Francis Wheen - Karl Marx

Marx’s scattergun hit other targets who were no more worthy of his attentions. There were several chapters of invective against Eugène Sue, an author of popular sentimental novels, whose only offence was to have been praised in Bruno Bauer’s Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung . Though Sue may well have been every bit as dire as Marx suggested, the punishment was absurdly disproportionate to the crime: try to imagine, by way of a modern equivalent, a magnum opus by Professor George Steiner attacking The Bridges of Madison County . Even Engels had to admit that Marx was wasting his sourness on the desert air. ‘The thing’s too long,’ he wrote. ‘The supreme contempt we two evince towards the Literatur-Zeitung is in glaring contrast to the twenty-two sheets [352 pages] we devote to it. In addition most of the criticism of speculation and of abstract being in general will be incomprehensible to the public at large, nor will it be of general interest. Otherwise the book is splendidly written …’

Or, as the tactful curate said on being served a rotten egg by his bishop, ‘No, my lord, parts of it are excellent!’

Had Marx confined himself to twitting obscure Hegelians and second-rate novelists, he might have been left in peace. But he couldn’t resist the chance to tease a bigger and more dangerous beast. In the summer of 1844, after surviving an assassination attempt, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia issued this brief message of thanks to his loyal subjects before departing on holiday: ‘I cannot leave the soil of the Fatherland, although only for a short time, without expressing publicly the deeply felt gratitude in My and the Queen’s name by which Our heart has been moved.’ Marx thought this hilarious – and said so, con brio , in an article for Vorwärts! . The King’s syntax, he wrote, seemed to imply that the royal bosoms were moved by the royal name:

If amazement at this peculiar movement makes one think again,one sees that the relative conjunction ‘ by which our heart has been moved’ refers not to the name but to the more remotely situated gratitude … The difficulty is due to the combination of three ideas: (1) that the King is leaving his homeland, (2) that he is leaving it only for a short time, (3) that he feels a need to thank the people. The too compressed utterance of these ideas makes it appear that the King is expressing his gratitude only because he is leaving his homeland …

If Marx thought that he could get away with this lèse-majesté, he had forgotten that monarchs have their own masonic solidarity. On 7 January 1845, at an audience with King Louis Philippe in Paris, the Prussian envoy Alexander von Humboldt handed over two items – a valuable porcelain vase, and a letter from Friedrich Wilhelm IV protesting at the outrageous insults and libels published by Vorwärts! . Louis Philippe agreed that there were indeed far too many German philosophers in Paris: the magazine was closed down two weeks later, and the interior minister François Guizot ordered Marx’s expulsion from France.

Where now? The only king in mainland Europe still willing to accept refugees was Leopold I of Belgium, though even he demanded a written promise of good behaviour. (‘To obtain permission to reside in Belgium I agree to pledge myself, on my word of honour, not to publish in Belgium any work on current politics. [signed] Dr Karl Marx.’) While Jenny stayed on for a few days to sell their furniture and linen, Marx left Paris in the company of Heinrich Bürgers, a young journalist from Vorwärts! who was quitting the country in disgust at ‘the punishment inflicted on the man who was my friend and faithful guide in my studies’. As their two-man coach rattled through Picardy, Bürgers tried vainly to lift his mentor’s spirits with choruses from German drinking songs.

A good night’s sleep was rather more restorative. The next morning Marx was already impatient for action, telling Bürgers to hurry up with his breakfast because ‘we must go and see Freiligrath today’. Ferdinand Freiligrath, a quondam court poet to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, had fled to Belgium some weeks earlier to escape arrest after publishing a treasonous Confession of Faith . Once a regular butt of the old Rheinische Zeitung , he was now granted instant absolution as a convert to the anti-Prussian cause. Other new arrivals from the radical diaspora included Moses Hess, Karl Heinzen, the Swiss radical Sebastian Seiler, the former artillery officer Joseph Weydemeyer (who was to become a lifelong friend), a gaggle of Polish socialists – and, most importantly, Friedrich Engels, who needed little persuasion to escape from the stifling propriety of Barmen and follow Marx into exile. Jenny’s brother Edgar von Westphalen, the lovable if incontinent puppy of the family, came too.

By the time Marx’s wife and daughter joined him, he was already back in the old routine – reading, writing, boozing, scheming. ‘We were madly gay,’ Weydemeyer recalled. There were long mornings in cafés and even longer nights of card-playing and tipsy conversation. For once, even the family finances were in credit: two days before leaving Paris Marx was paid a 1,500-franc advance by a publisher in Darmstadt for his embryonic work on political economy, and a whip-round by Engels added another 1,000 francs to the kitty, mostly from supporters in Germany. Engels also handed over the fee for his own book, The Condition of the Working Class in England , so that ‘at least the curs shan’t have the satisfaction of seeing their infamy cause you pecuniary embarrassment’. But, he added presciently, ‘ I fear that in the end you’ll be molestedin Belgium too, so that you’ll be left with no alternative but England.’

Jenny, pregnant once more, tried to conceal her disappointment at forsaking the shops and salons of Paris for boring old Brussels, but her mother was worried enough by this latest domestic upheaval to send her maidservant from Trier, Helene Demuth, on permanent loan. The twenty-five-year-old Demuth, who spent the rest of her life holding the Marx household together through countless crises and vicissitudes, was a small, graceful woman of peasant stock – round faced, blue eyed and always immaculately neat and well groomed even when surrounded by squalor. Her domestic efficiency was formidable and unflagging. As late as 1922, an Englishwoman who had visited the Marxes as a girl still recalled Helene’s excellent cooking: ‘ Her jam tarts are a sweet and abiding memoryto this day.’ Not that she was a meek little drudge: she guarded her new employers with tigerish ferocity, and any guests who outstayed their welcome could expect a severe mauling.

For the first couple of months Marx and his family lodged in hotels or the spare rooms of friends. But as soon as they found a more permanent billet – a small terraced house at 5 Rue D’Alliance, at the eastern end of the city – Jenny set off with her daughter and maid for a summer vacation in the Baroness von Westphalen’s residence in Germany, leaving Karl to make the place habitable. ‘ The little house should do,’ Jenny wrote from Trier. A room would have to be set aside for childbirth, but ‘having concluded my important business on the upper floor, I shall remove downstairs again. Then you could sleep in what is now your study and pitch your tent in the immense drawing-room – that would present no difficulty. The children’s noise downstairs would then be completely shut off, you would not be disturbed upstairs, I could join you when things were quiet … What a colony of paupers there is going to be in Brussels!’ On 26 September, only a fortnight after travelling back from Trier, Jenny added to the colonial population by giving birth to another daughter, Laura.