KARL MARX

3i8 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
Vogt had stirred up all the 'foggy gossip of the refugees'. 79 He caused
affidavits to be made left, right and centre, fired off at least fifty letters
(that to his lawyer in Berlin alone is twenty printed pages) and entered
into a 'secret and confidential' 80 correspondence with the Daily Telegraph
to try to get them to make amends. He started on the book in August
but did not finish it until mid-November; both Jenny and Engels disapproved
of the delay and considered Marx's approach much too thorough.
It proved impossible to find a publisher in Germany and - despite Engels'
warnings - Marx decided on a London publisher for whom Marx's book
was his first commercial enterprise; Marx even optimistically persuaded
him to agree to share the profits. What with the cost of the lawsuits,
gathering material and printing, Marx found that he had spent about
£100 to which Engels and Lassalle had to contribute heavily.
It took Marx a long time to decide on the title: he himself, supported
by Jenny, favoured Da-Da Vogt, apparently on the grounds that it would
'puzzle the philistines', 81 but Engels persuaded him to settle for the
simpler Herr Vogt. The book was very long and described by Marx himself
as 'a system of mockery and contempt'. 82 Vogt, pillaried as a reincarnation
of Sir John Falstaff, was pursued through two hundred closely printed
pages whose style was so allusive that Engels recommended a resume
after each chapter 'in order to present the general impression clearly to
the Philistines'. 83 Marx was at his most vituperative:
By means of an artificially hidden sewer system all the lavatories of
London spew their physical filth into the Thames. By means of the
systematic pushing of goose quills the world capital spews out all its
social filth into the great papered central sewer called the Daily
Telegraph.
Having transformed the social filth of London into newspaper
articles, Levy transforms the articles into copper, and finally the copper
into gold. Over the gate leading to this central sewer made of paper
there can be read these words written di colore oscuro: 'hie.. . quisquam
faxit oletum\ or as Byron so poetically translated it: 'Wanderer, stop
and - piss!' 84
Marx read passages aloud to Jenny and she found them highly amusing.
Engels thought it better than the Eighteenth Brumaire and Lassalle called
it 'a masterpiece in all respects'. However, few copies sold and subsequent
generations have not shared the taste for vituperation so characteristic of
mid-Victorian polemics. Disappointment at the book's failure was
enhanced when the publisher went bankrupt and Marx was saddled with
all the printing costs. Ten years later, following the abdication of Napoleon
III, the final stroke was added to the tragi-comedy: the French
provisional Government of 1870 published papers found in the Tuileries