Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

SELECT CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 383

the last barricade to be manned. But he was too much of an individualist

to be an adherent of any one school of political thought. The Lafargues

tried to snub the persistent Lissagaray.

Last night Lissa came again [wrote Eleanor to her sister Jenny] ...

again Laura and Lafargue shook hands with everybody. .. and not with

him! Altogether they behave most oddly. Either Lissagaray is the perfect

gendeman that Paul's letter and his own behaviour proclaim him to be,

and then he should be treated as such, or else he is no gentleman, and

then he ought not to be received by us - one or the other - but this

really unladylike behaviour on Laura's part is very disagreeable. I only

wonder Lissagaray comes at all.^13

Marx, too, disapproved of the association, and refused to allude to any

'engagement'. Eleanor claimed that he was unjust towards Lissagaray but,

as he wrote to Engels,

1 require nothing of him except that he furnish proofs instead of

phrases, that he be better than his reputation, that one has some reason

for relying on him. You see from the reply what effect the man con-

tinues to have. The damnable thing is that, for the child's sake I must

proceed with great consideration and care.^14

I Ic was sure that his intervention would force Lissagaray 'to put a good
face on a bad situation'.^15 Jenny Marx, however, strongly disapproved of
her husband's attitude when Engels tactlessly showed her Marx's letter.^16
She claimed to be the only one to understand her daughter's position and
connived at Lissagaray's visits to Eleanor at Brighton, while keeping up

. 1 continual correspondence with her and sending her hampers of special
lood and clothes.

Meanwhile, Eleanor was trying to establish her financial independence.
In the summer of 1873 , aided by two clergymen and old Arnold Ruge
(Marx's colleague of the 1840s) she got a teaching job in a ladies' boarding
school run by the Misses Hall in Brighton. But she still pined for Lissa-
garay. Her health broke down and she had to return to London. Throughout
1872 she was the constant companion of her father, both at home and
on his journeys to Harrogate and Carlsbad. Marx had forbidden her to
sec Lissagaray and she appealed to him, probably some time during 1874 :

I want to know, dear Mohr, when I may see L again. It is so very hard

never to see him. I have been doing my best to be patient, but it is so

difficult, and I don't feel as if I could be much longer. - I do not expect

you to say that he can come here - I should not even wish it, but could

I not, now and then, go for a litde walk with him? You let me go out

with Outine, with Frankel, why not with him? - No one moreover will

be astonished to see us together, as everybody knows we are engaged.. ..