‘Curious to see Mrs Aveling addressing the enormous crowd, curious to see the eyes of the women fixed upon her as she spoke of the miseries of the dockers’ homes, pleasant to see her point her black-gloved finger at the oppression, and pleasant to hear the hearty cheer with which her speech was given.’ So Labour MP Robert Cunninghame Graham described Karl Marx’s youngest daughter, Eleanor, giving a speech to 100,000 demonstrators in Hyde Park at the height of the 1889 dock strike. ‘Brilliant, devoted and beautiful,’ agreed the trade union leader Ben Tillett. ‘During our great strike she worked unceasingly — a vivid and vital personality, with great force of character, courage and ability.’
And in Rachel Holmes’s bold, fluent, scholarly and rewarding new biography, Eleanor Marx’s voice as polemicist, activist, feminist and socialist is rediscovered. It does not quite match the heights of Yvonne Kapp’s masterful 1970s two-volume biography of ‘Tussy’ (as she was known in the nickname-rich Marx-Engels environs), but nonetheless covers familiar territory in a refreshing manner and has made good use of the archives to craft a sophisticated account of Tussy’s thwarted life and socialist legacy.
Whatever did Marx do to his daughters? The careers and families which Eleanor, Jenny and Laura built seemed never to match the impact of their father’s love for them:
My earliest recollection is when I was about three years old and Mohr [Marx] was carrying me on his shoulders round our small garden in Grafton Terrace, and putting convolvulus flowers in my brown curls.
With a sometimes over-generous literary flair, Holmes deftly describes Eleanor’s upbringing in the chaotic, erratic, but mostly joyous Marx household. The picnics on Hampstead Heath, the Shakespeare and Goethe, the ever-present Uncle Engels.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in