3i8 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYadvantage that they are an artistic whole and that is only attainable
through my habit of not letting them be printed until they lie before
me complete.^180Marx was in a particular hurry to finish as 'the thing weighs on me like
a mountain'; also his friends - Liebknecht, for example - were spreading
oversimplified versions of his ideas; and, as ever, Marx was haunted by
the idea of not being able to complete his work before a revolutionary
outbreak.^181
In February 1866 , being seriously ill and under pressure from Engels,
Marx at last agreed to complete volume one before drafting out the
others. 'If I had enough money, that is more >-0, for my family and if
my book were ready, it would be a matter of complete indifference to me
whether I was thrown on the scrap heap today or tomorrow.' And he
continued with the following report on his progress:
As far as this 'damned' book goes, this is the situation: it was ready at
the end of December. The discussion of ground rent alone is, in its
present form, almost book length. I went to the museum in the day and
wrote at night. I had to work through the new agricultural chemistry in
Germany, especially Leibig and Schonbein, who are more important
for this thing than all the economists put together and also the enor-
mous material that the French have given us since I was last occupied
with this point Although ready the manuscript is gigantic in its
present form and no one else apart from me can edit it - not even you.
I began the copying out and stylising on the first of January and the
thing went on very briskly since I was naturally delighted to lick
the child smooth after so many birth pangs. But then once again the
carbuncle broke it off. ...^182
By November 1866 he was able to send off the first batch of manuscript
and the following April the whole was at last completed. Marx insisted
on going to Germany himself with the manuscript and tactfully informed
Engels of his clothes and watch that needed to be redeemed from the
pawnshop before his trip. Engels sent by return the halves of seven £ 5
notes: the other halves, as was their usual practice, followed when Marx
telegraphed the safe arrival of the first batch. Marx sailed for Hamburg
in mid-April, proved to be one of the few passengers who kept upright in
the storm, and deposited his manuscript in Meissner's safe. Since there
was a possibility of printing the manuscript immediately (the printing was
eventually done by Wigand who had published so much Young Hegelian
material in the 1840s), Marx decided to stay on in Germany and went to
Hanover at the invitation of Dr Kugelmann, a former member of the
Communist League and now a much respected gynaecologist, with whom
Marx had been in correspondence since 1862. Marx described him as 'a