Rachel Holmes - Eleanor Marx: A Life

The librarians, archivists and staff of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, the Marx Memorial Library in London, the Local History and Archives Team of the London Borough of Lewisham, the London Metropolitan Archives, the London Library and the British Library. All the specialists, who gave generously of time, expertise and criticism, reading various iterations, sharing advice and material, prodding me to further research, thought and exploration of the Marx and Engels Nachlass . You know who you are, and that I am greatly in your intellectual debt.

Thank you: Lisa Appignanesi, Ann Baskerville, Jane Beese, Victoria Brittain, Omar Burjaq, Polly Clayden, Alistair Constance (best ex), Morgan Cooper, Nicole Crisp, Najwan Darwish, Nathan Geffen, Ann Grant, Omar Robert Hamilton, Suheir Hammad, Nathalie Handal, Sarah Hickson, Kiyo Inoue, John Jolly, Remi Kanazi, Jude Kelly, Helena Kennedy, Laura Miller, Bill & Jeanine Mitchell, Gillian Moore, Tania, Bassem and Hanna Nasir, Susie Nicklin, Margie Orford, Maha Khan Phillips, Yoko Reijn, Margaret Reynolds, Philippe Rivire, my godson Rufus Shaljean, Muneeza Shamsie, Raja and Penny Shehadeh, Faisal Slamang, Ahdaf Soueif, Jana Stefanovska, Saleh Totah, Dalli Weyers. Andrew Davies, especially for the print of your BBC TV series Eleanor Marx (1977). Jacqueline and Gillian Rose for the script of Gillian Roses Tussy , produced by the RSC at the Almeida Theatre in London in August 1985. Helmut Pibernik for German Geschick and for being my second father.

Socrates & Rosa; Latifa & Hakim; Poppy & Monti; all the denizens of Caf La Vie, and Silver & Spike for your generosity in sharing your homes and giving me space to write. My champion godmother Ann Baskerville and my second mother Sarah Holmes, who built A Dolls House re-visioned.

My editor Bill Swainson: consistently supporting and encouraging me when I gone fishin, and for securing me tight lines. The thanks I owe you demand superlatives you would never allow in print. Natasha Fairweather, my superb and redoubtable agent. Alexandra Pringle, inspired in all things. The terrific Bloomsbury team who made this book: managing editor Anna Simpson, copy-editor Emily Sweet, genius designer David Mann, publicist Eleanor Weil, and editorial assistants Oliver Holden-Rea and Imogen Corke.

Tahmima Anam and Bee Rowlatt, sowster supernovas. Soul sister Josie Rourke got Tussy back on the boards. Carmen Callil, for feminisms flotilla and Tussy insights. Gillian Slovo for the primacy of material facts and unconditional humanity. Greg Mosse generously shared his brain, sound advice and Amsterdam. Susie Orbach for an infinity of new perspectives. Kate Mosse, stalwart sorority sister, always answering with exactly whats needed. Barometer and pioneer Louise Shaljean. My sister Karen Holmes, especially for her expertise when I needed it most.

Zackie Achmat and Jack Lewis our General from inspiration to the last word. Your encyclopaedic Marxian knowledge, sharing of Karoo dawn hours and ability to make me laugh was essential. Kamila Shamsie, camerado, Ur-friend of the open seas. Jeanette Winterson, the midwife without whom. So many thanks.

Jonathan Evans, for all the reasons he knows. He has been love and generosity itself, sharing his life with Tussy and her family and investing in this book with unstinting encouragement, patience, infinite care and ingenious support. He is a great reader and champion of all writers.

This work is dedicated, with thanks and love always, to my mother, Karin Anne Pibernik, ne Siln, and to the memory of her mother, my purple, white and green grandmother, Speedy Haste.

Death can help people discover who they are.

What forces drove Eleanor Marx to her death? asked Eduard Bernstein in an article published just four months after it happened. Bernstein believed that Edward Aveling was culpable, either morally, or criminally or both. Only the law could decide if Aveling bore criminal responsibility, for which he should be brought to trial. Bernstein rather focused on the question of Avelings moral accountability.

Bernsteins piece was a response to anti-socialist press using the opportunity of Eleanors suicide as an example of the life-failure Appalled, Eleanor preferred death to this free-love union. The fact that Bell had been dead for several years and no children existed from that marriage exposed the absurdity of this version of events.

Its important to hold in mind that at this stage, July 1898, very few people knew of the existence of Eva Frye, apart from a few complicit friends of Edward and Evas who went to their wedding party the year before in June 1897 and even they werent exactly clear on the true circumstances of the marriage they witnessed.

Bernsteins speculation of what drove Eleanor to her death is full of supposition, leaning heavily on what he calls the psychological enigma

For Labour Leader , the ingratitude, injustice and hardness that Aveling displayed at the inquest spoke for themselves. Aveling publicly repudiated Eleanor Marx; he would be judged accordingly.

Bernsteins article stands for many similar ones written immediately and in the years after Tussys death by close friends and political comrades including Havelock Ellis and the heartbroken Library. Like Bernstein, all Tussys close intimates had experienced her absolute delight in her new home: An ideal existence seemed to open out before her; her face would beam with pleasure as she welcomed her friends to the Den. Aveling was unable simply to leave, take only what was fairly his and start a new life. He seemed compelled to try and destroy Eleanors contentment and security, as well as her legal entitlement to her own property. This was his psychological tragedy.

However, the most striking aspect of this piece is its telling focus on Freddy Demuth. Bernstein publishes nine letters Eleanor wrote to Freddy from August 1897 to March 1898, correspondence directly concerning tumultuous events in her personal life with Edward. Bernstein introduces Freddy as the son of Helen Demuth . . . who was a second mother to the children of Marx:

and in brotherly fidelity stood Frederick Demuth to Eleanor Marx. He is a simple workman, to whom life has not been too kind, and I have strong grounds for believing that in the documents left by Eleanor Marx for her legal advisor his name stood in a prominent position.

Documents retained and destroyed by Aveling.

Cherchez les femmes. Two women, Helen Demuth and Jenny Marx, lifelong friends. They lived together, delivered and raised children together from their own childhoods to death. Tussys two mothers, who both had relationships with the same man. A marriage of three?

In brotherly fidelity stood Frederick Demuth to Eleanor. Freddy, whose physical likeness to Karl Marx in every point was, as Louise Kautsky brusquely put it, almost comical. Even without the father philosophers signature beard.

Edward Aveling died three days after Bernsteins article was published. Within weeks, Bernstein found himself confronted by new revelations as he worked on the settlement of Avelings estate with August Bebel. Freddy Demuth stayed in contact with Laura Lafargue and Eduard Bernstein for the remainder of their lives.

Bernstein wrote that Eleanors friends had a double duty to clear up the crime committed against her: the maintenance of personal responsibility as a shared, common interest of social existence, and the responsibility of friendship.

And what of Eleanors personal responsibility to the common interest?

There are as many theories of suicide as there are suicides. Aveling claimed at the inquest that Eleanor had several times suggested they end it together and he paid no attention to her threats of suicide, since she made them so frequently. Yet Eleanor was dead, apparently having agreed to the novel idea of a unilateral suicide pact.