LONDON (^243)
At Easter, 1852 [wrote Jenny], our little Franziska had a severe
bronchitis. For three days she was between life and death. She suffered
terribly. When she died we left her lifeless little body in the back room,
went into the front room and made our beds on the floor. Our three
living children lay down by us and we all wept for the little angel
whose livid, lifeless body was in the next room. Our beloved child's
death occurred at the time of the hardest privations, our German
friends being unable to help us just then. Ernest Jones, who paid us
long and frequent visits about that time, promised to help us but he
was unable to bring us anything. ... Anguish in my heart, I hurried to
a French emigrant who lived not far away and used to come to see us,
and begged him to help us in our terrible necessity. He immediately
gave me two pounds with the most friendly sympathy. That money was
used to pay for the coffin in which my child now rests in peace. She
had no cradle when she came into the world and for a long time was
refused a last resting place. With what heavy hearts we saw her carried
to her grave.^134
In such circumstances it is not surprising that Jenny's physical and
moral resources were quickly dissipated. In 1852 , in many ways the worst
of the Dean Street years, Jenny was frequently confined to bed, emaciated,
coughing and, on doctor's orders, drinking a lot of port. Engels had tried
to raise money to get her a holiday in the country but by the autumn
she was in bed for days on end taking a spoonful of brandy hourly. Two
years later she was again ill but cared for herself on the grounds that the
doctor's prescription had only served to make her worse.
Since Jenny acted as his secretary, these illnesses hindered Marx in his
work. Indeed, she participated to the full in all of Marx's activities. She
attended meetings as an observer for him, picked out newspaper articles
that she thought might interest him and looked after publishing details
when he was away. She was at her most useful when acting as his secretary,
writing letters, producing fair copies of his articles for newspapers (his
handwriting being illegible) and keeping careful records of the dispatch
of his journalism. She was proud of her role as secretary and wrote later:
'The memory of the days I spent in his little study copying his scrawled
articles is among the happiest of my life.'^135 In financial matters, too,
Jenny was active: she wrote innumerable begging letters, dealt with the
creditors who besieged the house and even, in August 1850 , 'desperate at
the prospect of a fifth child and the future'^136 undertook a trip alone to
Marx's uncle, a businessman in Holland. However, the recent revolution-
ary upheavals had not been good for trade and the old man was in no
mood to help his eccentric nephew, so Jenny returned empty-handed.
Temperamentally, she was very unpredictable and liable to go to
extremes. Marx wrote to her: 'I know how infinitely mercurial you are
coco
(coco)
#1