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II,| KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYThe differences between Marx and Willich were not only doctrinal.
Willich came from an old and distinguished family. It was even said
(and Willich did nothing to dispel the rumour) that he was descended
from the Hohenzollerns. Since the age of twelve he had made his career
that of a professional soldier, and he was a good one. Engels, his adjutant
in the 1849 uprising in Baden, described him as 'brave, coldblooded,
skilful and of quick and sound perception in battle, but, when not fighting,
something of a boring ideologist'.^66 Willich seems to have made an unfor-
tunate impression on the Marx household on his arrival in London by
bursting in on them very early in the morning with colourful attire and
excessive bonhomie. Jenny even thought that Willich was out to seduce
her: 'He would come to visit me', she wrote later, 'because he wanted to
pursue the worm that lives in every marriage and lure it out.'^67 At any
rate it was natural that Marx should be jealous of Willich's flamboyant
posturing just as Willich was outraged both by Marx's waning enthusiasm
for immediate revolutionary struggle and by his autocratic tendency
(according to Willich) to divide mankind into two parties: Marx and the
rest. There was also an increasingly unfavourable contrast made by
Willich's friends between 'intellectuals' such as Marx, who lived with his
family, studied in the British Museum and lectured on economic theory,
and 'practical' men like Willich, who lived a bachelor among the refugee
workers, shared their hardships and thought that all problems were 'really
so simple'.^68 Marx might command the distant respect of the workers,
but it was Willich who won their devotion.
These differences soon caused dissension in the Central Committee of
the Communist League, of which Willich had become a member on the
suggestion of Marx himself. In the spring of 1850 Willich quarrelled
violently with Engels and refused attempts by the Central Committee to
mediate between them. In August Marx opposed Willich's suggestion
to the Central Committee that they form a united front with other
democratic refugee organisations. The same divergence of opinion
occurred in the committee for refugees; here, when Willich found himself
in a minority of one, he resigned and took the dispute to a general
meeting of the Association where he gained the support of the majority.
Marx found himself outflanked on the Left and called a 'reactionary' for
his defence of the tactics advocated in the Communist Manifesto. Thus
fortified, Willich returned to the attack in the Central Committee on
1 September and passions were so roused that Willich challenged Marx
to a duel. Marx had moved a long way since his student days in Bonn and
disdained the suggestion, but Conrad Schramm, whom Marx described as
the Percy Hotspur of his group, challenged Willich in turn, despite Marx's
dissuasions. Duelling was outlawed in England, so they took the night