A very interesting excerpt about Karl Marx from Paul Johnson's Intellectuals. (Page 79 of the paperback.)
In all [Marx's] researches into the iniquities of British capitalists, he came across many instances of low-paid workers but he never succeeded in unearthing one who was paid literally no wages at all. Yet such a worker did exist, in his own household. When Marx took his family on their formal Sunday walks, bringing up the rear, carrying the picnic basket and other impedimenta, was a stumpy female figure. This was Helen Demuth, known in the family as 'Lenchen'... of peasant stock, she had joined the von Westphalen family at the age of eight as a nursery-maid. She got her keep but was paid nothing. In 1845 the Baroness... gave Lenchen, then twenty-two, to [their daughter] Jenny Marx...She remained in the Marx family until her death in 1890 [at 67]... She was a ferociously hard worker, not only cooking and scrubbing but managing the family budget, which Jenny was incapable of handling. Marx never paid her a penny.... Lenchen became Marx's mistress and conceived a child...
...it was a son... Marx refused to acknowledge his responsibility... [The child, Freddy] was put out to be fostered by a working-class family called Lewis but allowed to visit the Marx household. He was, however, forbidden to use the front door and obliged to see his mother only in the kitchen...
...Lenchen was the only member of the working class that Marx ever knew at all well, his one real contact with the proletariat. Freddy might have been another, since he was brought up as a working-class lad... But Marx never knew him...
The text goes on to explain that Marx was terrified not only of his family finding out (which they did anyway), but of being ruined as a revolutionary leader and seer, so he convinced Engels to accept paternity. But before his death, Engels revealed the truth. And the boy looked exactly like his father, Karl Marx. |
