Final Years and Some Further Volumes (1919–24)

The final years of Marshall’s life following his deserved triumph with the publication of Industry and Trade were spent in growing ill health, the onset of senility from the early 1920s, rapid increase of short-term memory loss, though poor memory had apparently plagued Marshall from the beginning of the twentieth century. Hypertension, first diagnosed in 1914, steadily grew worse, together with a gall bladder ailment causing nausea, acidity and digestive problems dating from the 1870s, which likewise gradually worsened. Keynes’s description of his last visit to Marshall on 16 May 1924, less than two months before Marshall’s death, is illustrative. It mentioned seeing Marshall in bed with his night cap on, ‘weak in voice, still able to laugh’, no short-term memory left to speak of and ‘now rather like a child, … often troublesome’ (Keynes to Lydia Lopokova, 16 May 1924, in Hill and Keynes (eds) 1989, p. 195).