Product Code Database
Jenny Caroline Marx Longuet (1 May 1844 – 11 January 1883) was the eldest daughter of Jenny von Westphalen Marx and Karl Marx. Briefly a political journalist writing under the pseudonym J. Williams, Longuet taught language classes and had a family of five sons and a daughter before her death to cancer at the age of 38.
In 1868, at the age of 24, she accepted a position as a French language teacher in order to help her parents financially. She also contributed a number of articles to the socialist press, in 1870 writing under the pseudonym "J. Williams" on the treatment of the Irish political prisoners by the British government. "Jenny Marx Longuet (Jennychen)," Karl Marx Family Biography, Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org/
She met her future husband, the French people journalist and radical political activist Charles Longuet in 1871.Padover, Karl Marx, pg. 476. The pair became engaged in March 1872 and were married on 10 October the same year in a civil ceremony at St Pancras registry office,Francis Wheen. Karl Marx: A Life. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999; p. 350. she taking the name Jenny Longuet.Padover, Karl Marx, pp. 476-477.
As with her parents, the young couple faced economic hardship in their earliest years.Padover, Karl Marx, pg. 477. They moved to Oxford soon after their marriage, hoping that Charles could find work as a teacher, but he was unable to do so. Jenny earned a meagre income for the pair working as a private tutor, giving lessons in French, German language, and singing.
The couple's financial lives became more stable in 1874, when Jenny and Charles found work as teachers, with Jenny holding a position as a German teacher at the St Clement Danes School.Padover, Karl Marx, pp. 477-478. The minimal salary she earned at the school was supplemented by giving private lessons.Padover, Karl Marx, pg. 478. Her husband obtained a position teaching French at King's College, together making enough to maintain a small house in London.
Jenny Longuet was pregnant in almost every year of her married life.Padover, Karl Marx, pg. 479. She gave birth to a first son in September 1873, but the child died the following summer of diarrhea. A second son, Jean Longuet (1876–1938) fared better, surviving to eventually become a leader of the Socialist Party of France.
A third son, born in 1878, who had a developmental disability and was sickly, died at the age of 5, while a fourth, Edgar Longuet (1879–1950) lived a full life, becoming a medical doctor as well as an activist in the French Socialist Party.Padover, Karl Marx, pg. 480.
In February 1881 Jenny and the boys moved to France to join her husband.Padover, Karl Marx, pg. 482. The family settled in the town of Argenteuil, near Paris, where they were regularly visited by the boys' doting grandfather Karl Marx.Padover, Karl Marx, pg. 484.
Despite her ill health, Jenny delivered another son, Marcel Longuet (1881–1949)Padover, Karl Marx, pg. 485. who later worked as a journalist, including for the Parisian newspaper L'Aurore. A final child, a daughter also named Jenny Longuet, was born in September 1882 and lived until 1952.
|
|
