These unfortunate necessitous ones ranged themselves in my mind under
three heads: First, those who had lost former advantageous positions,
and who were waiting to return to them (such men belonged to the lowest
as well as to the highest classes of society); Secondly, women of the
town, who are very numerous in these houses; and Thirdly, children.
The majority of those I found, and noted down, were men who had lost
former places, and were desirous of returning to them, chiefly of the
better class, and government officials. In almost all the lodgings we
entered with the landlord, we were told, "Here we need not trouble to
fill up the card ourselves: the man here is able to do it, provided he
is not tipsy."
Thus summoned by Iván Fedotitch, there would appear, from some dark
corner, the once rich nobleman or official, mostly drunk, and always
half-dressed. If he were not drunk, he willingly undertook the task: he
kept nodding his head with a sense of importance, knitted his brows,
inserted now and then learned terms in his remarks, and carefully
holding in his dirty, trembling hands the neat pink card, looked round
at his fellow-lodgers with pride and contempt, as if he were now, by the
superiority of his education, triumphing over those who had been
continually humbling him.
He was evidently pleased to have intercourse with the world which used
pink cards, with a world of which he himself had once been a member.
To my questions about his life, this kind of man not only replied
willingly, but with enthusiasm,--beginning to tell a story, fixed in his
mind like a prayer, about all kinds of misfortunes which had happened to
him, and chiefly about his former position, in which, considering his
education, he ought to have remained.
Many such people are scattered about in all the tenements of the
Rzhanoff Houses. One lodging-house was tenanted exclusively by them,
women and men. As we approached them, Iván Fedotitch said, "Now, here's
where the nobility live."
The lodging was full. Almost all the lodgers--about forty persons--were
at home. In the whole house, there were no faces so ruined and
degraded-looking as these,--if old, flabby; if young, pale and haggard.
I talked with several of them. Almost always the same story was told,
differing only in degree of development. One and all had been once rich,
or had still a rich father or brother or uncle; or either his father or
his unfortunate self had held a high office. Then came some misfortune
caused by envious enemies, or his own imprudent kindness, or some
out-of-the-way occurrence; and, having lost everything, he was obliged
to descend to these strange and hateful surroundings, among lice and
rags, in company with drunkards and loose characters, feeding upon bread
and liver, and subsisting by beggary.
All the thoughts, desires, and recollections of these men are turned
toward the past. The present appears to them as something unnatural,
hideous, and unworthy of attention. It does not exist for them. They
have only recollections of the past, and expectations of the future
which may be realized at any moment, and for the attainment of which but
very little is needed; but, unfortunately, this little is out of their
reach; it cannot be got anywhere: and so one has wasted one year,
another five, and a third thirty years.
One needs only to be dressed respectably in order to call on a
well-known person who is kindly disposed toward him; another requires
only to be dressed, have his debts paid, and go to some town or other; a
third wants to take his effects out of pawn, and get a small sum to
carry on a law-suit, which must be decided in his favour, and then all
will be well again. All say that they have need of some external
circumstance in order to regain that position which they think natural
and happy.
If I had not been blinded by my pride in being a benefactor, I should
have needed only to look a little closer into their faces, young and
old, which were generally weak, sensual, but kind, in order to
understand that their misfortunes could not be met by external means;
that they could be happy in no position while their present conception
of life remained the same; that they were by no means peculiar people in
peculiarly unhappy circumstances, but that they were like all other men,
ourselves included.
I remember well how my intercourse with men of this class was
particularly trying to me. I now understand why it was so. In them I saw
my own self as in a mirror. If I had considered carefully my own life
and the lives of people of my own class, I should have seen that between
us and these unfortunate men there existed no essential difference.
Those who live around me in expensive suites of apartments and houses of
their own in the best streets of the city, eating something better than
liver or herring with their bread, are none the less unhappy. They also
are discontented with their lot, regret the past, and desire a happier
future, precisely as did the wretched tenants of the Rzhanoff Houses.
Both wished to be worked less and to be worked for more, the difference
between them being only in degrees of idleness.
Unfortunately, I did not see this at first, nor did I understand that
such people needed to be relieved, not by my charity, but from their own
false views of the world; and that to change a man's estimate of life he
must be given one more accurate than his own, which, unhappily, not
possessing myself, I could not communicate to others.
These men were unhappy not because, to use an illustration, they were
without nourishing food, but because their stomachs were spoiled; and
they required, not nourishment, but a tonic. I did not see that in order
to help them, it was not necessary to give them food but to teach them
how to eat. Though I am anticipating, I must say that of all these
people whose names I put down I did not in reality help one,
notwithstanding that everything some of them had desired was done to
relieve them. Of these I became acquainted with three men in particular.
All three, after many failures and much assistance, are now in the same
position they were in three years ago.