Fedor Ivanitch Lavretsky--we must ask the reader’s permission to break
off the thread of our story for a time--came of an old noble family. The
founder of the house of Lavretsky came over from Prussia in the reign
of Vassili the Blind, and received a grant of two hundred chetverts of
land in Byezhetsk. Many of his descendants filled various offices, and
served under princes and persons of eminence in outlying districts,
but not one of them rose above the rank of an inspector of the Imperial
table nor acquired any considerable fortune. The richest and
most distinguished of all the Lavretskys was Fedor Ivanitch’s
great-grandfather, Andrei, a man cruel and daring, cunning and able.
Even to this day stories still linger of his tyranny, his savage temper,
his reckless munificence, and his insatiable avarice. He was very stout
and tall, swarthy of countenance and beardless, he spoke in a thick
voice and seemed half asleep; but the more quietly he spoke the more
those about him trembled. He had managed to get a wife who was a fit
match for him. She was a gipsy by birth, goggle-eyed and hook-nosed,
with a round yellow face. She was irascible and vindictive, and never
gave way in anything to her husband, who almost killed her, and whose
death she did not survive, though she had been for ever quarrelling with
him. The son of Andrei, Piotr, Fedor’s grandfather, did not take
after his father; he was a typical landowner of the steppes, rather a
simpleton, loud-voiced, but slow to move, coarse but not ill-natured,
hospitable and very fond of coursing with dogs. He was over thirty when
he inherited from his father a property of two thousand serfs in capital
condition; but he had soon dissipated it, and had partly mortgaged
his estate, and demoralised his servants. All sorts of people of low
position, known and unknown, came crawling like cockroaches from all
parts into his spacious, warm, ill-kept halls. All this mass of people
ate what they could get, but always had their fill, drank till they
were drunk, and carried off what they could, praising and blessing
their genial host; and their host too when he was out of humour blessed
his guests--for a pack of sponging toadies, but he was bored when he was
without them. Piotr Andreitch’s wife was a meek-spirited creature; he
had taken her from a neighbouring family by his father’s choice and
command; her name was Anna Pavlovna. She never interfered in anything,
welcomed guests cordially, and readily paid visits herself, though being
powdered, she used to declare, would be the death of her. “They put,”
she used to say in her old age, “a fox’s brush on your head, comb all
the hair up over it, smear it with grease, and dust it over with flour,
and stick it up with iron pins,--there’s no washing it off afterwards;
but to pay visits without powder was quite impossible--people would be
offended. Ah, it was a torture!”
She liked being driven with fast-trotting horses, and was ready to play
cards from morning till evening, and would always keep the score of the
pennies she had lost or won hidden under her hand when her husband came
near the card-table; but all her dowry, her whole fortune, she had put
absolutely at his disposal. She bore him two children, a son Ivan, the
father of Fedor, and a daughter Glafira. Ivan was not brought up at
home, but lived with a rich old maiden aunt, the Princess Kubensky; she
had fixed on him for her heir (but for that his father would not have
let him go). She dressed him up like a doll, engaged all kinds of
teachers for him, and put him in charge of a tutor, a Frenchman, who had
been an abbé, a pupil of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a certain M. Courtin de
Vaucelles, a subtle and wily intriguer--the very, as she expressed it,
fine fleur of emigration--and finished at almost seventy years old by
marrying this “fine fleur,” and making over all her property to him.
Soon afterwards, covered with rouge, and redolent of perfume à la
Richelieu, surrounded by negro boys, delicate-shaped greyhounds and
shrieking parrots, she died on a crooked silken divan of the time of
Louis XV., with an enamelled snuff-box of Petitot’s workmanship in her
hand--and died, deserted by her husband; the insinuating M. Courtin had
preferred to remove to Paris with her money. Ivan had only reached
his twentieth year when this unexpected blow (we mean the princess’s
marriage, not her death) fell upon him; he did not care to stay in his
aunt’s house, where he found himself suddenly transformed from a wealthy
heir to a poor relation; the society in Petersburg in which he had grown
up was closed to him; he felt an aversion for entering the government
service in the lower grades, with nothing but hard work and obscurity
before him,--this was at the very beginning of the reign of the Emperor
Alexander. He was obliged reluctantly to return to the country to his
father. How squalid, poor, and wretched his parents’ home seemed to him!
The stagnation and sordidness of life in the country offended him at
every step. He was consumed with ennui. Moreover, every one in the
house, except his mother, looked at him with unfriendly eyes. His father
did not like his town manners, his swallow-tail coats, his frilled
shirt-fronts, his books, his flute, his fastidious ways, in which he
detected--not incorrectly--a disgust for his surroundings; he was for
ever complaining and grumbling at his son. “Nothing here,” he used to
say, “is to his taste; at table he is all in a fret, and doesn’t eat;
he can’t bear the heat and close smell of the room; the sight of folks
drunk upsets him, one daren’t beat any one before him; he doesn’t want
to go into the government service; he’s weakly, as you see, in health;
fie upon him, the milksop! And all this because he’s got his head full
of Voltaire.” The old man had a special dislike to Voltaire, and the
“fanatic” Diderot, though he had not read a word of their words; reading
was not in his line. Piotr Andreitch was not mistaken; his son’s head
for that matter was indeed full of both Diderot and Voltaire, and not
only of them alone, of Rousseau too, and Helvetius, and many other
writers of the same kind--but they were in his head only. The retired
abbé and encyclopedist who had been Ivan Petrovitch’s tutor had taken
pleasure in pouring all the wisdom of the eighteenth century into his
pupil, and he was simply brimming over with it; it was there in him, but
without mixing in his blood, nor penetrating to his soul, nor shaping
itself in any firm convictions.... But, indeed, could one expect
convictions from a young man of fifty years ago, when even at the
present day we have not succeeded in attaining them? The guests, too,
who frequented his father’s house, were oppressed by Ivan Petrovitch’s
presence; he regarded them with loathing, they were afraid of him; and
with his sister Glafira, who was twelve years older than he, he could
not get on at all. This Glafira was a strange creature; she was ugly,
crooked, and spare, with severe, wide-open eyes, and thin compressed
lips. In her face, her voice, and her quick angular movements, she took
after her grandmother, the gipsy, Andrei’s wife. Obstinate and fond
of power, she would not even hear of marriage. The return of Ivan
Petrovitch did not fit in with her plans; while the Princess Kubensky
kept him with her, she had hoped to receive at least half of her
father’s estate; in her avarice, too, she was like her grandmother.
Besides, Glafira envied her brother, he was so well educated, spoke
such good French with a Parisian accent, while she was scarcely able
to pronounce “bon jour” or “comment vous portez-vous.” To be sure, her
parents did not know any French, but that was no comfort to her. Ivan
Petrovitch did not know what to do with himself for wretchedness and
ennui; he had spent hardly a year in the country, but that year seemed
to him as long as ten. The only consolation he could find was in talking
to his mother, and he would sit for whole hours in her low-pitched
rooms, listening to the good woman’s simple-hearted prattle, and eating
preserves. It so happened that among Anna Pavlovna’s maids there was one
very pretty girl with clear soft eyes and refined features, Malanya by
name, a modest intelligent creature. She took his fancy at first sight,
and he fell in love with her: he fell in love with her timid movements,
her bashful answers, her gentle voice and gentle smile; every day she
seemed sweeter to him. And she became devoted to Ivan Petrovitch
with all the strength of her soul, as none but Russian girls can be
devoted--and she gave herself to him. In the large household of a
country squire nothing can long be kept a secret; soon every one knew of
the love between the young master and Malanya; the gossip even reached
the ears of Piotr Andreitch himself. Under other circumstances, he would
probably have paid no attention to a matter of so little importance,
but he had long had a grudge against his son, and was delighted at an
opportunity of humiliating the town-bred wit and dandy. A storm of
fuss and clamour was raised; Malanya was locked up in the pantry, Ivan
Petrovitch was summoned into his father’s presence. Anna Pavlovna too
ran up at the hubbub. She began trying to pacify her husband, but Piotr
Andreitch would hear nothing. He pounced down like a hawk on his son,
reproached him with immorality, with godlessness, with hypocrisy; he
took the opportunity to vent on him all the wrath against the Princess
Kubensky that had been simmering within him, and lavished abusive
epithets upon him. At first Ivan Petrovitch was silent and held himself
in, but when his father thought to fit to threaten him with a shameful
punishment he could endure it no longer. “Ah,” he thought, “the fanatic
Diderot is brought out again, then I will take the bull by the horns, I
will astonish you all.” And thereupon with a calm and even voice, though
quaking inwardly in every limb, Ivan Petrovitch declared to his father,
that there was no need to reproach him with immorality; that though he
did not intend to justify his fault he was ready to make amends for it,
the more willingly as he felt himself to be superior to every kind of
prejudice--and in fact--was ready to marry Malanya. In uttering
these words Ivan Petrovitch did undoubtedly attain his object; he so
astonished Piotr Andreitch that the latter stood open-eyed, and was
struck dumb for a moment; but instantly he came to himself, and just as
he was, in a dressing-gown bordered with squirrel fur and slippers on
his bare feet, he flew at Ivan Petrovitch with his fists. The latter,
as though by design, had that morning arranged his locks à la Titus,
and put on a new English coat of a blue colour, high boots with little
tassels and very tight modish buckskin breeches. Anna Pavlovna shrieked
with all her might and covered her face with her hands; but her son ran
over the whole house, dashed out into the courtyard, rushed into the
kitchen-garden, into the pleasure-grounds, and flew across into the
road, and kept running without looking round till at last he ceased to
hear the heavy tramp of his father’s steps behind him and his shouts,
jerked out with effort, “Stop you scoundrel!” he cried, “stop! or I
will curse you!” Ivan Petrovitch took refuge with a neighbour, a small
landowner, and Piotr Andreitch returned home worn out and perspiring,
and without taking breath, announced that he should deprive his son of
his blessing and inheritance, gave orders that all his foolish books
should be burnt, and that the girl Malanya should be sent to a distant
village without loss of time. Some kind-hearted people found out Ivan
Petrovitch and let him know everything. Humiliated and driven to fury,
he vowed he would be revenged on his father, and the same night lay
in wait for the peasant’s cart in which Malanya was being driven away,
carried her off by force, galloped off to the nearest town with her and
married her. He was supplied with money by the neighbour, a good-natured
retired marine officer, a confirmed tippler, who took an intense delight
in every kind of--as he expressed it--romantic story.
The next day Ivan Petrovitch wrote an ironically cold and polite letter
to Piotr Andreitch, and set off to the village where lived his second
cousin, Dmitri Pestov, with his sister, already known to the reader,
Marfa Timofyevna. He told them all, announced his intention to go to
Petersburg to try to obtain a post there, and besought them, at least
for a time, to give his wife a home. At the word “wife” he shed tears,
and in spite of his city breeding and philosophy he bowed himself in
humble, supplicating Russian fashion at his relations’ feet, and even
touched the ground with his forehead. The Pestovs, kind-hearted and
compassionate people, readily agreed to his request. He stayed with
them for three weeks, secretly expecting a reply from his father; but no
reply came--and there was no chance of a reply coming.
Piotr Andreitch, on hearing of his son’s marriage, took to his bed,
and forbade Ivan Petrovitch’s name to be mentioned before him; but his
mother, without her husband’s knowledge, borrowed from the rector,
and sent 500 roubles and a little image to his wife. She was afraid
to write, but sent a message to Ivan Petrovitch by a lean peasant, who
could walk fifty miles a day, that he was not to take it too much to
heart; that, please God, all would be arranged, and his father’s
wrath would be turned to kindness; that she too would have preferred
a different daughter-in-law, but that she sent Malanya Sergyevna her
motherly blessing. The lean peasant received a rouble, asked permission
to see the new young mistress, to whom he happened to be godfather,
kissed her hand and ran off at his best speed.
And Ivan Petrovitch set off to Petersburg with a light heart. An unknown
future awaited him; poverty perhaps menaced him, but he had broken away
from the country life he detested, and above all, he had not been false
to his teachers, he had actually put into practice the doctrines of
Rousseau, Diderot, and la Déclaration des droits de l’homme. A sense
of having done his duty, of triumph, and of pride filled his soul; and
indeed the separation from his wife did not greatly afflict him; he
would have been more perturbed by the necessity of being constantly
with her. That deed was done, now he wanted to set about doing something
fresh. In Petersburg, contrary to his own expectations, he met with
success; the Princess Kubensky, whom Monsieur Courtin had by that time
deserted, but who was still living, in order to make up in some way to
her nephew for having wronged him, gave him introductions to all her
friends, and presented him with 5000 roubles--almost all that remained
of her money--and a Lepkovsky watch with his monogram encircled by
Cupids.
Three months had not passed before he obtained a position in a Russian
embassy to London, and in the first English vessel that sailed (steamers
were not even talked of then) he crossed the sea. A few months later he
received a letter from Pestov. The good-natured landowner congratulated
Ivan Petrovitch on the birth of a son, who had been born into the world
in the village of Pokrovskoe on the 20th of August, 1807, and named
Fedor, in honour of the holy martyr Fedor Stratilat. On account of her
extreme weakness Malanya Sergyevna added only a few lines; but those
few lines were a surprise, for Ivan Petrovitch had not known that Marfa
Timofyevna had taught his wife to read and write. Ivan Petrovitch did
not long abandon himself to the sweet emotion of parental feeling;
he was dancing attendance on a notorious Phryne or Lais of the day
(classical names were still in vogue at that date); the Peace of Tilsit
had only just been concluded and all the world was hurrying after
pleasure, in a giddy whirl of dissipation, and his head had been turned
by the black eyes of a bold beauty. He had very little money, but he
was lucky at cards, made many acquaintances, took part in all
entertainments, in a word, he was in the swim.