KARL MARX

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4IO KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
Disillusioned by Eleanor and Ventnor, with Jenny too busy with her
babies to help him and Laura too selfish, Marx gave in to the pressure
of Engels and his doctor and went to Algiers. He was the readier to leave
London as he found Engels' boisterous company intolerable. 'Good old
Fred', he wrote to his daughter Jenny, 'may easily kill someone out of
love.' 119 Marx spent two and a half lonely months in Algiers in a small
hotel overlooking the bay. The season was exceptionally cold and wet;
his thoughts were 'to a great part absorbed by reminiscence of my wife,
such a part of my best part of life!' 140 ; and all his letters to Engels and
his daughters are full of elaborate details about his health and the weather
which (towards the end of his stay) became hot enough to persuade him
to crop his hair and shave his beard. His letters began to contain faults
of orthography and grammar - a result of the 'clouding of the mind' 141
produced by Jenny's death and his illness. Marx left Algiers in May 1882
and went to Monte Carlo where he stayed a month, but his pleurisy and
bronchitis showed no signs of abating.
On 6 June he left for Argenteuil to stay with Jenny for the next three
months, seeking rest in 'the noise of children, this "microscopic world"
that is much more interesting than the "macroscopic". 142 Jenny's household,
however, was far from being able to provide the peace for which
Marx was looking. She was expecting yet another baby in mid-September
and found no support in her husband, whom she bitterly criticised: the
little time that Longuet spent at home he spent in bed, being preoccupied
with his political activities in Paris which Marx considered as futile as
those of Lafargue. Longuet was also tactless enough to invite to Argenteuil
Roy (the French translator of Capital)-, in view of Marx's opinion of his
capacities, this naturally caused great embarrassment.
During the summer of 1882 the other members of the Marx family
gravitated towards Paris: Lenchen came in June to help Jenny, and both
Eleanor and Laura came shortly afterwards. While Laura was still in
London, Marx had written telling her it was her 'duty to accompany the
old man of the mountains' when he went to Vevey in Switzerland in
September. Laura consented and while there Marx promised her all his
documents of the International for her to write its history and broached
the possibility of her undertaking the translation into English of Capital, 14 '
They returned to Argenteuil after Jenny had given birth to her only
daughter. Quite unlike her relations with Laura, Eleanor got on well with
Jenny and developed in Argenteuil capacities that had lain quite dormant
in London. But she, too, left at the end of August and took Jenny's eldest
son, Johnny, back to England where for several months she acted with
exemplary firmness as a second mother to him.
On his return from Switzerland Marx felt that he could burden Jenny