6 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYfifty miles east of Trier. Marx paid a visit to her there in March to make
plans for the marriage.
As soon as he left, Jenny wrote to him:
I think that you have never been as dear, as sweet, as charming. Every
time we parted before I was certainly enraptured with you, and would
have had you back to tell you once more how dear, how completely
dear you are to me. But this last time you left triumphant; I did not
know how dear you were to me in my deepest heart until I no longer
saw you in the flesh; I have only the one faithful portrait of you standing
so full of life before my soul in all its angelic mildness and goodness,
heightened love and spiritual lustre. If you were back here again, my
dear little Karl, what a capacity for happiness you would find in your
brave little girl; and even if you showed a still worse tendency and even
nastier intentions, I would still not take reactionary measures;^8 I would
patiently lay down my head, sacrificing it to my naughty boy. ... Do
you still remember our twilight conversation, our beckoning games,
our hours of slumber. Dear heart, how good, how loving, how attentive,
how joyful you were!^0The letter also contained careful instructions as to what to buy and what
not to buy for the wedding which took place in the Protestant Church
and registry office in Kreuznach on 19 June 1843. The official registration
described the couple as 'Herr Karl Marx, Doctor of Philosophy, residing
in Cologne, and Fraulein Johanna Bertha Julie Jenny von Westphalen, no
occupation, residing in Kreuznach'. From the two families, only Jenny's
mother and brother Edgar were present, the witnesses being acquaint-
ances from Kreuznach.
Marx and Jenny left immediately for a honeymoon of several weeks.
They first went to Switzerland to see the Rhine Falls near Schaffhausen
and then - travelling through the province of Baden - they took their
time on the journey back to Kreuznach. Jenny later told a story that
illustrated how extraordinarily irresponsible they both were (and con-
tinued to be) in their attitude to money. Jenny's mother had given them
some money for the honeymoon and they took it with them, in a chest.
They had it with them in the coach during their journey and took it into
the different hotels. When they had visits from needy friends they left it
open on the table in their room and anyone could take as much as he
pleased. Needless to say, it was soon empty.^10
On returning to Kreuznach, Marx and Jenny lived for three months
in her mother's house - which enabled Marx to 'withdraw from the public
stage into my study'" and get down to writing for the Deutsch-Franzosische
Jahrbiicher. It was clear that the Jahrbiicher would be a specifically political
review. Although Marx had dealt with political subjects in his articles for