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1858
[ELEANOR MARX ON HER FATHER]
… For those who knew Marx, no legend is funnier than that which portrays him as a morose, embittered, unbending and unapproachable person, a sort of Jupiter Tonans, ceaselessly hurling his thunderbolts with never a smile on his lips, enthroned alone and aloof in Olympus. Such a description of the merriest, gayest person who ever lived, the man bubbling over with fun, whose laughter irresistibly won one's heart, the most friendly, gentle and sympathetic of all companions, is a constant source of amazement and amusement to all who knew him.
In his family circle, as among friends and acquaintances, his goodness of heart was most evident …
But the most delightful aspects of Marx's character were displayed above all in his dealings with his children. Children could wish for no better playmate. I recall when I was about three years old, how Mohr [the Moor] (his old nickname always comes to mind) used to carry me around on his shoulders in our little garden in Grafton Terrace, and stick convolvulus flowers in my brown curls. Mohr was certainly a splendid steed; I was often told how my older sisters, together with my brother, whose death shortly after I was born was a lifelong source of deep grief to my parents, used to harness Mohr to some chairs, which they mounted, and which he had to pull. In fact, some chapters of the Eighteenth Brumaire were written, in Dean Street, Soho, while he was acting as draughthorse for his three little children who sat behind him on chairs, cracking their whips. For my part, perhaps because I had no sisters of my own age, I preferred Mohr as a ridinghorse. Sitting on his shoulder, firmly clutching his thick hair, which at that time was still black with only a trace of gray, I loved to gallop around in our little garden and over the fields, which in those days were not yet built up. A few words, in passing, concerning the name 'Mohr'. In our family everyone had a nickname. Mohr was Marx's regular, almost official name, used not only by us but by close friends as well. He was also called 'Challey' (probably a corruption of Charley, from Charles, i.e. Karl) and 'Old Nick" … Our mother was always known as 'Möme', our dear old friend Helene Demuth was finally called 'Nim' … Engels, after 1870, was our 'General'. My sister Jenny was known as 'Qui-qui, Emperor of China' and 'Di', my sister Laura as 'Hottentot' and 'Kakadu'. I was called 'Quo-quo, Crown Prince of China' and 'Dwarf Alberich' from the Nibelungenlied; finally I became 'Tussy' which I remain today.
Mohr was not only an excellent horse, but (a still higher commendation) a unique and unrivalled story-teller. My aunts have often told me that Mohr as a boy was a terrible tyrant; he forced them to pull him down the Marxberg in Trier at full gallop, and, still worse, to eat the cakes which he made himself with dirty hands out of dirtier dough. But they did it all without a murmur for Karl told them such wonderful stories as reward. Many many years later he told stories to his children. To my sisters - I was still too little - he told stories during their walks together, stories not reckoned in chapters but in miles. 'Tell us another mile' the two girls would beg. For my part, of all the countless wonderful stories which Mohr told me, I loved most the story of Hans Röckle. It went on for months, for it was a long long story and never came to an end. Hans Röckle was a magician, like those in Hoffmann's Tales, who had a toyshop and many debts. His shop was full of wonderful things: wooden men and women, giants, dwarves, kings, queens, workmen and masters, animals and birds as numerous as in a Noah's Ark, tables, chairs, carriages, boxes large and small. But alas! Although he was a magician he was always short of money and most reluctantly had to sell all his pretty toys to the devil. But after many adventures and wanderings these things always came back to his shop. Some of the adventures were as gruesome and hair-raising as anything in Hoffmann's Tales, some were comic, but all were told with inexhaustible invention, wit and humour.
Mohr also read aloud to his children. To me, as to my sisters, he read the whole of Homer, the Nibelungenlied, Gudrun, Don Quixote, The Thousand and One Nights. Shakespeare was our family Bible, and before I was six I knew whole scenes from Shakespeare by heart.
For my sixth birthday Mohr gave me my first novel - the immortal Peter Simple. Then followed Marryat and Cooper. My father read all these books with me and discussed the contents very seriously with his little girl. And when the child, fired by Marrat's sea-stories, declared that she wanted to be a Post-Captain, and asked her father whether it would not be possible to dress as a boy and join the crew of a man-of-war, he assured her that this could very well be done but warned her to say nothing to anybody till all her plans were complete. But before this happened, the Walter Scott craze had set in, and I heard with horror that I was myself distantly related to the hated Clan Campbell. Plans followed for the raising of the Highlands and a revival of the '45'. I should add that Marx read and reread Walter Scott; he admired him and knew him almost as well as he knew Fielding and Balzac…
In the same way, this 'bitter' and 'embittered' man would discuss politics and religion with his children. I remember clearly once as a child having religious scruples. We had been to a Roman-Catholic church to hear the splendid music, which had made such a deep impression on me that I confided in Mohr. He quietly explained everything to me in such a clear and lucid fashion that from that day to this no doubt could ever cross my mind again. And how simply and sublimely he told me the story of the carpenter's son who was put to death by rich men! Often and often I heard him say: 'After all, we can forgive Christianity much, since it taught us to love children'.
Marx himself could have said: 'Suffer the little children to come unto me', for wherever he went he was surrounded by children. Whether he sat on Hampstead Heath (a large open space north of London, near our old home) or in one of the parks, a swarm of children gathered round the big man with the long hair and beard and the kindly brown eyes. Perfectly strange children came up to him too, and stopped him in the street, and animals showed the same trust in him. I remember once, how a completely strange ten-year-old boy unceremoniously stopped the Chief of the International in Maitland Park and asked him to 'swop' was schoolboy slang for 'exchange', the two knives were produced and compared. The boy's knife had only one blade, Marx's two, which were however dreadfully blunt. After some discussion the deal was concluded, the knieves exchanged, and the 'dreaded Chief of the International' added a penny as compensation for the bluntness of his blades.
With what patience and sweetness, too, Marx answered all my questions, when American war-reports and Blue Books had temporarily ousted Marryat and Scott. I brooded for days over English government reports and maps of America. Mohr never complained about my interruptions, though it must have distracted him to have a chatterbox around while he was at work on his great book. At about this time, I distinctly remember, I had an unshakeable conviction that Abraham Lincoln (President of the U.S.A.) could not possibly get on without my advice, so I wrote long letters to him, which Mohr then had to read and post. Many years later he showed me these childish letters which had so much amused him that he had kept them.
And so throughout my youth Mohr was an ideal friend. At home we were all good friends, and he was the best and gayest of all, even during those years when he suffered such pain from boils, until the very end…
Eleanor Marx-Aveling, 'Karl Marx - Lose Blätter', in Österreichischer Arbeiter-Kalender für das Jahr 1895, pp. 51-54, cited in Mohr und General, pp. 269-79.