t
232 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYrefugee leaders to be used by the Hungarians in Paris. At the end of May
Bangya informed Marx that he had found a German publisher willing to
pay £2 5 for extended versions of the sketches. Marx did not suspect any
trap (Bangya had recently refused his invitation to attend a meeting of
the Communist League) and set to work. At first he was helped by Ernst
Dronke, a former member of the staff of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and
later by Engels. Marx spent a month with Engels in Manchester in May
when the final draft was composed. 'We are crying with laughter at the
pickling of these blockheads,'^87 Marx wrote to Jenny. Once the manuscript
had been delivered, however, the publication date was repeatedly delayed;
Bangya's excuses sounded more and more implausible and inquiries
revealed that the publisher Bangya had mentioned did not exist. Finally
Marx came to the conclusion that the manuscript had been sold to the
authorities in Germany.^88
In August 1852 a further episode occurred which showed to what
lengths Marx was prepared to go in his vendettas against the refugees.
The rumour had reached Marx that on his American trip Kinkel had
referred to Engels and himself as 'two down-and-outs who had been
thrown out of the London pubs by the workers'.^89 He wrote to Kinkel:
'I await your explanation by return. Silence will be treated as an admission
of guilt.'^90 Kinkel did reply by return that he wanted nothing more to do
with Marx in view of Marx's article in the Revue attacking him while still
in gaol. Marx should not, he continued, trust hearsay, but if he chose to
do so, the due processes of law were open to him. Convinced that Kinkel
would not look at anything with a Soho postmark, Marx 'got Lupus in
Windsor to post a letter to him, written on paper in the shape of a billet
doux with a bunch of roses and forget-me-nots printed on it in colour'.^91
The letter named Marx's sources of information for the American venture
and claimed that Kinkel's letter provided 'a new and striking proof that
the said Kinkel is a common and cowardly priest'.^92
By the end of 1852 the feuds among the refugees began to cool off.
Engels wrote that when he was with Marx at Christmas 'we made a point
of going without any fuss into the middle of the crowds in the Kinkel-
Willich-Ruge pubs, which we would not have been able to risk without
a brawl six months previously'.^93 Kinkel's popularity was on the decline
since the relative failure of his American trip and the squabbles over the
money. Willich's reputation was destroyed more swiftly: Baroness von
Briiningk, who held a salon for the German refugee leaders in St John's
Wood, alleged that Willich had made improper advances to her; he left
for America very soon afterwards. His quarrel with Marx did not immedi-
ately cease, for Willich felt compelled to reply to the accusations against
him in Marx's Revelations with a long article entitled, 'Doctor Marx and