Marx or Haggis?

Marx's name jumped up to my screen today when I was researching the publishing history of nineteenth-century Cape Town. I didn't have any clues about how they could be linked together.

My specific target was a Dutch emigrant from Holland to colonial Cape Town in the mid-nineteenth century. His name was Johann Carel Juta. Juta established J. C. Juta Co. in 1853 and it quickly flourished to become a key publisher and bookseller in Cape Town and South Africa. It is now one of the oldest publishers and booksellers in South Africa. Interesting enough.

Surfing the web by all means, to my surprise, the story did not end here as other typical colonial enterprises go when Marx hit me on face.

Juta was the brother-in-law of Marx, whose younger sister Louise was Juta's wife. Marx quite liked this "good, sensible chap". In his letter to his friend Engels in Manchester, Marx claimed that Juta was travelling to Manchester soon and might pay him a visit. Marx's intention to put his brother-in-law in his friend's care is obvious. Did Juta eventually visit Engels? Perhaps. Who knows?

All these make the Cape Town story complicated and interesting.

Marx. Manchester. It probed me to come up a fun literary venture. I live in Edinburgh now. Short-term though and about to leave in one-month's time. My apartment in Old Town is haunted by history. Chambers' statute is around the corner and Hume's is not far away. Scott's is a little farther. The essence of Scottishness is around me.

I spent a year in Manchester, strolling up and down the Victorian industrial city, where Marx and Engels seeded Marxism, and where I found myself in solitude and loneliness.

If time and strength allow me, I would write something titled like When Marx meets Hume/Scott/Chambers: My Life in Manchester and Edinburgh, or Four Years Apart: My Life in England with Marx and Scotland with Hume/Scott/Chambers.

I revealed my plan to my wife. She replied in a poker face: "Why not When a Chinese meets Haggis?" Speechless.