MARX TO ENGELS” 

{London,} 11 December 1858 

Dear Engels, 

Can you let me have an account of Bright’s mezrinc by Tuesday, 
so worded as to make it clear That THE WRITER wAs AT MANCHESTER? 

Herewith Kinkeliana.*”’ Freiligrath seems to think that, because 
the Kinkel woman has broken her neck, her husband has become 
a great man, or at very least a noble one. So melodramatically did 
Kinkel organise the funeral—with ‘trembling hand’ and ‘laurel 
wreath’, etc.—that Freiligrath, who could not wring from his lyre a 
single note of sorrow for the ‘tragic’ events, either in his own party 
(as at Daniels’ death) or in the world ceneratty (Cayenne, Orsini 
AND sO For RTH), suddenly goes and hymns the wretched humbug. 
From The Daily Telegraph cutting you will see how the coterie is 
exploiting the death of the nasty, ‘acrimonious shrew’ (for such 
was the affected, speciously clever, essentially coarse personage 
whose meanness was Glaringly displayed in, e.g., her ingratitude to 
Strodtmann and to Mrs von Briiningk once she had squeezed the 
latter dry, etc.) in just the same way as the creature herself 
exploited ‘Kinkel’s HAT, SHOT THROUGH AND THROUGH’, and wrote to 
Germany from London: *‘Have you an idea what it is to be 
looked upon as a sort of mother to all emigrants?’ * That was what 

a E. Bauer, ‘PreuSens constitutioneller Imperialismus’, Die Neue Zeit, No. 22, 27 
November 1858. - > [G. Struve,] ‘Bildung macht frei!’, Die Neue Zeit, No. 22, 27 
November 1858. 

the creature wrote at a time when she and Gottfried, As A sort oF 
BEGGAR, were knocking at the doors of all the Jews in the City. 

And there’s something else I don’t like in the palliative letter 
Freiligrath wrote me. I am expected to regard his opposition to 
the general craze for amnesty, Le., 1n Fact, to Rudolf Schramm’s 
idiosyncrasy, as something revolutionary. But a few weeks ago our 
Freiligrath got himself naturalised English and would be a fool 
indeed were he to yearn nostalgically for the post of a badly paid 
clerk in Germany so long as those nice Crédits mobiliers” vast. 
Very vividly do I remember Mrs Freiligrath—at a time when 
people were already drivelling about amnesty but the Genera Bank 
oF Switzertand had as yet no place in the Royat Excuance Buupincs— 
most earnestly seeking to persuade me not to raise any objection 
to the acceptance of amnesty. 

All these people sense THAT THERE IS SOMETHING Moving acain. And, of 
course, are pushing their way onto the stage bearing banners of 
liberty. 

Keep the enclosed poem and letter. 

In this house things look More DREARY AND DESOLATE THAN EVER. Since 
my wife cannot even arrange Christmas festivities for the 
children—instead, she is beset on all sides by dunning letters, on 
top of which she is having to copy my manuscript* and, in 
between whiles, to run errands to the pawnshop in town—the 
atmosphere is gloomy in the extreme. Moreover, my wife is quite 
right when she says that, after all the misere she has had to go 
through, the revolution will only make things worse and afford 
her the gratification of seeing all the humbugs from here once 
again celebrating their victories over there. Women are like that. 
And the womanish behaviour of Freiligrath, etc., and other 
acquaintances justly embitters her. A la guerre comme a la guerre,” 
she says. But Tuer: is no guerre. It’s day-to-day routine. 

Salut. 

Your 
K. M.