E-text prepared by John Young Le Bourgeois
NELKA
(Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff.)
1878-1963
A Biographical Sketch.
by Michael Moukhanoff
1964
FOREWARD.
In attempting this biographical sketch of Nelka I am using the
memories of 45 years together and also a great number of letters as
material. Her Aunt, Miss Susan Blow, had the habit of keeping
Nelka's letters over the years. There are some as early as when
Nelka was only five years old and then up to the year 1916, the year
her aunt died. These letters reflect very vividly the personality,
the ideas, the aspirations, the disappointments and the hopes of a
person over a period of a long life. They paint a very real picture
of her personality and for this reason I am using quotations from
these letters very extensively.
Nelka de Smirnoff was born on August 19, 1878 in Paris, France.
Her father was Theodor Smirnoff, of the Russian nobility. Her
grandmother had tartar blood in her veins and was born Princess
Tischinina. Nelka's father was a brilliant man, finishing the
Imperial Alexander Lyceum at the head of his class. A versatile
linguist, he joined the Russian diplomatic service and occupied
several diplomatic posts in various countries, but died young, when
Nelka was only four years old, and was buried in Berlin. Nelka
therefore hardly knew him, though she remembered him and throughout
her life had a great veneration for him and loyalty for his memory.
Nelka's mother was Nellie Blow, the daughter of Henry T. Blow of St.
Louis, Missouri. The Blow family, of old southern aristocratic
stock, moved from Virginia to St. Louis in 1830. Henry T. Blow was
then about fifteen years old and had several brothers and sisters.
He was a successful business man who became very wealthy and was also
a prominent public and political figure, both in St. Louis and
nationally. He was a friend of both Abraham Lincoln and of President
Grant and received appointments from them. He was minister to
Venezuela and later Ambassador to Brazil. He was active in politics
from 1850 on. Though his brothers were southern democrats, Henry Blow
took a stand against slavery and upheld the free-soil movement.
During the Civil War he was the only one of the family to take the
side of the Union and spent much of his time getting his brothers out
of prison camps. For a time he was state senator and for two terms
was Congressman in Washington. He also served as one of the three
Commissioners for the District of Columbia.
He was married to Minerva Grimsley and had ten children. His daughter
Nellie Blow, while in Brazil with her father, met Theodor Smirnoff
who was then secretary at the Russian Embassy there. She married him
in Carondolet, part of St. Louis, where the family lived, in 1872.
They had three children, a boy and a girl, who died in infancy in St.
Petersburg, Russia, and another girl, Nelka, who was born in 1878 and
was therefore the only living child.
Henry T. Blow's oldest daughter (and Nelka's aunt) Miss Susan Blow
was a prominent figure in the American educational movement, writing
and lecturing on education, and the one who introduced the Froebel
kindergarten system in the United States. The youngest daughter,
Martha, married Herbert Wadsworth of Geneseo, N.Y. She was a very
talented musician and painter and later became a very known
horsewoman.
After Nelka's father died in Europe, her mother returned to America
and it was the first time that Nelka came here. As a daughter of a
Russian, Nelka was also a Russian subject and remained a Russian that
way to the end. After the Russian Revolution, having no allegiance to
the Soviet Government, she became what is known as "stateless," a
position which in later years she liked, for she always said that she
belonged to the World, not just one country.
But as a child her mother wanted to bring her up as a Russian even
though in many ways this was difficult, for there were no relatives
and few connections left in Russia, her mother did not speak the
language and all ties and connections were in America.
Because of this conflict of attachments, Nelka's mother and she
traveled many times back and forth between Europe and America. Her
mother gave her a very complete and broad education both in America
and in Europe. In Europe she attended a very exclusive and rather
advanced school in Brussels. Because of this Nelka spoke not only
perfect French and English, but German as well.
When she was ten years old she went to a school in Washington. She
then already showed interest and love for animals which later became
a dominant feature in her life.
Writing to her aunt Susie from Washington 1888:
"At Uncle Charles Drake the boys have a little pet squirrel; it don't
bite them but it bites strangers if you give it a chance to. They
have some little guinea pigs that are very cute."
She also at that age showed intellectual interests:
Washington 1888.
"I read very much now whenever I get a chance to. I think it is
splendid and always amusing. I can play lots of little duets on the
piano with Mama. I love it."
Her stay in the school in Brussels was very profitable for her
studies and development and also showed in her letters how much
interest she took in everything.
Brussels 1893.
"I know what you mean about my getting older. You think that at every
different age I would be content to be that age if I did not get any
older. So I was. When I was ten I thought it would be dreadful to be
eleven, but when I was eleven I was quite satisfied if I did not have
to be twelve, and so on. But ever since I have been fourteen I have
thought it was awful and have never become reconciled to it."
Brussels 1894.
"I was first in grammar, literature and physics. Do you know the
'Melee' of Victor Hugo? I have just read it and I like it so much. I
would like to see some persons who have lived and who live. It makes
me crazy to see people vegetate."
Brussels 1893.
"We went to Waterloo. We went by carriage all the way, first through
the Bois de la Cambre and then on through the most perfect woods
imaginable. We went to a sort of little mound in the middle of the
battlefield with a huge lion on top as the emblem of victory. One
thing, although of no importance, I like so much, that was three
little birds nests one in the lion's mouth and one in each ear.
Wasn't it nice? We then went to the museum at the foot of the hill. I
got a photograph of Napoleon and one of Wellington. I have such a
contempt for Napoleon and I just take pleasure in comparing it with
the frank, open face of the Duke of Wellington."
Already at that age she was seeking answers to moral questions and
showed her philosophical mind:
Brussels 1894.
"'Une injustice qu'on voit et qu'on tait: on la commet soi meme.' (An
injustice one sees and keeps quiet about: one commits it oneself.) I
wish more persons could or would recognize that truth."
As a child Nelka did not speak Russian, because there was no one
around using this language. After her school in Brussels, her mother
took her to Russia to St. Petersburg. She was then seventeen.
St. Petersburg 1895.
"For the last few days I have been most blissfully absorbed in
Taine's 'Ideal dans l'Art.' I never knew it was in a separate volume.
It is splendid. Of course you know 'Character' of Smiles. I don't
care for it much, so sermony. I am going to the Hermitage tomorrow
just to see the Dutch and Flemish schools."
The same year her mother took her to Paris and entered her to attend
lectures at the College de France while living at the Convent of the
Assumption.
Paris 1895.
"I have just come back from the College de France. I enjoyed the
lecture very much; it was on Stendhal. You will be perhaps surprised
to learn that my educational career has taken a sudden turn. I am
going into the Convent of the Assumption next week. Now don't be
horrified. The Assumption is an exception to all the convents;
besides the regular studies they have professors from the Sorbonne,
Lycee Henry IV and other colleges to come in and give lectures on
foreign literature, history, art, etc. Besides this unheard of
privilege they have an atelier for drawing with Ducet to correct, and
living models, men, women and children. Of course Mama never imagined
such a thing possible in a convent, the general idea of convents not
going beyond wax flowers. Here are the privileges I will have:
1) Clock-like life and no time lost.
2) No risk of disagreeable associations as they are most particular
who they take.
3) I will see Mama almost every day.
"I shall have to go to bed at eight! Just fancy that!!! But then I
have an astonishing capacity for sleeping and eating just now."
While in Paris, in addition to the general subjects and the lectures
at the Sorbonne, Nelka also studied music, in particular the violin,
and at a time was quite proficient in it, though she did not keep it
up, as she did with painting, which she continued for a number of
years.
Nelka's mother tried to bring her up in the Russian spirit with a
great veneration for the memory of her father. Nelka grew up with a
burning nationalistic feeling for Russia and a veneration for the
Russian Emperor. Her mother kept up relations with such Russians as
she knew or who were with the Russian Embassy when in Washington. And
later, when she grew up, Nelka continually kept up with her Russian
friends.
I think characteristic of Nelka was her highly emotional expressions
of loyalty and devotion, an emotion which dominated all of her life
and all of her actions. Anything she did or undertook was primarily
motivated by emotion or feeling rather than reason, but once decided
upon was carried out with determination and a great deal of will
power.
But because the difference of national attachments and the resulting
conflict there was always a tearing apart and a division, a duality
of attachments both to Russia and to America, and this seems to have
been an emotional disturbance which lasted with her for a great many
years.
Her first, overwhelming emotional feeling was a patriotic
nationalistic devotion to Russia and a mystic devotion to the Emperor
and the Russian Orthodox Church. Then her next emotional feelings
embraced the devotion and loyalty for her family and her kin.
But in Russia she had no relatives and all her family was in America.
Because of that there seemed always a conflict of emotions,
attachments and loyalties which dominated as a disturbance throughout
her life, at least through the first half of it. This conflict of
feelings was upsetting and painful and she suffered a great deal from
the frustrations that these emotions often brought about.
The Russian education of feelings for Russia which her mother tried
to install in her succeeded, for throughout life Nelka remained a
faithful Russian in all of her feelings and while having so many ties
in America, and being herself half American, she was constantly in
conflict with the 'American way of life.'
From her early childhood Nelka had a tremendous love and devotion not
only to her mother but also to her two aunts, Miss Blow and Mrs.
Wadsworth. When in America she and her mother would stay either in
Ashantee with the Wadsworths or in Cazenovia where Miss Blow had her
home.
Early in life she was seeking and trying to think things out. She was
never satisfied, never ready to accept something but always tried to
analyze it through her own thinking. At the age of twenty she wrote
in 1898:
"I have absolutely no facility for expression; that is what is the
matter. I see persons so clever, so talented, and genuine in their
line and with absolutely distorted points of view. How aggravating. I
feel that in due time I may get to see something clearly (at least
thus far, if I do not see things clearly, I have not been pleased to
see any other way), and I am craving a means of giving out. You will
say I need the persistence to educate myself in the technique of some
mode of rendering my impressions. I suppose it is so. That is what I
have always meant with this desire to 'exhaust' myself. I need to
work. I need to give out or I shall have such a mental indigestion
that I shall no longer be able to form a single thought. As it is, so
many things are fleeting through me in incompleteness, in mere
suggestion and so simultaneously at that, that I am bewildered. O,
for complete cessation of consciousness, since this consciousness is
but that of an amalgamation quantity of incomprehensible suggestions,
or else, for a vent for some of this shapeless, immature acquisition,
so that something at least can complete itself."
Was this just a disturbance of youth, of any youth, not completely
empty-headed, frivolous or superficial, or was this the result of a
distinct inheritance of two very different and opposing
personalities, of so different nationalities and with an addition of
even tartar blood? I don't know. The fact remains that she was
constantly emotionally disturbed and constantly seeking the answers
of life, that so many have done and so few have found.
In the same year, not long before her mother died, she wrote from
Narragansett Pier 1898:
"I am very much puzzled still on individuality, that is, on its
everlasting existence. I do not see at all how it can be, but I am
waiting. Perhaps I can see soon. I have been trying to get a
definition for art and for beauty. I have nothing that satisfies me
yet. Art and beauty: I do not connect them at all in my mind. Art
is based on significance first and this does not depend on beauty.
Beauty is much more difficult to define than art. We have somehow
got the idea that only the beautiful pleases. Can beautiful be
applied to whatever pleases? I don't think so. Beauty is
truthfulness of what? Of the original intention I suppose. Is
beautiful something or is it not? Anyway I detach it from that which
pleases. If beauty is something distinct that which pleases is not
always beautiful. Is beauty independent of taste? It is so hard to
think out. However, I never think anything without knowing it, and I
know very few things, needless to say."
Washington 1898.
"It is terrible to be twenty! But I proved myself still young in
being able to shed a tear over my departed teens. Mama and all of
our little Russian colony drank my health wishing me each in turn to
find myself each year one year younger, till I had to stop them less
they eclipse me altogether. I think my nineteenth was the fullest
year I have ever had--crammed."
When she was twenty, Nelka went with her mother to Narragansett Bay
for the summer. Here a very tragic event took place which left an
imprint on Nelka, if not for life, then certainly for many years.
One afternoon, while sitting and talking with her mother, the latter
suddenly collapsed and died instantly. Nelka was there all alone
with her. The blow was terrible. For a very long time, being highly
emotional, she could not get over this tragic end of a person with
whom she had always been so close and so intimate. She went into
deep mourning and remained in a state of frozen sorrow. Writing to
her aunt Susie she expressed so vividly the tragic feeling of
complete sorrow which gripped her:
St. Louis 1898.
"No one could offer more generously what unfortunately I feel that I
may never have. Don't misunderstand me, dear Poodie, but my 'home'
was forever lost when Mama left me and I can never find it except
with her. I am Mama's own and my 'home' such as you mean it can only
exist in memory and anticipation."
"I am thankful to God that I am left on earth with such aunts as you
and Pats. Not many in my situation are so blessed. I shall always
feel alone. But perhaps I have had more of Mama than many have in
twice the time."
It is true that by circumstances she had always lived very much
together with her mother, who as a widow had nothing but her. Even
when Nelka was in school, her mother lived in the same city and saw
her constantly, and their closeness was very complete.
Again she writes:
"In all events I have had more in life than I deserve, more than one
should dare hope for."
"I was sorry to disappoint you yesterday, but I cried all the
afternoon."
A year later--Washington 1899.
"Try as I will I do not see how I can ever take up any interest
again. I have so little desire to go on with anything and I am so
satisfied with what I have had."
Washington 1899.
"I went to church this morning and I was surprised to realize how
heathenish and unchristian the sermon sounded to me. It was painful
to feel that I did not believe one word of what a Christian minister
said. What a network man seems to have made of the simplest things,
wherein to be everlastingly confounded. Might one just look up and
reach out overhead, instead of looking around one and trying to grope
at one's level. Truths made intangible by the impenetrable meshes of
faulty creeds and imperfect reasoning."
Ashantee 1899.
"Please do not worry about me. I told you that I was peaceful and
content, which I am. I want nothing which I cannot get and my mind
is reposeful. I do not care to understand anything. That I have got
to accept whatever may come is manifest and the wherefore has ceased
to trouble me, if it ever did. In the instances that have thus far
come up in my life, what I should do has always been palpable enough
and has required more determination or will. My inclination is to do
as little as I can to maintain my peace of conscience. While I have
no feeling of lassitude, I also feel no incentive, and while without
this one need not fail utterly, one will not probably accomplish
much."
"I don't believe there are many happy lives. Mama gave me more
happiness in the given number of years than I shall ever have again,
though doubtless, if I live long enough, I shall have some more happy
moments. This is to be supposed. But all this matters so very, very
little."
"I don't think that out of what is anything better is going to be."
"The external situation in general is not bad and as far as I can
see, the trouble lies in the natures of the individuals and is more
or less beyond remedy. The tragedy arriving from trying to unite in
action and purpose where in mind and heart and soul there is no
union, no mutual illumination, no mutual comprehension of the point
of view, will be everlasting. 'Constater et accepter' and the sooner
to 'constater' correctly, the sooner futile struggle ends."
"Goodnight. I neither weep nor laugh and I am glad to go to bed;
might be a good deal worse off, if I had no bed."
Ashantee 1899.
"I have lots of things to talk to you about but I don't know where to
begin. I want to say one thing that I think, which is that I think
it is very difficult to judge practically when a too analytical
definition of a condition or state is substituted for the ordinary
and worldly vernacular. I think one must often fall into error from
too great an attempt of metaphysical accuracy (precision), for
whatever the thing in essence, the reaction thereof upon the
multitude is made more forcible and more lucid to the mind by the
term applied to it at large. For instance a crank is not a person of
peculiar fancies."
Ashantee 1899.
"Great griefs are beyond all expression, but the stillness of
agonizing moments is worse. Why, oh, why anything?"
"I cannot feel anything. That makes variety but it is being alone in
interests, the feeling unchanged, the purposes conceived and striven
for singly that makes the struggle seem hard and the achievement
futile."
A girl of twenty or twenty-one, she was always questioning, always,
seeking, always disturbed.
Ashantee, December 1899.
"You see I am making use of the divine right of the individual which
you are ever proclaiming and you must not mistake this for
unniecelike freedom of speech. I can only live and learn and perhaps
learn to see how often I am mistaken. I am still in that pitiful
state of youthful consciousness and have with it the confidence to
act upon what I think. And to me almost every general rule becomes
transformed under the allowances one must make for the modifications
of the issue at hand. I think that often all that is most vital in
life may be lost be adhering to formulated precepts and I think that
every occasion calls for special and particular consideration for its
solution."
After staying a while in America, after her mother's death, Nelka
decided to go to Europe in order to change her ideas and get away
from memories. This was a wise move and gave her a great deal of
comfort, and helped build up her morale. She first went to Paris
where she once again went to the Convent of the Assumption and took
up the study of painting in earnest at the Julien studios. From
Paris she also went to visit her friends the Count Moltke and his
wife in Denmark and then later went for four months to Bulgaria where
she stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Bakhmeteff, my uncle who was Russian
ambassador in Sofia and Madame Bahkmeteff who was Nelka's godmother.
These two years in Europe were a very happy, steadying and pleasant
time for Nelka and she regained a hold of herself. Especially she
loved Paris as she always did. She told me once that when in Paris
at the time she was so exhilarated that she felt like walking on air.
But her observations of life and its questions continued as always,
something that never left her. She wrote a great deal to her aunt
Susie and there are many interesting observations made during that
period.
Paris 1899.
"I don't believe there is any use trying to understand things until
an issue comes up and I believe that anyone who has heretofore
responded to the flagrant necessities and requirements of life will
be able to solve and meet more readily, more justly and more normally
any problem which may arise. More is there to be learned and more
balance and judgment gained in attending to one's most minute duties
than in hours of mental anticipation of possible events and
questions, conjured up in necessary incompleteness. What beauty
there is here! The intellectual and emotional stimulus would make a
cow tingle, and yet not some people I know."
Paris 1899.
"I am disgusted with the ending of the century with two wars, it is a
disgrace. I think the whole world is very horrible anyhow and I
don't believe in worldly goods and possessions, or countries, or
governments and I don't see why everyone by inhabiting tropical
climes couldn't dispense with clothes and even the lazy could find
food where the vegetation is luxuriant. I think it is artificial to
live in a place where one's own skin is not sufficient protection
against the weather. I think the whole organization of everything is
abominable and I don't believe it is a necessary stage of
development. Most ordinary lives are the quintessence of
artificiality and the grossest waste of time. I am more than ever
against the 'me' in myself. It is the source of all evil."
Paris 1900.
"I have read some illuminating bits and I think I will finish by
finally building myself a scant but solid creed for I have cast all
preconceived notions from me, rooted out all expressions of habit and
influence, and cleared, though perhaps still warped dwelling of my
former tentative suppositions will contain henceforth but the jewels
of certain convictions, or remain empty evermore!"
Paris 1900.
"The stimulating effect of this place is wonderful. I don't know
what it is, but it is just life to everything in one. I have
absolute peace of mind and I have no mental worries or torments.
Nothing seems complicated, nothing seems involved and everything that
I can help is satisfactory. I want to lose myself in my work and I
have every advantage for doing so. Paris is wonderful, I never so
appreciated it before."
"I am so busy, I have my whole week planned ahead for almost every
second. You see I am at the studio every morning including Saturday
and have several lessons a week in the afternoon. New Years I dined
at the La Beaumes. There was just the immediate family and we were
twenty-three at table." (These were part of a French branch of the
relatives of Nelka on her mother's side.)
Paris 1900.
"I can understand people with no sentiment, but I will not tolerate
people who scoff at it."
"I am so glad to have the Russian church here. I go every Sunday."
Paris 1900.
"I don't have a minute to spare. This is what I wanted and the life
though very full is easy and tranquil. The free reality of thought
is delightful and wonderful. I do not include freedom of expression.
I wonder how much I fool myself? It is not an intolerance which
wishes to promote self but which is limited and dead to a variation
of its own species because it lacks the consciousness of its own
incompleteness. A man who does not wish to dominate and emphasize
his will upon his surroundings, including people, is not a whole man.
My Russian is getting on. I will be very glad when I have mastered
the language, then I am going to begin Italian."
As a child Nelka did not speak Russian and only started studying it
when grown up. When she later went to Russia she still was very weak
in the language and only gradually picked it up with practice, but
eventually knew it very well.
Paris 1900.
"How madly busy all the little people are, bussing over the planet,
and for what? How nice it is to go to sleep. I am going to bed.
P.S. I think it is an intellectual crime to wear long skirts in the
streets."
Paris 1900.
"One must be earnest or else laugh at everything and end in despair.
I am so satisfied with my present condition that I think it would be
foolish to upset it all after so short a time. I am just beginning to
feel the peaceful reaction of it all and I dread the idea of getting
roused again before having fully got hold of myself. The total
change I felt necessary proved a salvation and that complete absence
of all reminders of the past year is the only thing wherein I can get
quiet. I do not want to go over what I have felt. Suffice it to say
that I want to stay just as I am until after next winter when I will
feel like going back to America without regret. I do not feel equal
to any more emotions."
Paris 1900.
"I do not understand the 'variety of perfection.' I think it is
impossible and therefore absurd to try to preface for this life, well
up on our own inheritance, as you say. There has been too much
practical research and study and not enough character building, the
result: total lack of balance and maniacs. Anything better that
would admit of more possibility of collectedness of peaceful
contemplation of the possibility of perfecting the least act with the
whole of oneself. The least act is worth it. How does one live now?
Scattered over the universe, over the time. There are no whole
people except a few who keep their entirety within the arbitrary
limitations of prejudice and habitual notions of which they are
possessed. The other: they are fragments, cranks and nonentities.
One more thing, I do not think that a nation can be judged by its
great men. Great men belong to humanity, to the century, to anything
but not to their country. I think intelligence and capacity is never
local, and it is the average and the habit of life that determines
the country."
Paris 1900.
"I do not think that anything is likely to happen to me except
perhaps softening of the brain and that would happen anywhere. I
have seen no one to whom it is likely that I will lose my heart, so I
am quite safe."
Paris 1900.
"I do find everything so funny, and people so funny, not individuals,
but as a whole, by funny I mean queer. The senseless mode of
existence, the superfluous education: these artificial restrictions.
It is especially the artificiality of so many things. Who is going
to do away with it all? I don't understand anything and I know there
is no use trying to build up an understanding on rules."
That summer Nelka went for a month's visit to Denmark to her friends
Count and Countess Moltke.
Glorupvej, Denmark 1900.
"We were still two days on the steamer getting to Bremen and then we
changed trains and boats about fifteen times in 24 hours getting
here. But once here it is beyond all words in delight. The place is
perfectly beautiful. I cannot describe it to you. It is so quiet,
so far away from everything. Beautiful forests that we drive
through, deer all over, swans, fountains and all so old. I lead a
most regular of lives. Everyone is exact to the minute, for meals
and everything. I feel that it is a very great opportunity I am
having to be here in Denmark and see all this new country. It is so
interesting and I enjoy it so much. It was very sweet of Louisette
to ask me."
Glorupvej, Denmark 1900.
"What you write in answer to my saying that I like 'whole soulness':
it is precisely the whole soulness which is not a conscious conquest
that I like. I appreciate the merit of the last but it is not that
which attracts me, which also reminds me that I want to tell you that
I have come to the firm, clear and definite conclusion that a person
that loves is not necessarily loving, nor a person that gives
necessarily generous. A loving person may never love and a generous
person may never give, and the practice of either quality does not
indicate an impulse. One can conceive, accept and appropriate the
idea of generosity, lovingness, etc., etc., and act it, but that is
not the thing. I hate all effort which has for its aim the creation
of self, the conscious creation. I like the self to become through
slavery to the best natural impulses and through sacrifice brought in
one's affections. Seeing that we do depend on each other, it seems
to me admissible that the surrender of self, which continues to be
with me the highest of everything, should allow of a direct object as
its means. I used to have a holy respect of the majority. Now, when
I see how many imbeciles go to make up that majority I am no longer
afraid to throw over any precept that has filtered into my head, and
if ever there was a revolutionist in thought, it is I. Foolish
beliefs and hobbies have become adorned with so much that appeals to
the sense of the beautiful that one clings even to that, but then
that is another element which can envelop rational things as well.
Of course all cannot help but be well, but then I am sure that the
present condition is quite off the track and I have no respect for
anything but pain, joy and sacrifice which are the only realities.
Life makes standards and standards don't make life."
Glorupvej 1900.
"I can tolerate wrong and weakness and everything else but that
search for self and above all that pompous blowing of a horn before
such empty things, such big sounding ambitions, that mock glory, that
swelling in noble pride upon such fictitious hallucinations, that
poor mesquin grandness. It is exasperating. I hate ambition to
achieve. However, I suppose I am very foolish. I am a mass of
vanity and self-seeking in my own way, but it is a great pleasure to
cry down. I get roused sometimes on things that are not my business
and I have felt very much inclined to express my opinion about some
thing, but I suppose I had better not."
"My life I think is molded on circumstance and on the best of my
instinct and judgment which may be faulty but which in every special
instance seems the safest to me. To remind oneself constantly that
one's life is made up of days prevents one from taking most things
'au tragique' and makes existence passable enough."
Paris 1900.
"Life is so short. The only peace is in remembering how short life
is. I work so hard at my painting. My efforts alone deserve some
results, but it is slow in forthcoming. This week however there is
an improvement. I get up before seven every day and go to bed at
nine and drink eight glasses of milk a day. I hope you are pleased.
Some emotion, more extremeness, some craziness, some feeling, really
I think it is necessary. I do not see any satisfaction in anything
but intense feeling. Intense feeling which may come even in the
quietest of lives and which does not depend upon external events. It
is astonishing how easy it is to be tolerant of people's
personalities, however unsympathetic to one, and how very easy also
to be intolerant of their point of view."
"There is nothing so disastrous as to be fooled by the appreciation
where it is not deserved. How I wish I could do any one thing well."
Paris 1900.
"I hope it is a satisfaction to you to know how well pleased I am
here and that I am absolutely content. I think I will indulge myself
and get a jewel with your Xmas present. 'The Perfect One' loves to
deck out in gems! I have been reading an essay on Tolstoi and I am
took with an attack of asceticism, unequaled by any heretofore.
This, following my last sentence, is charmingly typical of my
character, is it not? There is one girl here who really might be
very nice. She is eyed as being somewhat emancipated by the
household I think, but I think it is only Youthful freshness of a
first departure and inexperience in calculating the impression she
makes on the style of her audience."
At the end of the same year Nelka went for four months to Sofia,
Bulgaria where she stayed with the Russian Minister Mr. Bakhmeteff,
my uncle and Madame Bakhmeteff who was an American and Nelka's
godmother.
She enjoyed very much that stay in Bulgaria and had a very
interesting and pleasant time and great success. From Sofia she
wrote a number of letters which reflect both the interest of her stay
there as well as the continued constant searching so typical of her
youth, and perhaps of her whole life.
Sofia 1900.
"How can I tell you how I feel at being here. It is an entirely new
world. So interesting and so beautiful! No one could be lovelier to
me than Madame Bakhmeteff. She comes in to my room every two minutes
and asks me if I have anything under the sun and seems so pleased to
have me here. It is really delightful. I have a sitting room next
to my bedroom all to myself, filled with every book that I have been
longing to get hold of. Everything is so picturesque. I was
delighted with Denmark but how different this is. There is something
I respond to in that orderly, cold atmosphere, but I think there is
more that I respond to in the Orient. How much more simple and less
complicated the life is here. I was almost stopped at the Hungarian
and Servian frontier because I had no passport. By the merest chance
I had a very old one in my bag which was absolutely invalid but
which, added to my absolute refusal to leave the train, got me by the
three frontiers in the end. I called a Turk and a Servian who were
in the same compartment to my rescue and for an hour or more carried
on a heated discussion in every language. I am going to ride every
day much to my delight. The diplomatic corps have to depend almost
entirely on each other and it is very interesting being thrown with
people of so many different nationalities. I have been living so
fully it seems to me for the last three or four years and still
always a crescendo. I don't know why I always write so much about
myself--egotistical youth--but how I realize my youth. Even while
youth itself makes my head whirl, I stand back within myself and say
almost sadly--it is youth. It is sad in a way because I know that
the reaction of great interest upon me is youth, and not the
interest."
Sofia 1900.
"You speak of danger; I don't see where danger is. The worst evil is
prejudice. Without prejudice and without too much drive for worldly
attainments, I don't see much danger. I am satisfied as far as I
myself am concerned. Every moment is exciting and the regret or
irritation I feel against many existing conditions is not wholly
disagreeable. This is youth, and when I am older I will jog along at
a slower rate. I am not like you, or like almost anyone I know, but
I admire and respect those most whom I resemble the least. I am one
mass of contradictions to myself, perhaps, supremely self-centered."
Sofia 1900.
"The freedom I have, good or bad, does not depend on the external
conditions of one's life. I have enough sense of what is practical
to keep in certain lines. No conditions on earth would hamper me
mentally and I want to get life-proof through living."
"How I hate business! More and more I am beginning to think less and
less of what one accomplishes materially in this life. What does it
matter? I think it is less help to be able to help those about one a
little materially and be more or less a nonentity as an individual
than to be able to mean something as a person with a heart and
comprehension. There are some beautiful things in this life that
everything organized tries to make hideous and monstrous and I would
always say 'gather ye roses while ye may.' I think that every one
has almost a right to some happiness and a certain indulgence and the
'droit de temperament,' means something and need not always be
selfish. If you do not think this, then there is only the other
extreme of austere abnegation of self for any cause however trivial.
Nature is the only guide and I don't believe Nature is bad. Of
course the curse of freedom will allow one for a long time to distort
and vilely modify natural instincts, but at least one can fly from
the too palpable artificial. Dear Poodie, don't sigh. I only let
off steam in words--that is safe. I am still a slave to this
disgusting civilization and always your very devoted 'Perfect One',
that is to be, or might have been, Nelka."
Sofia 1900.
"I really ought not to talk because I don't give myself the trouble
to put my thoughts on general things in order and in every comment I
always have the desire to embrace everything. I follow my own
thoughts but love the immediate point and my brain is not in the
proper condition to command its own vagaries."
Sofia 1900.
"What a delightful and full summer I have had. I can only reiterate
that I am satisfied. I have had so much. Given my nature and my
life, more than anyone I know. I may be mistaken in everything but I
never doubt my application when I am about to act. Perhaps I will
some day, but I don't think so. I have learned a certain 'science de
la vie,' meaning this time the artificial, irrational life that is
practiced and that I despise. Apart from this I have my own notion
of real life and that is my own luxury. When I write so it sounds so
big and so out of place for a girl, I always regret saying anything.
If what I think means anything it will be shown in my life and so far
my life is only a selfish, soft existence, so perhaps that is all I
mean. I don't know that I love many things with conviction, but I
know I have a contempt with conviction for many things."
"I have stopped looking at life as written with a big L. Regarding
it only as an indefinite term of years is much less appalling; it
does not lessen the joys and does lessen the sorrows and
disappointments. The method now is to catch every minute and stretch
it for all it is worth."
"You say I am not adaptive. It is difficult to s'entendre on what
that means. Many sides I am, to my detriment. Too many sides for it
seems to me I can fit into almost any opening with equal interest.
And I find very few environments wholly uncongenial. I am not
conscious of exacting in my nature any particular strain or line but
what irritates and antagonizes me in any environment is the
presumption on the part of the creator of that environment that
theirs is the only world-view. I suppose the really strongest thing
in me is an instinctive spirit of contradiction, for I always rise
spontaneously against anything and everything that is proclaimed to
me as being so. This is perhaps rather sweeping but it is more or
less so. People influence me never by what they tell me but by the
general impression they make on me and that I see them make on other
people. I believe what I just wrote is nonsense. I only mean to say
that I am only intolerant of intolerance. I think the ordinary rules
of good behavior demand a certain amount of tolerance and with that
any milieu is possible. I am sure of a few things but these few
things are very firmly fixed in my mind. Nothing surprises me."
Sofia, 1900.
"I know there is a certain fundamental something in me that will make
me apply the same reasoning to everything and I am never worried
about any question. In fact I don't know what it is to have a
question in mind--that which might be one is simply left out. I
cannot say I know myself of course, but I know more of myself than
anyone else does and I am certainly more severe. I do not recognize
a good thing in me. I believe I am level headed and more or less
reasonable, but that is not my merit. Any sanity of judgment I have
comes from Mama. Whatever good there may be is due entirely to her.
I am not afraid of anything. I am ready for anything. The truth is
the only thing worth caring about. Not the great universal truths
that one can search and cherish while living in a mass of lies but
just the truthfulness of one's life and everyday actions. Try to
call things what they are and it is a perfect realm of ever
increasing delight, for everything around us is lies from beginning
to end. But in general everything is lies and the ambitions are all
false and the education is no better than the shoes that are put on
Chinese female feet to stunt and deform them. What a sweet and
perfect simile. How did I happen to fall on it?"
Sofia 1900.
"I am thinking seriously of working just about twice as much as I did
last winter. If one would do anything the least in art one must give
oneself to it 24 hours and live these 24 hours double. There is no
art but good art and what is not best is not art at all. I hate
pretense. It only exists among people who know nothing. I know
nothing in any line but I would rather remain a nullity studying with
serious intentions than profit of or repose upon some meaningless
accidental achievement. Of all traits presumption is the most
insufferable. Oh, how one is anxious to put one's finger in pies one
is completely incapable of understanding."
After her stay in Bulgaria, Nelka return to Paris to finish her
studies before returning to America.
Paris 1901.
"Oh how stimulating this place is and how much study and achievement
there is. What a lecture I heard. It was more helpful to me than
anything I can remember for a long while. And what a book I have
got! A complete resignation without losing energy on one's work at
hand that is what one may strive for. Energy and conviction and élan
are not usually resigned to all obstacles and resignation is often
lassitude. I feel resignation so necessary and at the same time I
have such infinite faith in the power of 'il faut' (one must). The
worst thing I am afraid of is to become tired in the way I mean. I
think it is more hopeless than disgust and disillusion."
Paris 1900.
"Where can I read something holding your point of view which would be
more within my range of understanding than Hegel? I can't understand
free will as independent of our physical being and I don't see how
will can be something different from a kind of complicated reflex. I
am afraid there is no help for it. I will have to inform myself
somehow. Anyway my head always seems clearer over here. I wish I
could be so in America. You would not believe how waked up I can
get. I believe it is in the air. There is something both
stimulating and relaxing in the moral atmosphere that I feel only
here."
After her stay in Paris and Bulgaria, Nelka returned to America and
stayed either with her aunt Miss Blow or with her aunt Mrs.
Wadsworth: in the summer in Cazenovia or Ashantee, in winter in
Washington where her Aunt Martha had a large house which had just
been built and occupied for the first time in 1900. Her aunt kept up
a very active social life and while Nelka stayed through all this
social activity she never liked it. She kept in close contact with
the varied European embassies and especially the Russian embassy,
where she enjoyed the influence of the European atmosphere.
Ashantee, November 1901.
"I do not want to complicate the interpretations of my condition and
I want above all things to cease dwelling so selfishly upon it.
There is no need of looking for unaccountable voids, longings and the
like. I have been unhappy and shattered ever since Mama died. My
own nature gives me much to contend with and I want to get away from
it all. I am unfit for anything but concentration, and I am not made
for the world I live in. If I am not married by the time I am
twenty-seven, I am determined to go into a convent or our Red Cross.
I may change my mind many times but this is my last word for the
present. I have a contempt, when not pity, for the lives of most of
the people I see around me and mine is among the most selfish and
aimless. I do not wish to read or think or study. And as for
'consciously living for a true world view,' I want to run away from
every form of consciousness."
Ashantee 1901.
"You speak in your letter of forming an unconscious totality of
feeling and tendency out of their necessarily limited experiences,
and of not living independently of the deposit of human struggle and
thump. Certainly one should perhaps profit by the last but I cannot
imagine acquiring anything: conviction, principle, or any attitude of
mind except by simple experience. I think we may experience in an
ordinary life all that is necessary to build a sufficient and
adequate world view. And what I read means nothing to me except
where I can compare it with my own experience or consider it in
relation to my own experience. I do not think that I can have a
proper world view until I am old enough to have had time to
experience life and I don't want to go ahead of my experience in
reading."
Ashantee, November 1901.
"Kitty and I have just come in from a long disagreeable day in
Rochester where we are having clothes made. It is extremely painful
to me, but all this kind of thing just pushes me more in the opposite
direction and makes me firmer in my fast maturing resolution. I am
exceedingly blue. In fact, it is only occasionally that I am not so,
and, as in the light of the world I have an unusual amount of things
to make me the contrary, it must mean surely that I am not of the
world and I wish, wish, wish that I were out of it."
Ashantee, December 1901.
"I am going to try and be reasonable and as mildly satisfactory as I
may be and avoid extremes and keep hold of myself, as the only
possible justification of my points of view and ideas, for no one
will agree with them, and one cannot claim any merit in these, when
the result offered is not better than anyone else."
"I will never be influenced by anyone until I see someone who masters
intelligently, calmly and practically situations as they occur. I
have a great deal in myself to fight and the powerful helping
influence has been Mama and the warnings I have had from witnessing
things that went wrong. I think the more one lives and the more one
thinks, the simpler things get. The greatest of all dangers seems to
me to fool oneself. Really this seems to me to be the only hopeless
plight and there comes to a certain fascination in trying to say
things plainly to oneself. Nothing is as strong as plain truth about
a thing, and the moment one shirks it one is lost."
One can see that back in America she was again distressed,
discontented and uncertain. She had lost the tranquility and the
assurance which she had while in Europe. It seems to me that for
some reason or other this feeling of unsatisfaction was always much
greater in America than in Europe and here she was always disturbed.
A heavy test to her feelings of loyalty for Russia came with the
advent of the Russo-Japanese war in 1904. America was in those days
very pro-Japanese and Nelka suffered in her feelings while living in
Washington. Finally, in a feeling of exasperation, she left
Washington in 1904 and returned to Paris. Here she studied at the
French Red Cross to qualify as a nurse. She also resumed her
painting studies. For medical practice she worked at a children's
dispensary.
Denmark 1903.
"The trip is such a complicated one (back to Paris) with such
indefinite changes and waits that I feel sure it would not be right
to go alone despite my mature years, and so there is nothing to do."
(She was 25 years old.)
Paris 1904.
"I have painted a portrait of myself, grinning from ear to ear, which
you probably would not like, but it is the best I think I have done.
It was for the Salon with Julien's great approval but it was refused
with eight thousand other masterpieces. It is a fearful blow to me
but salutary for my soul no doubt and this being my holy week I am
going to try to benefit from the disappointment and chagrin. I must
go and study now. I am doing 5 hours a day of concentrated study."