THE DAUGHTERS OF KARL MARX: EXCERPTS FROM A CORRESPONDENCE
This spring an extremely interesting volume, The Daughters of Karl Marx: Family Correspondence 1866-1898, will be published in New York. By the kind permission of the publisher, Harcourt Brace...
...Bradlaugh last Sunday at Cleveland Hall gave the best and most popular answer to it I have yet heard...
...To judge from the articles in the Times, Star, Standard all is couleur de rose in Ireland, throughout the length and breadth of that happy land there is a feeling of tumultuous joy, the mere vote has proved a sop for the hungry monster discontent, who now has nothing to do but to crawl about on all fours in order to catch a ray of sunshine from the luminous body of all Royalty.' Irishmen, we are told by special correspondents, are decorating their wretched hovels so that things may look pleasing to royal eyes, are furnishing their rusty harps with strings to prepare a proper accompaniment to the performances on royal light fantastic toes—they are prepared, it is said, ever after the glorious advent of the Queen's son, you know gratitude is one of their chief characteristics, to starve themselves, their wives and children, and fatten sheep and oxen and pigs for their English masters...
...Then he dresses well, wearing by way of contrast to the remainder of his . . ." [letter incomplete] been briefly deported to Tasmania for seditious activities...
...I feel heartily ashamed of myself now for having worried him...
...And Bernstein is writing the "Life" of Engels for Fisher Unwin!3 Although he must (I should think) be using the correspondence of Engels and Mohr he has said nothing to me about it...
...8 The Mother Red Cap Tavern, situated at a busy crossroads in Camden Town, was well known in Victorian London as an omnibus station and meetingplace...
...His head as he left the carriage drooped forwards, as if the weight of the destinies of his party had been superimposed on his shoulders...
...Yes, the Fenians have forced the most respectable Englishman to tear from that venerable institution the Church, the mystical covering that has protected it for years...
...Laura's children all had died in infancy]—although all of them (except Meme) seem dissatisfied...
...His face was unmistakably the colour of nacre...
...a time, and sometimes twice a day, are no joke...
...That is why I love even my dull Museum drudgery...
...It is impossible to defend his attitude, and I am in daily fear that someone will tell Barnes and that Barnes will insist upon answering Bernstein...
...it has been a terrible struggle...
...Bernstein's position is a most unfortunate one for the movement, and one that makes our position very difficult...
...And never has there been a movement in England that was so international...
...11 A reference to Much Ado About Nothing and one of Paul's family nicknames...
...I should have let you know before, but in all the worry I forgot...
...Is there to be no compensation for those who are losers by the disestablishment of the Church...
...Unhappily there is no one, now we have not the General [Engels], to influence Bernstein, and pull him together...
...You see I have yet much to learn even of imaginative Paddy...
...Marx was sympathetic to the Fenians' objectives but could not wholly approve of their conspiratorial, often violent, tactics...
...several lines illegible] But stop...
...Of course we can't prevent the use of the letters, but by the English law not a single letter of Mohr's can be published without our consent...
...My only fear is that Germany, which has done so grandly, may slacken now that Liebknecht [sentenced to four months' imprisonment under an 1897 anti-Socialist law] is not able to publish his capital articles...
...Assuredly the critical attitude is necessary and useful...
...The Irishman was an Irish Nationalist weekly paper...
...After the Liberal party's triumphant success in the 1868 elections, Gladstone came to office declaring that his mission was to "pacify Ireland...
...After I wrote you last Sunday I almost regretted it—for it seems selfish to worry you with my affairs, when you must assuredly have worry enough of your own...
...In a capital article, the Irishman' declares that there are in Ireland other and greater grievances than the endowment of Protestant parsons, and in reply to the phrase now much en vogue, that the Church is a "badge of conquest" and ought therefore to be removed, it wittily observes: "If it is intended to remove the badge of conquest, what are we to say to the great and grand evil of the conquest itself...
...Chancellor of the Exchequer...
...Since the great 1853 and 1859 strikes (even including the great Dock Strike of 1889) there has been no such movement in England...
...But this is over: I mean to try hard by dint of hard work to make something more and better of my life than it has heretofore been...
...Yes, their nationality, an amnesty for their imprisoned countrymen,' the Irish are willing to receive at the hands of a Royal or any other "Jolly Nash"—and that is about the whole extent of their loyalty...
...Doctors' visits at 5s...
...It is not my intention to inflict on you a report of the "words, words, words" of English political costermongers, it is of the conduct of the Irish at this critical 207 moment that I am anxious to give you an account, for no doubt at Paris you have the strangest information respecting it...
...Introduction copyright ® 1982 by Sheila Rowbotham...
...By official corporations, by the Lord Mayor, by worthies elected to their lucrative offices by the English, by householders who have houses to let, by shopkeepers who have goods to sell, by the servile scum that floats on all societies...
...8 January 1898 want to see at any time...
...As I have said, Edward is better, but he is still terribly weak and terribly emaciated...
...s Bernstein does not seem to have completed this project...
...The parsons on the contrary should be grateful to us for taking the weight of riches off their shoulders...
...7 "From the Midi...
...What," cried he, "when you take from a thief goods, which he has unlawfully acquired, do you give him compensation for the loss he has sustained...
...I have had so much worry of late...
...I hate to speak of myself—and you too will be, by this, tired of the subject...
...Translated and adapted by Faith Evans...
...And now, goodbye, dearest Di...
...Tomorrow is my birthday—if I keep but half my good resolutions for the coming years I shall do well...
...He had determined not to outstay the three weeks up on Thursday—and as I am going tomorrow it is better he should start at once than wait two days, and have me back again for one...
...But there are times when a little enthusiasm—even if "uncritical"— is of greater value...
...Still more selfish does it seem that I think at all about myself—instead of thinking only of our dear Mohr [Marx...
...We have added a few bracketed items of information...
...We were more than glad to hear you had had news of the box—and we are now waiting anxiously to know whether you have it—I could hardly get over the disappointment were it lost...
...My thanks to you and a kiss, and a kiss to Paul...
...But if all this has been troubling me it is not all...
...It was very welcome, for, as I hardly need tell you, illness means immense expense in every way...
...They are a trial to one's patience, I must admit...
...In my mind's eye I have many a time gone over the scene of their unpacking their box and finding the various things...
...It has proved impossible to trace the extracts referred to in this letter...
...It is curious that one should have to get here the shirts that are made in the north...
...Mais ne craignez rien...
...is the shriek ringing out high and clear above all other sounds...
...The following are the words of the Irish leader John Martin': "If, he says, the Prince of Wales is authorized to bear to Ireland any reassuring message from her Majesty or the English Cabinet, with an intention to restore our national rights, then let the Irish people receive him not with cold and silent politeness only...
...Until our independent legislature is restored, we are not only wearing the badge but enduring the reality of conquest" Even the Universal News, the particular organ of the Catholic party, does not go into ecstasies at this defeat of Protestantism, but simply observes that the removal of the Church will do little for Ireland if the great and overshadowing evil of the land question be allowed to remain as it is.' This is an unmistakable sign of the times, a proof that religious fanaticism is dying out—that even in priest-ridden Ireland Gods are shelved when there is serious work to be done...
...The question is by whom are they made...
...A former Young Irelander who, 20 years earlier, had ache, Worthy Benedict...
...The help coming from abroad is magnificent, and at every meeting the "foreign brethren" are cheered to the echo...
...The employers cannot claim indemnity under the "strike-clause" because the men have never struck...
...Dear old Di, I wish I could talk it all over with you...
...I pity you and now leave you to pleasanter occupations—and beg you to believe me...
...Both Jenny and Eleanor, however, were fervent supporters of the Irish Nationalist movement...
...By the kind permission of the publisher, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, we print below several letters (written in English, like much of this correspondence) by Marx's daughters...
...and except in letters to me alone you must not let him know there is still cause for anxiety...
...Not only that the burden had become too heavy—I had other reasons (I can't write them—it would take so long, but when I see you will tell you)—and so at last I screwed my courage to the sticking place...
...That Mohr is really much better and stronger I see from the fact that he hasn't got worse here...
...It is so for Germany...
...And so he is not yet out of the wood, and I am still very anxious...
...10 "Scrawl...
...On the church question the Irish also have opinions of their own, opinions that do not find their way into English journals...
...To me at least it is a necessity...
...I only wished you had been a little nearer, and during those anxious hours, I did think Draveil was terribly far from Sydenham...
...The chance too of independence is very sweet...
...You see I'm not clever enough to live a purely intellectual life, nor am I dull enough to be content to sit down and do nothing...
...But I did not exaggerate the danger...
...I thought that for France the same rule applied as for England and Germany—i.e., that any newspaper (not illustrated papers) were 1/2d...
...Always affectionately yours JENNY MARX Not free yet...
...London, end of March 1869] little family circle nothing happens worth speaking of (today Papa proposed a fresh leg of mutton for dinner, by way of an excitement, as he said...
...I am sending you today's Chronicle where you will find news of the strike.' Our great (entre nous our only) hope is the re-assembling of Parliament...
...Eleanor to Laura My dear Laura, It is like your thoughtful kindness to send my birthday present in advance of that not overwelcome anniversary...
...212...
...Engels wrote about the box...
...Who that friend was I have not yet discovered...
...Barnes would be sure to get me to help him—and then I should be most awkwardly placed...
...I thought of the faithful five,' and felt a brute even to buy some fish...
...Martin was outspoken in his denunciation of the inadequacy of the disestablishment bill...
...Mohr and I have been saying for the last few days that when he feels up to it we shall both come to see you (I for a little while of course as I hope to get to work without loss of time) and also that in the spring or summer you must come to us with all the boys...
...He received a mixed welcome and there ware violent riots during his visit to Derry in early May...
...And now, dear, I have a great favour to ask of you—namely that you will if possible see Lissa sometimes, and treat him just as an old friend...
...I was really ill and, as you may guess, terribly preoccupied with my own thoughts which were none of the pleasantest...
...Remember he is blameless in this...
...a proof that Greek fire and a few shots are useful when applied at the right moment...
...If the Irishman proceeds to say, "we owe a debt of gratitude"—it is not to Gladstone but to Stephens the Head Centre.9 Fenians have effected in a few months that which moral force, agitation, constitutional means had for years, nay centuries, striven ineffectually to bring about...
...The Irish question has given a new lease of life to demagogues great and small, to penny-a-liners of all descriptions...
...And Paul's shirts...
...Unhappily some of our Socialists don't understand, and say it is no "Socialist" movement...
...As you are a Meridional' and rather addicted to the vice of enthusiasm, whatever you may profess to the contrary, I do not mind confessing to you that I have been sufficiently stupid twice to walk to the Red Caps for the sole purpose there to feast my eyes on a placard bearing the inscription "The destruction of the Church is at hand...
...And now to get away from ourselves...
...Meantime the Burnley ass does not say what the size is— so I can't order here until the Lord of the Manor will let me know the inches of his lordly neck...
...A lesson for the Working Classes of England...
...Selkirk was the prototype of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe...
...I hope we shall continue the best and most intimate of friends—and to do this nothing will help so much as if you and Longuet continue to see him...
...Nay they have done more, for the disendowment question leads to the question of vested interests to the desecration of that Holy of Holies—private property...
...I could not bring myself to do it—he has been very good, and gentle, and patient with me—but I have done it now...
...There has been much else...
...are vested interests not to be respected...
...Copyright c 1979 by Albin Michel...
...A black dress coat, and a white tie lent a greater ghostliness to the stolid pallor of his countenance...
...But enough of myself...
...Edward says (please excuse the language) they all want their bottoms smacked...
...I think 211 we have done the best we could for the "children" [of Jenny, who had died in '83...
...They admit it to be a question of standing by their class...
...Ens...
...The Premier was cheered but he was also hissed, and I could find in his look or manner none of the trepidation which make his great rival so painfully remarkable...
...You will, I am sure, understand my feeling in this...
...Challey [Marx] wants me to copy for you the description given in the Irishman of Disraeli and Gladstone or others [illegible] to the House of Commons...
...Then the game will become even more interesting, e.g., Goschen2 will have to explain why he does not, especially in view of the Far Eastern crisis, insist upon the carrying out of the naval contracts...
...I firmly believe that owing to my long intercourse with cats, I have acquired, like them, nine lives instead of one...
...I was quite shocked yesterday when...
...on March 24, 1869, after lengthy and heated debate in the House of Commons...
...Men are growing out of their childhood, toys no longer attract them, no longer have the power to divert them from the great objects they are determined to attain...
...The imbeciles...
...For Benjamin held his head high and walked on to his goal with something like the confidence of Alexander Selkirk," who, as everybody knows, was 'monarch of all he surveyed.' If none of your readers have seen the man in the flesh, then they have lost a sight...
...Prince Arthur was to tour Ireland from April 5 to May 4, 1869...
...He says you are to let him know the names of the Companies you have applied to and what they said to you...
...12 "I am monarch of all I survey": William Cowper, Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk...
...The Fenians, a revolutionary organization dedicated to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland, had staged a brave but unsuccessful uprising in March 1867, with the aid of a militant group of Irish-Americans who had emigrated after the Famine of 1845-50...
...He is a very skeleton—mere skin and bones...
...We can hold out, so Barnes positively assures me, easily till then (and Thorne says so too...
...English commentary and notes copyright c 1982 by Andre Deutsch, Ltd., and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc...
...Eleanor to Jenny My dearest Di, Papa told me you had written to him about me—and from what he has said I see how kindly you have spoken of me...
...News of any other kind I have not to give— for Ventnor is not exactly an exciting place, and the greatest events of each day have been my morning interview with butchers, poulterers, etc., and the various "meals...
...He went in and Dizzy came...
...The Engineers' strike...
...I got your letter too late yesterday to catch our post (5 o'c...
...I was as near to Gladstone as the paper on which this is being written...
...For a long time I have tried to make up my mind to break off my engagement [to the Communard Lissagaray...
...The disestablishment and disendowment bill, formally known as the Irish Church Act, had been passed in the House of Commons soon before Jenny's letter...
...One friend after another I have found false and treacherous—till even Dollie comes here and tells Papa she believes me to be secretly married and a lot of other cock and bull stories, that do far more honour to her imagination than to her veracity...
...I fear I am taxing your patience— the deciphering of so many pages of my pattes de mouche" will give you an incurable head1 In fact the bill was carried, at its second reading, by 118 votes (368 for, 250 against) at 2.30 A.M...
...We live on in the normal way, indifferent to the march of time, even unaffected by the change of seasons—but fortunately there is a great busy world out of Modena Villas, a world all astir...
...Sorry you've had to pay on Chronicle...
...I sometimes wonder Ventnor, 15 January 1882 how I have lived through it all...
...This is the English translation and now listen to the Irish original...
...Stephens was arrested in 1865 but escaped to America, where he energetically rallied support for a Fenian rising...
...Your TUSSY P.S...
...9 James Stephens, one of the founders of the Fenian movement...
...Par will by that time be quite a man (from all I heard he was almost an independent gentleman six months ago) and either Helen or I would go over to help you on the journey...
...If the Prince comes authorized to open the prison doors for every Irishman convicted and suspected of political offence, then let the people cheer him heartily...
...A reference to Fenian prisoners serving terms of penal servitude in English prisons...
...Of course I did not, because (except perhaps his sister, now living in Devonshire) there is not a relation he would The Den, Jews Walk, Sydenham, London...
...How I love him no one can know—and yet—we must each of us, after all, live our own life—and much and hard as I have tried I could not crush out my desire to try something...
...The enclosed will explain why he has not received them...
...Gladstone, the Irishman treats sarcastically and is rather surprised at the fact that that patriotic statesman should now rush about in frenzied haste to redress in the twinkling of an eye a wrong which has existed for three centur208 ies and against which he never before opened his lips...
...Of course you have seen from the French papers that the vote for the disendowment of the Irish church was carried in the House of Commons by a majority of sixty,' but no doubt those papers have given you a very incorrect notion of the impression made by that event on the Irish, that is, if they have taken their information from the London press...
...Kiss my dear little boys for their Auntie, who also kisses you...
...The day after I wrote to you the doctor told me Edward might at any moment (his temperature was up to 103 at times) "take a turn for the worse," and that I ought at once to communicate with his relations...
...Now dear, goodnight...
...The editorial commentary and notes are taken from the book...
...The case is suspicious and therefore he advised his countrymen to be on their guard and to have no confidence in the Liberal leader, to trust neither Whigs nor Tories, Gladstone nor Disraeli, and to avoid above all things the position of partisans in parliamentary contests of English factions...
...I did try not to let him see—but I succeeded very badly, and then Dollie's advent made further efforts at concealment useless...
...To begin with there are dear Mama's things which we so much wanted you to have— and then the toys for the children...
...I think your "better half " will appreciate it...
...The slightest chill would, the doctors say, be absolutely fatal— and Edward is a most unmanageable person— I write freely because he is in bed asleep (thank goodness he does sleep well...
...The weather in this "genial" place having gone from bad to worse, Mohr has made up his mind to leave here tomorrow (Monday...
...going to my poulterer I saw five guinea-fowls hanging (dead) in a row...
...This he attempted to achieve by severing the connection between the Protestant church and the state—a major source of discontent given that the overwhelming majority of the population were Catholic peasants—and by securing a fairer relationship between landlord and tenant...
...Probably an allusion to the Lafargues' menagerie...
...Your TUSSY P.S...
...After all work is the chief thing...
...Jenny to Paul Lafargue My dear Paul, As you have of your own accord interrupted your tete-a-tete by visits right and left, you will pardon me, if for a few moments I draw your attention from private to public affairs: in our Excerpted from The Daughters of Karl Marx: Family Correspondence 1866-1898...
...Edward [Aveling] is better...
...In the following letter Jenny reports to Paul on the troubled situation in Ireland...
...Of course I know Bernstein would never misuse any letter—but it is as well that we should have the legal control over them...
...Fancy a placidfaced Jew, with broad nostrils and full luminous eye, a mouth as flexible as india rubber and a great rice-coloured forehead, over which a dyed ringlet hangs carelessly dependent...
...The courts have again declared that a letter is the property of the writer of the letter and his heirs or executors, not of the person to whom the letter is written...
...Of course I do not mean to deny that great preparations are being made for the royal reception...
...Then I feel too that he has had in me a most disagreeable and trying companion...
...Introduction by Sheila Rowbotham...
...unencumbered by worldly goods they will slip like eels through the narrow lock which leads to Heaven...
...Indeed he is working again—though I wish he wouldn't...
...Probably a reference to the leader of March 27, 209 though this opinion was frequently expressed by the Universal News...
...They are locked out, and the employers admit that they have no quarrel with the men in all cases except some two or three in London...
...He, Disraeli, had taken a friend's arm...
...It is most amusing...
...It is entitled—"The Rivals...
...To be published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc...
...Letters copyright ® 1982 by Marcelle Bottigelli...
...The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) was organized on highly ritualistic lines, with "Head Centre" the code for "Chief Executive...
...the Land Act, which on paper offered the tenant increased security but still failed to protect him against eviction, was passed the following year...
...per paper quite irrespective of weight...
...We 210 have had days with icy winds, and days with fogs that would not disgrace London—and yet on the whole Mohr has stood it well...
...Tongues and pens are running a desperate race...
...George Barnes was Secretary of the Union...
...The Vorwarts is falling more and more under Bernstein's influence, and his wet-blanket articles, that no doubt you see both in the Vorwarts and the Neue Zeit, are not exactly useful at the present moment...
...Commentary and notes by Olga Meier...
...If I can I shall get him off to Hastings away from the awful fogs we are having here...
Vol. 29 • April 1982 • No. 2
