,] 7 September 1853 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Frederic, 

Your letter did, indeed, arrive too late.*”' I condensed the stuff? 
by cutting out unnecessary pathos, tidied it up a bit, and sent it to 
the amiable organ of the united ‘uicensep vicruatters’ on Monday. 
Not inserted. At the same time, however, this highly consistent 
paper published a short letter ‘From a native Correspondent’ (presum- 
ably D. Urquhart) in its Monday issue, in which its own ‘Foreicn 
CorresponvENT’ was quite plainly unmasked as a ‘Russian acent’, while 

4 See previous letter. - > The Morning Advertiser 

Bakunin himself was not exactly made out to be a saint.* Probably 
The Morning Advertiser rejected my _ riposte*'? because less 
confused than that of the ‘Native’. Now the thing is to come out in 
The People’s Paper. 

It was through a mere lapsus linguae‘—out of long habit—that I 
mentioned Mr Dronke in my letter to. you. I don’t believe that 
‘little’ Blanqui’s* words are of any consequence, or that we shall 
gain anything by an appendix. 

The worthy litthe man has stirred up such a mighty pother that 
1. Lupus has never said a word to me about his departure,*” 
although I had long since learnt of it through you; 2. that this 
same Lupus is always very guarded in his references to you; 3. that 
last night I was treated to a scene which was hardly creditable. 

I was busy at work. Wife and children in the room. In comes 
Lupus with portentous tread—to take his leave at last, I supposed, 
for not once in my house had he let fall a word about his 
impending departure. 

A year earlier I had borrowed a little Spanish grammar from 
him, by Franceson, maybe 120 pages. So far as I could recall, I had 
returned the trashy object 5 months before. Or else, Dronke had 
pinched it. 

The old gentleman had already asked my wife and Lenchen 
about the thing on two previous occasions and had been told that 
they would look for it. 

Last night, then—the fellow was snappish from the moment he 
came in—I told him in as soothing tones as possible that I 
couldn’t find the damned thing, that I had looked for it 
everywhere and believed I had returned it to him, etc., etc. 
‘You’ve sold it!’ came the boorish, uncouth, insolent reply. (I’d 
wager a sovereign that nowhere in London could anyone get 2 
farthings for the rubbish.) I, of course, jump to my feet, an 
altercation ensues, stubborn as a mule he persists in his nonsense, 
insults me ‘au sein de ma famille’.’ As you know, I’m willing to put 
up with a great deal from an old man in his dotage who has 
become venerable as a party tradition. However, there are limits. I 
believe the old fool was taken aback when at last I bared my teeth 
at him. 

All this is the result of Dronke’s intrigues, too constant an 

aD. Urquhart, ‘Indeed? [From a native correspondent,] The Morning Advertiser, 
No. 19408, 5 September 1853. -> K. Marx, ‘To the Editor of The People’s 
Paper’. - © slip of the tongue - 4 i.e. Dronke’s - ¢ C. F. Franceson, Grammatik der 
spanischen Sprache. -' in the bosom of my family. 

indulgence in gin, and the evaporation of the cerebral juices. 
Perhaps the sea air will have a beneficial effect on his thinking 
organ. One may, perhaps, lay claim to the privilege of being an 
‘old blusterer’, but one should not abuse it. My own lot is no bed 
of roses, nor can I in consequence regard his worldly worries as an 
EXCUSE. 

The hobby-horse presently being ridden by those wretched 
Russians, in both the Tribune and the London Advertiser (though 
differing in person and form), is that the Russian people is 
democratic through and through, whilst official Russia (Csar and 
bureaucracy) is exclusively German, likewise the aristocracy.*” 

So Germany must be fought in Russia, not Russia in Germany. 

You know more about Russia than I do,—and if you can find 
time to challenge this nonsense (it’s just the same as when the 
Teutonic jackasses blamed the French for the despotism of 
Frederick II, etc., as if backward thralls haven’t always needed 
civilised thralls to train them) you would greatly oblige me. In the 
Tribune, of course. 

Your 
K. M. 

Write to me at greater length about the state of commerce—in 
English at once. 

I have made a diplomatic reply to the enclosed letter from 
Klein, which I send to you for safe keeping.*** It is impossible to 
correspond from London. The factory workers should keep 
themselves entirely to themselves and not make contact with 
philistines or other handicraftsmen in Cologne, Dusseldorf, etc. If 
they wish to send someone over here once a year to get good 
advice, we should have no objection.