*4IO KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
tail of the great liberal party, i.e. their enslavers, the capitalists'.^117 And
Engels, in spite of his temporary enthusiasm for working-class radicals
such as Joseph Cowen, had to warn Bernstein that 'there is here at the
moment no real working-class movement in the continental sense'.^118
Nevertheless, Marx persisted in his view that in Britain a peaceful tran-
sition to socialism was possible.
My party [he wrote in 1880 ] considers an English revolution not neces-
sary, but - according to historic precedents - possible. If the unavoidable
evolution turn into a revolution, it would not only be the fault of the
ruling classes, but also of the working class. Every pacific concession
of the former has been wrung from them by 'pressure from without'.
Their action kept pace with that pressure and if the latter has more
and more weakened, it is only because the English working class know
not how to wield their power and use their liberties, both of which
they possess legally.^119
Particularly after the Commune, Marx began to be better known in
English society. During the Eastern crisis of 1877 , he claimed to have
placed many unsigned pieces in 'the fashionable London press' attacking
Gladstone's Russian policy, all through the agency of Maltman Barry, his
old acquaintance from the International. He was also using Barry to work
on Members of Parliament who 'would hold up their hands in horror if
they knew that it was really the "Red-Terror-Doctor", as they like to call
me, who was whispering in their ears'.^120 In early 1879 , the 'Red-Terror-
Doctor' attracted the attention of no less a person than Queen Victoria's
eldest daughter, who was married to the German Crown Prince. She
requested Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, a liberal MP who had been Under-
Secretary for India, to meet Marx and give her his opinion of him;
accordingly, he arranged a lunch with Marx at the Devonshire Club in
St James's Street. Grant Duff's general impressions, as he related them to
the Crown Princess, were as follows:He is a short, rather small man with grey hair and beard which contrasts
strangely with a still dark moustache. The face is somewhat round; the
forehead well shaped and filled up - the eye rather hard but the whole
expression rather pleasant than not, by no means that of a gentleman
who is in the habit of eating babies in their cradles - which is I daresay
the view which the police take of him. His talk was that of a well-
informed, nay learned man - much interested in Comparative Grammar
which had led him into the Old Slavonic and other out-of-the-way
studies and was varied by many quaint turns and little bits of dry
humour, as when speaking of Hezechiall's 'Life of Prince Bismarck' he
always referred to it, by way of contrast to Dr Busch's book, as the Old
Testament.