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I am interested in following the route of the legendary pub crawl
between Central London and Hampstead and to know if any of the pubs visited still exist. Any information available?
Dear Mister,
My name is Eleanor Marx. I am the third daughter of Karl Marx. I want
to warmly thank you for your question. I find it very spiritual and
witty. Since not every one in our family community agrees on that
opinion, I am forced to describe to you a little bit our collective
MODUS OPERANDI with the material from the forum Dialogue.
The letters are usually brought by my mother, Jenny Marx, née baroness
von Westphalen, to our little evening discussion after the supper.
Usually my respected mother has already an initially formulated opinion
about the correspondances. Between "Silly, not worth an answer" and "To
be answered in priority", she entertains a sophisticated spectrum of
evaluative nuances, and we usually go along with her opinion.
Usually... but not
always... Your letter has the pleasant feature to have divided our
small community in two very interestingly polarised positions.
For our good mutual understanding, let me just introduce to you who are
the protagonists of that collective reflexion on the Dialogue material.
There is my mother Jenny Marx, née von Wesphalen, my father Karl Marx,
our friend Mister Friedrich Engels, my older sister Jennychen Longuet,
née Marx, my second sister Laura Lafargue, née Marx, and myself,
Eleanor, the youngest child of the Marx family.
"Silly, not worth an answer" was how your note was labelled by Mother.
But when she read it, Mister Engels and Father had a long laugh, which
seemed, to a certain extent, to annoy Mother. After a non conclusive
discussion, we decided to take a vote to know if your letter would be
answered or not. You must understand, Mister, that we are a very
open-minded and democratic family, and sometimes, when we see that
after extensive discussions, we cannot agree, we do not hesitate to
casually take votes, and go along with their results, without prejudice
or bitterness. We vote on several kinds of things: localisation of the
next picnic, dramatic authors for theater recitations, music to be
played at our next dance... position to adopt toward "silly" letters...
We are a very "chartist" family, as you can see!
So, Mother voted against the proposition of honoring you with an
answer. Jennychen voted with her. I voted with Mister Engels in favor
of giving an answer to your witty and amusing question. Father
abstained. But I have the certainty that he did it not to annoy Mother.
Karl Marx, Mister, had a genuine outburst of joy when your question was
read to him. The balance of the decision was then in the hands of
Laura, my second sister. If she was to vote with Mother and Jennychen,
you would never have heard from us. Laura is a somewhat superficial
lady, but she is far less strait-laced than Jennychen, and she has a
fair sense of synthesis. She said: "I do not exactly appreciate the
question, because of the heavy reference to the absorption of liquors
involved in it. However, the tone seems friendly and sincere, and the
issue raised changes us a little bit from all these debates on
philosophy and political economy we are constantly questionned about."
And she voted the Yea...
The question was then raised of who should answer to you. Jennychen,
Laura and my mother were not interested. Mister Engels and Father were
tempted, chuckling constantly. But again, they did not dare... The
debate went on and on. And suddenly Father said: "Let Tussy take care
of it". My mother stared at him. Father pursued: "What? She just turned
22. These issues are not forbidden to her anymore. She made very
intelligent, decent and accurate observations during the discussion. I
am certain she will handle that with precision and elegance." My mother
finally accepted, under certain conditions, so here I am. And here is
my answer:
We had, Mister, a great pleasure to read your letter. Despite the fact
that they will not dare to formulate it, my father and Mister Engels
have obviously a very elevated opinion of "the legendary pub crawl
between Central London and Hampstead". But your question is not
answerable. Whatever our private opinion on these locals and their
activities can be, to see you, an obviously well informed man of the
end of XXth century, ask us, people of the 1870's, what that "pub
crawl" -or, to that effect, anything else- BECAME, is simply an
unsolvable paradox. So I have the pleasure to send you the question
back. Please, Man of the Future, let us know what our current Londonian
Liquor & Entertainment distribution network "became". And accept my
warm and respectful thanks for a genuine moment of family amusement.
Eleanor Marx
(letter revised by Jenny Marx, née Baroness von Westphalen) |
