"In spite of his having made £400 by speculating in American funds, Marx was obliged to write to Engels yet another begging letter...
Engels duly came to the rescue and went as far as guaranteeing Marx £200 p.a., with the possibility of another £50. In November 1866 Marx's hopes were momentarily raised by the death of an aunt in Frankfurt but the result was only a meagre £12. The family was soon threatened with eviction and Marx had to get small loans from acquaintances ‘as in the worst refugee period'. The situation was made even worse by the necessity of keeping up appearances in front of Paul Lafargue, who was then paying court to Laura. Marx once again expressed a desire to go bankrupt — but instead ordered champagne and gymnastic lessons for Laura on the doctor's advice. During 1867 Marx recognised that Engels had given him ‘an enormous sum of money' but claimed that its effect was negated by his previous debts which amounted to £200. The next year, on his fiftieth birthday, he bitterly recalled his mother's words, ‘if only Karl had made Capital, instead of just writing about it'. Things were so bad that Marx seriously considered moving to Geneva...
In November 1868 the financial situation became intolerable and Engels asked Marx to let him know firstly how much he needed to clear all his debts and secondly whether he could live thereafter on £350 p.a. (Engels himself enjoyed an income from 1860 onwards of never less than £1100.) Marx described himself as ‘quite knocked down', asked Jenny to calculate their total debts and discovered that they were ‘much larger' than he had imagined." Engels let himself be bought out of Ermen and Engels earlier than he had anticipated and left the firm — to his immense jubilation and the popping of cham- pagne corks - on 1 July 1869. Three weeks later, however, Marx noticed that jenny was still not managing with the weekly allowance that he gave her. On pressing her about it, ‘the stupidity of women emerged... Women plainly always need to be controlled !' Engels accepted this with good grace and Marx's financial troubles were, at last, finished. It has been calculated from their correspondence that from 1865 to 1869 Engels gave Marx no less than £1862."
--- Karl Marx: His Life and Thought / David McLellan
