Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

242 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

ahead, three or four policemen some distance behind us. Marx showed

an activity that I should not have attributed to him. And after the wild

chase had lasted some minutes, we succeeded in turning into a side

street and there running through an alley - a back yard between two

streets - whence we came behind the policemen who lost the trail.

Now we were safe.^132

When Engels was in London staying with Marx, the two of them used

to go out together; once Engels wrote to Jenny apologising for having

led her husband astray, and was informed that Marx's 'nocturnal wander-

ings' had brought him such a chill that he had had to stay in bed for a

week.

Life in the three rooms in Dean Street was extremely irregular. The

following vivid description, which seems to be largely accurate, was writ-

ten by a Prussian government spy in 1852 :

As father and husband, Marx, in spite of his wild and resdess character,

is the gendest and mildest of men. Marx lives in one of the worst,

therefore one of the cheapest quarters of London. He occupies two

rooms. The one looking out on the street is the salon, and the bedroom

is at the back. In the whole apartment there is not one clean and solid

piece of furniture. Everything is broken, tattered and torn, with a half

inch of dust over everything and the greatest disorder everywhere. In

the middle of the salon there is a large old-fashioned table covered

with an oilcloth, and on it there lie manuscripts, books and newspapers,

as well as the children's toys, the rags and tatters of his wife's sewing

basket, several cups with broken rims, knives, forks, lamps, an inkpot,

tumblers, Dutch clay pipes, tobacco ash - in a word, everything topsy-

turvy, and all on the same table. A seller of second-hand goods would

be ashamed to give away such a remarkable collection of odds and

ends.

When you enter Marx's room smoke and tobacco fumes make your

eyes water so much that for a moment you seem to be groping about

in a cavern, but gradually, as you grow accustomed to the fog, you

can make out certain objects which distinguish themselves from the

surrounding haze. Everything is dirty, and covered with dust, so that

to sit down becomes a thoroughly dangerous business. Here is a chair

with only three legs, on another chair the children are playing at

cooking - this chair happens to have four legs. This is the one which

is offered to the visitor, but the children's cooking has not been wiped

away; and if you sit down, you risk a pair of trousers.^133

Family accommodation was so restricted that when Franziska was born
in the spring of 1851 , she had to be given to a nurse, there being so little
room in the house. A year later, she died.