28 Tristram Hunt identifies Burns as Engels’s ‘underworld Persephone, profoundly enriching [his] appreciation of capitalist society . . . Mary helped to provide Engels with the material reality for his communist theory.’ Tristram Hunt, The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, Penguin, London, 2009, pp. 100–1.
29 See Roy Whitfield, Engels in Manchester: The Search for a Shadow, Working Class Movement Library Salford, 1988, p. 21, and Hunt, The Frock-Coated Communist, pp. 100–1.
30 Friedrich Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17306/ 17306-h/17306-h.htm, The Project Gutenberg eBook, accessed 13 December 2005, e-book #17306.
31 Ibid.
32 See for example EM to Karl Kautsky, 15 March 1898, IISH.
33 KM to FE, 8 January 1863, MECW, Vol. 41, 1985, p. 442.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 FE to KM, 13 January 1863, MECW, Vol. 41, 1985, p. 442.
38 FE to KM, 26 January 1863, MECW, Vol. 4, 1975, pp. 441–7.
39 FE to KM, 20 May 1863, MECW, Vol. 41, 1985, p. 472.
Chapter 5 – Abraham Lincoln’s Adviser
1 Jenny Marx to KM, December 1863–January 1864, IISH.
2 Adapted by Augustine Daly from a melodrama by Salomon von Mosenthal that was currently popular in Vienna, the play, set in seventeenth-century Germany, tells the story of a Jewish girl (Leah) in love with a Christian farmer (Rudolph).
3 George William Curtis, in Harper’s Weekly, 7 March 1863.
4 Jenny Marx to KM, December 1863–January 1864, IISH.
5 Modena Villas was also spelt Medina on contemporary London streetmaps.
6 Jenny Marx to KM, December 1863–January 1864, IISH.
7 Ibid.
8 EM to Lion Philips, 25 June 1864, IISH.
9 In Firdousi’s account of the origins of chess, two warring brother-princes cannot accept their mother’s instruction that they have equal shares of everything and rule the kindom together. Distraught at the civil war that breaks out between them the queen mother burns her palace to the ground and threatens to burn herself to death according to custom. The victorious, compromising Gav devises the game to avert her self-immolation and console her. He makes a board of ebony in the likeness of a battlefield, traced into one hundred squares, with two armies of teak and ivory, both on horse and foot, each moving after a different manner until the king is hemmed in with foemen and all escape cut off according to the rules of the game. At which point it is ordered that he should die – Sháh-mát (the King is dead) – checkmate.
10 Eleanor Marx, ‘Karl Marx: A Few Stray Notes’, in Reminiscences, p. 253.
11 EM to Lion Philips, 25 June 1864, IISH.
12 A popular sea-shanty of the time tells the story of the controversial British-built Alabama and her notorious demise in the English Channel on 19 June 1864:
When the Alabama’s Keel was Laid
Roll, Alabama, Roll!
‘Twas laid in the yard of Jonathan Laird
Roll, roll Alabama, roll!
’Twas laid in the yard of Jonathan Laird,
’Twas laid in the town of Birkenhead.
Down the Mersey way she rolled then,
And Liverpool fitted her with guns and men.
From the western isle she sailed forth,
To destroy the commerce of the north.
To Cherbourg port she sailed one day,
For to take her count of prize money.
Many a sailor laddie saw his doom
When the Kearsage it hove in view
When a ball from the forward pivot that day,
Shot the Alabama’s stern away.
Off the three-mile limit in ’64,
The Alabama was seen no more.
13 EM to Lion Philips, 25 June 1864, IISH.
14 New York Times, 30 April 1864.
15 Jenny Marx to Ernestine Liebknecht, 10 December 1864, IISH.
16 Ibid.
17 Friedrich Engels, A Wilhelm Wolff Biography, Die Neue Welt, July 1, 8, 22, 29; Sept. 30; Oct. 7, 14, 21, 28; Nov. 4, 25, 187.
18 Laura Marx to KM, nd, August 1864, IISH.
19 Marx, Provisional Rules of the International Working Men’s Association in MECW, Vol. 20, 1985, pp. 14–15.
20 The Times leader, 9 September 1868.
21 See Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, pp. 303–4 .
22 Wilhelm Liebknecht, in Reminiscences of Marx, p. 111.
23 Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, p. 94.
24 Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p. 241.
25 EM to FE, 13 February 1865, IISH.
26 Ibid.
27 Leslie Derfler, Paul Lafargue and the Founding of French Marxism, 1842–1882, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1991, p. 34. Derfler’s work provides the most comprehensive account of Lafargue’s life and career to date, and corrects a large number of factual errors previously in circulation, including those he generated himself.
28 Lafargue said in his memoirs that he first met Marx in February 1865. His memory was faulty; in fact it was March.
29 Paul Lafargue, in Reminiscences, p. 71.
30 Derfler, Paul Lafargue, p. 33.
31 Paul Lafargue, in Reminiscences, p. 82.
32 She meant The Effinghams.
33 EM to KM, 26 April 1867, IISH.
34 Derfler, Paul Lafargue, p. 39.
35 Tussy’s ‘Confession’, 20 March 1865, IISH.
Chapter 6 – Fenian Sister
1 EM to Alice Liebknecht, 14 October 1866, IISH.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 David Bates (1809–1870), ‘Speak Gently’ – see http://rpo.library.utoron to.ca/poem/132.html
5 Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lee & Shepard, Boston, 1869,p. 85.
6 EM to KM, 19 March 1866, IISH, and in Faith Evans and Olga Meier, with introduction by Sheila Rowbotham, The Daughters of Karl Marx: Family Correspondence 1866–1898, Andre Deutsch, London, 1982, p. 5.
7 Eleanor recalled this Margate holiday in detail in the last month of her life, in a letter to Natalie Liebknecht, 1 March 1898, IISH.
8 KM to FE, 6 March 1868, MECW, Vol. 42, p. 542
9 Laura Marx to Mrs Jenny Marx, nd, August 1866, IISH.
10 KM to FE, 11 November 1882, MECW, Vol. 46, p. 374.
11 KM to Paul Lafargue, 13 August 1866, MML, Lafargue correspondence.
12 Ibid.
13 Jenny Marx to Ernestine Liebknecht, 14 October 1866, IISH.
14 Peters, Red Jenny, p. 146.
15 Laura Marx to Jenny Marx junior, in Die Töchter von Karl Marx, Unveröffentlichte Briefe, Cologne, 1981, p. 6.
16 Ibid.
17 EM to Alice Liebknecht, nd, January/February 1867, IISH.
18 EM to KM, 26 April 1867, MECW, Vol. 42, 1987, p. 359.
19 Royan is situated on the French Atlantic coast, at the mouth of the Gironde estuary at the confluence of the Dordogne, Lot and Garenne rivers. Until the arrival of the railway in 1875 it was accessible from inland only by river and road. At the time of Tussy’s visit, steamboat was the most common way of arriving from Bordeaux. By the end of the nineteenth century this sleepy, pretty port with its wide sandy cove would be a fashionable belle époque playground of grand villas, visited by Picasso, Sarah Bernhardt and Emile Zola. For now, it was a gem for the well-heeled of Bordeaux who, like the Lafargues, could afford the luxury of summer holidays. Tussy might have liked the historical fact that the settlement had been under English jurisdiction during the reign of Henry II, by his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine.
20 For a detailed and comprehensive account of the publication plan and history of Capital, see Ernest Mandel, Introduction, Capital, Volume I, Penguin, London, 1990, pp. 11–86.
21 Laura Lafargue to FE, 6 March 1893, in Frederick Engels, Paul and Laura Lafargue: Correspondence Vol. 3, 1891–1895, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1959–63,
Vol. 3, p. 247.
22 Ibid.
23 EM to FE, 13 February 1865, IISH.
24 KM to FE, 14 December 1868, MECW, Vol. 43, 1988, p. 184.
25 KM to FE, 26 June 1868, MECW, Vol. 43, 1988, pp. 49–50.
26 EM to Lizzy Burns, 14 October 1868, IISH.
27 The Irishman was launched in Belfast in 1852 by the journalist Denis Holland, under the name of the Ulsterman. Holland and his co-editor Richard Piggott moved the weekly paper to Dublin in 1858, renaming it the Irishman. Constant lawsuits and harassment made it necessary to have two managers to keep the publication going. Former members of Young Ireland numbered amongst its contributors. Holland sold out his interest to Piggott in 1863; by 1865 it had a circulation of 50,000 copies a week. Piggott’s support for the Fenian Brotherhood landed him with lawsuits and, in 1867, imprisonment for his support of the uprising.
28 Lizzy fretted to Fred, as she called him, that Tussy had contracted the illness with them in Manchester. In fact she caught it from a school friend, daughter of Sir Edward Frankland, FRS, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
29 EM to Lizzy Burns, 14 October 1868, IISH.
30 Ibid.
31 EM to LL, 29 December 1868, IISH.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 This was not Tussy’s only theatrical escapade with the Lormier brothers. In 1869 she started writing ‘A Drama in IV Acts’ in French for Eugene and Ludovic Lormier and herself; only the cast list remains, IISH.
35 EM to Jenny Marx senior, 31 March 1869, IISH.
36 Ibid.
37 KM to EM, 26 April 1869, IISH.
38 EM and KM to Jennychen, 2 June 1869, IISH.
39 FE to KM, letters, 22 June, 6 July, 25 July, 30 July; Engels sent regular letters to Marx between June and the end of July, keeping him up to date on her reading; see MECW, Vol. 4, pp. 234, 244, 255 and 258.
40 FE to KM, 27 June 1869, MECW, Vol. 43, p. 298.
41 KM to Jenny Marx senior, 10 June 1869, IISH.
42 EM to Jennychen, 2 June 1869, IISH.
43 EM to Jennychen, 19/20 July 1869, IISH.
44 Ibid.
45 Eleanor Marx, ‘Frederick Engels’, in Reminiscences, pp. 185–6.
46 FE to KM, 1 July 1869, Vol. 43, 1988, p. 55.
47 See for example Mrs Jenny Marx to Ernestine Liebknecht, 10 December 1864, IISH.
48 EM to Lizzy Burns, 14 October 1868, IISH.
49 FE to Julie Bebel, 8 March 1892, in MECW, Vol. 49, 2001, p. 377.
50 EM to Jenny Marx junior, 20 July 1869, IISH, and Evans and Meier, Daughters of Karl Marx, p. 52.
51 Ibid.
52 Jenny Marx to Dr Ludwig Kugelmann, cited in Chushichi Tsuzuki, The Life of Eleanor Marx, 1855–1898, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967, p. 25.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 FE to KM, 29 November 1869, Vol. 43, 1988, p. 387.
56 Karl Marx, Documents of the First International, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1963–8, Vol. 4.
57 EM to KM, 7 November 1869, IISH.
58 Ibid.
59 KM to FE, 6 November 1869, MECW, Vol. 43, 1988, p. 367.
60 Ibid.
61 Eleanor postscript to letter from KM to FE, 10 February 1870.
62 KM to Paul and Laura Lafargue, 20 July 1870, IISH.
63 EM, in Reminiscences, p. 251.
64 KM to FE, 3 August 1870, MECW, Vol. 44, p. 30.
65 Jenny Marx to Frederick Engels, 13 September 1870, IISH.
66 Jenny Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann, 19 November 1870, IISH.
67 Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, p. 298.
Chapter 7 – The Communards
1 Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, p. 167.
2 Mrs Jenny Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann, 19 November 1870, IISH.
3 KM to Eleanor, Jenny and Laura, 13 June 1871, IISH.
4 EM to Wilhelm Liebknecht, 29 December 1871, IISH.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Prosper Lissagaray, History of the Paris Commune, New Park Publications, London, 1976, p. 419.
11 The Times, 19 May 1871, cited in Lissagaray, History of the Paris Commune, note p. 397
12 FE, in Social Democrat, 18 January 1884.
13 Karl Marx, in The Sun, 9 September 1871.
14 Ibid.
15 Wilhelm Liebknecht, Eleanor Marx, Social Democrat, Vol. 2, No. 9, 15 September 1898.
16 Documents of the First International. The General Council of the First International, 1864–1866. The London Conference 1865. Minutes, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, for the Centenary of the First International in 1964, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/minutes/index.htm
17 Ibid.
18 Anselmo Lorenzo, ‘Reminiscences of the First International’, in Reminiscences, p. 291.
19 Ibid., p. 290.
20 EM to Wilhelm Liebknecht, 29 December 1871, IISH.
21 Ibid.
22 Mrs Jenny Marx to Wilhelm Liebknecht, 26 May 1872, IISH.
23 EM, letter to Aberdeen Socialist Society, 17 March 1893, in Labour Monthly, March 1940, p. 158.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 FE to Frederick Adolph Sorge, 17 March 1872, MECW, Vol. 44, 1989, p. 342.
27 Cited in Deborah McDonald, Clara Collet: 1860–1948: An Educated Working Woman, Frank Cass, London, 2004, p. 21.
28 Mrs Jenny Marx to Wilhelm Liebknecht, 26 May 1872, IISH.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., and Mrs Jenny Marx to Johann Philip Becker, 7 November 1872, IISH.
31 Maggie to EM, 18 September 1872, cited in Tsuzuki, The Life of Eleanor Marx, p. 32.
32 EM to Jenny Marx, 7 July 1872, IISH.
33 KM to FE, 31 May 1873, MECW, Vol. 44, 1989, p. 504.
34 Mrs Jenny Marx to EM, 3 April 1873, IISH.
35 Mrs Jenny Marx to EM, nd, May 1873, IISH.
36 Mrs Jenny Marx to EM, 3 April 1873, IISH.
37 Mrs Jenny Marx EM, nd, April 1873, IISH.
38 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Scott, London, 1891, pp. xxvi–xxix.
39 EM to Mrs Jenny Marx, 31 May 1873, IISH.
40 Ibid.
41 EM to KM, 23 March 1874, IISH.
42 KM to Ludwig Kugelmann, 4 August 1874, in Letters to Dr Kugelmann, Lenin Collected Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1962 Vol. 12, pp. 104–12.
43 EM to JL, 5 September 1874, IISH.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 EM to Wilhelm Liebknecht, 13 October 1874, IISH.
50 Ibid.
51 Rouge et Noir, 24 October 1874.
52 EM to Wilhelm Liebknecht, 13 October 1874, IISH.
53 Ibid.
54 EM to Nathalie Liebknecht, 23 October 1874, IISH.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.
58 Jenny Marx junior to Ludwig Kugelmann, 21 December 1871, IISH.
Chapter 8 – Dogberries
1 Nikolai Morozov, ‘Visits to Karl Marx’, in Reminiscences, p. 302.
2 Marian Comyn, ‘My Recollections of Karl Marx’, Nineteenth Century and After, Vol. 91, January 1922, pp. 161–9, and The Times of London, 4 October 1938 and 30 January 1941. By today’s standards, 41 Maitland Park Road is a large, elegant townhouse.
3 Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, Octave 7, 1931–38, London, Chatto, 1968. Virginia Bateman became the mother of Compton Mackenzie.
4 Cited in McDonald, Clara Collet, pp. 22–3.
5 Comyn, ‘My Recollections of Karl Marx’, and The Times of London, 4 October 1938 and 30 January 1941.
6 Nikolai Morozov, ‘Visits to Karl Marx’, in Reminiscences, p. 303.
7 EM to Nathalie Liebknecht, 1 January 1875, IISH.
8 Ibid.
9 Comyn, ‘My Recollections of Karl Marx’, and The Times of London, 4 October 1938 and 30 Jan
uary 1941.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Yvonne Kapp, Eleanor Marx, Vol. I: Family Life, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1972, p. 155.
14 JL to EM, 23 March 1882, IISH.
15 EM to Karl Hirsch, 12 May 1876, IISH.
16 Comyn, ‘My Recollections of Karl Marx’, and The Times of London, 4 October 1938 and 30 January 1941.
17 See McDonald, Clara Collet, p. 22.
18 Ibid., p. 6.
19 Ibid.
20 The founding of the Dogberry is still commonly attributed, in error, to Marx. As with so many other initiatives put down to Marx that were in fact Eleanor’s, checking primary archival sources rather than crediting popular belief quickly corrects these historical errors.
21 McDonald, Clara Collet, p. 22.
22 EM, ‘Karl Marx: A Few Stray Notes’, in Reminiscences, 1957, p. 252.
23 See Nina Auerbach, Ellen Terry: Player in Her Time, Norton, New York, 1987, p. 176.
24 Michael Booth, Theatre in the Victorian Age, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991.
25 Hallam Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son, Vol. 2, New York, Macmillan, 1897, p. 543.
26 Mackenzie, My Life and Times, Octave 7, 1931–38, London, Chatto, 1968.
27 EM to Karl Hirsch, 25 October 1875, IISH.
28 The titles of these articles tell their own story of Shakespeare’s popularity in Germany: ‘Shakespearean Studies in England’, ‘Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Lyceum Theatre London’, ‘The London Theatre World’ and ‘The London Season’. Most memorable is her striking piece on Richard III in 1877. She relates the performance to contemporary politics, using the piece as an opportunity to highlight the disastrous International Conference in Constantinople, scuppered by Turkey’s withholding of autonomy for Hercegovina and Bulgaria. ‘The trumpet of war is silent and the philistine blathering about politics, quietly puts his fearful mind at rest, slumbers peacefully and lulls himself into golden dreams of peace and prosperity.’ Irving claimed this to be the first unexpurgated performance of the play since Shakespeare’s death. Whatever the truth of this claim, promoting this production of Richard III ‘as it was written’ was clever marketing. As Jenny Marx reported, ‘The great mass of people who besieged the doors of the Lyceum last Monday, proved how successful the experiment was. Immediately after the first monologue of Gloucester, “Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York,” the silence was breathless and even the gods of paradise listened in magic enchantment.’
Eleanor Marx Page 54