THE LAST DECADE 4 IIno longer and returned to London - only to depart once again for
Ventnor, alone, at the end of October. He was feeling in slightly better
health and sat drinking rum with Engels till one o'clock in the morning
on the eve of his departure. On the Isle of Wight he spent long hours
wandering over the downs. His increasing loneliness drove him to beg
Laura to come and live with him. Only very occasionally now was the
spark of the old fiery Marx rekindled - such as when he was suddenly
notified of the success of his theories in Russia; he commented excitedly:
'I damage a power which, together with England, is the true bulwark
of the old society.'^144 Meanwhile in Argenteuil Jenny's condition was
deteriorating. From as early as April she was continuously suffering severe
pains from what seems to have been cancer of the bladder. She had four
young children to look after in addition to a husband who only shouted
at her and did nothing at all to help. Her mother-in-law blamed her for
the debts of the Longuet household and continually urged her to go out
to work. When the Lafargues came to see her in early January they found
her 'sunk in a torpor broken by nightmares and fantastic dreams'. She
soon became delirious and died on 11 January 1883 , aged 38. It fell to
Eleanor to inform her father. 'I have lived many a sad hour', she wrote,
'but none so bad as that. I felt that I was bringing my father his death
sentence. I racked my brain all the long anxious way to find how I could
break the news to him. But I did not need to, my face gave me away.
Moor said at once "our Jennychen is dead".'^145
Irredeemably shattered by the death of his 'first born, the daughter he
loved most',^146 Marx returned to London to die.
On his return to London, hoarseness as a result of laryngitis prevented
Marx from speaking much. Lenchen cooked him the tastiest meals to try
and restore his appetite and he was given constant mustard baths to warm
his cold feet. He was drinking a pint of milk a day and got through a
bottle of brandy in four. His reading alternated between publishers' cata-
logues when he was feeling low and French novels when his intellectual
interest was aroused. An ulcer in the lung complicated his bronchitis. By
the end of February he was confined to his room with a north-east wind
bringing constant frost and snow. On 10 March Engels reported to Laura
that the doctor considered Marx's health to be actually improving slightly
and that all would be well if he could get through the next two months.
On the morning of the thirteenth he had taken wine, milk and soup. But
when Engels came on his daily visit early in the afternoon he found the
scene he had so often feared:
The house was in tears, it seemed that the end had come. I asked for
information, tried to get a realistic view of the situation and to offer