by A G Mogan
At the young age of sixteen, Marx showed an advanced ability for planning and being thorough with his work. His mind was a creative one, one that was able to think through difficult problems.
Marx eventually left home for the university of Bonn to pursue those gifts. However, his work at the university turned out to be a disappointment. He was feeling miserable and restless, and as a result, he neglected his studies. The truth was that he was lovesick.
Karl’s separation from Jenny had made him realize just how important she was to him. When he had the ability to see her whenever he wanted, he didn’t realize what a separation from her would mean. From the moment he started university, he found that his studies and ambitions that had once meant so much to him weren’t quite as important without Jenny. Karl was unable to concentrate as day and night there was only one thing filling his mind and heart and that was Jenny von Westphalen.
When his family discovered the bad reports at university, his family sent for him and his stay at Bonn came to an end. Now he was once again in the presence of the girl who charmed him. He began to court her and she did not discourage him.
But there were many things going against them. For one, there was the age difference. Then there was their individual background. Jenny had the blood of two noble families in her veins. She was the daughter of one high official and the sister of another, while Marx, though he had accepted Christianity, was the son of a local Jewish lawyer, with no fortune, and with a bad record at the university.
Even though there was some hesitation on Jenny’s part, there was nothing that could stop Karl Marx’s intense passions and his pleas and they soon became engaged in 1836. It should be noted that they did not have the consent of Jenny’s father. They separated for a while, and Karl returned to his home, delighted with his relationship with Jenny.
He was also full of ambition and desire for achievement. He pleaded with his father to send him to Berlin, and confessed to him about his engagement with Jenny.
Karl’s father was shocked at his son’s news. He attempted to reason with his son. He begged him to go and inform Jenny’s father, but Karl could not be persuaded.
“Send me to Berlin,” he said, “and we shall again be separated; but I shall work and make a name for myself, so that when I return neither Jenny nor her father will have occasion to be disturbed by our engagement.”
In October of 1836, Marx enrolled in Berlin University’s faculty of law and rented a room in the Mittelstrasse.
After a time, Karl found himself agitated because she would not answer his letters, even though she had cautioned him that she would not write to him. She felt that until her family knew of their secret engagement, she was not free to act as she might wish.
Finally, Karl declared that he was going to write to the Baron von Westphalen, ask for his fatherly consent regarding their engagement.
This turned out to be a wise move on Karl’s part. Jenny spoke out more strongly than she had ever done to Karl. She expressed that she was willing to accept him with what he was able to give her and she cared nothing for any other man. She begged her father to give his consent.
But still, Jenny refused to write to Karl, who was distracted by his feelings once again. He wrote of his anger to his father, who tried to comfort him. But so violent were Karl’s letters that at last his father wrote to him:
“I am disgusted with your letters. Their unreasonable tone is loathsome to me. I should never had expected it of you. Haven’t you been lucky from your cradle up?”
Finally Karl received a letter from his betrothed. This letter filled him with joy for about a day, and then sent him back to his restless feelings.
By 1837, Marx had finished a short novel, Scorpion and Felix, a drama, Oulanem, as well as a number of love poems dedicated to Jenny. He studied advanced mathematics, English and Italian, some Latin, and a miscellaneous collection of works on history and literature. But poetry almost twisted his mind. In later years he wrote:
“Everything was centered on poetry, as if I were bewitched by some uncanny power.”
Luckily, he was wise enough to realize his poetry was of a lesser quality compared with those of the great masters. He moved to Cologne, where he became a journalist amd began writing for the radical newspaper Rheinische Zeitung. It was here that he expressed his early views on socialism and his growing interest in economics.
He still sent his father wild letters, to which the latter replied:
“Complete disorder, silly wandering through all branches of science, silly brooding at the burning oil-lamp! In your wildness you see with four eyes — a horrible setback and disregard for everything decent. And in the pursuit of this senseless and purposeless learning you think to raise the fruits which are to unite you with your beloved one! What harvest do you expect to gather from them which will enable you to fulfil your duty toward her?”
After returning to Berlin, Karl received his degree, and thought he wanted to become an instructor at the university of Jena. However, his radicalism prevented this, and he became the editor of a liberal newspaper, whose extreme radicalism soon lead to his withdrawal.
Jenny was happy to wander with him if only they might be married. And they were married on 19 June 1843 in the Kreuznach church of Saint Paul, in Bad Kreuznach. They spent a short honeymoon at Bingen on the Rhine.
Later that same year, Marx became co-editor of a new, radical leftist Parisian newspaper, the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. The German socialist Arnold Ruge set up this paper in order to bring together German and French radicals. Marx and Jenny moved to Paris in October of 1843.
In Paris, he became known to some of the greatest intellectual luminaries, such as Bakunin, the Russian anarchist, Proudhon, Cabet, and Saint-Simon. But the most important one was his friendship with the poet Heinrich Heine.
One can only guess as to Jenny’s thoughts concerning her husband. Since his long stay in Berlin, and his captivation in the theories of men like Engels and Bauer, he had become different from the man that she once knew. Karl was lost in his studies and became depressed at times. This did not bode well for a marriage to a spirited girl such as Jenny von Westphalen. His natural drift was toward a group of slovenly followers, which also carried the smell of tobacco and sour beer. It is possible that these things may have disgusted his wife, though she still loved him.
In Heinrich Heine, she found a disposition similar to hers. According to Mr. Spargo:
“The admiration of Jenny Marx for the poet was even more ardent than that of her husband. He fascinated her because, as she said, he was ‘so modern’, while Heine was drawn to her because she was ‘so sympathetic’.”
Heine was very knowledgeable about what Jenny needed that Marx was unable to provide. The two were indeed very similar in heart and soul; yet Heine refused to be disloyal to his friend. Jenny loved him and if not for other circumstances, she might have consented to be with Heine. The French government, at the request of the King of Prussia, banished Marx and for the rest of his life, he lived in exile with few friends and little money. The only thing that kept him going was Jenny's loyalty and by his immeasurable faith in a cause that was so dear to him.
Even though Marx no longer believed in marriage and he despised the church and government, he was still loyal to the woman who had given up so much for him.
Jenny continued to stick with him through all of the changes in his life. She even denied herself necessities of life so that he might not starve. He spent his final days in London and even though he was safe from danger, he seemed to suffer in odd ways. For some time, nothing that he wrote could find a printer. Wherever he went, people looked at him suspiciously. He and his six children and wife lived on five dollars a week, which was paid to him by the New York Tribune, through the influence of the late Charles A. Dana. After the birth of his final child, his mother’s life was in serious danger and Marx complained that there was no cradle for the baby, and a little later that there was no coffin for its bur
ial.
Jenny, who was cut off from her relatives, died about a year before him, on 2 December 1881. In her final years, she suffered from liver cancer. Following a family visit to France, she died in London at the age of sixty-seven. After she died, Karl had no further interest in life for the rest of his days.
Following Jenny’s death, Karl developed a discharge that kept him in ill health for the last fifteen months of his life. This led to the bronchitis and pleurisy that killed him in London on 14 March 1883.
He was buried in Highgate Cemetery, London, in an area reserved for agnostics and atheists. There were less than a dozen mourners at his funeral.
Several of his closest friends spoke at his funeral, including Wilhelm Liebknecht and Friedrich Engels. Engels’ speech included the following passage:
“On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep—but forever.”
Marx and his family were reburied on a new site nearby in November of 1954. The tomb at the new site bears the message: “Workers of All Lands Unite” — the final line of The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx’s greatest work.
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5
Queen Victoria & Prince Albert
Queen Victoria was born in the charming palace of Kensington, in London. Her father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of the King of the United Kingdom, George III. Until 1817, Edward’s niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 triggered a succession crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent and his unmarried brothers to marry and have children. In 1818, he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children. The Duke and Duchess of Kent’s only child, Victoria, was born on 24 May 1819.
A month later, the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by the Bishop of London, baptized Victoria. Her sponsors were the Prince Regent and the Emperor of Russia, the Queen Dowager of Würtemburg, and the Duchess Dowager of Coburg.
She was named Alexandrina Victoria, the first in honor of the Emperor Alexander of Russia. She was almost called Alexandrina Georgiana, but the Prince Regent, at the last moment, declared that the name of Georgiana should be second to no other, and then added:
“Give her her mother’s name — after that of the Emperor.”
When Queen Victoria spoke of her childhood, she simple characterized it as “dull”. However, it seems to have never been empty. She was taught to not waste any time and to be careful not to cause others to waste it.
Lord Campbell, speaking of the Princess as a little girl, said:
“She seems in good health, and appears lively and good-humored.”
She was taught to respect her own health, as well as that of the British Government, and to respect the laws of health as the laws of God.
Fräulein Lehzen, a German lady, became governess to the princess when she was five years old. She later held the post of the Queen's private secretary, until relieved by the Prince-Consort. She was the daughter of a Hanoverian pastor, and came to England in 1818 as governess to the Princess Feodora of Leiningen. In her letters, she states that 'the princess received her in a pretty, childlike way,' and describes her as 'not tall, but very pretty;' adding that she 'has dark brown hair, beautiful blue eyes, and a mouth which, though not tiny, is very good-tempered and pleasant; very fine teeth, a small but graceful figure, and a very small foot. She was dressed in white muslin with a coral necklet.' Their life was like that of any other happy and well-adjusted family. The princess shared her bedroom with the governess. They all took their meals together and when they did not go to church, the duchess read a sermon aloud and commented on it. Thomas Moore often heard the Princess Victoria sing duets with her mother, who also sang some German songs herself.
There is nothing remarkable in the stories of young Victoria, nor in the one related by her music-teacher, of how she once rebelled against so much practice, and how, on his telling her that there was no "royal road" in art, and that only by much practice could she become "mistress of the piano," she closed and locked the obnoxious instrument and put the key in her pocket, saying playfully, "Now you see there is a royal way of becoming `mistress of the piano.'" But all the things told of the Queen's young days are simple and respectable. Many English people have said to me, "You will find few stories of Her Majesty's childhood, but those few will all be good."
When she was just eleven years old, the Princess opened the Victoria Park at Bath. She began this business very early in her life and she has been conscientious in keeping it up for fifty years—parks, expositions, colleges, exchanges, law courts, bridges, docks, art schools, and hospitals. By this time the Princess had learned to bear the gaze of hundreds of eyes, admiring or criticizing. She knew that the time was coming when the hundreds would increase to millions. In her later years, it is not surprising that this unquenchable interest has become tedious for her.
But what was arguably the first great event in the princess's life was her first meeting with her cousins, her mother's nephews, the young princes Ernest and Albert of Saxe-Coburg, in 1836. That visit lasted for about a month, and from the beginning, there was a mutual attraction. In a letter dated 7th June 1836 from Princess Victoria to King Leopold, she wrote 'I have only now to beg you, my dearest uncle, to take care of the health of one now so dear to me, and to take him under your special protection. I hope and trust that all will go on prosperously and well on this subject, now of so much importance to me.' Although she preferred Albert, she had been equally kind to both, and they did not yet know her preference.
In personal appearance, they were both very good-looking. They were much beloved by their Uncle Leopold, then King of Belgium, and soon ingratiated themselves to their Aunt Kent and their Cousin Victoria. They spent three weeks at Kensington in daily communication with their relatives, and with their father, the Duke of Coburg, were much fêted by the royal family. They enjoyed English society and sights, and learned something of English life and character, which to one of them, at least, proved useful. The young Prince Albert seemed always learning. He was thirsty for knowledge.
At that time, Victoria was only seventeen, and the prince’s education was still incomplete. He spent his time traveling, collecting flowers and views and autographs for Victoria, when in 1837, news reached him that by the death of William IV, she was proclaimed queen.
When she came of age on May 24 of 1837, she was awakened early by a band of musicians under her bedroom windows. She received many presents and congratulatory visits, and was delighted to know the day was observed as a grand holiday in London and throughout England. Boys were let out of school, and M.P.'s out of Parliament. At night, the city was "brilliantly illuminated” and a grand state ball was given in St. James' Palace. For the first time, the Princess took precedence of her mother.
A week later she went in state to St. James Palace, accompanied by great lords and ladies, and escorted by squadrons of the Life Guards and Blues, and was formally proclaimed from the window of the Presence Chamber, looking out on the court-yard. A Court chronicle reported that Her Majesty wore a black silk dress and a little black chip bonnet, and that she looked quite pale. Miss Martineau, speaking of the scene, says: "There stood the young creature, in simplest mourning, her sleek bands of brown hair as plain as her dress. The tears ran down her cheeks, as Lord Melbourne, standing by her side, presented her to the people as their Sovereign. … In the upper part of the face she is really pretty, and with an ingenuous, sincere air which seems full of promise."
On June 21 of 1837, she was proclaimed queen. The coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on June 28, 1838, and has been described by many. London received about 300,000 visitors to celebrate the occasion. Amid the applause of the crowds and the flashes of diamonds, the crown was placed on the head of the you
ng queen. But the best story of that day that illustrates the helpfulness of Her Majesty was when she made a hasty movement forward as an aged peer, Lord Rolle, tripped over his robes, and stumbled on the steps of the throne. As she left the Abbey, 'the tender paleness that had overspread her fair face on her entrance had yielded to a glow of rosy celestial red.'
An eye-witness says: 'The Queen came in as gay as a lark, and looking like a girl on her birthday. However, this only lasted till she reached the middle of the cross of the Abbey, at the foot of the throne. On her rising from her knees before the "footstool," after her private devotions, the Archbishop of Canterbury turned her round to each of the four corners of the Abbey, saying, in a voice so clear that it was heard in the inmost recesses, "Sirs, I here present unto you the undoubted Queen of this realm. Will ye all swear to do her homage?" Each time he said it there were shouts of "Long live Queen Victoria!" and the sounding of trumpets and the waving of banners, which made the Queen turn first very red and then very pale.
It was from the quaint town of Bonn that Prince Albert wrote his famous letter of congratulation to Her Majesty, in which there appeared not one word of praise, not a thought designed to stir the heart of the young girl suddenly thrust into the role of Queen. Thus wrote the young man:
"Now you are Queen of the mightiest land of Europe; in your hand lies the happiness of millions. May Heaven assist you, and strengthen you with its strength in the high, but difficult task."
Etiquette dictated that he restrain from vocalizing his feelings till she was able to confirm her feelings and declare her love. After five days of waiting, the Queen’s answer came—the happy "climax," as the Prince called it in a letter to Baron Stockmar. Even though decades have passed, theirs is still considered a simple and touching royal romance.
