Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

and how the least bit of good news gives you new life.'^137 'jMercurial' was

his favourite word in describing Jenny's character; but with the passage

of years she found it increasingly difficult not to be submerged by her

oppressive surroundings. In the summer of 1850 Marx wrote to Weyde-

meyer: 'You must not take amiss the excited letters of my wife. She is

suckling, and our situation here is so extraordinarily miserable that it

is pardonable to lose one's patience.'^138 At the death of her first child

in November 1850 Jenny was quite 'beside herself and 'dangerously

overwrought'. The following year Marx described her as being ill 'more

from bourgeois than physical causes'. A few months later he wrote to

Engels:

Floods of tears the whole night long tire my patience and make me

angry.... I feel pity for my wife. Most of the pressure falls on her and

basically she is right. Industry must be more productive than marriage.

In spite of everything you remember that by nature I am not at all

patient and even a litde hard so that from time to time my equanimity

disappears.^139

In 1854 Marx spoke of 'the dangerous condition of my wife';^140 the same
year she retreated to bed 'partly from anger because good Dr Freund
bombarded us once again with dunning letters'.^141 The following year 'for
a week my wife has been more ill with nervous excitement than ever
before'.^142
Of course, much of the housework was taken over by Helene Demuth.
Liebknecht wrote of her at this time: '2 7 years old, and while no beauty,
she was nice looking with rather pleasing features. She had no lack of
admirers and could have made a good match again and again.' She was
in many ways the lynchpin of the Marx household: 'Lenchen was the
dictator but Mrs Marx was the mistress. And Marx submitted as meekly
as a lamb to that dictatorship.'^143
'In the early summer of 1851', Jenny wrote in her autobiography, 'an
event occurred that I do not wish to relate here in detail, although it
greatly contributed to an increase in our worries, both personal and
others.'^144 This event was the birth of Marx's illegitimate son Frederick;
the mother was Helene Demuth. This fact was kept so well concealed
and the surviving papers of the Marx family were so carefully sifted to
eliminate all references to it that only the recent chance discovery of a
letter brought it to light.^145 This letter, addressed to August Bebel, was
written by Louise Freyberger (the first wife of Karl Kautsky) who had
kept house for Engels on the death of Helene Demuth to whom she
had been very close. According to her, Engels had accepted paternity for
Frederick and thus 'saved Marx from a difficult domestic conflict.' But