Comrade and wife to Karl Marx, Jenny Marx writes to their old comrade Joseph Weydemeyer, then in the United States, pleading to send remittances from Marx’s work to the family. In dire poverty of their London exile, she tells of a single horrible day as debts they could not pay came due.

‘Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer’ (1851) by Jenny Marx from the Chicago Daily Socialist. Vol. 3 No. 82. February 1, 1909.

(The following letter written by the wife of Karl Marx, 1851, from London to Weydemeyer, one. one of the ’48ers, shows something of the suffering of these revolutionists.)

Almost a year has gone by since I enjoyed the hospitality of your house, where I felt at home and so happy in the company of yourself and your dear wife; and in the whole time I have not given a sign of life. I was silent when your wife sent me that nice letter and even when we received the news of the birth of your child. This silence often depressed my mind, but most of the time I was unable to write and it is a hard task even today.

But circumstances force the pen in my hand–I beg you to send us the money received for the “Review” as soon as possible, and, the rest as soon as you collect it. We are in sore need of it. Nobody can say of us that we ever made a noise about what we for years have sacrificed and had to endure; very little, or never, have our personal affairs or difficulties been noised abroad.

My husband is very sensitive in such matters, and he prefers to sacrifice the last before he allows himself to be used by “democratic beggary” like the great official men. What, however, he could expect from his friends mainly in Cologne, was an active, energetic stand for his Review. This he was entitled to expect from the place where his sacrifices for the “Rheinische Zeitung” were known. Instead of that the business was totally ruined by careless and unsystematic, management, and one does not know whether the dragging Jong of the publisher or of the manager and friends in Cologne did the most harm.

My husband was almost crushed by the petty worry of life, and in such a horrible form that his whole energy was needed to hold him upright in the daily struggles. You know, dear Mr. Weydemeyer, what sacrifices my husband made for the paper. Thousands of dollars of money he put in.

To save the political honor of the paper and the civic honor of his friends, he allowed the whole burden to be unloaded on his shoulders, all the income he sacrificed, and in the moment of his departure he paid the back salaries of the editors and other bills–and he was expelled by force from the country. You know that we did not keep anything for ourselves: I came to Frankfort to pawn my silverware, the last we had: at Cologne I sold my furniture. My husband went, when the unhappy epoch of the counter revolution set in, to Paris. I followed with my three children. Barely settled in Paris, we were again expelled; myself and my children were also fore to go.

I followed him across the channel. A month after our fourth child was born. You know London and its condition to know what it means.

Three children and the birth of a fourth. For rent alone we paid $31.50 a month. We were able to meet all that by our own means, derived from the sale of some property, but our small resources were soon exhausted. In spite of agreements the money did not come from the Review except in small amounts, so that we drifted into the most terrible conditions.

I will describe you only one single day of this life and you will see that very few fugitives have gone through similar experiences. The keeping of a wet nurse for my baby was out of question, so I resolved to nurse the child myself, in spite of constant terrible pains in the breast and in the back. But the poor little angel drank so much silent worry from me that he was sickly from the first day of his life, laying In pain day and night. He did not sleep a single night more than two or three hours. Then he became subject to cramps and was wavering constantly between death and miserable life. In those pains he drew so hard that my breast got sore and broke open; often the blood streamed in his little wavering mouth.

So I was sitting one day when unexpectedly our landlady stepped in whom we had paid $187.50 during the winter and with whom we had a contract to pay after that the rent to the owner the house. She denied the contract and demanded five pounds, the sum we owed for rent, and because we were unable to pay at once two constables stepped in and attacked my small longings, beds, linen, clothes, all, even the cradle of my poor baby and the toys of the two girls, who stood by crying bitterly.

In two hours they threatened they would take all and everything away. I was lying there on the bare hard floor with my freezing children and my sore breast.

Schramm, our friend, hurried to the city to seek help. He stepped into a hack; the horses shied and ran away. He jumped out and they brought him bleeding into the house where I with my poor shaking children were crying and moaning.

The next day we had to get out of the house. It was cold, raining and gloomy. My husband was out hunting for rooms: Nobody wanted to take us in when he talked of tour children. In the end a friend helped us. I sold my beddings to satisfy the druggist, the baker, the butcher and the milkman, who got scared and all at once presented their bills. The bedding was brought to the sidewalk and was loaded on cart. We were able after the selling of everything possessed to pay every cent. I moved with my little ones in our present two small rooms in the German Hotel, 1 Leicester street, Leicester Square, where we have found a week’s shelter and board for five and one half pounds.

Pardon me my dear friend, for my m lengthy letter, but my heart streaming this evening and I must pour out my heart before one of our oldest, best and most earnest friends. Do not believe that these petty sufferings have bent us. I know only too well that we are not the only ones who suffer, and that I rejoice that I even belong to the chosen privileged lucky ones, because my dear husband, the support of my life, yet stands at my side. But what strikes me the hardest and causes my heart to bleed is that my husband has to endure so many petty annoyances while he could be helped with so very little and that he, who is willing and with pleasure has helped so many, stands here so helpless and nobody to help him; but, believe me, dear Mister Weydemeyer, that we do not ask anything front anybody.

The only thing my husband expected of those who received so many thoughts from him, to whom he as so much support in every way on the is the little they owe him. I don’t know why I wrote, dear Mr. Weydemeyer. So much about our situation. My husband only knows that I in his name have begged you to hurry the collection and the sending of the money as much as possible.

Farewell, dear friend. The heartiest regards to your dear wife and kiss your little angel for a mother who drops so many a tear on her baby. Our three oldest children develop magnificently spite of all and everything.

The girls are pretty, becoming and happy and our fat boy is an example of humor and fun.

The little rascal sings the whole day with a monotonous pathos and a giant voice, and when he sings the words in Freiligrath’s Marselliaise with a terrible voice the whole house trembles. Maybe it is the historic mission of his mouth like his two unlucky predecessors to open the giant fight again in which we all will join hands. Farewell.

The Chicago Socialist, sometimes daily sometimes weekly, was published from 1902 until 1912 as the paper of the Chicago Socialist Party. The roots of the paper lie with Workers Call, published from 1899 as a Socialist Labor Party publication, becoming a voice of the Springfield Social Democratic Party after splitting with De Leon in July, 1901. It became the Chicago Socialist Party paper with the SDP’s adherence and changed its name to the Chicago Socialist in March, 1902. In 1906 it became a daily and published until 1912 by Local Cook County of the Socialist Party and was edited by A.M. Simons if the International Socialist Review. A cornucopia of historical information on the Chicago workers movements lies within its pages.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/chicago-daily-socialist/1909/090201-chicagodailysocialist-v03n082.pdf