Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

THE 'ECONOMICS' 3'17 4

The devil knows, the crowd is getting ever smaller and no new

blood is being added.'^1 '

And to the countess, he wrote:

You will understand how the quite unforeseen news of Lassalle's death

has astonished, shocked and shattered me. He was one of those for

whom I had a great affection.... Be convinced that no one can feel

deeper grief than I at his being torn away. And above all I feel for you.

I know what the departed was to you, what his loss means to

you. Rejoice over one thing. He died young, in triumph, like Achilles.^120

Although Marx was obviously over-generous here to his own past senti-
ments, yet his relationship to Lassalle was ambivalent, resentment and
hate always being tempered by a grudging admiration.

IV. LIFE IN GRAFTON TERRACE

The years 1860-6 3 had marked a fresh - but final - low in Marx's
domestic affairs. He touched the depth of 'bourgeois misery' and could
manage no more in three years than research on the historical portions
of his 'Economics'. In 1864 , however, the situation changed: two legacies
gave the Marx household enough security for Marx to be able to devote
himself to the spread of the First International (which had been founded
just four weeks after Lassalle's death) and also to start drafting the vital
chapters of his 'Economics' on capital.
As Marx had foreseen, the poverty that the family experienced in
Grafton Terrace was in many ways worse than that of Dean Street. The
building had, according to Jenny, 'the four characteristics the English like
in a house: airy, sunny, dry, and built in gravelly soil';^121 and on a fine
day there was a clear view right down to St Paul's. But the Marxes lived
a very isolated life as their house was, initially, very difficult of access:
building was going on all round, there was no made-up road leading to
it, and in rainy weather the sticky red soil turned into a quagmire. This
particularly affected Jenny who wrote that

it was a long time before I could get used to the complete solitude. I

often missed the long walks I had been in the habit of making in the

crowded West-End streets, the meetings, the clubs and our favourite

public-house and homely conversations which had so often helped me

to forget the worries of life for a time. Luckily I still had the article

for the Tribune to copy out twice a week and that kept me in touch

with world events.^122

Even worse, there were more appearances to be kept up and expenditure