Works of Frederick Engels 1891

To the Editor of The Daily Chronicle


Source: The Daily Chronicle, November 26, 1891;
Transcribed: by Tony Brown.


Sir, — In your issue of this morning your Paris correspondent, amongst other inaccuracies concerning the family of my late friend Karl Marx, states that after the Commune the French Minister of justice ordered the arrest of M. Paul Lafargue, recently elected deputy at Lille. He then continues —

“Madam Karl Marx is said at this time to have revealed the whereabouts of a depot of arms to the authorities, on condition that her son-in-law should not be molested. M. Lafargue then passed the Spanish frontier.”

Mrs. Aveling, the daughter of Mrs. Marx, being for the moment absent from London, the duty of repelling the above-mentioned accusation against her mother devolves upon me. The facts are these: — M. Lafargue, while staying with his wife and his two sisters-in-law at Bagnères-de-Luchon, was informed of his impending arrest by a friendly Republican police-officer. He escaped the same day into Spain, passing the Pyrenées on horseback. Mrs. Marx, who was then in London, therefore could not, even if she had been so minded, interfere on his behalf by betraying to the French Government anything whatever. The whole story of the pretended depot of arms is a mere fable, invented to blacken the memory of a woman whose noble and self-sacrificing nature was utterly incapable of a mean action.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant.

Frederick Engels

122, Regent’s-park-road, N.W., Nov. 17.