the five dollars a week
received from the _New York Tribune_, for which Marx acted as special
correspondent, and to which he contributed some of his finest work.[150]
There are few pictures more pathetic, albeit also heroic, than that
which we have of the great thinker and his devoted wife struggling
against poverty during the first few years of their stay in London.
Often the little family suffered the pangs of hunger, and Marx and a
group of fellow-exiles used to resort to the reading room of the British
Museum, weak from lack of food very often, but grateful for the warmth
and shelter of that hospitable spot. The family lived some time in two
small rooms in a cheap lodging house on Dean Street, the front room
serving as reception room and study, and the back room serving for
everything else. In a diary note, Mrs. Marx has herself left us an
impressive picture of the suffering of those early years in London.
Early in 1852, death entered the home for the first time, taking away a
little daughter. Only a few weeks later another little daughter died,
and Mrs. Marx wrote concerning this event:--

"On Easter of the same year--1852--our poor little Francisca died of
severe bronchitis. Three days the poor child was struggling with death.
It suffered so much. Its little lifeless body rested in the small back
room; we all moved together into the front room, and when night
approached, we made our beds on the floor. There the three living
children were lying at our side, and we cried about the little angel,
who rested cold and lifeless near us. The death of the dear child fell
into the time of the most bitter poverty ... (the money for the burial
of the child was missing). In the anguish of my heart I went to a French
refugee who lived near, and who had sometimes visited us. I told him our
sore need. At once with the friendliest kindness he gave me two pounds.
With that we paid for the little coffin in which the poor child now
sleeps peacefully. I had no cradle for her when she was born, and even
the last small resting place was long denied her. What did we suffer
when it was carried away to its last place of rest!"[151]

The poverty, of which we have here such a graphic view, lasted for
several years beyond the publication of the "Critique," on to the
appearance of the first volume of "Capital." When this struggle is
remembered and understood, it becomes easier to appreciate the life work
of the great Socialist thinker. "It wa