Marx, Karl

(1818 -1883)

Information

Marx suffered intermittently from painful attacks of what his family called ‘his old enemies’ –outbreaks of boils. Despite dosing himself with a variety of remedies such as creosote and arsenic, he discovered that the best relief lay in visits to the seaside, as advised by his friend and fellow philosopher, Friedrich Engels. The convalescent period he spent in Margate from 15th March to 10th April 1866 seems to have been particularly beneficial and his letters speak enthusiastically of the ‘delicious’ sea-bathes, the ‘wonderful air’ and vigorous long walks (even as far as Canterbury on one occasion). His letters from Margate also reveal him to be an entertaining correspondent with an eye for humorous incongruities, as witness his account, sent to his daughter Jenny, who later visited him there, of the inauspicious beginning to his visit, which caused him to seek alternative lodgings almost immediately. He moved from the King’s Arms to 5 Lansell’s Place ‘ in front of the sea’.

Quotations

I arrived here yesterday evening, ¾ past seven. According to your instructions I left my luggage behind me in the cloakroom and was then landed by the omnibus at a small inn called the ‘King’s Arms’. Having ordered a rump steak, and being shown to the coffee room, which was rather dimly illuminated, I took rather fright, (you know my anxious temper) at a lean, long, stiff sort of man, midway between parson and commis-voyageur, solitarily and motionlessly seated before the chimney. From the vagueness of his glanceless eye, I thought him a blind man. … When my supper arrived the man began somewhat to wave, quietly took off his boots and warmed his elephantine feet at the fire. What with this agreeable spectacle, and his supposed blindness, and what with a rump steak, which seemed, in its natural state, to have belonged to a deceased cow, I passed the first Margate evening anything but comfortably.

Despite his strictly observed convalescent regime, Marx’s busy brain still found material in his surroundings to confirm his view of English class structures, which he expounded in this extract from a letter to a cousin in March 1866.

… I have been banished ,by my medical adviser, to this seaside place, which, at this time of the year, is quite solitary. Margate lives only upon the Londoners , who regularly inundate it at the bathing season. During the other months it vegetates only. For my part right glad I am to have got rid of all company, even that of my books. … I have become myself a sort of walking stick, running up and down the whole day, and keeping my mind in that state of nothingness which Buddhaism considers the climax of human bliss.
… Withdrawing a little from the seaside, and roaming over the adjacent agricultural districts, you are painfully reminded of ‘civilisation’, because from all sides you are startled by large boards, with governmental proclamations on them, headed : Cattle Disease. The ruling English oligarchs were never suspected to care one farthing for ‘ der Menscheit ganzes Weh’, but as to cows and oxen, they feel deeply.