Lassalle of Germany was a man of decidedly fashionable and luxurious habits. His suppers were among the most exquisite in Berlin. A gilded youth, a connoisseur in wine and a learned man to boor, he became an agitator and champion of the workers. In one of those fashionable circles he met a young lady, Fraulein von Donniges. She was a young lady of twenty, unconventional and original in character. Lassalle's attentions were ardently reciprocated and they decided to marry.

But her father was a Bavarian diplomat, who would not hear of her association with an agitator. She was imprisoned in her room and made to renounce him in favour of one Count von Racowitza. Lassalle, now mad with rage and jealousy, sent a challenge both to the father and the betrothed, which was accepted by the latter. Lassalle, though considered a better swordsman, was mortally wounded and died on August 26th, 1864; hence that ended his activity and his ambition to one day become President of a German Socialist Republic, with her elevated by his side.

Typical of a novel story, the Count died soon after they married and she wrote a book, My Relations with Ferdinand Lassalle'. She then went to America and appeared to mourn the loss of Lassalle all her life. I remember reading of her committing suicide there about forty years ago.

Karl Marx had two daughters, one married Paul Lafarque, a French Socialist, and the other, Eleanor, was said to be the wife of Dr. Edward Aveling, a great scholar, a university lecturer, who trans­lated the first volume of Marx's Das Kapital. He was also a sexual pervert and had a great influence over women. Eleanor, as Olive Schreiner said, was a lovable character. She used to attend the international conferences and do a lot of the translating. Aveling saw in her beauty and character something for his gratification, but there was a fly in the ointment - he was already married. Eleanor, kind and lovable character, however, was found too weak to resist him, and therefore, as Olive Schreiner said in her letters, "Eleanor Marx is in future to be known as Mrs. Aveling." Subsequently, however, the real Mrs. Aveling died. Now, Eleanor thought, I shall be relieved of the social stigma; we will go through the conventional ceremony. But to the disgust of those who knew them, and to the fatal grief of poor Eleanor, he married another. Eleanor then said she had nothing to live for and committed suicide. Bernard Shaw knew Eleanor, and has admitted since that he had a fend affection for her himself, but I don't think he ever gave it expression. Shaw, however, like the rest of us advanced Socialists, has little concern for present-day conventionalities in principle, but his high moral character has made him observe them in practice. I have never met Bernard Shaw, though I was once delegated to do so with another representing the Friends of the Soviet Union, when he visited South Africa in 1934. We journeyed to the boat on his arrival, on which he received the deputations - or, rather, those who were fortunate enough to get anywhere near him. Cape Town's curiosity group of gate-crashers were there in such numbers that to approach him was impossible. Many of those I saw in the crash were not there for fraternal reasons. We could have broken into a loud oration from the back of the crowd, but we thought such an attempt rather unbecoming of a deputation. However, more about his visit will appear in a later chapter. I will relate a romance in his life given us by one of his biographers-Hesketh Pearson.