When I first wrote my study of William Morris over twenty years ago I inclined to Kapp’s judgement, and gave both Eleanor and Engels the benefit of the doubt. But since that time the Engels-Lafargue correspondence has become available, and I have consequently sharpened my own judgement in revision. Engels’s lofty dismissal, in l887, of the existing socialist movement in Britain as ‘a number of small cliques held together by personal motives’, comes uneasily from a man who was at the centre of the smallest and most personally-motivated clique of all. The Avelings, having hurried on the split in the SDF, failed then to give a full commitment to the Socialist League, formed a faction within it, and forced on a further split which destroyed their own creation. Engels, who indignantly rebutted each and every attack on Aveling as the malicious slander of political enemies, was both the captive of Aveling and his political mentor. His personal motives (loyalty to ‘Tussy’) were admirable. But in the result he contributed in a small way to the confusions of the early movement and to the repute into which ‘British Marxism’ fell.
Aveling (it seems) surrounded himself with bouncing cheques and left other people to settle his bills and to comfort his discarded mistresses. The notion that these private vices can be segregated from his public and political virtue will not hold ice. His was the behaviour of an élitist, who made a tolerable and entertaining living for himself in the top storey of a poor movement. But what of that other notion, so prevalent now that it may be called a stereotype, that Eleanor all along was the noble and innocent victim of his abuse? Her suicide projected this interpretation backwards, across the previous fifteen years; by killing herself as she did, in a final protest against him, she rejected the name she had long chosen – Eleanor Marx Aveling – and re-entered a purified history as Eleanor Marx.
But I do not think this notion will do either. Eleanor also first entered the movement as a special person, an élitist, the daughter of ‘Mohr’. She could not possibly have been other. She was spoiled by Engels and invited instantly into the control-room of the Tardis. His sardonic contempt of those bungling English socialists rubbed off on her. She was an enthusiastic Bohemian who shared Aveling’s theatrical ambitions and who enjoyed his round of one-act plays, sentimental comedies and soirées. It is difficult not to see ‘the Avelings’ in the 1880s except as a double act. If Dr Aveling enraged the American socialists by charging them 25 dollars for ‘corsage bouquets’, Mrs Aveling was the one who wore them. I think it probable that in these early years she found Edward’s flouting of bourgeois financial proprieties to be daring and amusing. She learned, to her grievous cost, otherwise. But in those days they certainly appeared to outsiders as a marital package. When Bernstein spoke in the advanced Fabian household of the Blands of the Avelings, ‘there was suddenly a suspiciously unanimous chorus of praise of them. “Oh, the Avelings are very clever people.” “Oh, everybody must admit that they have been of great service to the movement,” and so forth.’ It is always remembered that Shaw’s Dubedat (‘as natural as a cat, he moves among men as most men move among things’) is derived from Aveling; it is less often recalled that (in Bernstein’s view) ‘the deliberate blindness and deafness of Mrs Dubedat in respect of all that was said to the detriment of her husband’ is equally derived from Eleanor:
Of course when he says he doesn’t believe in morality, ordinary pious people think he must be wicked. You can understand, can’t you, how all this starts a great deal of gossip about him, and gets repeated until even good friends get set against him?
The important word is ‘deliberate’.
In her socialist propaganda work in the 1880s Eleanor was an enthusiast. I find in an old notebook a letter of hers proposing in October 1885 that a Christmas Tree be organised for the children of the Socialist League:
We cannot too soon make children understand that Socialism means happiness. Perhaps some friends (I tremble a little at the thought of Bax) will object to a Christmas tree. If they or he shd I will only remind them of the origin of the Christian festival – of the beautiful old Pagan feast that celebrated the birth of light. Let us, like the Christians, adopt this old story to our purpose. Is not Socialism the real ‘new birth’, & with its light will not the old darkness of the earth disappear?
This is the Eleanor whom Marxists have always cherished, the passionate daughter of Marx who disproves in all her life the libelling of the family as cold-blooded materialists. Yet we have also to remember that the enthusiastic comrade, who combines a ready resource of emotion with an absolute conviction of her own political integrity, can sometimes be an unsettling, even disruptive, fellow worker. Yvonne Kapp gives us a curious insight into the aftermath of Bloody Sunday (1887). The demonstrators were prevented from entering Trafalgar Square by over 4,000 police and 600 guardsmen. The Radical, Irish and Socialist crowds were ingloriously routed, 200 of them to hospital. The next question for the movement was what to do next week – whether to rush the Square once more or whether to demonstrate in Hyde Park. Eleanor, writing to sister Laura, had not a moment of doubt:
We shall urge going to the Square, but I fear many will funk ... If we can induce them to go next Sunday, it will mean very warm work. Last Sunday the troops had ammunition ready and stood with fixed bayonets. Next Sunday I think it very possible they will actually fire. That would be very useful to the whole movement here. It would complete the work some of us have been doing this long while past, of winning over the better Radical element to Socialism.
A delegate meeting of Radical clubs was called to take the decision, and a witty Radical reporter noted:
In front of the platform sat Lady Macbeth Aveling and the redoubtable Edward, D.Sc. They were of course in favour of a spirited dash at Trafalgar Square; and very fine it was to see the lofty scorn of Lady Macbeth when any speaker on the pacific side rose to address the meeting. When the resolution proposing the Hyde Park meeting was read Lady Macbeth turned to Edward. D.Sc , and hissed ‘C-o-w-a-r-d-s!’ between her teeth.
Among those whom Eleanor implied to Laura were ‘funks’ was William Morris, since he was less than convinced that the unleashing of the military upon an unarmed crowd would be ‘very useful to the whole movement’. And Yvonne Kapp notes approvingly: ‘While Eleanor learnt from Bloody Sunday that the working class had not yet enough experience of struggle, Morris drew the conclusion that it had not yet enough education or organisation to engage in struggle’. This is untrue, as Kapp must know, since she has just quoted Morris’s own judgement on the matter: he proposed that the demonstrators should immediately learn to struggle more effectively, by organisation, crowd discipline and drill, and ‘a due system of scouts, outposts and supports ...’
Eleanor maintained this faith in the educative value of a severe defeat, which would make the real class struggle apparent and bring recalcitrant Britain into line with the Continent. In the last year of her life, while assisting the engineers in their long lock-out, she admitted in a letter to Natalie Liebknecht that ‘we are hopelessly beaten’. ‘It is true – ... entre nous – the beating may, in the long run be as useful to our cause, more useful perhaps, than a half-hearted “victory” ...’ This did not prove to be true, and, in general, too many of Eleanor’s political judgements are spoiled by this kind of warm-hearted and wilful political emoting.
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