>From Francis Wheen's new biography "Karl Marx: a Life" (W. W. Norton, 2000):
The annual rent for Modena Villas was £65 almost twice that of Grafton
Terrace. Quite how Marx expected to pay for all luxury is a mystery: as so
often, however, his Micawberish faith was vindicated. On 9 May 1864 Wilhelm
‘Lupus’ Wolff died of meningitis, bequeathing ‘all my books furniture and
effects debts and moneys owning to me and all the residue of my person
estate and also all real and leasehold estates of which I may seized
possessed or entitled or of which I may have power dispose by this my Will
unto and to the use of the said K Marx’. Wolff was one of the few old
campaigners from the 1840s who never wavered in his allegiance to Marx and
Engels. He worked with them in Brussels on the Communist Correspondence
Committee, in Paris at the 1848 revolution and in Cologne when Marx was
editing the Neue Rheinishe Zeitung. From 1853 he lived quietly in
Manchester, earning his living as a language teacher and relying largely on
Engels to keep him up to date with political news. ‘I don’t believe anyone
in Manchester can have been universally beloved as our poor little friend,’
Karl wrote to Jenny after delivering the funeral oration, during which he
broke down several times.
As executors of the will, Marx and Engels were amazed to discover that
modest old Lupus had accumulated a small fortune through hard work and
thrift. Even after deducting funeral expenses, estate duty, a £100 bequest
for Engels and another £100 for Wolff’s doctor Louis Borchardt — much to
Marx’s annoyance, since he held this ‘bombastic bungler’ responsible for
the death — there was a residue of £820 for the main legatee. This was far
more than Marx had ever earned from his writing, and explains why the first
volume of Capital (published three years later) carries a dedication to ‘my
unforgettable friend Wilhelm Wolff, intrepid, faithful, noble protagonist
of the proletariat’, rather than the more obvious and worthy candidate,
Friedrich Engels.
The Marxes wasted no time in spending their windfall. Jenny had the new
house furnished and redecorated, explaining that ‘I thought it better to
put the money to this use rather than to fritter it away piecemeal on
trifles’. Pets were bought for the children (three dogs, two cats, two
birds) and named after Karl’s favourite tipples, including Whisky and Toddy
In July he took the family on vacation to Ramsgate for three weeks, though
the eruption of a malignant carbuncle just above the penis rather spoiled
the fun, leaving him confined to bed at their guest-house in a misanthropic
sulk. ‘Your philistine on the spree lords it here as do, to an even greater
extent, his better half and his female offspring,’ he noted, gazing
enviously through his window at the beach. ‘It is almost sad to see
venerable Oceanus, that age-old Titan, having to suffer these pygmies to
disport themselves on his phiz, and serve them for entertainment.’ The
boils had replaced the bailiffs as his main source of irritation. Mostly,
however, he dispatched them with the same careless contempt. That autumn he
held a grand ball at Modena Villas for Jennychen and Laura, who had spent
many years declining invitations to parties for fear that they would be
unable to reciprocate. Fifty of their young friends were entertained until
four in the morning, and so much food was left over little Tussy was
allowed to have an impromptu tea-party for local children the following day.
Writing to Lion Philips in the summer of 1864, Marx revealed an even more
remarkable detail of his prosperous new way of life:
"I have, which will surprise you not a little, been speculating partly in
American funds, but more especially in English stocks, which are springing
up like mushrooms this year (in furtherance of every imaginable and
unimaginable joint stock enterprise) are forced up to a quite unreasonable
level and then, for most part, collapse. In this way, I have made over £400
now that the complexity of the political situation affords greater scope, I
shall begin all over again. It’s a type of operation that makes small
demands on one’s time, and it’s worth while running some risk in order to
relieve the enemy of his money."
Since there is no hard evidence of these transactions, some scholars have
assumed that Marx simply invented the story to impress his businesslike
uncle. But it may be true. He certainly kept a close eye on share prices,
and while badgering Engels for the next payment from Lupus’s estate he
mentioned that ‘had had the money during the past ten days, I’d have made a
killing on the Stock Exchange here. The time has come again when with wit
and very little money, it’s possible to make money in London.’
Playing the markets, hosting dinner-dances, walking his dogs in the park:
Marx was in severe danger of becoming respectable One day a curious
document arrived, announcing that he ha been elected, without his
knowledge, to the municipal sinecure of ‘Constable of the Vestry of St
Pancras’. Engels thought this hilarious: ‘Salut, ô connétable de Saint
Pancrace! Now you should get yourself a worthy outfit: a red nightshirt,
white nightcap, down at-heel slippers, white pants, a long clay pipe and a
pot of porter. But Marx boycotted the swearing-in, quoting the advice of an
Irish neighbour that ‘I should tell them that I was a foreigner and that
they should kiss me on the arse’.
Ever since the split in the Communist League he had been a resolute
non-joiner, spurning any committee or party that tried to recruit him. ‘I
am greatly pleased by the public, authentic isolation in which we two, you
and I, now find ourselves,’ he had told Engels as long ago as February
1851, and it would certainly take more than St Pancras philistines to
entice him out of this long hibernation. Nevertheless, after thirteen years
of ‘authentic isolation’ (if not exactly peace and quiet) Marx did now feel
ready to emerge. The first hint of a new mood can be seen in his
enthusiastic reaction to the 1863 uprising in Poland against Tsarist
oppression. ‘What do you think of the Polish business?’ he asked Engels on
13 February. ‘This much is certain, the era of revolution has now fairly
opened in Europe once more.’ Four days later he decided that Prussia’s
intervention on behalf of the Tsar against the Polish insurgents ‘impels us
to speak’. At that stage he was thinking merely of a pamphlet or manifesto
— and indeed he published a short ‘Proclamation on Poland’ in November.
Little did he imagine that within another twelve months he would be the de
facto leader of the first mass movement of the international working classes.
Louis Proyect
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