Already much more familiar with English political economy than most English writers of his time, and with the fine library of the British Museum at his command, Marx felt that the time had at last arrived when he could devote himself to his long-cherished plan of writing a great treatise upon political economy as a secure basis for the theoretical structure of Socialism. With this object in view, he resumed his economic studies in 1850, soon after his arrival in London. The work proceeded slowly, however, principally owing to the long and bitter struggle with poverty which encompassed Marx and his gentle wife. For years they suffered all the miseries of acute poverty, and even afterward, when the worst was past, the principal source of income, at times almost the only source in fact, was the five dollars a week received from the _New York Tribune_, for which Marx acted as special correspondent, and to which he contributed some of his finest work.[150] There are few pictures more pathetic, albeit also heroic, than that which we have of the great thinker and his devoted wife struggling against poverty during the first few years of their stay in London. Often the little family suffered the pangs of hunger, and Marx and a group of fellow-exiles used to resort to the reading room of the British Museum, weak from lack of food very often, but grateful for the warmth and shelter of that hospitable spot. The family lived some time in two small rooms in a cheap lodging house on Dean Street, the front room serving as reception room and study, and the back room serving for everything else. In a diary note, Mrs. Marx has herself left us an impressive picture of the suffering of those early years in London. Early in 1852, death entered the home for the first time, taking away a little daughter. Only a few weeks later another little daughter died, and Mrs. Marx wrote concerning this event:-- "On Easter of the same year--1852--our poor little Francisca died of severe bronchitis. Three days the poor child was struggling with death. It suffered so much. Its little lifeless body rested in the small back room; we all moved together into the front room, and when night approached, we made our beds on the floor. There the three living children were lying at our side, and we cried about the little angel, who rested cold and lifeless near us. The death of the dear child fell into the time of the most bitter poverty ... (the money for the burial of the child was missing). In the anguish of my heart I went to a French refugee who lived near, and who had sometimes visited us. I told him our sore need. At once with the friendliest kindness he gave me two pounds. With that we paid for the little coffin in which the poor child now sleeps peacefully. I had no cradle for her when she was born, and even the last small resting place was long denied her. What did we suffer when it was carried away to its last place of rest!"[151]