Part 12

What struck me as most singular was the fact that there was scarcely a volume about Marx himself. Practically all the books dealt with his theory of capital and his other socialistic views. The man himself, his personality, and the facts of his life were dismissed in the most meager fashion, while his economic theories were discussed with something that verged upon fury. Even such standard works as those of Mehring and Spargo, which profess to be partly biographical, sum up the personal side of Marx in a few pages. In fact, in the latter's preface he seems conscious of this defect, and says:

Whether socialism proves, in the long span of centuries, to be good or evil, a blessing to men or a curse, Karl Marx must always be an object of interest as one of the great world-figures of immortal memory. As the years go by, thoughtful men and women will find the same interest in studying the life and work of Marx that they do in studying the life and work of Cromwell, of Wesley, or of Darwin, to name three immortal world-figures of vastly divergent types.

Singularly little is known of Karl Marx, even by his most ardent followers. They know his work, having studied his Das Kapital with the devotion and earnestness with which an older generation of Christians studied the Bible, but they are very generally unacquainted with the man himself. Although more than twenty-six years have elapsed since the death of Marx, there is no adequate biography of him in any language.

Doubtless some better-equipped German writer, such as Franz Mehring or Eduard Bernstein, will some day give us the adequate and full biography for which the world now waits.

Here is an admission that there exists no adequate biography of Karl Marx, and here is also an intimation that simply as a man, and not merely as a great firebrand of socialism, Marx is well worth studying. And so it has occurred to me to give in these pages one episode of his career that seems to me quite curious, together with some significant touches concerning the man as apart from the socialist. Let the thousands of volumes already in existence suffice for the latter. The motto of this paper is not the Vergilian "Arms and the man I sing," but simply "The man I sing"--and the woman. Karl Marx was born nearly ninety-four years ago--May 5, 1818--in the city which the French call Treves and the Germans Trier, among the vine-clad hills of the Moselle. Today, the town is commonplace enough when you pass through it, but when you look into its history, and seek out that history's evidences, you will find that it was not always a rather sleepy little place. It was one of the chosen abodes of the Emperors of the West, after Rome began to be governed by Gauls and Spaniards, rather than by Romans and Italians. The traveler often pauses there to see the Porta Nigra, that immense gate once strongly fortified, and he will doubtless visit also what is left of the fine baths and amphitheater.

Treves, therefore, has a right to be termed imperial, and it was the birthplace of one whose sway over the minds of men has been both imperial and imperious.

Karl Marx was one of those whose intellectual achievements were so great as to dwarf his individuality and his private life. What he taught with almost terrific vigor made his very presence in the Continental monarchies a source of eminent danger. He was driven from country to country. Kings and emperors were leagued together against him. Soldiers were called forth, and blood was shed because of him. But, little by little, his teaching seems to have leavened the thought of the whole civilized world, so that to-day thousands who barely know his name are deeply affected by his ideas, and believe that the state should control and manage everything for the good of all.

Marx seems to have inherited little from either of his parents. His father, Heinrich Marx, was a provincial Jewish lawyer who had adopted Christianity, probably because it was expedient, and because it enabled him to hold local offices and gain some social consequence. He had changed his name from Mordecai to Marx.

The elder Marx was very shrewd and tactful, and achieved a fair position among the professional men and small officials in the city of Treves. He had seen the horrors of the French Revolution, and was philosopher enough to understand the meaning of that mighty upheaval, and of the Napoleonic era which followed.

Napoleon, indeed, had done much to relieve his race from petty oppression. France made the Jews in every respect the equals of the Gentiles. One of its ablest marshals--Massena--was a Jew, and therefore, when the imperial eagle was at the zenith of its flight, the Jews in every city and town of Europe were enthusiastic admirers of Napoleon, some even calling him the Messiah.

Karl Marx's mother, it is certain, endowed him with none of his gifts. She was a Netherlandish Jewess of the strictly domestic and conservative type, fond of her children and her home, and detesting any talk that looked to revolutionary ideas or to a change in the social order. She became a Christian with her husband, but the word meant little to her. It was sufficient that she believed in God; and for this she was teased by some of her skeptical friends. Replying to them, she uttered the only epigram that has ever been ascribed to her.

"Yes," she said, "I believe in God, not for God's sake, but for my own."

She was so little affected by change of scene that to the day of her death she never mastered German, but spoke almost wholly in her native Dutch. Had we time, we might dwell upon the unhappy paradox of her life. In her son Karl she found an especial joy, as did her husband. Had the father lived beyond Karl's early youth, he would doubtless have been greatly pained by the radicalism of his gifted son, as well as by his personal privations. But the mother lived until 1863, while Karl was everywhere stirring the fires of revolution, driven from land to land, both feared and persecuted, and often half famished. As Mr. Spargo says:

It was the irony of life that the son, who kindled a mighty hope in the hearts of unnumbered thousands of his fellow human beings, a hope that is today inspiring millions of those who speak his name with reverence and love, should be able to do that only by destroying his mother's hope and happiness in her son, and that every step he took should fill her heart with a great agony.

When young Marx grew out of boyhood into youth, he was attractive to all those who met him. Tall, lithe, and graceful, he was so extremely dark that his intimates called him "der neger"--"the negro." His loosely tossing hair gave to him a still more exotic appearance; but his eyes were true and frank, his nose denoted strength and character, and his mouth was full of kindliness in its expression. His lineaments were not those of the Jewish type.

Very late in life--he died in 1883--his hair and beard turned white, but to the last his great mustache was drawn like a bar across his face, remaining still as black as ink, and making his appearance very striking. He was full of fun and gaiety. As was only natural, there soon came into his life some one who learned to love him, and to whom, in his turn, he gave a deep and unbroken affection.

There had come to Treves--which passed from France to Prussia with the downfall of Napoleon--a Prussian nobleman, the Baron Ludwig von Westphalen, holding the official title of "national adviser." The baron was of Scottish extraction on his mother's side, being connected with the ducal family of Argyll. He was a man of genuine rank, and might have shown all the arrogance and superciliousness of the average Prussian official; but when he became associated with Heinrich Marx he evinced none of that condescending manner. The two men became firm friends, and the baron treated the provincial lawyer as an equal.

The two families were on friendly terms. Von Westphalen's infant daughter, who had the formidable name of Johanna Bertha Julie Jenny von Westphalen, but who was usually spoken of as Jenny, became, in time, an intimate of Sophie Marx. She was four years older than Karl, but the two grew up together--he a high-spirited, manly boy, and she a lovely and romantic girl.

The baron treated Karl as if the lad were a child of his own. He influenced him to love romantic literature and poetry by interpreting to him the great masterpieces, from Homer and Shakespeare to Goethe and Lessing. He made a special study of Dante, whose mysticism appealed to his somewhat dreamy nature, and to the religious instinct that always lived in him, in spite of his dislike for creeds and churches.

The lore that he imbibed in early childhood stood Karl in good stead when he began his school life, and his preparation for the university. He had an absolute genius for study, and was no less fond of the sports and games of his companions, so that he seemed to be marked out for success. At sixteen years of age he showed a precocious ability for planning and carrying out his work with thoroughness. His mind was evidently a creative mind, one that was able to think out difficult problems without fatigue. His taste was shown in his fondness for the classics, in studying which he noted subtle distinctions of meaning that usually escape even the mature scholar. Penetration, thoroughness, creativeness, and a capacity for labor were the boy's chief characteristics.

With such gifts, and such a nature, he left home for the university of Bonn. Here he disappointed all his friends. His studies were neglected; he was morose, restless, and dissatisfied. He fell into a number of scrapes, and ran into debt through sundry small extravagances. All the reports that reached his home were most unsatisfactory. What had come over the boy who had worked so hard in the gymnasium at Treves?

The simple fact was that he had became love-sick. His separation from Jenny von Westphalen had made him conscious of a feeling which he had long entertained without knowing it. They had been close companions. He had looked into her beautiful face and seen the luminous response of her lovely eyes, but its meaning had not flashed upon his mind. He was not old enough to have a great consuming passion, he was merely conscious of her charm. As he could see her every day, he did not realize how much he wanted her, and how much a separation from her would mean.

As "absence makes the heart grow fonder," so it may suddenly draw aside the veil behind which the truth is hidden. At Bonn young Marx felt as if a blaze of light had flashed before him; and from that moment his studies, his companions, and the ambitions that he had hitherto cherished all seemed flat and stale. At night and in the daytime there was just one thing which filled his mind and heart--the beautiful vision of Jenny von Westphalen.

Meanwhile his family, and especially his father, had become anxious at the reports which reached them. Karl was sent for, and his stay at Bonn was ended.

Now that he was once more in the presence of the girl who charmed him so, he recovered all his old-time spirits. He wooed her ardently, and though she was more coy, now that she saw his passion, she did not discourage him, but merely prolonged the ecstasy of this wonderful love-making. As he pressed her more and more, and no one guessed the story, there came a time when she was urged to let herself become engaged to him.

Here was seen the difference in their ages--a difference that had an effect upon their future. It means much that a girl should be four years older than the man who seeks her hand. She is four years wiser; and a girl of twenty is, in fact, a match for a youth of twenty-five. Brought up as she had been, in an aristocratic home, with the blood of two noble families in her veins, and being wont to hear the easy and somewhat cynical talk of worldly people, she knew better than poor Karl the un-wisdom of what she was about to do.

She was noble, the daughter of one high official and the sister of another. Those whom she knew were persons of rank and station. On the other hand, young Marx, though he had accepted Christianity, was the son of a provincial Jewish lawyer, with no fortune, and with a bad record at the university. When she thought of all these things, she may well have hesitated; but the earnest pleading and intense ardor of Karl Marx broke down all barriers between them, and they became engaged, without informing Jenny's father of their compact. Then they parted for a while, and Karl returned to his home, filled with romantic thoughts.

He was also full of ambition and of desire for achievement. He had won the loveliest girl in Treves, and now he must go forth into the world and conquer it for her sake. He begged his father to send him to Berlin, and showed how much more advantageous was that new and splendid university, where Hegel's fame was still in the ascendent.