Letters of Jenny Marx
Source: MECW Volume 39, p. 569;
First published: in Marx and Engels, Works, 1934.
Dear Mr Weydemeyer,
For the past week my husband has been very poorly and is for the most part confined to bed. Nevertheless he has managed to finish the enclosed sequel to his article [Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte], so that there may be no interruption in the printing thereof, supposing a start has really been made on it.
A few days ago we had a letter from Cluss in Washington — with whom I hope you have already made contact for you will find him in all respects an excellent support — from which Kinkel’s boundless turpitude again emerges. For while this hypocrite fawns on Karl’s friends in the most barefaced manner and writes to them, saying ‘he has emphasised the need to get in touch with Marx and the most capable members of his party’ (a downright lie), he seeks in the most perfidious way to blacken my husband’s personal character and relates the most edifying tales about him and his friends drawn from Willich’s mendacious innuendoes.
Karl, who doesn’t feel strong enough today to write to you himself, asks me to tell you that you should provide some information in your paper [Die Revolution] about our poor friends in Cologne, b the more so since Kinkel’s party, along with its court scribes and its rowdies and its compliant Lithographische Korrespondenz, deliberately passes over their existence and all their sufferings in complete silence, which is all the more infamous as it is precisely to Becker, Bürgers and their erstwhile organ that Kinkel owes most of his popularity. But our people languish in prisons, are hideously treated, and now will have to spend another three months in jug while the great men of the future are pocketing thousands in the name of the revolution and are already handing out future ministerial posts.
How was your dear wife after the terrible voyage? What are your children doing? Have they all become more or less acclimatised?
But time is getting exceedingly short. I must hurry out and post this letter. Let us hope that the conclusion of his article will be easier for my dear Karl.
Farewell for the present,
Yours
Jenny Marx
Lupus is now somewhat recovered. He, too, will send something soon, as will Engels. Insistent reminders have also gone off to Weerth. Red Wolff has got married and, being on his honeymoon, cannot let you have anything as yet.