Karl Marx’s Youngest Daughter Eleanor

choi

Henrik Bering, Daughter of the Revolution; Marv transformed ‘Das Kapital’ into a fable about a toy maker who had to sell toys to the devil to meet his bills. Wall Street Journal, Feb 28, 2015
www.wsj.com/articles/book-review ... l-holmes-1425069935
(book review on Rachel Holmes, Eleanor Marx; A life. Bloomsbury, 2014)

Note:
(a) "After the radical newspaper he wrote for in Cologne, the Rheinische Zeitung, was shut down by the Prussian censors in 1843, Marx and his wife spent seven years moving around the Continent. Nobody wanted them. When informed in 1849 by the Paris authorities that Marx needed to clear out of the city within 24 hours or face internment, Britain was the only choice left. Twenty-eight Dean Street in Soho is where we find the 'most dangerous family in Europe'”
(i) Rheinische Zeitung
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinische_Zeitung
("Rhenish Newspaper;" edited most famously by Karl Marx; 1842-1843; based in Cologne)
(A) Rhenish--with pronunciation--is the adjective for "Rhine."
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rhenish
(B) German English dictionary
* Zeitung (noun feminine): "newspaper"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Zeitung
(ii) Revolutions of 1848
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848
(Feb 23, 1848-early 1849; section 2.12 Other English-speaking lands)

passed by UK.
(iii) Soho
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soho
(section 1.1 Toponymy)
(iv) The Marx family expected to stay in London for weeks, but ended up staying there the rest of their lives.

(b) "But although her hard-core brand of socialist feminism grates, her book does deliver a powerful portrait of a radical mind in all its high-keyed intensity. * * * Wilhelm Stieber, a Prussian agent * * * visited the Marx family in 1850 under journalistic cover: ' * * * It is dangerous to sit down. Here is a chair with only three legs, there the children play kitchen on another [chair] that happens to be whole"
(i)
(A) high-keyed (adj): "very nervous or excitable; high-strung"
Random House Dictionary
dictionary.reference.com/browse/high-keyed
(B) high-keyed (adj):
"1: having a high pitch; shrill
2: (US) highly strung
3: bright in colour"
www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/high-keyed
(ii) Google "play kitchen" and you will know what it means. Similar to "play doctor."

choi

(c) "She [Eleanor] comes across as highly gifted but anarchic, a Pippi Longstocking forerunner, who addresses her father with a 'Halloo, old boy' and insists that she has two brains. 'Forward' is the old-fashioned term for such a child, but Marx was the kind of indulgent Rousseauian parent who found this sort of thing delightful."
(i) Pippi Longstocking
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pippi_Longstocking
(ii) Halloo (exclamation): "used to attract someone’s attention"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/halloo

This word is NOT found in US-based www.m-w.com.
(iii)
(A) forward (adj): ""lacking modesty or reserve : brash"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forward
(b) forward (adj): "presumptuous, impertinent, or bold <a rude, forward child>"
Random House Dictionary
dictionary.reference.com/browse/forward
(iv) Emile, or On Education, a book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and published in 1762 (about raising a fictional boy named Emile)

(d) "While the bookcases in Grafton Terrace, their second home, 'could be measured in feet, the stories within them . . . could be "measured by miles," ' Ms Holmes writes, quoting Eleanor’s memoir."

Google "Grafton Terrace" and one will find a map of London pops up with a street of that name, about 200 meters long.
(e) "She [Eleanor] was particularly keen on 'the soliloquy of Richard III ("I can smile and smile and be a villain," which I KNOW I loved because I had to have a knife in my hand to say it!)' The smile and smile and be a villain bit is actually from 'Hamlet,' but never mind."
(i) One May Smile, and Smile, and Be a Villain. enotes, undated
www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/one-may-smile-smile-villain
(Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 105–109)
(ii) I will discuss Richard III in the next posting.

(f) "At age 11 * * * She [Eleanor] started attending the South Hampstead College for Ladies, which focused more on deportment than book learning. With her dislike of authority, her political opinions and her propensity for doing cartwheels, she must have been the pupil from hell. Girls’ education at this point had little to offer someone of her intelligence, Ms Holmes notes, forcing her to become 'a tireless autodidact.'”
(i) deportment (n): "the manner in which one conducts oneself :  behavior"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deportment
(ii) autodidact (n; from Greek)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autodidact

choi

(g) Eleanor “learned Norwegian to translate Ibsen’s ‘An Enemy of the People.’ She edited Marlowe’s ‘A Warning to Fair Women,’ and she translated a firsthand account by her lover Prosper Lissagaray of the Paris Commune.”
(i) Henrik Ibsen
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Ibsen
(1828-1906)
(ii) “She edited Marlowe’s ‘A Warning to Fair Women’”

There must be something wrong. The reviewer (Bering) just copied the mistake from the author (Holmes). See (f)(ii)(B) below.
(A) The work of
Christopher Marlowe
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Marlowe
(baptised 1564-1593; English)

does not include it.
(B) Rachel Holmes, Eleanor Marx; A life. at page 304
books.google.com/books?id=wRtcBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA304&lpg=PA304&dq=%22marlowe+commission%22+ellis&source=bl&ots=1WLnRenpUD&sig=-yCk-v9ca9sopIVQfXaRaA8K68w&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3GbzVNG2JYGkyASE0IGwCw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22marlowe%20commission%22%20ellis&f=false
("The year 1888 was one of intense literary production. Tussy cracked on with editing A Warning to Fair Women, the Harlowe commission Ellis had promised the previous year. Vizetelly covered her ten-shilling return fare to Oxford so she could consult the original manuscript in the Bodleian--'I fancy certain passages that seem corruptions may be simply due to the transcribers' mistakes,'  This scholarship would be unremarkable in someone trained to it but Eleanor had barely been to school, never mind had the benefit of a university education")
* What “Harlowe commission”?  This I can not find out.
* crack on (vi): "often foll by with (informal) to continue to do something as quickly as possible"
www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/crack-on
(C) The only other source found in the Web (after a half-hour search) is as follows.

Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station; A study in the writing and acting of history. Manhattan: The New York Review of Books, 1940, at pages 335-336
books.google.com/books?id=6ZaTgaSeFDMC&pg=PA336&lpg=PA336&dq="eleanor+marx"+havelock+ellis++"warning+to+fair+women"&source=bl&ots=3UjjMp-F2u&sig=suhOljxkTneWVB7G-VWyS_pYBao&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JmjzVK-gNsibyASI8IGwDg&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22eleanor%20marx%22%20havelock%20ellis%20%20%22warning%20to%20fair%20women%22&f=false
("She [Eleanor] was the daughter who must resembled Marx. She had black hair and bright eyes, as well as his broad forehead and short and broad body. * * * She also edited her father's writings after his death, made the first English translation of Madame Bovary, translated Ubsen for Havelock Ellis and edited A Warning to Fair Women, an anonymous Elizabethan play, for Ellis' Mermaid Series. But her edition of Fair Women never appeared. The series was taken over by a new publisher who thought it prudent to dissociate it from the author [Ellis] of Studies in the Psychology of Sex and even removed his name from the title pages")
(iii) Prosper-Oliver Lissagaray
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper-Olivier_Lissagaray
(1838-1901; He was assisted by Karl Marx in the writing of History of the Paris Commune of 1871 ['First Published: in French, 1876'], which was translated [in 1886] to English by Eleanor Marx; Exiled in London from 1871 to 1880, he gathered [a strange use of the verb, which I can not find in dictionaries] in the house of the Marx family; Eleanor fell in love with "Lissa," 17 years older; "But at age 25 [1880] * * * Eleanor decided to break up with Lissa")
(iv) Eleanor Marx
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Marx
(1855-1898; section 1 Early years)

Apparently she never got a formal education. Eleanor never married, so kept her surname.

choi

(h) “The book also contains a first-rate villain of the sort that would fit right in on the Victorian stage and prompt boos and hisses: the secularist Edward Aveling, ‘an unprincipled windbag,’ in the words of George Bernard Shaw. Despite his ‘reptilian air,’ women found Aveling irresistible. He chatted Eleanor up in the British Museum Reading Room. He was married, he explained, but separated: His wealthy wife refused to grant him a divorce for religious reasons. Eleanor soon came to consider him her husband. * * * While sponging shamelessly off Eleanor’s hard-earned money, he had numerous affairs. Though friends tried to warn her that Aveling was a bad egg, she kept on making excuses for him. Only when she discovered that he had married for a second time did she realize her folly * * * Directly after, Eleanor’s housekeeper appeared at the pharmacy with a sealed order: ‘Please give bearer chloroform and small quantity of prussic acid for dog,’ bearing Aveling’s initials; prussic acid is another name for cyanide. Later that day, the housekeeper found Eleanor dead on her bed * * * She was 43 years old.”
(i) Edward Aveling
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Aveling
(18409-1898; section 1.4 Later life, death, and legacy)
(ii) windbag (n)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/windbag
(iii) bad egg (n): "(mainly American informal) someone who behaves in a bad or dishonest way"
Cambridge Idioms Dictionary, 2nd ed (2006)
idioms.thefreedictionary.com/a+bad+egg
(iv)
(A) hydrogen cyanide
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_cyanide
(section 2 History of discovery)
(B) prussic acid (n; French prussique, from (bleu de) Prusse Prussian blue)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prussic%20acid