Eleanor Marx

by Rachel Holmes

  Eleanor never hesitated to jump in to try and bridge Freddy’s parental gap. When his wife stole the union fund in 1892 and abandoned her son, Eleanor had persuaded Laura, Lafargue and Longuet to discreetly accept financial responsibility for Freddy. Without asking the General for money, they put together as much as they could to help him repay the stolen cash. More than ever before, Eleanor felt it was a ‘bad business’ that Freddy couldn’t count on the support of his father when her family had been financially supported by him their whole lives. It was the one aspect of the General’s behaviour she could not square. She wrote to Laura, ‘It may be that I am very sentimental’,

  – but I can’t help feeling that Freddy has had great injustice all through his life. Is it not wonderful when you come to look things squarely in the face, how rarely we seem to practise all the fine things we preach – to others?36

  The estrangement between Tussy and the General was resolved when his health deteriorated towards the end of the year. Engels sensed he was now mortally ill. He confided in Eleanor and Louise, swearing them to secrecy. Tussy kept her counsel. Louise trotted off immediately and spilled the bad news to Victor Adler, thus giving the German SPD notice to gather its vultures. The future of the Marx papers and manuscripts was now, as far as Eleanor knew, definitively at risk. Neither Engels nor Tussy imagined his death to be imminent but it was clearly possible that he might become incapacitated, vulnerable to losing control of exercising power over his wishes, as he had over his household. Edward, returned from his sojourn as Alec Nelson, rejoined the fray, adding a dramatic postscript to one of Tussy’s pleading letters to Laura:

  Dear Laura, Come, come, COME. You have no idea of the immediate importance of it. The General is in this mood. He will brook no interference from any but you two women, whose right to demand account of your father’s papers he must admit. You have to make that demand and declare point-blank your reason, that you do not trust the Fs. Believe me, this is the only way to save the M.S.37

  But all were mistaken. Confronted by the final fact of his mortality, Engels acted swiftly to take additional measures to secure the papers and manuscripts in accordance with Marx’s wishes and his own good conscience. During November he drew up a series of signed documents supplementary and explanatory to his will. He added a supplementary clause that had a significant bearing on Tussy:

  All papers in Karl Marx’s handwriting except his letters to me and all letters addressed to him except those written by me to him are to be restored to Eleanor Marx-Aveling as the legal representative of Karl Marx’s heirs.38

  This was unambiguous. Engels secured these supplementary documents in a drawer of his writing desk, along with a letter for Tussy and Laura to be given to them after his death, written in his own hand.

  The aspect of the General’s will that was to have the most impact on Tussy and Marxist literary history was his decision to separate his own manuscripts from everything in Marx’s handwriting. Everything in Marx’s hand went to Eleanor and stayed with her in England. If she died, the papers went to Laura in France. Engels’s own manuscripts went to the leaders of the German party, Bebel and Bernstein. Critically, the correspondence between Marx and Engels went to the German SPD. This division of the Nachlass would make it impos­sible for Tussy to compile her father’s letters for publication. This was a difficult position in which to place Eleanor as Marx’s official literary executor.

  Eleanor misjudged Engels over the Freebooters fiasco. He was hurt by her lack of confidence in him but there’s sufficient evidence to demonstrate that he also recognised his own lack of judgement in indulging Louise and Ludwig so unguardedly. Engels may also have felt that he was protecting Tussy from further exploitation by her own adventurer. Publicly, the General remained benign about Aveling but he was no fool – Tussy might love where she would, but Engels had the measure of Edward. Well might the General think that Tussy had better look to the hoodwinking going on in her own home before investing all her energies in what was going on in his.

  ‘Poor Edward’, who had gone to St Mary’s to convalesce, returned sick and exhausted from his excesses. ‘When I looked I found he had an enormous abscess – twice the size of my fist! I at once sent for the doctor.’39 If only Eleanor had removed her rose-tinted pince-nez when inspecting Edward, she would have seen that his enormous abscess was a moral turpitude that might have been far more efficiently treated by two punches with her fist rather than calling the doctor.

  It was unfair to suggest, as she did, that the General had been convinced that ‘like Pumps, I am only speculating on him, and am only jealous of Louise being in his house, etc.’40

  The great denouement of the Marxes v Freebooters came over Christmas, as many of the best family crises do. Edward played a helpful role in precipitating the drama. Tussy suggested to Laura that she write to her and suggest that she was prepared to volunteer to help her copy out the manuscripts for Volume IV of Capital, which Tussy had recently discovered were not as far progressed as she had thought. Further, she would like to know clearly about the status of the future of Mohr’s papers and their treatment in the case of Engels’s death. Tussy would show this letter to Engels, providing her with an opening to engage him directly on the matter. Engels would trust and accept Laura’s assistance where he was rejecting offers from others he knew he couldn’t rely on to undertake the work effectively, like Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein was of the opinion that the Marx sisters were the proper persons to undertake the transcription. So, Tussy suggested to Laura, ‘You cd offer to fetch the MSS you wd copy, & Bonnier, who so often goes across cd take them back. We cd both work at it, & so, at least establish some claim.’41

  Laura agreed to the plan and wrote to the General. Four days before Christmas, Tussy went to Salford to give three lectures to SDF branch members on the questionably seasonable subjects of ‘The International Socialist Movement’, ‘Socialism, Scientific and Otherwise’ and ‘Women and the Socialist Movement’. Hardly easy-going fare for the holidays – but it was precisely because it was the holidays that workers were able to get the time off to attend intense lecture programmes.

  On her way to the station Tussy called in on the General, and found him entirely alone, left to ‘shift for himself’.42 Tussy had had enough. ‘C’est la guerre,’ she announced to Laura. Well, the General understood war. It was time to have it out. The Freebooters were as their names suggested. ‘In a word, my dear, it’s war, and we’ve got to fight.’43

  Laura’s letter arrived after Tussy left for Manchester. Edward, visiting Regent’s Park Road for lunch, delivered it on her behalf and so witnessed the drama it precipitated. Engels read Laura’s letter aloud, in the presence of the Freebooters. He immediately agreed that Eleanor and, if she needed assistance, Laura, should transcribe the manuscript for the fourth volume of Capital. Then, quietly and in a very dignified manner, he confirmed that ‘of course Marx’s MS & the papers were held in safe charge for his daughters and could have no other destination.’44 There was no question about this: it was clear and definite. Thus far, all appeared calm. Aveling withdrew for his post-prandial nap – and pretended to be asleep.

  During his ‘nap’ he heard raised voices coming from the General’s rooms upstairs, followed by Louise rushing downstairs on gushing rapids of tears and heaving sobs. Engels followed and shook Edward, probably telling him to stop pretending to be a sleeping dog. Engels, enraged, said there was a conspiracy – in fact there had been endless conspiracies since he took the new house. Laura had been put up to writing the letter and Eleanor, of all people, should know better than to mistrust him. Aveling’s war bulletin to the Lafargues described the General’s most military manner, marching up and down, spluttering, and revealing a yeasty conscience. But the truth of it was that Engels was truly hurt. It was painfully obvious that the letter was a fit-up and the bitter truth hit Engels hard: if Tussy didn’t trust him any more he had let down the people he most loved and failed in his duty of care to his best friend’
s daughters.

  Tussy knew the General was struck and her heart went out to him. But the incendiary letter had achieved her aim; it opened a direct line of communication:

  It seems impossible you cd really believe Laura and I mistrust you. Whom on earth cd we trust but you? . . . I shall say no more now, except that if you had not been very much poisoned against us you cd never have thought so meanly of Mohr’s children as to think they cd mistrust you.45

  Letters flew between Engels, Laura and Tussy. Tussy presented herself four-square at Regent’s Park Road for what turned out to be a ‘Bad Christmas Day’ for the Freybergers. Tussy and the General agreed they would talk together, alone, before the festivities began. ‘As an appetiser for the festive meal,’ she described to Laura, ‘the General took me off to his “droring-room” & we proceeded to our first round.’ He expressed his anger at Tussy’s want of tact in setting up Laura’s letter but had nothing to gainsay the accuracy of its contents.

  After a certain amount of sparring – during wh. I told him he had not been angry until others had made him so . . . we came to the point: the MSS. He said these were ours & wd, of course, come to us. I said if I had his assurance of that I was quite satisfied & knew you wd. be.46

  Tussy then told the General for the first time that Louise was pestering her and Laura to sign a legal document she’d had drawn up making Louise the responsible owner of the papers, and that her stated reason for doing this was because she feared Pumps intended to steal them. Engels was clearly shaken by this and Louise – when confronted – was unable to deny the truth of it.

  A few days later the General went to Tussy’s for lunch. It was the first time he’d visited Gray’s Inn Road since she’d moved in and he came on his own. They went over the same ground again, in detail, and had what Tussy described as their ‘final round’ in the dispute. Eleanor said everything she had to say about the Freybergers and her and Laura’s concern about Mohr’s papers and manuscripts. Engels was conciliatory and yet still didn’t tell Tussy about the legal arrangements. Wisely, she took him on trust. ‘He again said he wd see all papers of Mohr came to us, but said nothing of his will. Of course I said I was quite satisfied & that for the rest, I shd say nothing more about it.’47

  The upshot of these two parleys was that Engels guaranteed to make sure about the fate of the papers and, with some bravado, declared his hope that two ‘such “famose Frauenzimmer” as Louise & I – tho’ I am not so “noble” as she is – must agree. Well, we – i.e. the noble one & I, will no doubt have a stormy interview – & then all will be peace – on the surface!’48 And that is exactly what happened.

  Tussy spent her fortieth birthday in January 1895 grateful that the ‘ghastly festivities’49 were over. Engels was also greatly relieved. ‘Tussy and I had an explanation, which, as far as I know,’ he assured Laura, ‘settled everything connected with the subject and left us as good friends as before.’50 Resolution of this dispute was all the birthday present she needed.

  In March Eleanor and Edward went to Hastings for a holiday – to improve Edward’s health. He worked on Clarion, which he now edited, and Tussy looked after him and saw to her correspondence for the gas workers’ union. She wrote to Library, asking him to agree to Will Thorne’s request that he speak to the gas workers in West Ham, and reporting that a few hours of fresh air every day were doing Edward some good, ‘Still, he is not very strong yet.’51 When was he ever, around Tussy?

  Whatever their birthday wishes, Tussy’s friends must have hoped that the now forty-year-old powerhouse who’d successfully taken on pretenders to her father’s legacy and inheritance might also reward her adult self by breaking from her tired relationship with the ever-needy, manipulative Aveling. On the anniversary of their father’s death, Tussy wrote to Library from their guesthouse, looking out over the pebbled beachfront and roiling March sea at Hastings, ‘Today it is twelve years since Mohr died – and I think I miss him and my mother and Jenny more to-day even than when we lost them.’52

  Whilst she and Edward were in Hastings, Engels was diagnosed with throat cancer. Freyberger didn’t tell him the exact pathology; if the General suspected, he didn’t let on. But at the end of the month he composed a long codicil to his will, witnessed by the house cook and his live-in nurse. This codicil made substantive changes to his previous will. Overall, it shifted the bequest of the bulk of his capital wealth and assets to Louise.

  But the General’s material wealth was not Tussy’s interest or concern. Significantly, Engels revoked all his previous directions about the Marx family letters. Excepting only the letters between himself and Marx, all letters written by or addressed to Karl Marx were to be given by his executors to Eleanor, ‘the legal representative of Karl Marx’s heirs’.53 This revision made Eleanor sole heir to her father’s manuscripts and all letters written by or to Marx, except between him and the General. The cash legacies for the Marx daughters and family were sufficient to make them financially secure for the rest of their lives but this probably mattered more to Engels than it did to Eleanor. In the great struggle over Engels’s legacy, Tussy’s inheritance was as secure as he could make it.

  Had she known, Louise would have been delighted at the fortune she stood to inherit. But this boon of inherited material wealth would stand as nothing compared with the weight of responsibility placed on Tussy as guardian of so rich a portfolio of cultural capital. As Engels no doubt anticipated, worrying that the pressures on Eleanor as keeper of the Marxian Nachlass and her father’s voluminous correspondence would be immense.

  By May the pain and swelling in Engels’s neck was intolerable. He needed an operation, followed by recuperation at the seaside. He asked Tussy if she and Edward would join him there for a week or so and told her that he’d also written to Laura and Paul inviting them to come and see him. For once, the Lafargues promptly agreed to come to England. As matters transpired, the trip to Eastbourne didn’t happen until the end of June.

  Tussy and the General shared eggnog and oysters and discussed Edward’s nomination as a parliamentary candidate by the Independent Labour Party. The nomination came from the Glasgow Central branch of the ILP. Engels asked Tussy for all the papers and information and read them assiduously. He advised Edward to refuse the nomination as he surmised, correctly, that it was a political trap. They joked about the General’s new addiction to anaesthetics and he tried, fruitlessly, to broker a final peace deal between Tussy and Louise.

  He teased her about her Russian friend George Plekhanov’s request to translate his monograph on Anarchism and Socialism from German into English. The General roared with laughter at the news – ‘There indeed I do pity you,’ he teased. ‘Where is the poor girl to have picked up the necessary knowledge for such work?’54 Tussy knew the subject almost by heredity and wished she didn’t. It was a gag only the two of them could have shared. Tussy liked Russians and abhorred anarchists. Like Plekhanov, she was sensitive to the rising popularity of anarchist tendencies and critical of their promotion of terrorism and desire to ‘make the whole world a playground for reaction and international spydom’.55

  Immediately after returning to the city from Eastbourne, Eleanor packed up Gray’s Inn Square and moved herself and Edward to Orpington in Kent. Their tenancy at Green Street Green started on 1 July and Tussy eagerly anticipated the novelty of an English country summer. She invited family and friends to visit, including Freddy and Harry, who she was sure would enjoy the opportunity of a great outdoors holiday.

  Tussy had spent much of the year so far optimistic of a rapprochement between Engels and his alienated son. Her hopes were founded on the unprecedented fact that Freddy had been invited to Engels’s seventy-fourth birthday celebrations at the end of the previous year. Freddy and Harry’s appearance at the General’s birthday party had attracted much attention from the other guests, foregathered from all over the world. Tussy stood by Freddy’s side throughout the party. Those who subsequently dared to try and draw her into discussion
of the meaning of Freddy Demuth’s presence at the General’s festivities were stared down. Eleanor’s implacable silence – all the more noticeable from a usually voluble individual – was fearsome. There was no shame in the General’s secret for Tussy – but it was not hers to tell. Removing herself from the wearying gossip of the London hothouse was another of the many pleasures Tussy felt in those first few weeks at Green Street Green.

  Expecting her sister, or Freddy and Harry, to visit soon, Tussy was astonished to find herself greeting Sam Moore as her first visitor through the picket gate of her country cottage. A few days previously she had received an anxious letter from him, scribbled in haste from Lincoln’s Inn on 21 July. In it he told her that the General had arranged to return to London with his two doctors: ‘His state is precarious . . . He may go on for some weeks if pneumonia does not intervene, but if it does then it will be a question of a few hours . . . so that if you want to see him you had better go to 41 R.P. R. on Thursday.’56

  When Sam turned up unexpectedly at Green Street Green to see her at a few hours’ notice, Tussy wondered if he had come to tell her personally that the General was dead. But the news Sam brought was entirely unexpected. Tussy was thunderstruck. The time from Sam’s arrival, the cups of tea, whisky and long, long conversation folded in on itself, compressed into a dazing flash. In that moment of shock, the axis of Tussy’s world lurched to an angle so sickening that she couldn’t regain her balance or bearings. She tried to make sense of the story Sam was telling her. It couldn’t, just couldn’t be true.