MEMOIRS OF
ALEXANDER HERZEN - Parts I and II
══════
PUBLISHED ON THE FOUNDATION
ESTABLISHED IN MEMORY OF
THEODORE L. GLASGOW
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MEMOIRS
OF
ALEXANDER HERZEN
PARTS I AND II
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY
J. D. DUFF
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
[Illustration]
NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON · HUMPHREY MILFORD · OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
MCMXXIII
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
─────
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE THEODORE L. GLASGOW MEMORIAL
PUBLICATION FUND
The present volume is the seventh work published by the Yale University
Press on the Theodore L. Glasgow Memorial Publication Fund. This
foundation was established September 17, 1918, by an anonymous gift to
Yale University in memory of Flight Sub-Lieutenant Theodore L. Glasgow,
R.N. He was born in Montreal, Canada, and was educated at the University
of Toronto Schools and at the Royal Military College, Kingston. In
August, 1916, he entered the Royal Naval Air Service and in July, 1917,
went to France with the Tenth Squadron attached to the Twenty-second
Wing of the Royal Flying Corps. A month later, August 19, 1917, he was
killed in action on the Ypres front.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PART ONE—NURSERY AND UNIVERSITY
1812-1834
Chapter I. 3
My Nurse and the _Grande Armeé_—Moscow in
Flames—My Father and Napoleon—General
Ilovaiski—A Journey with French
Prisoners—Patriotism—Calot—Property Managed in
Common—The Division—The Senator.
Chapter II. 28
Gossip of Nurses and Conversation of Generals—A
False Position—Boredom—The Servants’ Hall—Two
Germans—Lessons and Reading—Catechism and the
Gospel.
Chapter III. 62
Death of Alexander I—The Fourteenth of
December—Moral Awakening—Bouchot—My Cousin—N.
Ogaryóv.
Chapter IV. 85
My Friend Niko and the Sparrow Hills.
Chapter V. 95
Details of Home Life—Men of the Eighteenth
Century in Russia—A Day at Home—Guests and
Visitors—Sonnenberg—Servants.
Chapter VI. 120
The Kremlin Offices—Moscow University—The
Chemist—The Cholera—Philaret—Passek.
Chapter VII. 173
End of College Life—The “Schiller”
Stage—Youth—The Artistic Life—Saint—Simonianism
and N. Polevói—Polezháev.
PART TWO—PRISON AND EXILE
1834-1838
Chapter I. 201
A Prophecy—Ogaryóv’s Arrest—The Fires—A Moscow
Liberal—Mihail Orlóv—The Churchyard.
Chapter II. 214
Arrest—The Independent Witness—A
Police-Station—Patriarchal Justice.
Chapter III. 222
Under the Belfry—A Travelled Policeman—The
Incendiaries.
Chapter IV. 235
The Krutitski Barracks—A Policeman’s Story—The
Officers.
Chapter V. 246
The Enquiry—Golitsyn Senior—Golitsyn
Junior—General Staal—The Sentence—Sokolovski.
Chapter VI. 265
Exile—A Chief Constable—The Volga—Perm.
Chapter VII. 283
Vyatka—The Office and Dinner-table of His
Excellency—Tufáyev.
Chapter VIII. 307
Officials—Siberian Governors—A Bird of Prey—A
Gentle Judge—An Inspector Roasted—The Tatar—A
Boy of the Female Sex—The Potato Revolt—Russian
Justice.
Chapter IX. 342
Alexander Vitberg.
Chapter X. 360
The Crown Prince at Vyatka—The Fall of
Tufáyev—Transferred to Vladímir—The Inspector’s
Enquiry.
Chapter XI. 374
The Beginning of my Life at Vladímir.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
I
ALEXANDER HERZEN was born in Moscow on March 25,[1] 1812, six months
before Napoleon arrived at the gates of the city with what was left of
his Grand Army. He died in Paris on January 9, 1870. Down to his
thirty-fifth year he lived in Russia, often in places selected for his
residence by the Government; he left Russia, never to return, on January
10, 1847.
Footnote 1:
The dates given here are those of the Russian calendar.
He was the elder son of Iván Yákovlev, a Russian noble, and Luise Haag,
a German girl from Stuttgart. It was a runaway match; and as the
Lutheran marriage ceremony was not supplemented in Russia, the child was
illegitimate. “Herzen” was a name invented for him by his parents.
Surnames, however, are little used in Russian society; and the boy would
generally be called, from his own Christian name and his father’s,
Alexander Ivánovich. His parents lived together in Moscow, and he lived
with them and was brought up much like other sons of rich nobles. It was
quite in Herzen’s power to lead a life of selfish ease and luxury; but
he early chose a different path and followed it to the end. Yet this
consistent champion of the poor and humble was himself a typical
aristocrat-generous, indeed, and stoical in misfortune, but bold to
rashness and proud as Lucifer.
The story of his early life is told fully in these pages—his solitary
boyhood and romantic friendship with his cousin, Nikolai Ogaryóv; his
keen enjoyment of College life, and the beginning of his long warfare
with the police of that other aristocrat, Nicholas, Tsar of all the
Russias, who was just as much in earnest as Herzen but kept a different
object in view.
Charged with socialistic propaganda, Herzen spent nine months of
1834-1835 in a Moscow prison and was then sent, by way of punishment, to
Vyatka. The exiles were often men of exceptional ability, and the
Government made use of their talents. So Herzen was employed for three
years in compiling statistics and organizing an exhibition at Vyatka. He
was then allowed to move to Vladímir, near Moscow, where he edited the
official gazette; and here, on May 9, 1838, he married his cousin,
Natálya Zakhárin, a natural daughter of one of his uncles. Receiving
permission in 1839 to live, under supervision of the police, where he
pleased, he spent some time in Moscow and Petersburg, but he was again
arrested on a charge of disaffection and sent off this time to Novgorod,
where he served in the Government offices for nearly three years. In
1842 he was allowed to retire from his duties and to settle with his
wife and family in Moscow. In 1846 his father’s death made him a rich
man.
For twelve years past, Herzen, when he was not in prison, had lived the
life of a ticket-of-leave man. He was naturally anxious to get away from
Russia; but a passport was indispensable, and the Government would not
give him a passport. At last the difficulties were overcome; and in the
beginning of 1847 Herzen, with his wife and children and widowed mother,
left Russia for ever.
Twenty-three years, almost to a day, remained for him to live. The first
part of that time was spent in France, Italy, and Switzerland; but the
suburbs of London, Putney and Primrose Hill, were his most permanent
place of residence. He was safe there from the Russian police; but he
did not like London. He spoke English very badly;[2] he made few
acquaintances there; and he writes with some asperity of the people and
their habits.
Footnote 2:
Herzen is mentioned in letters of Mrs. Carlyle. She notes (1) that his
English was unintelligible; and (2) that of all the exiles who came to
Cheyne Walk he was the only one who had money.
His own family party was soon broken up by death. In November, 1851, his
mother and his little son, Nikolai (still called Kólya) were drowned in
an accident to the boat which was bringing them from Marseilles to Nice,
where Herzen and his wife were expecting them. The shock proved fatal to
his wife: she died at Nice in the spring of 1852. The three surviving
children were not of an age to be companions to him.
For many years after the _coup d’état_ of Louis Napoleon, Herzen, who
owned a house in Paris, was forbidden to live in France. He settled in
London and was joined there by Ogaryóv, the friend of his childhood.
Together they started a printing press, in order to produce the kind of
literature which Nicholas and his police were trying to stamp out in
Russia. In 1857, after the death of the great Autocrat, they began to
issue a fortnightly paper, called Kólokol (_The Bell_); and this _Bell_,
probably inaudible in London, made an astonishing noise in Russia. Its
circulation and influence there were unexampled: it is said that the new
Tsar, Alexander, was one of its regular readers. Alexander and Herzen
had met long before, at Vyatka. February 19, 1861, when Alexander
published the edict abolishing slavery throughout his dominions, must
have been one of the brightest days in Herzen’s life. There was little
brightness in the nine years that remained. When Poland revolted in
1863, he lost his subscribers and his popularity by his courageous
refusal to echo the prevailing feeling of his countrymen; and he gave
men inferior to himself, such as Ogaryóv and Bakúnin, too much influence
over his journal.
He was on a visit to Paris, when he died rather suddenly of inflammation
of the lungs on January 9, 1870. At Nice there is a statue of Herzen on
the grave where he and his wife are buried.
II
The collected Russian edition of Herzen’s works—no edition was permitted
by the censorship till 1905—extends to seven thick volumes. These are:
one volume of fiction; one of letters addressed to his future wife; two
of memoirs; and three of what may be called political journalism.
About 1842 he began to publish articles on scientific and social
subjects in magazines whose precarious activity was constantly
interrupted or arrested by the censorship. His chief novel, _Who Was To
Blame?_ was written in 1846. From the time when he left Russia he was
constantly writing on European politics and the shifting fortunes of the
cause which he had at heart. When he was publishing his Russian
newspapers in London, first _The Pole-Star_ and then _The Bell_, he
wrote most of the matter himself.
To readers who are not countrymen or contemporaries of Herzen’s, the
_Memoirs_ are certainly the most interesting part of his production.
They paint for us an astonishing picture of Russian life under the grim
rule of Nicholas, the life of the rich man in Moscow, and the life of
the exile near the Ural Mountains; and they are crowded with figures and
incidents which would be incredible if one were not convinced of the
narrator’s veracity. Herzen is a supreme master of that superb
instrument, the Russian language. With a force of intellect entirely out
of Boswell’s reach, he has Boswell’s power of dramatic presentation: his
characters, from the Tsar himself to the humblest old woman, live and
move before you on the printed page. His satire is as keen as Heine’s,
and he is much more in earnest. Nor has any writer more power to wring
the heart by pictures of human suffering and endurance. The _Memoirs_
have, indeed, one fault—that they are too discursive, and that
successive episodes are not always clearly connected or well
proportioned. But this is mainly due to the circumstances in which they
were produced. Different parts were written at considerable intervals
and published separately. The narrative is much more continuous in the
earlier parts: indeed, Part V is merely a collection of fragments. But
Herzen’s _Memoirs_ are among the noblest monuments of Russian
literature.
III
The _Memoirs_, called by Herzen himself _Past and Thoughts_, are divided
into five Parts. This translation, made six years ago from the
Petersburg edition of 1913, contains Parts I and II. These were written
in London in 1852-1853, and printed in London, at 36 Regent’s Square, in
the Russian journal called _The Pole-Star_.
Part I has not, I believe, been translated into English before. A
translation of Part II was published in London during the Crimean
war;[3] but this was evidently taken from a German version by someone
whose knowledge of German was inadequate. The German translation of the
_Memoirs_ by Dr. Buek[4] seems to me very good; but it is defective:
whole chapters of the original are omitted without warning.
Footnote 3:
_My Exile in Siberia_, by Alexander Herzen. (Hurst and Blackett,
London, 1855). Herzen was not responsible for the misleading title,
which caused him some annoyance.
Footnote 4:
_Erinnerungen von Alexander Herzen_, by Dr. Otto Buek (Berlin, 1907).
To make the narrative easier to follow, I have divided it up into
numbered sections, which Herzen himself did not use. I have added a few
footnotes.
June 5, 1923.
J. D. DUFF.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PART I
NURSERY AND UNIVERSITY
(1812-1834)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I
My Nurse and the _Grande Armée_—Moscow in Flames—My Father
and Napoleon—General Ilovaiski—A Journey with French
Prisoners—Patriotism—Calot—Property Managed in Common—The Division—The
Senator.
§1
“OH, please, Nurse, tell me again how the French came to Moscow!” This
was a constant petition of mine, as I stretched myself out in my crib
with the cloth border to prevent my falling out, and nestled down under
the warm quilt.
My old nurse, Vyéra Artamónovna, was just as eager to repeat her
favourite story as I was to hear it; but her regular reply was: “You’ve
heard that old story ever so often before, and besides it’s time for you
to go to sleep; you had better rise earlier to-morrow.”
“Oh, but please tell me just a little—how you heard the news, and how it
all began.”
“Well, it began this way. You know how your papa puts off always. The
packing went on and on till at last it was done. Everyone said it was
high time to be off; there was nothing to keep us and hardly a soul left
in Moscow. But no! He was always discussing with your uncle Paul[5]
about travelling together, and they were never both ready on the same
day. But at last our things were packed, the carriage was ready, and the
travellers had just sat down to lunch, when the head cook came into the
dining-room as white as a sheet and reported that the enemy had entered
the city at the Dragomirovsky Gate. Our hearts went down into our boots,
and we prayed that the power of the Cross might be on our side. All was
confusion, and, while we were bustling to and fro and crying out,
suddenly we saw a regiment of dragoons galloping down the street; they
wore strange helmets with horses’ tails tied on behind. They had closed
all the city gates; so there was your papa in a pretty mess, and you
with him! You were still with your foster-mother, Darya; you were very
small and weak then.”
Footnote 5:
Paul Ivanovitch Golochvastov, who had married my father’s youngest
sister.
And I smiled, with pride and pleasure at the thought that I had taken a
part in the Great War.
“At first, all went reasonably well, during the first days at least.
From time to time two or three soldiers would come into the house and
ask for something to drink; of course we gave them a glass apiece, and
then they would go away and salute quite politely as well. But then, you
see, when the fires began and got worse and worse, there was terrible
disorder, and pillage began and every sort of horror. We were living in
a wing of the Princess’s house, and the house caught fire. Then your
uncle Paul invited us to move to his house, which was built of stone and
very strong and stood far back in a court-yard. So we all set off,
masters and servants together—there was no thought of distinctions at
such a time. When we got into the boulevard, the trees on each side were
beginning to burn. At last we reached your uncle’s house, and it was
actually blazing, with the fire spouting out of every window. Your uncle
could not believe his eyes; he stood rooted to the ground.
“Behind the house, as you know, there is a big garden, and we went
there, hoping to be safe. We sat down sadly enough on some benches there
were there, when suddenly a band of drunken soldiers came in and one of
them began to strip your uncle of a fur coat he had put on for the
journey. But the old gentleman resisted, and the soldier pulled out his
dirk and struck him in the face; and your uncle kept the scar to his
dying day. The other soldiers set upon us, and one of them snatched you
from the arms of your foster-mother, and undid your clothes, to see if
there were any notes or jewels hidden there; when he found nothing, the
mean fellow tore the clothes on purpose and then left you alone.
“As soon as they had gone, a great misfortune happened. You remember our
servant Platon, who was sent to serve in the Army? He was always fond of
the bottle and had had too much to drink that day. He had got hold of a
sword and was walking about with it tied round his waist. The day before
the enemy came, Count Rostopchín distributed arms of all kinds to the
people at the Arsenal, and Platon had provided himself with a sword.
Towards evening, a dragoon rode into the court-yard and tried to take a
horse that was standing near the stable; but Platon flew at him, caught
hold of the bridle, and said: ‘The horse is ours; you shan’t have it.’
The dragoon pointed a pistol at him, but it can’t have been loaded. Your
father saw what was happening and called out: ‘Leave that horse alone,
Platon! Don’t you interfere.’ But it was no good: Platon pulled out his
sword and struck the soldier over the head; the man reeled under the
blow, and Platon struck him again and again. We thought we were doomed
now; for, if his comrades saw him, they would soon kill us. When the
dragoon fell off, Platon caught hold of his legs and threw him into a
lime-pit, though the poor wretch was still breathing; the man’s horse
never moved but beat the ground with its hoof, as if it understood; our
people shut it up in the stable, and it must have been burnt to death
there.
“We all cleared out of the court as soon as we could; the fires
everywhere grew worse and worse. Tired and hungry, we went into a house
that had not caught fire, and threw ourselves down to rest; but, before
an hour had passed, our servants in the street were calling out: ‘Come
out! come out! Fire, fire!’ I took a piece of oil-cloth off the billiard
table, to wrap you up from the night air. We got as far as the Tversky
Square, and the Frenchmen were putting out the fires there, because one
of their great generals was living in the Governor’s house in the
square; we sat down as we were on the street; there were sentries moving
all about and other soldiers on horseback. You were crying terribly;
your foster-mother had no more milk, and none of us had even a piece of
bread. But Natálya Konstantínovna was with us then, and she was afraid
of nothing. She saw some soldiers eating in a corner; she took you in
her arms and went straight off, and showed you to them. ‘The baby wants
_manger_,’ she said. At first they looked angrily at her and said,
‘_Allez, allez!_’ Then she called them every bad name she could think
of; and they did not understand a word, but they laughed heartily and
gave her some bread soaked in water for you and a crust for herself.
Early next morning an officer came and collected all the men, and your
father too, and took them off to put out the fires round about; he left
the women only, and your uncle who had been wounded. We stayed there
alone till evening; we just sat there and cried. But at dark your father
came back, and an officer with him.”
§2
But allow me to take the place of my old nurse and to continue her
story.
When my father had finished his duties as a fireman, he met a squadron
of Italian cavalry near the Monastery of the Passion. He went up to the
officer in command, spoke to him in Italian, and explained the plight of
his family. When the Italian heard his native language—_la sua dolce
favella_—he promised to speak to the Duc de Trévise,[6] and to post a
sentinel at once, in order to prevent a repetition of the wild scenes
which had taken place in my uncle’s garden. He gave orders to this
effect to an officer, and sent him off with my father. When he heard
that none of the party had eaten any food for two days, the officer took
us all off to a grocer’s shop; it had been wrecked and the floor was
covered with choice tea and coffee, and heaps of dates, raisins, and
almonds; our servants filled their pockets, and of dessert at least we
had abundance. The sentinel proved to be of no little service: again and
again, bands of soldiers were inclined to give trouble to the wretched
party of women and servants, camping in a corner of the square; but an
order from our protector made them pass on at once.
Footnote 6:
Mortier (1768-1835), one of Napoleon’s marshals, bore this title.
Mortier, who remembered having met my father in Paris, reported the
facts to Napoleon, and Napoleon ordered him to be presented the next
day. And so my father, a great stickler for propriety and the rules of
etiquette, presented himself, at the Emperor’s summons, in the
throne-room of the Kremlin, wearing an old blue shooting-jacket with
brass buttons, no wig, boots which had not been cleaned for several
days, grimy linen, and a beard of two days’ growth.
Their conversation—how often I heard it repeated!—is reproduced
accurately enough in the French history of Baron Fain and the Russian
history of Danilevski.
Napoleon began with those customary phrases, abrupt remarks, and laconic
aphorisms to which it was the custom for thirty-five years to attribute
some profound significance, until it was discovered that they generally
meant very little. He then abused Rostopchín for the fires, and said it
was mere vandalism; he declared, as always, that he loved peace above
all things and that he was fighting England, not Russia; he claimed
credit for having placed a guard over the Foundling Hospital and the
Uspenski Cathedral; and he complained of the Emperor Alexander. “My
desire for peace is kept from His Majesty by the people round him,” he
said.
My father remarked that it was rather the business of the conqueror to
make proposals of peace.
“I have done my best. I have sent messages to Kutúzov,[7] but he will
hear of no discussions whatever and does not acquaint his master with my
proposals. I am not to blame—if they want war they shall have it!”
Footnote 7:
The Russian commander-in-chief.
When this play-acting was done, my father asked for a safe-conduct to
leave Moscow.
“I have ordered that no passes be given. Why do you want to go? What are
you afraid of? I have ordered the markets to be opened.”
Apparently the Emperor did not realise that, though open markets are a
convenience, so is a shut house, and that to live in the open street
among French soldiers was not an attractive prospect for a Russian
gentleman and his family.
When my father pointed this out, Napoleon thought for a little and then
asked abruptly:
“Will you undertake to hand to the Tsar a letter from me? On that
condition, I will order a pass to be made out for you and all your
family.”
“I would accept Your Majesty’s proposal,” said my father, “but it is
difficult for me to guarantee success.”
“Will you give me your word of honour, that you will use all possible
means to deliver my letter with your own hands?”
“I pledge you my honour, Sir.”
“That is enough. I shall send for you. Is there anything you need?”
“Nothing, except a roof to shelter my family till we leave.”
“The Duc de Trévise will do what he can.” Mortier did in fact provide a
room in the Governor’s palace, and ordered that we should be supplied
with provisions; and his _maître d’hôtel_ sent us wine as well. After
several days Mortier summoned my father at four in the morning, and sent
him off to the Kremlin.
By this time the conflagration had spread to a frightful extent; the
atmosphere, heated red-hot and darkened by smoke, was intolerable.
Napoleon was dressed already and walking about the room, angry and
uneasy; he was beginning to realise that his withered laurels would soon
be frozen, and that a jest would not serve, as it had in Egypt, to get
him out of this embarrassment. His plan of campaign was ill-conceived,
and all except Napoleon knew it—Ney, Narbonne, Berthier, and even
officers of no mark or position; to all criticisms his reply was the
magic word “Moscow”; and, when he reached Moscow, he too discovered the
truth.
When my father entered the room, Napoleon took a sealed letter from a
table, gave it to him, and said by way of dismissal, “I rely upon your
word of honour.” The address on the envelope ran thus: _À mon frère
l’empereur Alexandre_.
The safe-conduct given to my father is preserved to this day; it is
signed by the Duc de Trévise and counter-signed below by Lesseps, chief
of police at Moscow. Some strangers, hearing of our good fortune, begged
my father to take them with him, under the pretext that they were
servants or relations; and they joined our party. An open carriage was
provided for my mother and nurse, and for my wounded uncle; the rest
walked. A party of cavalry escorted us; when the rear of the Russian
Army came in sight, they wished us good fortune and galloped back again
to Moscow. The strange party of refugees was surrounded a moment later
by Cossacks, who took us to head-quarters. The generals in command were
Wintzengerode and Ilovaiski.
When the former was told of the letter, he told my father that he would
send him at once, with two dragoons, to see the Tsar at Petersburg.
“What is to become of your party?” asked the Cossack general, Ilovaiski;
“They can’t possibly stay here, within rifle-shot of the troops; there
may be some hot fighting any day.” My father asked that we might be
sent, if possible, to his Yaroslavl estate; and he added that he was
absolutely penniless at the time.
“That does not matter: we can settle accounts later,” said the General;
“and don’t be uneasy: I give you my promise that they shall be sent.”
While my father was sent off to Petersburg on a courier’s cart,
Ilovaiski procured an old rattle-trap of a carriage for us, and sent us
and a party of French prisoners to the next town, under an escort of
Cossacks; he provided us with money for posting as far as Yaroslavl,
and, in general, did all that he could for us in a time of war and
confusion.
This was my first long journey in Russia; my second was not attended by
either French cavalry or Ural Cossacks or prisoners of war; the whole
party consisted of myself and a drunk police-officer sitting beside me
in the carriage.
§3
My father was taken straight to Arakchéyev’s[8] house and detained
there. When the Minister asked for the letter, my father said that he
had given his word of honour to deliver it in person. The Minister then
promised to consult the Tsar, and informed him next day in writing, that
he himself was commissioned by the Tsar to receive the letter and
present it at once. For the letter he gave a receipt, which also has
been preserved. For about a month my father was under arrest in
Arakchéyev’s house; no friend might see him, and his only visitor was S.
Shishkóv, whom the Tsar sent to ask for details about the burning of
Moscow, the entry of the French, and the interview with Napoleon. No
eye-witness of these events had reached Petersburg except my father. At
last he was told that the Tsar ordered him to be set at liberty; he was
excused, on the ground of necessity, for having accepted a safe-conduct
from the French authorities; but he was ordered to leave Petersburg at
once, without having communication with anyone, except that he was
allowed to say good-bye to his elder brother.
Footnote 8:
This minister was the real ruler of Russia till the death of Alexander
in 1825.
When he reached at nightfall the little village where we were, my father
found us in a peasant’s cottage; there was no manor-house on that
estate. I was sleeping on a settle near the window; the window would not
shut tight, and the snow, drifting through the crack, had covered part
of a stool, and lay, without melting, on the window-sill.
All were in great distress and confusion, and especially my mother. One
morning, some days before my father arrived, the head man of the village
came hurriedly into the cottage where she was living, and made signs to
her that she was to follow him. My mother could not speak a word of
Russian at that time; she could only make out that the man was speaking
of my uncle Paul; she did not know what to think; it came into her head
that the people had murdered him or wished to murder first him and then
her. She took me in her arms and followed the head man, more dead than
alive, and shaking all over. She entered the cottage occupied by my
uncle; he was actually dead, and his body lay near a table at which he
had begun to shave; a stroke of paralysis had killed him instantly.
My mother was only seventeen then, and her feelings may be imagined. She
was surrounded by half-savage bearded men, dressed in sheepskins and
speaking a language to her utterly incomprehensible; she was living in a
small, smoke-grimed peasant’s cottage; and it was the month of November
in the terrible winter of 1812. My uncle had been her one support, and
she spent days and nights in tears for his loss. But those “savages”
pitied her with all their heart; their simple kindness never failed her,
and their head man sent his son again and again to the town, to fetch
raisins and gingerbread, apples and biscuits, to tempt her to eat.
Fifteen years later, this man was still living and sometimes paid us a
visit at Moscow. The little hair he had left was then white as snow. My
mother used to give him tea and talk over that winter of 1812; she
reminded him how frightened she was of him, and how the pair of them,
entirely unintelligible to one another, made the arrangements about my
uncle’s funeral. The old man continued to call my mother Yulíza Ivánovna
(her name was Luise); and he always boasted that I was quite willing to
go to him and not in the least afraid of his long beard.
We travelled by stages to Tver and finally to Moscow, which we reached
after about a year. At the same time, a brother of my father’s returned
from Sweden and settled down in the same house with us. Formerly
ambassador in Westphalia, he had been sent on some mission to the court
of Bernadotte.
§4
I still remember dimly the traces of the great fire, which were visible
even in the early twenties—big houses with the roof gone and
window-frames burnt out, heaps of fallen masonry, empty spaces fenced
off from the street, remnants of stoves and chimneys sticking up out of
them.
Stories of the Great Fire, the battle of Borodino, the crossing of the
Berezina, and the taking of Paris—these took the place of cradle-song
and fairy-tale to me, they were my Iliad and Odyssey. My mother and our
servants, my father and my old nurse, were never tired of going back to
that terrible time, which was still so recent and had been brought home
to them so painfully. Later, our officers began to return from foreign
service to Moscow. Men who had served in former days with my father in
the Guards and had taken a glorious part in the fierce contest of the
immediate past, were often at our house; and to them it was a relief
from their toils and dangers to tell them over again. That was indeed
the most brilliant epoch in the history of Petersburg: the consciousness
of power breathed new life into Russia; business and care were, so to
speak, put off till the sober morrow, and all the world was determined
to make merry to-day and celebrate the victory.
At this time I heard even more than my old nurse could tell me about the
war. I liked especially to listen to the stories of Count
Milorádovitch;[9] I often lay at his back on the long sofa, while he
described and acted scenes of the campaign, and his lively narrative and
loud laugh were very attractive to me. More than once I fell asleep in
that position.
Footnote 9:
Michael Milorádovitch (1770-1825), a famous commander who lost his
life in suppressing the Decembrist revolution, December, 1825.
These surroundings naturally developed my patriotic feeling to an
extreme degree, and I was resolved to enter the Army. But an exclusive
feeling of nationality is never productive of good, and it landed me in
the following scrape. One of our guests was Count Quinsonet, a French
_émigré_ and a general in the Russian army. An out-and-out royalist, he
had been present at the famous dinner where the King’s Body-Guards
trampled on the national cockade and Marie Antoinette drank confusion to
the Revolution.[10] He was now a grey-haired old man, tall and slight, a
perfect gentleman and the pink of politeness. A peerage was awaiting him
at Paris; he had been there already to congratulate Louis XVIII on his
accession, and had returned to Russia to sell his estates. As ill luck
would have it, I was present when this politest of generals in the
Russian service began to speak about the war.
Footnote 10:
This dinner took place at Versailles, on October 1, 1789.
“But you, surely, were fighting against us,” I said very innocently.
“_Non, mon petit, non! J’étais dans l’armée russe._”
“What!” said I, “you a Frenchman and fighting on our side! That’s
impossible.”
My father gave me a reproving look and tried to talk of something else.
But the Frenchman saved the situation nobly: he turned to my father and
said, “I like to see such patriotic feeling.” But my father did not like
to see it, and scolded me severely when our guest had gone. “You see
what comes of rushing into things which you don’t and can’t understand:
the Count served _our_ Emperor out of loyalty to _his own_ sovereign.”
That was, as my father said, beyond my powers of comprehension.
§5
My father had lived twelve years abroad, and his brother still longer;
and they tried to organise their household, to some extent, on a foreign
plan; yet it was to retain all the conveniences of Russian life and not
to cost much. This plan was not realised; perhaps their measures were
unskilful, or perhaps the old traditions of Russian country life were
too strong for habits acquired abroad. They shared their land in common
and managed it jointly, and a swarm of servants inhabited the ground
floor of their house in town; in fact, all the elements of disorder were
present.
I was under the charge of two nurses, one Russian and the other German.
Vyéra Artamónovna and Mme. Provo were two very good-natured women, but I
got weary of watching them all day, as they knitted stockings and
wrangled together. So, whenever I could, I escaped to the part of the
house occupied by the Senator—my uncle, the former ambassador, was now a
Senator[11] and was generally called by this title—and there I found my
only friend, my uncle’s valet, Calot.
Footnote 11:
The Senate was not a deliberative body but a Supreme Court of Justice.
I have seldom met so kind and gentle a creature as this man. Utterly
solitary in Russia, separated from all his own belongings, and hardly
able to speak our language, he had a woman’s tenderness for me. I spent
whole hours in his room, and, though I was often mischievous and
troublesome, he bore it all with a good-natured smile. He cut out all
kinds of marvels for me in cardboard, and carved me many toys of wood;
and how I loved him in return! In the evenings he used to take
picture-books from the library and bring them up to my nursery—_The
Travels_ of Gmelin and Pallas, and another thick book called _The World
in Pictures_, which I liked so much and looked at so long, that the
leather binding got worn out: for two hours together Calot would show me
the same pictures and repeat the same explanations for the thousandth
time.
Before my birthday party, Calot shut himself up in his room, and I could
hear mysterious sounds of a hammer and other tools issuing from it. He
often walked quickly through the passage, carrying a glue-pot or
something wrapped up in paper, but each time he left his room locked. I
knew he was preparing some surprise for me, and my curiosity may be
imagined. I sent the servants’ children to act as spies, but Calot was
not to be caught napping. We even managed to make a small hole in the
staircase, through which we could look down into the room; but we could
see nothing but the top of the window and the portrait of Frederick the
Great, with his long nose and a large star on his breast, looking like a
sick vulture. At last the noises stopped, and the room was unlocked—but
it looked just as before, except for snippings of gilt and coloured
paper on the floor. I was devoured by curiosity; but Calot wore a
pretence of solemnity on his features and never touched the ticklish
subject.
I was still suffering agonies of impatience when the great day arrived.
I awoke at six, to wonder what Calot had in store for me; at eight Calot
himself appeared, wearing a white tie and white waistcoat under his blue
livery, but his hands were empty! I wondered how it would all end, and
whether he had spoilt what he was making. The day went on, and the usual
presents were forthcoming: my aunt’s footman had brought me an expensive
toy wrapped up in a napkin, and my uncle, the Senator, had been generous
also, but I was too restless, in expectation of the surprise, to enjoy
my happiness.
Then, when I was not thinking of it, after dinner or perhaps after tea,
my nurse said to me: “Go downstairs for a moment, there is someone there
asking for you.” “At last!” I thought, and down the bannisters I slid on
my arms. The drawing-room door flew open; I heard music and saw a
transparency representing my initials; then some little boys, disguised
as Turks, offered me sweets; and this was followed by a puppet-show and
parlour fireworks. Calot was very hot and very busy; he kept everything
going and was quite as excited as I was myself.
No presents could rank with this entertainment. I never cared much for
_things_; the bump of acquisitiveness was never, at any age, highly
developed in me. The satisfaction of my curiosity, the abundance of
candles, the silver paper, the smell of gunpowder—nothing was wanting
but a companion of my own age. But I spent all my childhood in solitude
and consequently was not exacting on that score.
§6
My father had another brother, the oldest of the three; but he was not
even on speaking terms with his two juniors. In spite of this, they all
took a share in the management of the family property, which really
meant that they combined to ruin it. This triple management by owners at
variance with one another was the height of absurdity. Two of them were
always thwarting their senior’s plans, and he did the same for them. The
head men of the villages and the serfs were utterly bamboozled: one
landlord required carts to convey his household, the second demanded
hay, and the third, fire-wood; each of the three issued orders, and sent
his man of business to see that they were carried out. If the eldest
brother appointed a bailiff, the other two dismissed the man in a month
on some absurd pretext, and appointed another, who was promptly disowned
by their senior. As a natural result, there were spies and favourites,
to carry slanders and false reports, while, at the bottom of this
system, the wretched serfs, finding neither justice nor protection and
harassed by a diversity of masters, were worked twice as hard and found
it impossible to satisfy such unreasonable demands.
As a consequence of this quarrel between brothers, they lost a great
lawsuit in which the law was on their side. Though their interests were
identical, they could never settle on a common course of procedure, and
their opponents naturally took advantage of this state of affairs. They
lost a large and valuable property in this way; and the Court also
condemned each brother to pay damages to the amount of 30,000 _roubles_.
This lesson opened their eyes for the first time, and they determined to
divide the family estates between them. Preliminary discussions went on
for nearly a year; the land was divided into three fairly even parts,
and chance was to decide to whom each should fall. My father and the
Senator paid a visit to their brother, whom they had not seen for
several years, in order to talk things over and be reconciled; and then
it was noised abroad that he would return the visit and the business
would be finally settled on that occasion. The report of this visit
spread uneasiness and dismay throughout our household.
§7
My uncle was one of those monsters of eccentricity which only Russia and
the conditions of Russian society can produce. A man of good natural
parts, he spent his whole life in committing follies which often rose to
the dignity of crimes. Though he was well educated after the French
fashion and had read much, his time was spent in profligacy or mere
idleness, and this went on till his death. In youth he served, like his
brothers, in the Guards and was _aide-de-camp_ in some capacity to
Potemkin;[12] next, he served on a diplomatic mission, and, on his
return to Petersburg, was appointed to a post in the Ecclesiastical
Court. But no association either with diplomatists or priests could tame
that wild character. He was dismissed from his post, for quarrelling
with the Bishops; and he was forbidden to reside in Petersburg, because
he gave, or tried to give, a box on the ear to a guest at an official
dinner given by the Governor of the city. He retired to his estate at
Tambóv; and there he was nearly murdered by his serfs for interference
with their daughters and for acts of cruelty; he owed his life to his
coachman and the speed of his horses.
Footnote 12:
Grigóri Potemkin (pronounce Pat-yóm-kin), b. 1736, d. 1791; minister
and favourite of the Empress Catherine.
After this experience he settled in Moscow. Disowned by his relations
and by people in general, he lived quite alone in a large house on the
Tver Boulevard, bullying his servants in town and ruining his serfs in
the country. He collected a large library and a whole harem of country
girls, and kept both these departments under lock and key. Totally
unoccupied and inordinately vain, he sought distraction in collecting
things for which he had no use, and in litigation, which proved even
more expensive. He carried on his lawsuits with passionate eagerness.
One of these suits was about an Amati fiddle; it lasted thirty years,
and he won it in the end. He won another case for the possession of a
party-wall between two houses: it cost him extraordinary exertions, and
he gained nothing by owning the wall. After his retirement, he used to
follow in the Gazette the promotions of his contemporaries in the public
service; and, whenever one of them received an Order, he bought the star
and placed it on his table, as a painful reminder of the distinctions he
might have gained.
His brothers and sisters feared him and had no intercourse with him of
any kind; our servants would not walk past his house, for fear of
meeting him, and turned pale at the sight of him; the women dreaded his
insolent persecution, and the domestic servants had prayer offered in
church that they might never serve him.
§8
Such was the alarming character of our expected visitor. From early
morning all the inmates of our house were keenly excited. I had never
seen the black sheep myself, though I was born in his house, which was
occupied by my father on his return from foreign parts; I was very
anxious to see him, and I was also afraid, though I don’t know what I
was afraid of.
Other visitors came before him—my father’s oldest nephew, two intimate
friends, and a lawyer, a stout good-natured man who perspired freely.
For two hours they all sat in silent expectation, till at last the
butler came in, and, with a voice that seemed somehow unnatural,
announced the arrival of our kinsman. “Bring him in,” said the Senator,
in obvious agitation; my father began to take snuff, the nephew
straightened his tie, and the lawyer turned to one side and cleared his
throat. I was told to go upstairs, but I remained in the next room,
shaking all over.
The uncle advanced at a slow and dignified pace, and my father and the
Senator went to meet him. He was carrying an _ikon_[13] with both arms
stretched out before him, in the way that _ikons_ are carried at
weddings and funerals; he turned towards his brothers and in a nasal
drawl addressed them as follows:
Footnote 13:
A sacred picture.
“This is the _ikon_ with which our father blessed me on his deathbed,
and he then charged me and my late brother, Peter, to take his place and
care for you two. If our father could know how you have behaved to your
elder brother....”
“Come, _mon cher frère_,” said my father, in his voice of studied
indifference, “you have little to boast about on that score yourself.
These references to the past are painful for you and for us, and we had
better drop them.”
“What do you mean? Did you invite me here for this?” shouted the pious
brother, and he dashed the _ikon_ down with such violence that the
silver frame rang loudly on the floor. Now the Senator began, and he
shouted still louder; but at this point I rushed upstairs, just waiting
long enough to see the nephew and the lawyer, as much alarmed as I was,
beating a retreat to the balcony.
What then took place, I cannot tell. The servants had all hid for safety
and could give no information; and neither my father nor the Senator
ever alluded to the scene in my presence. The noise grew less by
degrees, and the division of the land was carried out, but whether then
or later, I do not know.
What fell to my father was Vasílevskoë, a large estate near Moscow. We
spent all the following summer there; and during that time the Senator
bought a house for himself in the Arbat quarter of Moscow, so that, when
we returned alone to our big house, we found it empty and dead. Soon
after, my father also bought a new house in Moscow.
When the Senator left us, he took with him, in the first place, my
friend Calot, and, in the second place, all that gave life in our
establishment. He alone could check my father’s tendency to morbid
depression, which now had room to develop and assert itself fully. Our
new house was not cheerful: it reminded one of a prison or hospital. The
ground-floor rooms were vaulted; the thick walls made the windows look
like the embrasures of a fortress; and the house was surrounded on all
sides by a uselessly large court-yard.
The real wonder was, not that the Senator left us, but that he was able
to stay so long under one roof with my father. I have seldom seen two
men more unlike in character.
§9
My uncle was a kind-hearted man, who loved movement and excitement. His
whole life was spent in an artificial world, a world of diplomats and
lords-in-waiting, and he never guessed that there is a different world
which comes nearer to the reality of things. And yet he was not merely a
spectator of all that happened between 1789 and 1815, but was personally
involved in that mighty drama. Count Vorontsov sent him to England, to
learn from Lord Grenville what “General Buonaparte” was up to, after he
left the army of Egypt. He was in Paris at the time of Napoleon’s
coronation. In 1811 Napoleon ordered him to be detained and arrested at
Cassel, where he was minister at the court of King Jérôme[14]—“Emperor
Jérôme,” as my father used to say when he was annoyed. In fact, he
witnessed each scene of that tremendous spectacle; but, somehow, it
seemed not to impress him in the right way.
Footnote 14:
Jérôme Bonaparte (1784-1860) was King of Westphalia from 1807 to 1813.
When captain in the Guards, he was sent on a mission to London. Paul,
who was then Tsar, noticed this when he read the roster, and ordered
that he should report himself at once in Petersburg. The attaché sailed
by the first ship and appeared on parade.
“Do you want to stay in London?” Paul asked in his hoarse voice.
“If Your Majesty is graciously pleased to allow it,” answered the
captain.
“Go back at once!” the hoarse voice replied; and the young officer
sailed, without even seeing his family in Moscow.
While he served as ambassador, diplomatic questions were settled by
bayonets and cannon-balls; and his diplomatic career came to an end at
the Congress of Vienna, that great field-day for all the diplomats of
Europe. On his return to Russia, he was created a lord-in-waiting at
Moscow—a capital which has no Court. Then he was elected to the Senate,
though he knew nothing of law or Russian judicial procedure; he served
on the Widows’ and Orphans’ Board, and was a governor of hospitals and
other public institutions. All these duties he performed with a zeal
that was probably superfluous, a love of his own way that was certainly
harmful, and an integrity that passed wholly unnoticed.
He was never to be found at home. He tired out a team of four strong
horses every morning, and another in the afternoon. He never missed a
meeting of the Senate; twice a week he attended the Widows’ Board; and
there were also his hospitals and schools. Besides all this, he was
never absent from the theatre when a French play was given, and he was
driven to the English Club on three days of every week. He had no time
to be bored—always busy with one of his many occupations, perpetually on
the way to some engagement, and his life rolled along on easy springs in
a world of files and official envelopes.
To the age of seventy, he kept the health of youth. He was always to be
seen at every great ball or dinner; he figured at speech-days and
meetings of public bodies; whatever their objects might be—agriculture
or medicine, fire insurance or natural science—it was all one to him;
and, besides all this (perhaps because of this), he kept to old age some
measure of humanity and warmth of heart.
§10
It is impossible to conceive a greater contrast to all this than my
father. My uncle was perpetually active and perpetually cheerful, an
occasional visitor at his own house. But my father hardly ever went
out-of-doors, hated all the world of official business, and was always
hard to please and out of humour. We had our eight horses too, but our
stable was a kind of hospital for cripples; my father kept them partly
for the sake of appearance, and partly that the two coachmen and two
postilions might have some other occupation, as well as going to fetch
newspapers and arranging cock-fights, which last amusement they carried
on with much success in the space between the coach-house and the
neighbours’ yard.
My father did not remain long in the public service. Brought up by a
French tutor in the house of a pious aunt, he entered the Guards as a
serjeant at sixteen and retired as a captain when Paul became Tsar. In
1801 he went abroad and wandered about from one foreign country to
another till the end of 1811. He returned to Russia with my mother three
months before I was born; the year after the burning of Moscow he spent
in the Government of Tver, and then settled down permanently in Moscow,
where he led by choice a solitary and monotonous life. His brother’s
lively temperament was distasteful to him.
After the Senator had left it, the whole house assumed a more and more
gloomy aspect. The walls, the furniture, the servants—every thing and
person had a furtive and dissatisfied appearance; and of course my
father himself was more dissatisfied than anyone else. The artificial
stillness, the hushed voices and noiseless steps of the servants, were
no sign of devotion, but of repression and fear. Nothing was ever moved
in the rooms: the same books lay on the same tables, with the same
markers in them, for five or six years together. In my father’s bedroom
and study the furniture was never shifted and the windows never opened,
not once in a twelvemonth. When he went to the country, he regularly
took the key of his rooms in his pocket, lest the servants should take
it into their heads to scour the floors or to clean the walls in his
absence.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II
Gossip of Nurses and Conversation of Generals—A False
Position—Boredom—The Servants’ Hall—Two Germans—Lessons and
Reading—Catechism and the Gospel.
§1
UNTIL I was ten, I noticed nothing strange or peculiar in my
position.[15] To me it seemed simple and natural that I was living in my
father’s house, where I had to be quiet in the rooms inhabited by him,
though in my mother’s part of the house I could shout and make a noise
to my heart’s content. The Senator gave me toys and spoilt me; Calot was
my faithful slave; Vyéra Artamónovna bathed me, dressed me, and put me
to bed; and Mme. Provo took me out for walks and spoke German to me. All
went on with perfect regularity; and yet I began to feel puzzled.
Footnote 15:
Herzen’s parents were never married with the Russian rites, and he
bore throughout life a name which was not his father’s.
My attention was caught by some casual remarks incautiously dropped. Old
Mme. Provo and the household in general were devoted to my mother, but
feared and disliked my father. The disputes which sometimes took place
between my parents were often the subject of discussion between my
nurses, and they always took my mother’s side.
It was true that my mother’s life was no bed of roses. An exceedingly
kind-hearted woman, but not strong-willed, she was utterly crushed by my
father; and, as often happens with weak characters, she was apt to carry
on a desperate opposition in matters of no importance. Unfortunately, in
these trifles my father was almost always in the right, and so he
triumphed in the end.
Mme. Provo would start a conversation in this style: “In her place, I
declare I would be off at once and go back to Germany. The dulness of
the life is fit to kill one; no enjoyment and nothing but grumbling and
unpleasantness.”
“You’re quite right,” said Vyéra Artamónovna; “but she’s tied hand and
foot by someone”—and she would point her knitting-needles at me. “She
can’t take him with her, and to leave him here alone in a house like
ours would be too much even for one not his mother.”
Children in general find out more than people think. They are easily put
off, and forget for a time, but they persist in returning to the
subject, especially if it is mysterious or alarming; and by their
questions they get at the truth with surprising perseverance and
ingenuity.
Once my curiosity was aroused, I soon learned all the details of my
parents’ marriage—how my mother made up her mind to elope, how she was
concealed in the Russian embassy at Cassel by my uncle’s connivance, and
then crossed the frontier disguised as a boy; and all this I found out
without asking a single question.
The first result of these discoveries was to lessen my attachment to my
father, owing to the disputes of which I have spoken already. I had
witnessed them before, but had taken them as a matter of course. The
whole household, not excluding the Senator, were afraid of my father,
and he spared no one his reproofs; and I was so accustomed to this, that
I saw nothing strange in these quarrels with my mother. But now I began
to take a different view of the matter, and the thought that I was to
some extent responsible threw a dark shadow sometimes over my childhood.
A second thought which took root in my mind at that time was this—that I
was much less dependent on my father than most children are on their
parents; and this independence, though it existed only in my own
imagination, gave me pleasure.
§2
Two or three years after this, two old brother-officers of my father’s
were at our house one evening—General Essen, the Governor of Orenburg,
and General Bakhmétyev, who lost a leg at Borodino and was later
Lieutenant-Governor of Bessarabia. My room was next the drawing-room
where they were sitting. My father happened to mention that he had been
speaking to Prince Yusúpov with regard to my future; he wished me to
enter the Civil Service. “There’s no time to lose,” he added; “as you
know, he must serve a long time before he gets any decent post.”
“It is a strange notion of yours,” said Essen good-humouredly, “to turn
the boy into a clerk. Leave it to me; let me enroll him in the Ural
Cossacks; he will soon get his commission, which is the main thing, and
then he can forge ahead like the rest of us.”
But my father would not agree: he said that everything military was
distasteful to him, that he hoped in time to get me a diplomatic post in
some warm climate, where he would go himself to end his days.
Bakhmétyev had taken little part in the conversation; but now he got up
on his crutches and said:
“In my opinion, you ought to think twice before you reject Essen’s
advice. If you don’t fancy Orenburg, the boy can enlist here just as
well. You and I are old friends, and I always speak my mind to you. You
will do no good to the young man himself and no service to the country
by sending him to the University and on to the Civil Service. He is
clearly in a false position, and nothing but the Army can put that right
and open up a career for him from the first. Any dangerous notions will
settle down before he gets the command of a regiment. Discipline works
wonders, and his future will depend on himself. You say that he’s
clever; but you don’t suppose that all officers in the Army are fools?
Think of yourself and me and our lot generally. There is only one
possible objection—that he may have to serve some time before he gets
his commission; but that’s the very point in which we can help you.”
This conversation was as valuable to me as the casual remarks of my
nurses. I was now thirteen; and these lessons, which I turned over and
over and pondered in my heart for weeks and months in complete solitude,
bore their fruit. I had formerly dreamt, as boys always do, of military
service and fine uniforms, and had nearly wept because my father wished
to make a civilian of me; but this conversation at once cooled my
enthusiasm, and by degrees—for it took time—I rooted out of my mind
every atom of my passion for stripes and epaulettes and aiguillettes.
There was, it is true, one relapse, when a cousin, who was at school in
Moscow and sometimes came to our house on holidays, got a commission in
a cavalry regiment. After joining his regiment, he paid a visit to
Moscow and stayed some days with us. My heart beat fast, when I saw him
in all his finery, carrying his sabre and wearing the shako held at a
becoming angle by the chin-strap. He was sixteen but not tall for his
age; and next morning I put on his uniform, sabre, shako, and all, and
looked at myself in the glass. How magnificent I seemed to myself, in
the blue jacket with scarlet facings! What a contrast between this
gorgeous finery and the plain cloth jacket and duck trousers which I
wore at home!
My cousin’s visit weakened for a time the effect of what the generals
had said; but, before long, circumstances gave me a fresh and final
distaste for a soldier’s uniform.
By pondering over my “false position,” I was brought to much the same
conclusions as by the talk of the two nurses. I felt less dependence on
society (of which, however, I knew nothing), and I believed that I must
rely mainly on my own efforts. I said to myself with childish arrogance
that General Bakhmétyev and his brother-officers should hear of me some
day.
In view of all this, it may be imagined what a weary and monotonous
existence I led in the strange monastic seclusion of my home. There was
no encouragement for me, and no variety; my father, who showed no
fondness for me after I was ten, was almost always displeased with me; I
had no companions. My teachers came and went; I saw them to the door,
and then stole off to play with the servants’ children, which was
strictly forbidden. At other times I wandered about the large gloomy
rooms, where the windows were shut all day and the lights burnt dim in
the evening; I either did nothing or read any books I could lay hands
on.
My only other occupation I found in the servants’ hall and the maids’
room; they gave me real live pleasure. There I found perfect freedom; I
took a side in disputes; together with my friends downstairs, I
discussed their doings and gave my advice; and though I knew all their
secrets, I never once betrayed them by a slip of the tongue in the
drawing-room.
§3
This is a subject on which I must dwell for a little. I should say that
I do not in general mean to avoid digressions and disquisitions; every
conversation is full of them, and so is life itself.
As a rule, children are attached to servants. Parents, especially
Russian parents, forbid this intimacy, but the children do not obey
orders, because they are bored in the drawing-room and happy in the
pantry. In this case, as in a thousand others, parents don’t know what
they are doing. I find it impossible to imagine that our servants’ hall
was a worse place for children than our morning-room or smoking-room. It
is true that children pick up coarse expressions and bad manners in the
company of servants; but in the drawing-room they learn coarse ideas and
bad feelings.
The mere order to keep at a distance from people with whom the children
are in constant relations, is in itself revolting.
Much is said in Russia about the profound immorality of servants,
especially of serfs. It is true that they are not distinguished by
exemplary strictness of conduct. Their low stage of moral development is
proved by the mere fact that they put up with so much and protest so
seldom. But that is not the question. I should like to know what class
in Russia is less depraved than the servant class. Certainly not the
nobles, nor the officials. The clergy, perhaps?
What makes the reader laugh?
Possibly the peasants, but no others, might have some claim to
superiority.
The difference between the class of nobles and the class of servants is
not great. I hate, especially since the calamities of the year 1848,
democrats who flatter the mob, but I hate still more aristocrats who
slander the people. By representing those who serve them as profligate
animals, slave-owners throw dust in the eyes of others and stifle the
protests of their own consciences. In few cases are we better than the
common people, but we express our feelings with more consideration, and
we are cleverer at concealing selfish and evil passions; our desires are
not so coarse or so obvious, owing to the easiness of satisfying them
and the habitual absence of self-restraint; we are merely richer, better
fed, and therefore more difficult to please. When Count Almaviva named
to the barber of Seville all the qualifications he required in a
servant, Figaro said with a sigh, “If a servant must possess all these
merits, it will be hard to find masters who are fit for a servant’s
place.”
In Russia in general, moral corruption is not deep. It might truly
enough be called savage, dirty, noisy, coarse, disorderly, shameless;
but it is mainly on the surface. The clergy, in the concealment of their
houses, eat and drink to excess with the merchant class. The nobles get
drunk in the light of day, gamble recklessly, strike their men-servants
and run after the maids, mismanage their affairs, and fail even worse as
husbands and fathers. The official class are as bad in a dirtier way;
they curry favour, besides, with their superiors and they are all petty
thieves. The nobles do really steal less: they take openly what does not
belong to them, though without prejudice to other methods, when
circumstances are favourable.
All these amiable weaknesses occur in a coarser form among servants—that
class of “officials” who are beneath the fourteenth grade—those
“courtiers” who belong, not to the Tsar, but to the landowners.[16] But
how they, as a class, are worse than others, I have no idea.
Footnote 16:
In Russia civil-service officials (_chinóvniki_) are divided into
fourteen classes. Nobles are called _dvoryáne_, and servants attached
to a landowner’s house _dvoróvië_; Herzen plays on the likeness of the
two names.
When I run over my recollections on the subject—and for twenty-five
years I was well acquainted, not only with our own servants, but with
those of my uncle and several neighbours—I remember nothing specially
vicious in their conduct. Petty thefts there were, no doubt; but it is
hard to pass sentence in this case, because ordinary ideas are perverted
by an unnatural status: the human chattel is on easy terms with the
chattels that are inanimate, and shows no particular respect for his
master’s property. One ought, in justice, to exclude exceptional
cases—casual favourites, either men or women, who bask in their master’s
smiles and carry tales against the rest; and besides, _their_ behaviour
is exemplary, for they never get drunk in the daytime and never pawn
their clothes at the public-house.
The misconduct of most servants is of a simple kind and turns on
trifles—a glass of spirits or a bottle of beer, a chat over a pipe,
absence from the house without leave, quarrels which sometimes proceed
as far as blows, or deception of their master when he requires of them
more than man can perform. They are as ignorant as the peasants but more
sophisticated; and this, together with their servile condition, accounts
for much that is perverted and distorted in their character; but, in
spite of all this, they remain grown-up children, like the American
negroes. Trifles make them laugh or weep; their desires are limited and
deserve to be called simple and natural rather than vicious.
Spirits and tea, the public-house and the tea-shop—these are the
invariable vices of a servant in Russia. For them he steals; because of
them he is poor; for their sake he endures persecution and punishment
and leaves his wife and children to beggary. Nothing is easier than to
sit, like Father Matthew,[17] in the seat of judgement and condemn
drunkenness, while you are yourself intoxicated with sobriety; nothing
simpler than to sit at your own tea-table and marvel at servants,
because they _will_ go to the tea-shop instead of drinking their tea at
home, where it would cost them less.
Footnote 17:
An Irish priest who preached temperance in the middle of the
nineteenth century.
Strong drink stupefies a man and makes it possible for him to forget; it
gives him an artificial cheerfulness, an artificial excitement; and the
pleasure of this state is increased by the low level of civilisation and
the narrow empty life to which these men are confined. A servant is a
slave who may be sold, a slave condemned to perpetual service in the
pantry and perpetual poverty: how can such a man do otherwise than
drink? He drinks too much when he gets the chance, because he cannot
drink every day; this was pointed out by Senkovsky in one of his books
fifteen years ago. In Italy and the south of France, there are no
drunkards, because there is abundance of wine. And the explanation of
the savage drunkenness among English workmen is just the same. These men
are broken in a hopeless and ill-matched struggle against hunger and
beggary; after all their efforts, they have found everywhere a leaden
vault above their heads, and a sullen opposition which has cast them
down into the nether darkness of society and condemned them to a life of
endless toil—toil without an object and equally destructive of mind and
body. What wonder that such a man, after working six days as a lever or
wheel or spring or screw, breaks out on Saturday night, like a savage,
from the factory which is his prison, and drinks till he is dead drunk?
His exhaustion shortens the process, and it is complete in half an hour.
Moralists would do better to order “Scotch” or “Irish” for themselves,
and hold their tongues; or else their inhuman philanthropy may evoke
formidable replies.
To a servant, tea drunk in a tea-shop is quite a different thing. Tea at
home is not really tea: everything there reminds him that he is a
servant—the pantry is dirty, he has to put the _samovár_[18] on the
table himself, his cup has lost its handle, his master’s bell may ring
at any moment. In the tea-shop he is a free man, a master; the table is
laid and the lamps lit for _him_; for _him_ the waiter hurries in with
the tray, the cups shine, and the teapot glitters; he gives orders, and
other people obey him; he feels happy and calls boldly for some cheap
caviare or pastry to eat with his tea.
Footnote 18:
An urn with a central receptacle to hold hot charcoal: tea in Russia
is regularly accompanied by a samovár.
In all this there is more of childlike simplicity than of misconduct.
Impressions take hold of them quickly but throw out no roots; their
minds are continually occupied—if one can call it occupation—with casual
objects, trifling desires, and petty aims. A childish belief in the
marvellous turns a grown man into a coward, and the same belief consoles
him in his darkest hours. I witnessed the death of several of my
father’s servants, and I was astonished. One could see then that their
whole life had been spent, like a child’s, without fears for the future,
and that no great sins lay heavy on their souls; even if there had been
anything of the kind, a few minutes with the priest were enough to put
all to rights.
It is on this resemblance between children and servants that their
mutual attachment is based. Children resent the indulgent superiority of
grown-up people; they are clever enough to understand that servants
treat them with more respect and take them seriously. For this reason,
they enjoy a game of bézique with the maids much more than with
visitors. Visitors play out of indulgence and to amuse the child: they
let him win, or tease him, and stop when they feel inclined; but the
maid plays just as much for her own amusement; and thus the game gains
in interest.
Servants have a very strong attachment to children; and this is not
servility at all—it is a mutual alliance, with weakness and simplicity
on both sides.
§4
In former days there existed—it still exists in Turkey—a feudal bond of
affection between the Russian landowner and his household servants. But
the race of such servants, devoted to the family as a family, is now
extinct with us. The reason of this is obvious. The landowner has ceased
to believe in his own authority; he does not believe that he will
answer, at the dreadful Day of Judgement, for his treatment of his
people; and he abuses his power for his own advantage. The servant does
not believe in his inferiority; he endures oppression, not as a
punishment or trial inflicted by God, but merely because he is
defenceless.
But I knew, in my young days, two or three specimens of that boundless
loyalty which old gentlemen of seventy sometimes recall with a sigh:
they speak of the wonderful zeal and devotion of their servants, but
they never mention the return which they and their fathers made to that
faithfulness.
There was Andréi Stepánov, whom I knew as a decrepit old man, spending
his last days, on very short commons, on an estate belonging to my
uncle, the Senator.
When my father and uncle were young men in the Army, he was their valet,
a kind, honest, sober man, who guessed what his young masters wanted—and
they wanted a good deal—by a mere look at their faces; I know this from
themselves. Later he was in charge of an estate near Moscow. The war of
1812 cut him off at once from all communications; the village was burnt
down, and he lived on there alone and without money, and finally sold
some wood, to save himself from starvation. When my uncle returned to
Russia, he went into the estate accounts and discovered the sale of
wood. Punishment followed: the man was disgraced and removed from his
office, though he was old and burdened with a family. We often passed
through the village where he lived and spent a day or two there; and the
old man, now paralysed and walking on crutches, never failed to visit
us, in order to make his bow to my father and talk to him.
I was deeply touched by the simple devotion of his language and by his
miserable appearance; I remember the tufts of hair, between yellow and
white, which covered both sides of his bare scalp.
“They tell me, Sir,” he said once to my father, “that your brother has
received another Order. I am getting old, _bátyushka_, and shall soon
give back my soul to God; but I wish God would suffer me to see your
brother wearing his Order; just once before I die, I would like to see
him with his ribbon and all his glory.”
My eyes were on the old man, and everything about him showed that he was
speaking the truth—his expression as frank as a child’s, his bent
figure, his crooked face, dim eyes, and feeble voice. There was no
falsehood or flattery there: he did really wish to see, once more before
he died, the man who, for fourteen years, had never forgiven him for
that wood! Should I call him a saint or a madman? Are there any who
attain to sanctity, except madmen?
But this form of idolatry is unknown to the rising generation; and, if
there are cases of serfs who refuse emancipation, it is due either to
mere indolence or selfish considerations. This is a worse condition of
things, I admit, but it brings us nearer the end. The serfs of to-day
may wish to see something round their master’s neck; but you may feel
sure that it is not the ribbon of any Order of Chivalry!
§5
This seems an opportunity to give some general account of the treatment
shown to servants in our household.
Neither my father nor my uncle was specially tyrannical, at least in the
way of corporal punishment. My uncle, being hot-tempered and impatient,
was often rough and unjust to servants; but he thought so little about
them and came in contact with them so seldom, that each side knew little
of the other. My father wore them out by his fads: he could never pass
over a look or a word or a movement without improving the occasion; and
a Russian often resents this treatment more than blows or bad language.
Corporal punishment was almost unknown with us; and the two or three
cases in which it was resorted to were so exceptional, that they formed
the subject of conversation for whole months downstairs; it should also
be said that the offences which provoked it were serious.
A commoner form of punishment was compulsory enlistment in the Army,
which was intensely dreaded by all the young men-servants. They
preferred to remain serfs, without family or kin, rather than carry the
knapsack for twenty years. I was strongly affected by those horrible
scenes: at the summons of the landowner, a file of military police would
appear like thieves in the night and seize their victim without warning;
the bailiff would explain that the master had given orders the night
before for the man to be sent to the recruiting office; and then the
victim, through his tears, tried to strike an attitude, while the women
wept, and all the people gave him presents, and I too gave what I could,
very likely a sixpenny necktie.
I remember too an occasion when a village elder spent some money due
from peasants to their master, and my father ordered his beard to be
shaved off, by way of punishment. This form of penalty puzzled me, but I
was impressed by the man’s appearance: he was sixty years old, and he
wept profusely, bowing to the ground and offering to repay the money and
a hundred _roubles_ more, if only he might escape the shame of losing
his beard.
While my uncle lived with us, there were regularly about sixty servants
belonging to the house, of whom nearly half were women; but the married
women might give all their time to their own families; there were five
or six house-maids always employed, and laundry-maids, but the latter
never came upstairs. To these must be added the boys and girls who were
being taught housework, which meant that they were learning to be lazy
and tell lies and drink spirits.
As a feature of those times, it will not, I think, be superfluous to say
something of the wages paid to servants. They got five _roubles_ a
month, afterwards raised to six, for board-wages; women got a _rouble_
less, and children over ten half the amount. The servants clubbed
together for their food, and made no complaint of insufficiency, which
proves that food cost wonderfully little. The highest wages paid were
100 _roubles_ a year; others got fifty, and some thirty. Boys under
eighteen got no wages. Then our servants were supplied with clothes,
overcoats, shirts, sheets, coverlets, towels, and mattresses of
sail-cloth; the boys who got no wages received a sum of money for the
bath-house and to pay the priest in Lent—purification of body and soul
was thus provided for. Taking everything into account, a servant cost
about 300 _roubles_ a year; if we add his share of medical attendance
and drugs and the articles of consumption which came in carts from the
landlord’s estates in embarrassing amount, even then the figure will not
be higher than 350 _roubles_. In Paris or London a servant costs four
times as much.
Slave-owners generally reckon “insurance” among the privileges of their
slaves, _i.e._, the wife and children are maintained by the master, and
the slave himself, in old age, will get a bare pittance in some corner
of the estate. Certainly this should be taken into account, but the
value of it is considerably lessened by the constant fear of corporal
punishment and the impossibility of rising higher in the social scale.
My own eyes have shown me beyond all doubt, how the horrible
consciousness of their enslaved condition torments and poisons the
existence of servants in Russia, how it oppresses and stupefies their
minds. The peasants, especially those who pay _obrók_,[19] are less
conscious of personal want of freedom; it is possible for them not to
believe, to some extent, in their complete slavery. But in the other
case, when a man sits all day on a dirty bench in the pantry, or stands
at a table holding a plate, there is no possible room for doubt.
Footnote 19:
_Obrók_ is money paid by a serf to his master in lieu of personal
service; such a serf might carry on a trade or business of his own and
was liable to no other burdens than the _obrók_.
There are, of course, people who enjoy this life as if it were their
native element; people whose mind has never been aroused from slumber,
who have acquired a taste for their occupation, and perform its duties
with a kind of artistic satisfaction.
§6
Our old footman, Bakai, an exceedingly interesting character, was an
instance of this kind. A tall man of athletic build, with large and
dignified features, and an air of the profoundest reflexion, he lived to
old age in the belief that a footman’s place is one of singular dignity.
This respectable old man was constantly out of temper or half-drunk, or
both together. He idealised the duties of his office and attributed to
them a solemn importance. He could lower the steps of a carriage with a
peculiarly loud rattle; when he banged a carriage-door he made more
noise than the report of a gun. He stood on the rumble surly and
straight, and, every time that a hole in the road gave him a jolt, he
called out to the coachman, “Easy there!” in a deep voice of
displeasure, though the hole was by that time five yards behind the
carriage.
His chief occupation, other than going out with the carriage, was
self-imposed. It consisted in training the pantry-boys in the standard
of manners demanded by the servants’ hall. As long as he was sober, this
went well enough; but when he was affected by liquor, he was severe and
exacting beyond belief. I sometimes tried to protect my young friends,
but my authority had little weight with the Roman firmness of Bakai: he
would open the door that led to the drawing-room, with the words: “This
is not your place. I beg you will go, or I shall carry you out.” Not a
movement, not a word, on the part of the boys, did he let pass
unrebuked; and he often accompanied his words with a smack on the head,
or a painful fillip, which he inflicted by an ingenious and spring-like
manipulation of his finger and thumb.
When he had at last driven the boys from the room and was left alone, he
transferred his attentions to his only friend, a large Newfoundland dog
called Macbeth, whom he fed and brushed and petted and loved. After
sitting alone for a few minutes, he would go down to the court-yard and
invite Macbeth to join him in the pantry. Then he began to talk to his
friend: “Foolish brute! What makes you sit outside in the frost, when
there’s warmth in here? Well, what are you staring at? Can’t you
answer?” and the questions were generally followed by a smack on the
head. Macbeth occasionally growled at his benefactor; and then Bakai
reproved him, with no weak fondness: “Do what you like for a dog, a dog
it still remains: it shows its teeth at you, with never a thought of who
you are. But for me, the fleas would eat you up!” And then, hurt by his
friend’s ingratitude, he would take snuff angrily and throw what was
left on his fingers at Macbeth’s nose. The dog would sneeze, make
incredibly awkward attempts to get the snuff out of his eyes with his
paw, rise in high dudgeon from the bench, and begin scratching at the
door. Bakai opened the door and dismissed the dog with a kick and a
final word of reproach. At this point the pantry-boys generally came
back, and the sound of his knuckles on their heads began again.
We had another dog before Macbeth, a setter called Bertha. When she
became very ill, Bakai put her on his bed and nursed her for some weeks.
Early one morning I went into the servants’ hall. Bakai tried to say
something, but his voice broke and a large tear rolled down his
cheek—the dog was dead. There is another fact for the student of human
nature. I don’t at all suppose that he hated the pantry-boys either; but
he had a surly temper which was made worse by drinking bad spirits and
unconsciously affected by his surroundings.
§7
Such men as Bakai hugged their chains, but there were others: there
passes through my memory a sad procession of hopeless sufferers and
martyrs. My uncle had a cook of remarkable skill in his business, a
hard-working and sober man who made his way upwards. The Tsar had a
famous French _chef_ at the time and my uncle contrived to secure for
his servant admission to the imperial kitchens. After this instruction,
the man was engaged by the English Club at Moscow, made money, married,
and lived like a gentleman; but, with the noose of serfdom still round
his neck, he could never sleep easy or enjoy his position.
Alexyéi—that was his name—at last plucked up courage, had prayers said
to Our Lady of Iberia, and called on my uncle and offered 5,000
_roubles_ for his freedom. But his master was proud of the cook as his
property—he was proud of another man, a painter, for just the same
reason—and therefore he refused the money, promising the cook to give
him his freedom in his will, without any payment.
This was a frightful blow to the man. He became depressed; the
expression of his features changed; his hair turned grey; and, being a
Russian, he took to the bottle. He became careless about his work, and
the English Club dismissed him. Then he was engaged by the Princess
Trubetskoi, and she persecuted him by her petty meanness. Alexyéi was a
lover of fine phrases; and once, when he was insulted by her beyond
bearing, he drew himself up and said in his nasal voice, “What a stormy
soul inhabits Your Serene Highness’s body!” The Princess was furious:
she dismissed the man and wrote, as a Russian great lady would, to my
uncle to complain of his servant. My uncle would rather have done
nothing, but, out of politeness to the lady, he sent for the cook and
scolded him, and told him to go and beg pardon of the Princess.
But, instead of going there, he went to the public-house. Within a year
he was utterly ruined: all the money he had saved for his freedom was
gone, and even his last kitchen-apron. He fought with his wife, and she
with him, till at last she went into service as a nurse away from
Moscow. Nothing was heard of him for a long time. At last a policeman
brought him to our house, a wild and ragged figure. He had no place of
abode and wandered from one drink-shop to another. The police had picked
him up in the street and demanded that his master should take him in
hand. My uncle was vexed and, perhaps, repentant: he received the man
kindly enough and gave him a room to live in. Alexyéi went on drinking;
when he was drunk, he was noisy and fancied he was writing poetry; and
he really had some imaginative gift but no control over it. We were in
the country at the time, and my uncle sent the man to us, fancying that
my father would have some control over him. But the man was too far
gone. His case revealed to me the concentrated ill-feeling and hatred
which a serf cherishes in his heart against his masters: he gnashed his
teeth as he spoke, and used gestures which, especially as coming from a
cook, were ominous. My presence did not prevent him from speaking
freely; he was fond of me, and often patted my shoulder as he said,
“This is a sound branch of a rotten tree!”
When my uncle died, my father gave Alexyéi his freedom at once. But this
was too late: it only meant washing our hands of him, and he simply
vanished from sight.
§8
There was another victim of the system whom I cannot but recall together
with Alexyéi. My uncle had a servant of thirty-five who acted as a
clerk. My father’s oldest brother, who died in 1813, intending to start
a cottage hospital, placed this man, Tolochanov, when he was a boy, with
a doctor, in order to learn the business of a dresser. The doctor got
permission for him to attend lectures at the College of Medicine; the
young man showed ability, learned Latin and German, and practised with
some success. When he was twenty-five, he fell in love with the daughter
of an officer, concealed his position from her, and married her. The
deception could not be kept up for long: my uncle died, and the wife was
horrified to discover that she, as well as her husband, was a serf. The
“Senator,” their new owner, put no pressure on them at all—he had a real
affection for young Tolochanov—but the wife could not pardon the
deception: she quarrelled with him and finally eloped with another man.
Tolochanov must have been very fond of her: he fell into a state of
depression which bordered on insanity; he spent his nights in drunken
carouses, and, having no money of his own, made free with what belonged
to his master. Then, when he saw he could not balance his accounts, he
took poison, on the last day of the year 1821.
My uncle was away from home. I was present when Tolochanov came into the
room and told my father he had come to say good-bye; he also gave me a
message for my uncle, that he had spent the missing money.
“You’re drunk,” said my father; “go and sleep it off.”
“My sleep will last a long time,” said the doctor; “I only ask you not
to think ill of my memory.”
The man’s composure frightened my father: he looked at him attentively
and asked: “What’s the matter with you? Are you wandering?”
“No, Sir; I have only swallowed a dose of arsenic.”
The doctor and police were summoned, milk and emetics were administered.
When the vomiting began, he tried to keep it back and said: “You stop
where you are! I did not swallow you, to bring you up again.” When the
poison began to work more strongly, I heard his groans and the agonised
voice in which he said again and again, “It burns, it burns like fire!”
Someone advised that the priest should be sent for; but he refused, and
told Calot that he knew _too much anatomy_ to believe in a life beyond
the grave. At twelve at night he spoke to the doctor: he asked the time,
in German, and then said, “Time to wish you a Happy New Year!” and then
he died.
In the morning I went hastily to the little wing, used as a bath-house,
where Tolochanov had been taken. The body was lying on a table in the
attitude in which he died; he was wearing a coat, but the necktie had
been removed and the chest was bare; the features were terribly
distorted and even blackened. It was the first dead body I had ever
seen; and I ran out, nearly fainting. The toys and picture-book which I
had got as New Year’s presents could not comfort me: I still saw before
me the blackened features of Tolochanov, and heard his cry, “It burns
like fire!”
To end this sad subject, I shall say only one thing more: the society of
servants had no really bad influence on me. On the contrary, it
implanted in me, in early years, a rooted hatred for slavery and
oppression in all their manifestations. When I had been naughty as a
child and my nurse, Vyéra Artamónovna, wished to be very cutting, she
used to say, “Wait a bit, and you will be exactly like the rest, when
you grow up and become a master!” I felt this to be a grievous insult.
Well, the old woman may rest in peace—whatever I became, I did not
become “exactly like the rest.”
§9
I had one other distraction, as well as the servants’ hall, and in this
I met at least with no opposition. I loved reading as much as I disliked
my lessons. Indeed, my passion for desultory reading was one of the main
difficulties in the way of serious study. For example, I detested, then
as now, the theoretical study of languages; but I was very quick in
making out the meaning more or less and acquiring the rudiments of
conversation; and there I stopped, because that was all I needed.
My father and my uncle had a fairly large library, consisting of French
books of the eighteenth century. The books lay about in heaps in a damp
unused room on the ground-floor of the house. Calot kept the key and I
was free to rummage as much as I pleased in this literary lumber-room. I
read and read with no interruptions. My father approved for two reasons:
in the first place, I would learn French quicker; and besides I was kept
occupied, sitting quietly in a corner. I must add that I did not display
all the books I read openly on the table: some of them I kept secreted
in a cupboard.
But what books did I read? Novels, of course, and plays. I read through
fifteen volumes, each of which contained three or four plays, French or
Russian. As well as French novels, my mother had novels by Auguste
Lafontaine and Kotzebue’s comedies; and I read them all twice over. I
cannot say that the novels had much effect on me. As boys do, I pounced
on all the ambiguous passages and disorderly scenes, but they did not
interest me specially. A far greater influence was exercised over my
mind by a play which I loved passionately and read over twenty times,
though it was in a Russian translation—_The Marriage of Figaro_. I was
in love with Cherubino and the Countess; nay more, I myself was
Cherubino; I felt strong emotion as I read it and was conscious of some
new sensation which I could not at all understand. I was charmed with
the scene where the page is dressed up as a woman, and passionately
desired to have a ribbon belonging to someone, in order to hide it in my
breast and kiss it when no one was looking. As a matter of fact, no
female society came in my way at that age.
I only remember two school-girls who paid us occasional Sunday visits.
The younger was sixteen and strikingly beautiful. I became confused
whenever she entered the room; I never dared to address her, or to go
beyond stolen glances at her beautiful dark eyes and dark curls. I never
spoke a word of this to anyone, and my first love-pangs passed off
unknown even to her who caused them.
When I met her years afterwards, my heart beat fast and I remembered how
I had worshipped her beauty at twelve years old.
I forgot to say that _Werther_ interested me almost as much as _The
Marriage of Figaro_; half of the story I could not understand and
skipped, in my eagerness to reach the final catastrophe; but over that I
wept quite wildly. When I was at Vladímir in 1839, the same book
happened to come into my hands, and I told my wife how I used to cry
over it as a boy. Then I began to read the last letters to her; and when
I reached the familiar passage, the tears flowed fast and I had to stop.
I cannot say that my father put any special pressure upon me before I
was fourteen; but the whole atmosphere of our house was stifling to a
live young creature. Side by side with complete indifference about my
moral welfare, an excessive degree of importance was attached to bodily
health; and I was terribly worried by precautions against chills and
unwholesome food, and the fuss that was made over a trifling cold in the
head. In winter I was kept indoors for weeks at a time, and, if a drive
was permitted, I had to wear warm boots, comforters, and so on. The
rooms were kept unbearably hot with stoves. This treatment must have
made me feeble and delicate, had I not inherited from my mother the
toughest of constitutions. She, on her part, shared none of these
prejudices, and in her part of the house I might do all the things which
were forbidden when I was with my father.
Without rivalry and without encouragement or approval, my studies made
little progress. For want of proper system and supervision, I took
things easy and thought to dispense with hard work by means of memory
and a lively imagination. My teachers too, as a matter of course, were
under no supervision; when once the fees were settled, provided they
were punctual in coming to the house and leaving it, they might go on
for years, without giving any account of what they were doing.
§10
One of the queerest incidents of my early education was when a French
actor, Dalès, was invited to give me lessons in elocution.
“People pay no attention to it nowadays,” my father said to me, “but
your brother Alexander practised _le recit de Théramène_[20] every
evening for six months with Aufraine, the actor, and never reached the
perfection which his teacher desired.”
Footnote 20:
From Racine’s _Phèdre_.
So I began to learn elocution.
“I suppose, M. Dalès,” my father once said to him, “you could give
lessons in dancing too.”
Dalès was a stout old gentleman of over sixty; with a profound
consciousness of his own merits but an equally profound sense of
modesty, he answered that he could not judge of his own talents, but
that he often gave hints to the ballet-dancers at the Opera.
“Just as I supposed,” remarked my father, offering him his snuff-box
open—a favour he would never have shown to a Russian or German tutor. “I
should be much obliged if you would make him dance a little after the
declamation; he is so stiff.”
“_Monsieur le comte peut disposer de moi._”
And then my father, who was a passionate lover of Paris, began to recall
the _foyer_ of the Opera-house as it was in 1810, the _début_ of Mlle.
George and the later years of Mlle. Mars,[21] and asked many question
about _cafés_ and theatres.
Footnote 21:
George (1787-1867) was the chief actress in tragedy, and Mars
(1779-1847) the chief actress in comedy, on the Paris stage of their
time.
And now you must imagine my small room on a dismal winter evening, with
the water running down the frozen windows over the sandbags, two tallow
candles burning on the table, and us two face to face. On the stage
Dalès spoke in a fairly natural voice, but, in giving a lesson, he
thought himself bound to get away as far as possible from nature. He
recited Racine in a sing-song voice, and made a parting, like the
parting of an Englishman’s back hair, at the caesura of each line, so
that every verse came out in two pieces like a broken stick.
Meanwhile he made the gestures of a man who has fallen into the water
and cannot swim. He made me repeat each verse several times and
constantly shook his head: “Not right at all! Listen to me! ‘_Je crains
Dieu, cher Abner_’—now came the parting; he closed his eyes, shook his
head slightly, and added, repelling the waves with a languid movement of
the arm, ‘_et n’ai point d’autre crainte_.’”[22]
Footnote 22:
From Racine’s _Athalie_.
Then the old gentleman, who “feared nothing but God,” would look at his
watch, put away his books, and take hold of a chair. This chair was my
partner.
Is it surprising that I never learned to dance? These lessons did not
last long: within a fortnight they were brought to an end by a very
tragic event.
I was at the theatre with my uncle, and the overture was played several
times without the curtain rising. The front rows, wishing to show their
familiarity with Paris customs, began to make the noise which is made in
Paris by the back rows only. A manager came out in front of the curtain;
he bowed to the left, he bowed to the right, he bowed to the front, and
then he said: “We ask for all the indulgence of the audience; a terrible
misfortune has befallen us: Dalès, a member of our company,”—and here
the manager’s speech was interrupted by genuine tears,—“has been found
dead in his room, poisoned by the fumes from the stove.”
Such were the forcible means by which the Russian system of ventilation
delivered me from lessons in elocution, from spouting Racine, and from
dancing a solo with the partner who boasted four legs carved in
mahogany.
§11
When I was twelve, I was transferred from the hands of women to those of
men; and, about that time, my father made two unsuccessful attempts to
put a German in charge of me.
“A German in charge of children” is neither a tutor nor a
_dyádka_[23]—it is quite a profession by itself. He does not teach or
dress the children himself, but sees that they are dressed and taught;
he watches over their health, takes them out for walks, and talks
whatever nonsense he pleases, provided that it is in German. If there is
a tutor in the house, the German is his inferior; but he takes
precedence of the _dyádka_, if there is one. The visiting teachers, if
they come late from unforeseen causes, or leave too early owing to
circumstances beyond their control, are polite to the German; and,
though quite uneducated, he begins to think himself a man of learning.
The governesses make use of the German to do all sorts of errands for
them, but never permit any attentions on his part, unless they suffer
from positive deformity and see no prospect of any other admirers. When
boys are fourteen they go off to the German’s room to smoke on the sly,
and he allows it, because he needs powerful assistance if he is to keep
his place. Indeed, the common practice is to dismiss him at this period,
after thanking him in the presence of the boys and presenting him with a
watch. If he is tired of taking children out and receiving reprimands
when they catch cold or stain their clothes, then the “German in charge
of children” becomes a German without qualification: he starts a small
shop where he sells amber mouth-pieces, eau-de-cologne, and cigars to
his former charges, and performs secret services for them of another
kind.
Footnote 23:
A _dyádka_ (literally “uncle”) is a man-servant put in charge of his
young master.
The first German attached to my person was a native of Silesia, and his
name was Iokisch; in my opinion, his name alone was a sufficient
disqualification. He was a tall, bald man, who professed a knowledge of
agriculture, and I believe that this fact induced my father to take him;
but his chief distinction was his extreme need of soap and water. I
looked with aversion at the Silesian giant, and only consented to walk
about with him in the parks and gardens on condition that he told me
improper stories, which I retailed in the servants’ hall. He did not
survive more than a year; he was guilty of some misconduct on our
country estate, and a gardener tried to kill him with a scythe; and this
made my father order him to clear out.
His successor was Theodore Karlovitch, a soldier (probably a deserter)
from Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who was remarkable for his beautiful
handwriting and excessive stupidity. He had filled a similar post twice
already, and had gained some experience, so that he gave himself the
airs of a tutor; also, he spoke French, mispronouncing _j_ as _sh_ and
misplacing the accents.[24]
Footnote 24:
The English speak French even worse than the Germans; but they merely
mutilate the language, whereas the German vulgarises it. (Author’s
note.)
I had no kind of respect for him, but poisoned every moment of his
existence, especially after I was convinced that, in spite of all my
efforts, he was unable to understand either decimal fractions or the
rule of three. In most boys’ hearts there is a good deal that is
ruthless and even cruel; and I persecuted the Jäger of Wolfenbüttel
unmercifully with sums in proportion. I was so much interested by this,
that, though I did not often speak on such subjects to my father, I
solemnly informed him of the stupidity of Theodore Karlovitch.
He once boasted to me of a new frock-coat, dark blue with gold buttons,
and I actually saw him once wearing it; he was going to a wedding, and
the coat, though it was too large for him, really had gold buttons. But
the boy who waited on the German informed me that the garment was
borrowed from a friend who kept a perfumer’s shop. Without the least
feeling of pity, I attacked my victim, and asked bluntly where his blue
coat was.
“There is a great deal of moth in this house, and I have given it to a
tailor whom I know to keep it safe for me.”
“Where does the tailor live?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“Why not say?”
“People should mind their own business.”
“Oh, very well. But my birthday is next week, and, to please me, you
might get the blue coat from the tailor for that day.”
“No, I won’t; you don’t deserve it, after your rudeness.”
I held up a threatening finger at him. But the final blow to the
German’s position took place as follows. He must needs boast one day, in
the presence of Bouchot, my French tutor, that he had fought at Waterloo
and that the Germans had given the French a terrible mauling. Bouchot
merely looked at him and took snuff with such a formidable air that the
conqueror of Napoleon was rather taken aback. Bouchot left the room,
leaning angrily on his knotted stick, and he never afterwards called the
man by any other name than _le soldat de Vilain-ton_.[25] I did not know
then that this pun is the property of Béranger, and I was exceedingly
delighted by Bouchot’s cleverness.
Footnote 25:
_I.e._, Wellington.
At last this comrade of Blücher’s left our house, after a quarrel with
my father; and I was not troubled further with Germans.
During the time of the warrior from Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, I sometimes
visited a family of boys, who were also under the charge of a German;
and we took long walks together. The two Germans were friends. But, when
my German departed, I was left once more in complete solitude. I
disliked it and tried hard to escape from it, but without success. As I
was powerless to overcome my father’s wishes, I should, perhaps, have
been crushed by this kind of life; but I was soon saved by a new form of
mental activity, and by two new acquaintances, of whom I shall speak in
the next chapter. I am sure that it never once occurred to my father
what sort of life he was forcing me to lead; or else he would not have
vetoed my very innocent wishes and the very natural requests which I put
to him.
He let me go occasionally to the French Theatre with my uncle. This was
a supreme enjoyment to me. I was passionately fond of the theatre; but
even this treat cost me as much pain as pleasure. My uncle often arrived
when the play was half over; and, as he was always engaged for some
party, he often took me out before the end. The theatre was quite close
to our house; but I was strictly forbidden by my father to come home
alone.
§12
I was about fifteen when my father summoned a priest to the house to
teach me as much Divinity as was required for entrance at the
University. I had read Voltaire before I ever opened the Catechism. In
the business of education, religion is less obtrusive in Russia than in
any other country; and this is, of course, a very good thing. A priest
is always paid half the usual fee for lessons in Divinity; and, if the
same priest also teaches Latin, he actually gets more for a Latin lesson
than for instruction in the Catechism.
My father looked upon religion as one of the indispensable attributes of
a gentleman. It was necessary to accept Holy Scripture without
discussion, because mere intellect is powerless in that department, and
the subject is only made darker by human logic. It was necessary to
submit to such rites as were required by the Church into which you were
born; but you must avoid excessive piety, which is suitable for women of
advanced age but improper for a man. Was he himself a believer? I
imagine that he believed to some extent, from habit, from a sense of
decency, and just in case—. But he never himself observed any of the
rules laid down by the Church, excusing himself on the plea of bad
health. He hardly ever admitted a priest to his presence, or asked him
to repeat a psalm while waiting in the empty drawing-room for the
five-_rouble_ note which was his fee. In winter he excused himself on
the plea that the priest and his clerk brought in so much cold air with
them that he always caught cold in consequence. In the country, he went
to church and received the priest at his house; but this was not due to
religious feeling but rather a concession to the ideas of society and
the wishes of Government.
My mother was a Lutheran, and, as such, a degree more religious. Once or
twice a month she went on Sundays to her place of worship—her _Kirche_,
as Bakai persisted in calling it, and I, for want of occupation, went
with her. I learned there to imitate with great perfection the flowery
style of the German pastors, and I had not lost this art when I came to
manhood.
My father always made me keep Lent. I rather dreaded confession, and
church ceremonies in general were impressive and awful to me. The
Communion Service caused me real fear; but I shall not call that
religious feeling: it was the fear which is always inspired by the
unintelligible and mysterious, especially when solemn importance is
attached to the mystery. When Easter brought the end of the Fast, I ate
all the Easter dishes—dyed eggs, currant loaf, and consecrated cakes,
and thought no more about religion for the rest of the year.
Yet I often read the Gospel, both in Slavonic and in Luther’s
translation, and loved it. I read it without notes of any kind and could
not understand all of it, but I felt a deep and sincere reverence for
the book. In my early youth, I was often attracted by the Voltairian
point of view—mockery and irony were to my taste; but I don’t remember
ever taking up the Gospel with indifference or hostility. This has
accompanied me throughout life: at all ages and in all variety of
circumstances, I have gone back to the reading of the Gospel, and every
time its contents have brought down peace and gentleness into my heart.
When the priest began to give me lessons, he was astonished, not merely
at my general knowledge of the Gospel but also at my power of quoting
texts accurately. “But,” he used to say, “the Lord God, who has opened
the mind, has not yet opened the heart.” My theological instructor
shrugged his shoulders and was surprised by the inconsistency he found
in me; still he was satisfied with me, because he thought I should be
able to pass my examination.
A religion of a different kind was soon to take possession of my heart
and mind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III
Death of Alexander I—The Fourteenth of December—Moral
Awakening—Bouchot—My Cousin—N. Ogaryóv.
§1
ONE winter evening my uncle came to our house at an unusual hour. He
looked anxious and walked with a quick step to my father’s study, after
signing to me to stay in the drawing-room.
Fortunately, I was not obliged to puzzle my head long over the mystery.
The door of the servants’ hall opened a little way, and a red face, half
hidden by the wolf-fur of a livery coat, invited me to approach; it was
my uncle’s footman, and I hastened to the door.
“Have you not heard?” he asked.
“Heard what?”
“The Tsar is dead. He died at Taganrog.”
I was impressed by the news: I had never before thought of the
possibility of his death. I had been brought up in great reverence for
Alexander, and I thought with sorrow how I had seen him not long before
in Moscow. We were out walking when we met him outside the Tver Gate; he
was riding slowly, accompanied by two or three high officers, on his way
back from manœuvres. His face was attractive, the features gentle and
rounded, and his expression was weary and sad. When he caught us up, I
took off my hat; he smiled and bowed to me.
Confused ideas were still simmering in my head; the shops were selling
pictures of the new Tsar, Constantine; notices about the oath of
allegiance were circulating; and good citizens were making haste to take
the oath—when suddenly a report spread that the Crown Prince had
abdicated. Immediately afterwards, the same footman, a great lover of
political news, with abundant opportunities for collecting it from the
servants of senators and lawyers—less lucky than the horses which rested
for half the day, he accompanied his master in his rounds from morning
till night—informed me that there was a revolution in Petersburg and
that cannon were firing in the capital.
On the evening of the next day, Count Komarovsky, a high officer of the
police, was at our house, and told us of the band of revolutionaries in
the Cathedral Square, the cavalry charge, and the death of
Milorádovitch.[26]
Footnote 26:
When Nicholas became Emperor in place of his brother Constantine, the
revolt of the Decembrists took place in Petersburg on December 14,
1825. Five of the conspirators were afterwards hanged, and over a
hundred banished to Siberia.
Then followed the arrests—“They have taken so-and-so”; “They have caught
so-and-so”; “They have arrested so-and-so in the country.” Parents
trembled in fear for their sons; the sky was covered over with black
clouds.
During the reign of Alexander, political persecution was rare: it is
true that he exiled Púshkin for his verses, and Labzin, the secretary of
the Academy of Fine Arts, for proposing that the imperial coachman
should be elected a member;[27] but there was no systematic persecution.
The secret police had not swollen to its later proportions: it was
merely an office, presided over by De Sanglin, a freethinking old
gentleman and a sayer of good things, in the manner of the French
writer, Etienne de Jouy. Under Nicholas, De Sanglin himself came under
police supervision and passed for a liberal, though he remained
precisely what he had always been; but this fact alone serves to mark
the difference between the two reigns.
Footnote 27:
The president had proposed to elect Arakchéyev, on the ground of his
nearness to the Tsar. Labzin then proposed the election of Ilyá
Baikov, the Tsar’s coachman. “He is not only near the Tsar but sits in
front of him,” he said.
The tone of society changed visibly; and the rapid demoralisation proved
too clearly how little the feeling of personal dignity is developed
among the Russian aristocracy. Except the women, no one dared to show
sympathy or to plead earnestly in favour of relations and friends, whose
hands they had grasped yesterday but who had been arrested before
morning dawned. On the contrary, men became zealots for tyranny, some to
gain their own ends, while others were even worse, because they had
nothing to gain by subservience.
Women alone were not guilty of this shameful denial of their dear ones.
By the Cross none but women were standing; and by the blood-stained
guillotine there were women too—a Lucile Desmoulins, that Ophelia of the
French Revolution, wandering near the fatal axe and waiting her turn, or
a George Sand holding out, even on the scaffold, the hand of sympathy
and friendship to the young fanatic, Alibaud.[28]
Footnote 28:
Camille Desmoulins was guillotined, with Danton, April 5, 1794; his
wife, Lucile, soon followed him. Alibaud was executed July 11, 1836,
for an attempt on the life of Louis Philippe.
The wives of the exiles were deprived of all civil rights; abandoning
their wealth and position in society, they faced a whole lifetime of
slavery in Eastern Siberia, where the terrible climate was less
formidable than the Siberian police. Sisters, who were not permitted to
accompany their condemned brothers, absented themselves from Court, and
many of them left Russia; almost all of them retained in their hearts a
lively feeling of affection for the sufferers. But this was not so among
the men: fear devoured this feeling in their hearts, and none of them
dared to open their lips about “the unfortunate.”
As I have touched on this subject, I cannot refrain from giving some
account of one of these heroic women, whose history is known to very
few.
§2
In the ancient family of the Ivashevs a French girl was living as a
governess. The only son of the house wished to marry her. All his
relations were driven wild by the idea; there was a great commotion,
tears, and entreaties. They succeeded in inducing the girl to leave
Petersburg and the young man to delay his intention for a season. Young
Ivashev was one of the most active conspirators, and was condemned to
penal servitude for life. For this was a form of _mésalliance_ from
which his relations did not protect him. As soon as the terrible news
reached the young girl in Paris, she started for Petersburg, and asked
permission to travel to the Government of Irkutsk, in order to join her
future husband. Benkendorf tried to deter her from this criminal
purpose; when he failed, he reported the case to Nicholas. The Tsar
ordered that the position of women who had remained faithful to their
exiled husbands should be explained to her. “I don’t keep her back,” he
added; “but she ought to realise that if wives, who have accompanied
their husbands out of loyalty, deserve some indulgence, she has no claim
whatever to such treatment, when she intends to marry one whom she knows
to be a criminal.”
In Siberia nothing was known of this permission. When she had found her
way there, the poor girl was forced to wait while a correspondence went
on with Petersburg. She lived in a miserable settlement peopled with
released criminals of all kinds, unable to get any news of her lover or
to inform him of her whereabouts.
By degrees she made acquaintances among her strange companions. One of
these was a highwayman who was now employed in the prison, and she told
him all her story. Next day he brought her a note from Ivashev; and soon
he offered to carry messages between them. All day he worked in the
prison; at nightfall he got a scrap of writing from Ivashev and started
off, undeterred by weariness or stormy weather, and returned to his
daily work before dawn.
At last permission came for their marriage. A few years later, penal
servitude was commuted to penal settlement, and their condition was
improved to some extent. But their strength was exhausted, and the wife
was the first to sink under the burden of all she had undergone. She
faded away, as a flower from southern climes was bound to fade in the
snows of Siberia. Ivashev could not survive her long: just a year later
he too died. But he had ceased to live before his death: his letters
(which impressed even the inquisitors who read them) were evidence not
only of intense sorrow, but of a distracted brain; they were full of a
gloomy poetry and a crazy piety; after her death he never really lived,
and the process of his death was slow and solemn.
This history does not end with their deaths. Ivashev’s father, after his
son’s exile, transferred his property to an illegitimate son, begging
him not to forget his unfortunate brother but to do what he could. The
young pair were survived by two children, two nameless infants, with a
future prospect of the roughest labour in Siberia—without friends,
without rights, without parents. Ivashev’s brother got permission to
adopt the children. A few years later he ventured on another request: he
used influence, that their father’s name might be restored to them, and
this also was granted.
§3
I was strongly impressed by stories of the rebels and I their fate, and
by the horror which reigned in Moscow. These events revealed to me a new
world, which became more and more the centre of my whole inner life; I
don’t know how it came to pass; but, though I understood very dimly what
it was all about, I felt that the side that possessed the cannons and
held the upper hand was not my side. The execution of Pestel[29] and his
companions finally awakened me from the dreams of childhood.
Footnote 29:
One of the Decembrists.
Though political ideas occupied my mind day and night, my notions on the
subject were not very enlightened: indeed they were so wide of the mark
that I believed one of the objects of the Petersburg insurrection to
consist in placing Constantine on the throne as a constitutional
monarch.
It will easily be understood that solitude was a greater burden to me
than ever: I needed someone, in order to impart to him my thoughts and
ideals, to verify them, and to hear them confirmed. Proud of my own
“disaffection,” I was unwilling either to conceal it or to speak of it
to people in general.
My choice fell first on Iván Protopópov, my Russian tutor.
This man was full of that respectable indefinite liberalism, which,
though it often disappears with the first grey hair, marriage, and
professional success, does nevertheless raise a man’s character. He was
touched by what I said, and embraced me on leaving the house. “Heaven
grant,” he said, “that those feelings of your youth may ripen and grow
strong!” His sympathy was a great comfort to me. After this time he
began to bring me manuscript copies, in very small writing and very much
frayed, of Púshkin’s poems—_Ode to Freedom_, _The Dagger_, and of
Ryléev’s _Thoughts_. These I used to copy out in secret; and now I print
them as openly as I please!
As a matter of course, my reading also changed. Politics for me in
future, and, above all, the history of the French Revolution, which I
knew only as described by Mme. Provo. Among the books in our cellar I
unearthed a history of the period, written by a royalist; it was so
unfair that, even at fourteen, I could not believe it. I had chanced to
hear old Bouchot say that he was in Paris during the Revolution; and I
was very anxious to question him. But Bouchot was a surly, taciturn man,
with spectacles over a large nose; he never indulged in any needless
conversation with me: he conjugated French verbs, dictated examples,
scolded me, and then took his departure, leaning on his thick knotted
stick.
The old man did not like me: he thought me a mere idler, because I
prepared my lessons badly; and he often said, “You will come to no
good.” But when he discovered my sympathy with his political views, he
softened down entirely, pardoned my mistakes, and told me stories of the
year ’93, and of his departure from France when “profligates and cheats”
got the upper hand. He never smiled; he ended our lesson with the same
dignity as before, but now he said indulgently, “I really thought you
would come to no good, but your feelings do you credit, and they will
save you.”
§4
To this encouragement and approval from my teachers there was soon added
a still warmer sympathy which had a profound influence upon me.
In a little town of the Government of Tver lived a granddaughter of my
father’s eldest brother. Her name was Tatyana Kuchin. I had known her
from childhood, but we seldom met: once a year, at Christmas or
Shrovetide, she came to pay a visit to her aunt at Moscow. But we had
become close friends. Though five years my senior, she was short for her
age and looked no older than myself. My chief reason for getting to like
her was that she was the first person to talk to me in a reasonable way:
I mean, she did not constantly express surprise at my growth; she did
not ask what lessons I did and whether I did them well; whether I
intended to enter the Army, and, if so, what regiment; but she talked to
me as most sensible people talk to one another, though she kept the
little airs of superiority which all girls like to show to boys a little
younger than themselves.
We corresponded, especially after the events of 1824; but letters mean
paper and pen and recall the school-room table with its ink-stains and
decorations carved with a penknife. I wanted to see her and to discuss
our new ideas; and it may be imagined with what delight I heard that my
cousin was to come in February (of 1826) and to spend several months
with us. I scratched a calendar on my desk and struck off the days as
they passed, sometimes abstaining for a day or two, just to have the
satisfaction of striking out more at one time. In spite of this, the
time seemed very long; and when it came to an end, her visit was
postponed more than once; such is the way of things.
One evening I was sitting in the school-room with Protopópov. Over each
item of instruction he took, as usual, a sip of sour broth; he was
explaining the hexameter metre, ruthlessly hashing, with voice and hand,
each verse of Gnyéditch’s translation of the Iliad into its separate
feet. Suddenly, a sound unlike that of town sledges came from the snow
outside; I heard the faint tinkle of harness-bells and the sound of
voices out-of-doors. I flushed up, lost all interest in the hashing
process and the wrath of Achilles, and rushed headlong to the front
hall. There was my cousin from Tver, wrapped up in furs, shawls, and
comforters, and wearing a hood and white fur boots. Blushing red with
frost and, perhaps, also with joy, she ran into my arms.
§5
Most people speak of their early youth, its joys and sorrows, with a
slightly condescending smile, as if they wished to say, like the
affected lady in Griboyédov’s play, “How childish!” Children, when a few
years are past, are ashamed of their toys, and this is right enough:
they want to be men and women, they grow so fast and change so much, as
they see by their jackets and the pages of their lesson-books. But
adults might surely realise that childhood and the two or three years of
youth are the fullest part of life, the fairest, and the most truly our
own; and indeed they are possibly the most important part, because they
fix all that follows, though we are not aware of it.
So long as a man moves modestly forwards, never stopping and never
reflecting, and until he comes to the edge of a precipice or breaks his
neck, he continues to believe that his life lies ahead of him; and
therefore he looks down upon his past and is unable to appreciate the
present. But when experience has laid low the flowers of spring and
chilled the glow of summer—when he discovers that life is practically
over, and all that remains a mere continuance of the past, then he feels
differently towards the brightness and warmth and beauty of early
recollections.
Nature deceives us all with her endless tricks and devices: she makes us
a gift of youth, and then, when we are grown up, asserts her mastery and
snares us in a web of relations, domestic and public, most of which we
are powerless to control; and, though we impart our personal character
to our actions, we do not possess our souls in the same degree; the
lyric element of personality is weaker, and, with it, our feelings and
capacity for enjoyment—all, indeed, is weaker, except intelligence and
will.
§6
My cousin’s life was no bed of roses. She lost her mother in childhood;
her father was a passionate gambler, who, like all men who have gambling
in their blood, was constantly rich and poor by turns and ended by
ruining himself. What was left of his fortune he devoted to his stud,
which now became the object of all his thoughts and desires. His only
son, a good-natured cavalry officer, was taking the shortest road to
ruin: at the age of nineteen, he was a more desperate gambler than his
father.
When the father was fifty, he married, for no obvious reason, an old
maid who was a teacher in the Smolny Convent. She was the most typical
specimen of a Petersburg governess whom I had ever happened to meet:
thin, blonde, and very shortsighted, she looked the teacher and the
moralist all over. By no means stupid, she was full of an icy enthusiasm
in her talk, she abounded in commonplaces about virtue and devotion, she
knew history and geography by heart, spoke French with repulsive
correctness, and concealed a high opinion of herself under an artificial
and Jesuitical humility. These traits are common to all pedants in
petticoats; but she had others peculiar to the capital or the convent.
Thus she raised tearful eyes to heaven, when speaking of the visit of
“the mother of us all” (the Empress, Márya Fyódorovna[30]); she was in
love with Tsar Alexander, and carried a locket or ring containing a
fragment of a letter from the Empress Elizabeth[31]—“_il a repris son
sourire de bienveillance_!”
Footnote 30:
The wife of Paul and mother of Alexander I and Nicholas.
Footnote 31:
Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, reigned from 1741 to 1762.
Probably _il_ refers to her father.
It is easy to imagine the harmonious trio that made up this household: a
card-playing father, passionately devoted to horses and racing and noisy
carouses in disreputable company; a daughter brought up in complete
independence and accustomed to do as she pleased in the house; and a
middle-aged blue-stocking suddenly converted into a bride. As a matter
of course, no love was lost between the stepmother and stepdaughter. In
general, real friendship between a woman of thirty-five and a girl of
seventeen is impossible, unless the former is sufficiently unselfish to
renounce all claim to sex.
The common hostility between stepmothers and step-daughters does not
surprise me in the least: it is natural and even moral. A new member of
the household, who usurps their mother’s place, provokes repulsion on
the part of the children. To them the second marriage is a second
funeral. The child’s love is revealed in this feeling, and whispers to
the orphan, “Your father’s wife is not your mother.” At one time the
Church understood that a second marriage is inconsistent with the
Christian conception of marriage and the Christian dogma of immortality;
but she made constant concessions to the world, and went too far, till
she came up against the logic of facts—the simple heart of the child who
revolts against the absurdity and refuses the name of mother to his
father’s second choice.
The woman too is in an awkward situation when she comes away from the
altar to find a family of children ready-made: she has nothing to do
with them, and has to force feelings which she cannot possess; she is
bound to convince herself and the world, that other people’s children
are just as attractive to her as her own.
Consequently, I don’t blame either the convent-lady or my cousin for
their mutual dislike; but I understand how a young girl unaccustomed to
control was eager to go wherever she could be free. Her father was now
getting old and more submissive to his learned wife; her brother, the
officer, was behaving worse and worse; in fact, the atmosphere at home
was oppressive, and she finally induced her stepmother to let her go on
a visit to us, for some months or possibly for a year.
§7
The day after her arrival, my cousin turned my usual routine, with the
exception of my lessons, upside down. With a high hand she fixed hours
for us to read together, advised me to stop reading novels, and
recommended Ségur’s _General History_ and _The Travels of
Anacharsis_.[32] From the ascetic point of view she opposed my strong
inclination to smoke on the sly—cigarettes were then unknown, and I
rolled the tobacco in paper myself: in general, she liked to preach to
me, and I listened meekly to her sermons, if I did not profit by them.
Fortunately, she was not consistent: quite forgetting her own
arrangements, she read with me for amusement rather than instruction,
and often sent out a secret messenger in the shape of a pantry-boy to
buy buckwheat cakes in winter or gooseberries in summer.
Footnote 32:
_Voyage du jeune Anacharsis_, by the Abbé Barthélemy, published in
1779. Ségur was a French historian (1753-1830).
I believe that her influence on me was very good. She brought into my
monastic life an element of warmth, and this may have served to keep
alive the enthusiasms that were beginning to stir in my mind, when they
might easily have been smothered by my father’s ironical tone. I learned
to be attentive, to be nettled by a single word, to care for a friend,
and to feel affection; I learned also to talk about feelings. In her I
found support for my political ideas; she prophesied a remarkable future
and reputation for me, and I, with a child’s vanity, believed her when
she said I would one day be a Brutus or Fabricius.
To me alone she confided the secret of her love for a cavalry officer in
a black jacket and dolman. It was really a secret; for the officer, as
he rode at the head of his squadron, never suspected the pure little
flame that burnt for him in the breast of this young lady of eighteen.
Whether I envied him, I can’t say; probably I did, a little; but I was
proud of being chosen as her confidant, and I imagined (under the
influence of _Werther_) that this was a tragic passion, fated to end in
some great catastrophe involving suicide by poison or the dagger. I even
thought at times of calling on the officer and telling him the whole
story.
My cousin brought shuttlecocks with her from home. One of them had a pin
stuck into it, and she always used it in playing; if anyone else
happened to get hold of it, she took it away and said that no other
suited her as well. But the demon of mischief, which was always
whispering its temptations in my ear, tempted me to take out this pin
and stick it into another shuttlecock. The trick was entirely
successful: my cousin always chose the shuttlecock with the pin in it.
After a fortnight I told her what I had done: she changed colour, burst
out crying, and ran to her own room. I was frightened and distressed;
after waiting half an hour I went to find her. Her door was locked, and
I asked her to open it. She refused, saying that she was not well, and
that I was an unkind, heartless boy. Then I wrote a note in which I
begged her to forgive me, and after tea we made it up: I kissed her
hand, and she embraced me and explained the full importance of the
incident. A year before, the officer had dined at their house and played
battledore with her afterwards; and the marked shuttlecock had been used
by him. I felt very remorseful, as if I had committed a real act of
sacrilege.
My cousin stayed with us till October, when her father summoned her
home, promising to let her spend the next summer with us in the country.
We looked forward with horror to the separation; and soon there came an
autumn day when a carriage arrived to fetch her, and her maid carried
down baskets and band-boxes, while our servants put in provisions of all
kinds, to last a week, and crowded to the steps to say their good-byes.
We exchanged a close embrace, and both shed tears; the carriage drove
out into the street, turned into a side-street close to the very shop
where we used to buy the buckwheat cakes, and disappeared. I took a turn
in the court-yard, but it seemed cold and unfriendly; my own room, where
I went next, seemed empty and cold too. I began to prepare a lesson for
Protopópov, and all the time I was thinking, “Where is the carriage now?
has it passed the gates or not?”
I had one comfort: we should spend next June together in the country.
§8
I had a passionate love for the country, and our visits there gave me
new life. Forests, fields, and perfect freedom—all this was a complete
change to me, who had grown up wrapped in cotton-wool, behind stone
walls, never daring to leave the house on any pretext without asking
leave, or without the escort of a footman.
From spring onwards, I was always much exercised by one question—shall
we go to the country this year or not? Every year my father said that he
wished to see the leaves open and would make an early start; but he was
never ready before July. One year he put off so long that we never went
at all. He sent orders every winter that the country-house was to be
prepared and heated, but this was merely a deep device, that the head
man and ground-officer, fearing our speedy arrival, might pay more
attention to their duties.
It seemed that we were to go. My father said to my uncle, that he should
enjoy a rest in the country and must see what was doing on the land; but
still weeks went by.
The prospect became brighter by degrees. Food supplies were sent off—tea
and sugar, grain of different kinds and wine; then came another delay;
but at last the head man was ordered to send a certain number of
peasants’ horses on a fixed day. Joy! Joy! we are to go!
At that time I never thought of the trouble caused to the peasants by
the loss of four or five days at the busiest time of the year. I was
completely happy and made haste to pack up my books and notebooks. The
horses came, and I listened with inward satisfaction to the sound of
their munching and snorting in the court. I took a lively interest in
the bustle of the drivers and the wrangles of the servants, as they
disputed where each should sit and accommodate his belongings. Lights
burnt all night in the servants’ quarters: all were busy packing, or
dragging about boxes and bags, or putting on special clothes for the
journey, though it was not more than eighty _versts_. My father’s valet
was the most excited of the party: he realised all the importance of
packing, pulled out in fury all that others had put in, tore his hair
with vexation, and was quite impossible to approach.
On the day itself my father got up no earlier than usual—indeed, it
seemed later—and took just as long over his coffee; it was eleven
o’clock before he gave the order to put to the horses. First came a
coach to hold four, drawn by six of our own horses; this was followed by
three or sometimes four equipages—an open carriage, a britzka, and
either a large waggon or two carts; all these were filled by the
servants and their baggage, in addition to the carts which had preceded
us; and yet there was such a squeeze that no one could sit in comfort.
§9
We stopped half-way, to dine and feed the horses, at a large village,
whose name of Perkhushkov may be found in Napoleon’s bulletins. It
belonged to a son of the uncle, of whom I spoke in describing the
division of the property. The neglected manor-house stood near the high
road, which had dull flat fields on each side of it; but to me even this
dusty landscape was delightful after the confinement of a town. The
floors of the house were uneven, and the steps of the staircase shook;
our tread sounded loud, and the walls echoed the noise, as if surprised
by visitors. The old furniture, prized as a rarity by its former owner,
was now spending its last days in banishment here. I wandered, with
eager curiosity, from room to room, upstairs and downstairs, and finally
into the kitchen. Our cook was preparing a hasty meal for us, and looked
discontented and scornful; the bailiff was generally sitting in the
kitchen, a grey-haired man with a lump on his head. When the cook turned
to him and complained of the kitchen-range, the bailiff listened and
said from time to time, “Well, perhaps you’re right”; he looked uneasily
at all the stir in the house and clearly hoped we should soon go away.
Dinner was served on special plates, made of tin or Britannia metal, and
bought for the purpose. Meanwhile the horses were put to; and the hall
was filled with those who wished to pay their respects—former footmen,
spending their last days in pure air but on short commons, and old women
who had been pretty house-maids thirty years ago, all the creeping and
hopping population of great houses, who, like the real locusts, devour
the peasants’ toil by no fault of their own. They brought with them
flaxen-haired children with bare feet and soiled clothes; the children
kept pushing forward, and the old women kept pulling them back, and both
made plenty of noise. The women caught hold of me when they could and
expressed surprise at my growth in the same terms every year. My father
spoke a few words to them; some tried to kiss his hand, but he never
permitted it; others made their bow; and then we went away.
By the edge of a wood our bailiff was waiting for us, and he rode in
front of us the last part of the way. A long lime avenue led up to our
house from the vicarage; at the house we were met by the priest and his
wife, the sexton, the servants, and some peasants. An idiot, called
Pronka, was there too, the only self-respecting person; for he kept on
his dirty old hat, stood a little apart and grinned, and started away
whenever any of the newcomers tried to approach him.
§10
I have seen few more charming spots than this estate of Vasílevskoë. On
one side, where the ground slopes, there is a large village with a
church and an old manor-house; on the other side, where there is a hill
and a smaller village, was a new house built by my father. From our
windows there was a view for many miles: the endless corn-fields spread
like lakes, ruffled by the breeze; manor-houses and villages with white
churches were visible here and there; forests of varying hues made a
semicircular frame for the picture; and the ribbon of the Moscow River
shone blue outside it. In the early morning I used to push up my window
as high as it would go, and look, and listen, and drink in the air.
Yet I had a tenderness for the old manor-house too, perhaps because it
gave me my first taste of the country; I had a passion for the long
shady avenue which led up to it, and the neglected garden. The house was
falling down, and a slender shapely birch-tree was growing out of a
crack in the hall floor. A willow avenue went to the left, followed by
reed-beds and white sand, all the way to the river; about my twelfth
year, I used to play the whole morning on this sand and among the reeds.
An old gardener, bent and decrepit, was generally sitting in front of
the house, boiling fruit or straining mint-wine; and he used to give me
peas and beans to eat on the sly. There were a number of rooks in the
garden; they nested in the tree-tops and flew round and round, cawing;
sometimes, especially towards evening, they rose up in hundreds at a
time, rousing others by their noise; sometimes a single bird would fly
quickly from tree to tree, amid general silence. When night came on,
some distant owl would cry like a child or burst out laughing; and,
though I feared those wild plaintive noises, yet I went and listened.
The years when we did not stay at Vasílevskoë were few and far between.
On leaving, I always marked my height on the wall near the balcony, and
my first business on arriving was to find out how much I had grown. But
I could measure more than mere bodily growth by this place: the regular
recurrence to the same surroundings enabled me to detect the development
of my mind. Different books and different objects engaged my attention.
In 1823 I was still quite a child and took childish books with me; and
even these I left unread, taking more interest in a hare and a squirrel
that lived in a garret near my room. My father allowed me, once every
evening, to fire off a small cannon, and this was one of my chief
delights. Of course, all the servants bore a hand in this occupation,
and grey-haired men of fifty were no less excited than I was. In 1827 my
books were Plutarch and Schiller; early in the morning I sought the
remotest part of the wood, lay down under a tree, and read aloud,
fancying myself in the forests of Bohemia. Yet, all the same, I paid
much attention to a dyke which I and another boy were making across a
small stream, and I ran there ten times a day to look at it and repair
it. In 1829 and the next year, I was writing a “philosophical” review of
Schiller’s _Wallenstein_, and the cannon was the only one of my old
amusements that still maintained its attraction.
But I had another pleasure as well as firing off the cannon—the evenings
in the country haunted me like a passion, and I feel them still to be
times of piety and peace and poetry.... One of the last bright hours of
my life also recalls to me an evening in the country. I was in Italy,
and _she_ was with me. The sun was setting, solemn and bright, in an
ocean of fire, and melting into it. Suddenly the rich crimson gave place
to a sombre blue, and smoke-coloured vapour covered all the sky; for in
Italy darkness comes on fast. We mounted our mules; riding from Frascati
to Rome, we had to pass through a small village; lights were twinkling
already here and there, all was peace, the hoofs of the mules rang out
on the stone, a fresh dampish wind blew from the Apennines. At the end
of the village there was a small Madonna in a niche, with a lamp burning
before her; the village girls, coming home from work with white
kerchiefs over their heads, knelt down and sang a hymn, and some begging
_pifferari_ who were passing by added their voices. I was profoundly
impressed and much moved by the scene. We looked at each other, and rode
slowly on to the inn where our carriage was waiting. When we got home, I
described the evenings I had spent at Vasílevskoë. What was it I
described?
The shepherd cracks his long whip and plays on his birch-bark pipe. I
hear the lowing and bleating of the returning animals, and the stamping
of their feet on the bridge. A barking dog scurries after a straggling
sheep, and the sheep breaks into a kind of wooden-legged gallop. Then
the voices of the girls, singing on their way from the fields, come
nearer and nearer; but the path takes a turn to the right, and the sound
dies away again. House-doors open with creaking of the hinges, and the
children come out to meet their cows and sheep. Work is over. Children
play in the street or by the river, and their voices come penetrating
and clear over the water through the evening glow. The smell of burning
passes from the corn-kilns through the air; the soaking dew begins to
spread like smoke over the earth, the wind seems to walk audibly over
the trees, the sunset glow sends a last faint light over the world—and
Vyéra Artamónovna finds me under a lime-tree, and scolds me, though she
is not seriously angry.
“What’s the meaning of this? Tea has long been served, and everyone is
there. I have looked and looked for you everywhere till I’m tired out.
I’m too old for all this running. And what _do_ you mean by lying on the
wet grass? You’ll have a cold to-morrow, I feel sure.”
“Never mind, never mind,” I would answer laughing; “I shan’t have a
cold, and I want no tea; but you must steal me some cream, and mind you
skim off the top of the jug!”
“Really, I can’t find it in my heart to be angry with you! But how
dainty you are! I’ve got cream ready for you, without your asking. Look
how red the sky is! That’s a sign of a good harvest.”
And then I made off home, jumping and whistling as I went.
§11
We never went back to Vasílevskoë after 1832, and my father sold it
during my banishment. In 1843 we were staying in the country within
twenty _versts_ of the old home and I could not resist paying it a
visit. We drove along the familiar road, past the pine-wood and the hill
covered with nut bushes, till we came to the ford which had given me
such delight twenty years ago—I remembered the splashing water, the
crunching sound of the pebbles, the coachmen shouting at the jibbing
horses. At last we reached the village and the priest’s house; there was
the bench where the priest used to sit, wearing his brown cassock—a
simple kindly man who was always chewing something and always in a
perspiration; and then the estate-office where Vassíli Epifánov made out
his accounts; never quite sober, he sat crouching over the paper,
holding his pen very low down and tucking his third finger away behind
it. The priest was dead, and Vassíli Epifánov, not sober yet, was making
out accounts somewhere else. The village head man was in the fields, but
we found his wife at their cottage.
Changes had taken place in the interval. A new manor-house had been
built on the hill, and a new garden laid out round it. Returning past
the church and churchyard, we met a poor deformed object, creeping, as
it seemed, on all-fours. It signed to me, and I went close to it. It was
an old woman, bent, paralysed, and half-crazy; she used to live on
charity and work in the old priest’s garden; she was now about seventy,
and her, of all people, death had spared! She knew me and shed tears,
shaking her head and saying: “How old you have grown! I only knew you by
your walk. And me—but there’s no use talking about me.”
As we drove home, I saw the head man, the same as in our time, standing
in a field some way off. He did not recognise me at first; but when we
were past, he made out who I was, took off his hat, and bowed low. A
little further on, I turned round, and Grigóri Gorski—that was the head
man’s name—was standing on the same spot and watching our carriage. That
tall bearded figure, bowing in the harvest field, was a link with the
past; but Vasílevskoë had ceased to be ours.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV
My Friend Niko and the Sparrow Hills.
§1
SOME time in the year 1824 I was walking one day with my father along
the Moscow River, on the far side of the Sparrow Hills; and there we met
a French tutor whom we knew. He had nothing on but his shirt, was
obviously in great alarm, and was calling out, “Help! Help!” Before our
friend had time to pull off his shirt or pull on his trousers, a Cossack
ran down from the Sparrow Hills, hurled himself into the water, and
disappeared. In another moment he reappeared, grasping a miserable
little object, whose head and hands shook like clothes hung out to dry;
he placed this burden on the bank and said, “A shaking will soon bring
him round.”
The bystanders collected fifty _roubles_ for the rescuer. The Cossack
made no pretences but said very honestly, “It’s a sin to take money for
a thing like that; for he gave me no trouble, no more than a cat, to
pull him out. But,” he added, “though I don’t ask for money, if I’m
offered it, I may as well take it. I’m a poor man. So thank you kindly.”
Then he tied up the money in his handkerchief and went back to his
horses grazing on the hill.
My father asked the man’s name and wrote next day to tell his commanding
officer of his gallantry; and the Cossack was promoted to be a corporal.
A few months later the Cossack appeared at our house and brought a
companion, a German with a fair curling wig, pock-marked, and scented.
This was the drowning man, who had come to return thanks on behalf of
the Cossack; and he visited us afterwards from time to time.
Karl Sonnenberg had taught boys German in several families, and was now
employed by a distant relation of my father’s, who had confided to him
the bodily health and German pronunciation of his son. This boy, Nikolai
Ogaryóv, whom Sonnenberg always called Niko, attracted me. There was
something kind, gentle, and thoughtful about him; he was quite unlike
the other boys whom I was in the way of seeing. Yet our intimacy ripened
slowly: he was silent and thoughtful, I was lively and feared to trouble
him by my liveliness.
Niko had lost his mother in infancy, and his grandmother died about the
time when my cousin Tatyana left us and went home. Their household was
in confusion, and Sonnenberg, who had really nothing to do, made out
that he was terribly busy; so he brought the boy to our house in the
morning and asked if we would keep him for the whole day. Niko was
frightened and sad; I suppose he loved his grandmother.
After sitting together for some time, I proposed that we should read
Schiller. I was soon astonished by the similarity of our tastes: he knew
by heart much more than I did, and my favourite passages were those he
knew best; we soon shut the book, and each began to explore the other’s
mind for common interests.
He too was familiar with the unprinted poems of Púshkin and Ryléev;[33]
the difference from the empty-headed boys whom I sometimes met was
surprising. His heart beat to the same tune as mine; he too had cut the
painter that bound him to the sullen old shore of conservatism; our
business was to push off with a will; and we decided, perhaps on that
very first day, to act in support of the Crown Prince Constantine!
Footnote 33:
One of the five Decembrists who were hanged when the revolt was
suppressed.
This was our first long conversation. Sonnenberg was always in our way,
persistent as a fly in autumn and spoiling all our talk by his presence.
He was constantly interfering, criticising without understanding,
putting the collar of Niko’s shirt to rights, or in a hurry to go home;
in short, he was thoroughly objectionable. But, before a month was over,
it was impossible for my friend and me to pass two days without meeting
or writing; I, who was naturally impulsive, became more and more
attached to Niko, and he had a less demonstrative but deep love for me.
From the very first, our friendship was bound to take a serious turn. I
cannot remember that we thought much of amusement, especially when we
were alone. I don’t mean that we sat still always; after all, we were
boys, and we laughed and played the fool and teased Sonnenberg and shot
with a bow in our court-yard. But our friendship was not founded on mere
idle companionship: we were united, not only by equality of age and
“chemical” affinity, but by a common religion. Nothing in the world has
more power to purify and elevate that time of life, nothing preserves it
better, than a strong interest in humanity at large. We respected, in
ourselves, our own future; we regarded one another as chosen vessels,
with a fixed task before us.
We often took walks into the country; our favourite haunts were the
Sparrow Hills, and the fields outside the Dragomirovsky Gate.
Accompanied by Sonnenberg, he used to come for me at six or seven in the
morning; and if I was still asleep, he used to throw sand or pebbles at
my window. I woke up joyfully and hastened to join him.
These morning walks had been started by the activity of Sonnenberg. My
friend had been brought up under a _dyádka_,[34] in the manner
traditional in noble Russian families, till Sonnenberg came. The
influence of the _dyádka_ waned at once, and the oligarchy of the
servants’ hall had to grin and bear it: they realised that they were no
match for the “accursed German” who was permitted to dine with the
family. Sonnenberg’s reforms were radical: the _dyádka_ even wept when
the German took his young master in person to a shop to buy ready-made
boots. Just like the reforms of Peter the Great, Sonnenberg’s reforms
bore a military character even in matters of the least warlike nature.
It does not follow from this that Sonnenberg’s narrow shoulders were
ever covered by epaulettes, plain or laced—nature has constructed the
German on such a plan, that, unless he is a philologer or theologian and
therefore utterly indifferent to personal neatness, he is invariably
military, whatever civilian sphere he may adorn. Hence Sonnenberg liked
tight clothes, closely buttoned and belted in at the waist; and hence he
was a strict observer of rules approved by himself. He had made it a
rule to get up at six in the morning; therefore he made his pupil get up
one minute before six or, at latest, one minute after it, and took him
out into the fresh air every morning.
Footnote 34:
See note to p. 55.
§2
The Sparrow Hills, at the foot of which Sonnenberg had been so nearly
drowned, soon became to us a Holy Place.
One day after dinner, my father proposed to take a drive into the
country, and, as Niko was in the house, invited him and Sonnenberg to
join us. These drives were no joke. Though the carriage was made by
Iochim, most famous of coachmakers, it had been used, if not severely,
for fifteen years till it had become old and ugly, and it weighed more
than a siege mortar, so that we took an hour or more to get outside the
city-gates. Our four horses, ill-matched both in size and colour,
underworked and overfed, were covered with sweat and lather in a quarter
of an hour; and the coachman, knowing that this was forbidden, had to
keep them at a walk. However hot it was, the windows were generally kept
shut. To all this you must add the steady pressure of my father’s eye
and Sonnenberg’s perpetual fussy interference; and yet we boys were glad
to endure it all, in order that we might be together.
We crossed the Moscow River by a ferry at the very place where the
Cossack pulled Sonnenberg out of the water. My father walked along with
gloomy aspect and stooping figure, as always, while Sonnenberg trotted
at his side and tried to amuse him with scandal and gossip. We two
walked on in front till we had got a good lead; then we ran off to the
site of Vitberg’s cathedral[35] on the Sparrow Hills.
Footnote 35:
See part II, chap. IX.
Panting and flushed, we stood there and wiped our brows. The sun was
setting, the cupolas of Moscow glittered in his rays, the city at the
foot of the hill spread beyond our vision, a fresh breeze fanned our
cheeks. We stood there leaning against each other; then suddenly we
embraced and, as we looked down upon the great city, swore to devote our
lives to the struggle we had undertaken.
Such an action may seem very affected and theatrical on our part; but
when I recall it, twenty-six years after, it affects me to tears. That
it was absolutely sincere has been proved by the whole course of our
lives. But all vows taken on that spot are evidently doomed to the same
fate: the Emperor Alexander also acted sincerely when he laid the first
stone of the cathedral there, but the first stone was also the last.
We did not know the full power of our adversary, but still we threw down
the glove. Power dealt us many a shrewd blow, but we never surrendered
to it, and it was not power that crushed us. The scars inflicted by
power are honourable; the strained thigh of Jacob was a sign that he had
wrestled with God in the night.
From that day the Sparrow Hills became a place of pilgrimage for us:
once or twice a year we walked there, and always by ourselves. There,
five years later, Ogaryóv asked me with a modest diffidence whether I
believed in his poetic gift. And in 1833 he wrote to me from the
country:
“Since I left Moscow, I have felt sad, sadder than I ever was in my
life. I am always thinking of the Sparrow Hills. I long kept my
transports hidden in my heart; shyness or some other feeling prevented
me from speaking of them. But on the Sparrow Hills these transports were
not lessened by solitude: you shared them with me, and those moments are
unforgettable; like recollections of bygone happiness, they pursued me
on my journey, though I passed no hills but only forests.”
“Tell the world,” he ended, “how our lives (yours and mine) took shape
on the Sparrow Hills.”
Five more years passed, and I was far from those Hills, but their
Prometheus, Alexander Vitberg, was near me, a sorrowful and gloomy
figure. After my return to Moscow, I visited the place again in 1842;
again I stood by the foundation-stone and surveyed the same scene; and a
companion was with me—but it was not my friend.
§3
After 1827 we two were inseparable. In every recollection of that time,
whether detailed or general, _he_ is always prominent, with the face of
opening manhood, with his love for me. He was early marked with that
sign of consecration which is given to few, and which, for weal or for
woe, separates a man from the crowd. A large oil-painting of Ogaryóv was
made about that time and long remained in his father’s house. I often
stopped in front of it and looked long at it. He was painted with a
loose open collar: the artist has caught successfully the luxuriant
chestnut hair, the fleeting beauty of youth on the irregular features,
and the somewhat swarthy complexion. The canvas preserves the serious
aspect which precedes hard intellectual work. The vague sorrow and
extreme gentleness which shine from the large grey eyes, give promise of
great power of sympathy; and that promise was fulfilled. The portrait
was given to me. A lady, not related to Ogaryóv, afterwards got hold of
it; perhaps she will see these lines and restore it to me.
I do not know why people dwell exclusively on recollections of first
love and say nothing about memories of youthful friendship. First love
is so fragrant, just because it forgets difference of sex, because it is
passionate friendship. Friendship between young men has all the fervour
of love and all its characteristics—the same shy reluctance to profane
its feeling by speech, the same diffidence and absolute devotion, the
same pangs at parting, and the same exclusive desire to stand alone
without a rival.
I had loved Niko long and passionately before I dared to call him
“friend”; and, when we were apart in summer, I wrote in a postscript,
“whether I am your friend or not, I don’t know yet.” He was the first to
use “thou” in writing to me; and he called me Damon before I called him
Pythias.
Smile, if you please, but let it be a kindly smile, such as men smile
when recalling their own fifteenth year. Perhaps it would be better to
ask, “Was I like that in my prime?” and to thank your stars, if you ever
_had_ a prime, and to thank them doubly, if you had a friend to share
it.
The language of that time seems to us affected and bookish. We have
travelled far from its passing enthusiasms and one-sided partisanships,
which suddenly give place to feeble sentimentality or childish laughter.
In a man of thirty it would be absurd, like the famous _Bettina will
schlafen_;[36] but, in its own season, this language of adolescence,
this _jargon de la puberté_, this breaking of the soul’s voice—all this
is quite sincere, and even its bookish flavour is natural to the age
which knows theory and is ignorant of practice.
Footnote 36:
This must refer to Bettina von Arnim’s first interview with Goethe at
Weimar in April, 1807. She writes that she sprang into Goethe’s arms
and slept there. The poet was then 58, and Bettina had ceased to be a
child.
Schiller remained our favourite; the characters in his plays were real
for us; we discussed them and loved or hated them as living beings and
not as people in a book. And more than that—we identified ourselves with
them. I was rather distressed that Niko was too fond of Fiesco, and
wrote to say that behind every Fiesco stands a Verina. My own ideal was
Karl Moor, but I soon deserted him and adopted the Marquis Posa instead.
§4
Thus it was that Ogaryóv and I entered upon life hand in hand. We walked
in confidence and pride; without counting the cost, we answered every
summons and surrendered ourselves sincerely to each generous impulse.
The path we chose was not easy; but we never once left it; wounded and
broken, we still went on, and no one out-stripped us on the way. I have
reached, not our goal but the place where the road turns downhill, and I
seek instinctively for your arm, my friend, that I may press it and say
with a sad smile as we go down together, “So this is all!”
Meanwhile, in the wearisome leisure to which I am condemned by
circumstances, as I find in myself neither strength nor vigour for fresh
toil, I am recording _our_ recollections.[37] Much of what bound us so
closely has found a place in these pages, and I give them to you. For
you they have a double meaning, the meaning of epitaphs, on which we
meet with familiar names.
Footnote 37:
This was written in 1853.
But it is surely an odd reflection, that, if Sonnenberg had learned to
swim or been drowned when he fell into the river, or if he had been
pulled out by some ordinary private and not by that Cossack, we should
never have met; or, if we had, it would have been at a later time and in
a different way—not in the little room of our old house where we smoked
our first cigars, and where we drew strength from one another for our
first long step on the path of life.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V
Details of Home Life—Men of the Eighteenth Century in Russia—A Day at
Home—Guests and Visitors—Sonnenberg—Servants.
§1
THE dulness and monotony of our house became more intolerable with every
year. But for the prospect of University life, my new friendship, my
interest in politics, and my lively turn of character, I must either
have run away or died of the life.
My father was seldom cheerful; as a rule he was dissatisfied with
everyone and everything. He was a man of unusual intelligence and powers
of observation, who had seen and heard a great deal and remembered it;
he was a finished man of the world and could be exceedingly pleasant and
interesting; but he did not choose to be so, and sank deeper and deeper
into a state of morbid solitude.
What precisely it was that infused so much bile and bitterness into his
blood, it is hard to say. No period of passion, of great misfortunes,
mistakes, and losses, had ever taken place in his life. I could never
fully understand the source of that bitter scorn and irritation which
filled his heart, of his distrust and avoidance of mankind, and of the
disgust that preyed upon him. Perhaps he took with him to the grave some
recollection which he never confided to any ear; perhaps it was merely
due to the combination of two things so incongruous as the eighteenth
century and Russian life; and there was a third factor, the traditional
idleness of his class, which had a terrible power of producing
unreasonable tempers.
§2
In Europe, especially in France, the eighteenth century produced an
extraordinary type of man, which combined all the weaknesses of the
Regency with all the strength of Spartans or Romans. Half like Faublas
and half like Regulus, these men opened wide the doors of revolution and
were the first to rush into it, jostling one another in their haste to
pass out by the “window” of the guillotine. Our age has ceased to
produce those strong, complete natures; but last century evoked them
everywhere, even in countries where they were not needed and where their
development was bound to be distorted. In Russia, men who were exposed
to the influence of this powerful European current, did not make
history, but they became unlike other men. Foreigners at home and
foreigners abroad, spoilt for Russia by European prejudices and for
Europe by Russian habits, they were a living contradiction in terms and
sank into an artificial life of sensual enjoyment and monstrous egoism.
Such was the most conspicuous figure at Moscow in those days, Prince
Yusúpov, a Tatar prince, a _grand seigneur_ of European reputation, and
a Russian grandee of brilliant intellect and great fortune. He was
surrounded by a whole pleiad of grey-haired Don Juans and
freethinkers—such men as Masalski, Santi, and the rest. They were all
men of considerable mental development and culture; but they had nothing
to do, and they rushed after pleasure, loved and petted their precious
selves, genially gave themselves absolution for all transgressions,
exalted the love of eating to the height of a Platonic passion, and
lowered love for women into a kind of gluttonous epicureanism.
Old Yusúpov was a sceptic and a _bon-vivant_; he had been the friend of
Voltaire and Beaumarchais, of Diderot and Casti; and his artistic taste
was beyond question. You may convince yourself of this by a single visit
to his palace outside Moscow and a glance at his pictures, if his heir
has not sold them yet by auction. At eighty, this luminary was setting
in splendour, surrounded by beauty in marble and colour, and also in
flesh and blood. Púshkin, who dedicated a noble Epistle to him,[38] used
to converse with Yusúpov in his country-house; and Gonzaga, to whom
Yusúpov dedicated his theatre, used to paint there.
Footnote 38:
_To a Great Man_ (1830).
§3
By his education and service in the Guards, by his birth and connexions,
my father belonged to the same circle; but neither temperament nor
health allowed him to lead a life of dissipation to the age of seventy,
and he went to the opposite extreme. He determined to secure a life of
solitude, and found it intensely tedious—all the more tedious because he
had sought it merely for his own sake. A strong will was degraded into
stubborn wilfulness, and unused powers spoilt his temper and made it
difficult.
At the time of his education European civilisation was so new in Russia
that a man of culture necessarily became less of a Russian. To the end
of his life he wrote French with more ease and correctness than Russian,
and he literally never read a Russian book, not even the Bible. The
Bible, indeed, he did not read even in other languages; he knew, by
hearsay and from extracts, the matter of Holy Scripture in general, and
felt no curiosity to examine further. He did respect Derzhávin and
Krylóv, the first because he had written an ode on the death of his
uncle, Prince Meshcherski, and the latter, because they had acted
together as seconds in a duel. When my father heard that the Emperor
Alexander was reading Karamzín’s _History of the Russian Empire_, he
tried it himself but soon laid it aside: “Nothing but old Slavonic
names! Who can take an interest in all that?”—such was his disparaging
criticism.
His contempt for mankind was unconcealed and without exceptions. Never,
under any circumstances, did he rely on anyone, and I don’t remember
that he ever preferred a considerable request in any quarter; and he
never did anything to oblige other people. All he asked of others was to
maintain appearances: _les apparences, les convenances_—his moral code
consisted of these alone. He excused much, or rather shut his eyes to
much: but any breach of decent forms enraged him to such a degree that
he became incapable of the least indulgence or sympathy. I puzzled so
long over this unfairness that I ended by understanding it: he was
convinced beforehand that any man is capable of any bad action, and
refrains from it only because it does not pay, or for want of
opportunity; but in any breach of politeness he found personal offence,
and disrespect to himself, or “middle-class breeding,” which, in his
opinion, excluded a man from all decent society.
“The heart of man,” he used to say, “is hidden, and nobody knows what
another man feels. I have too much business of my own to attend to other
people, let alone judging their motives. But I cannot live in the same
room with an ill-bred man: he offends me, _il me froisse_. Otherwise he
may be the best man in the world; if so, he will go to Heaven; but I
have no use for him. The most important thing in life, more important
than soaring intellect or erudition, is _savoir vivre_, to do the right
thing always, never to thrust yourself forward, to be perfectly polite
to everyone and familiar with nobody.”
All impulsiveness and frankness my father disliked and called
familiarity; and all display of feeling passed with him for
sentimentality. He regularly represented himself as superior to all such
trivialities; but what that higher object was, for the sake of which he
sacrificed his feelings, I have no idea. And when this proud old man,
with his clear understanding and sincere contempt of mankind, played
this part of a passionless judge, whom did he mean to impress by the
performance? A woman whose will he had broken, though she never tried to
oppose him; a boy whom his own treatment drove from mere naughtiness to
positive disobedience; and a score of footmen whom he did not reckon as
human beings!
And how much strength and endurance was spent for this object, how much
persistence! How surprising the consistency with which the part was
played to the very end, in spite of old age and disease! The heart of
man is indeed hidden.
At the time of my arrest, and later when I was going into exile, I saw
that the old man’s heart was much more open than I supposed to love and
even to tenderness. But I never thanked him for this; for I did not know
how he would have taken my thanks.
As a matter of course, he was not happy. Always on his guard,
discontented with everyone, he suffered when he saw the feelings he
inspired in every member of the household. Smiles died away and talk
stopped whenever he came into the room. He spoke of this with mockery
and resented it; but he made no concession whatever and went his own way
with steady perseverance. Stinging mockery and cool contemptuous irony
were the weapons which he could wield with the skill of an artist, and
he used them equally against us and against the servants. There are few
things that a growing boy resents more; and, in fact, up to the time of
my imprisonment I was on bad terms with my father and carried on a petty
warfare against him, with the men and maids for my allies.
§4
For the rest, he had convinced himself that he was dangerously ill, and
was constantly under treatment. He had a doctor resident in the house
and was visited by two or three other physicians; and at least three
consultations took place each year. His sour looks and constant
complaints of his health (which was not really so bad) soon reduced the
number of our visitors. He resented this; yet he never remonstrated or
invited any friend to the house. An air of terrible boredom reigned in
our house, especially in the endless winter evenings. The whole suite of
drawing-rooms was lit up by a single pair of lamps; and there the old
man walked up and down, a stooping figure with his hands behind his
back; he wore cloth boots, a velvet skull-cap, and a warm jacket of
white lamb-skin; he never spoke a word, and three or four brown dogs
walked up and down with him.
As melancholy grew on him, so did his wish to save, but it was entirely
misapplied. His management of his land was not beneficial either to
himself or to his serfs. The head man and his underlings robbed both
their master and the peasants. In certain matters there was strict
economy: candle-ends were saved and light French wine was replaced by
sour wine from the Crimea; on the other hand, a whole forest was felled
without his knowledge on one estate, and he paid the market price for
his own oats on another. There were men whom he permitted to steal; thus
a peasant, whom he made collector of the _obrók_ at Moscow, and who was
sent every summer to the country, to report on the head man and the
farm-work, the garden and the timber, grew rich enough to buy a house in
Moscow after ten years’ service. From childhood I hated this factotum: I
was present once when he thrashed an old peasant in our court-yard; in
my fury I caught him by the beard and nearly fainted myself. From that
time I could never bear the sight of him. He died in 1845. Several times
I asked my father where this man got the money to buy a house.
“The result of sober habits,” he said; “that man never took a drop in
his life.”
§5
Every year about Shrovetide our peasants from the Government of Penza
brought their payments in kind to Moscow. It was a fortnight’s journey
for the carts, laden with carcasses of pork, sucking-pigs, geese,
chickens, rye, eggs, butter, and even linen. The arrival of the peasants
was a regular field-day for all our servants, who robbed and cheated the
visitors right and left, without any right to do so. The coachman
charged for the water their horses drank, and the women charged for a
warm place by the fire, while the aristocrats of the servants’ hall
expected each to get a sucking-pig and a piece of cloth, or a goose and
some pounds of butter. While the peasants remained in the court-yard,
the servants feasted continuously: soup was always boiling and
sucking-pigs roasting, and the servants’ hall reeked perpetually of
onions, burning fat, and bad whiskey. During the last two days Bakai
never came into the hall, but sat in the kitchen-passage, dressed in an
old livery overcoat, without jacket or waistcoat underneath it; and
other servants grew older visibly and darker in complexion. All this my
father endured calmly enough, knowing that it must be so and that reform
was impossible.
These provisions always arrived in a frozen condition, and thereupon my
father summoned his cook Spiridon and sent him to the markets to enquire
about prices. The cook reported astonishingly low figures, lower by half
than was actually offered. My father called him a fool and sent for his
factotum and a dealer in fruit named Slepushkin. Both expressed horror
at the cook’s figures, made enquiries, and quoted prices a little
higher. Finally Slepushkin offered to take the whole in a lump—eggs,
sucking-pigs, butter, rye, and all,—“to save you, _bátyushka_, from
further worry.” The price he offered was of course a trifle higher than
the cook had mentioned. My father consented: to celebrate the occasion,
Slepushkin presented him with some oranges and gingerbread, and the cook
with a note for 200 _roubles_. And the most extraordinary part of this
transaction was that it was repeated exactly every year.
Slepushkin enjoyed my father’s favour and often borrowed money of him;
and the strange way in which he did it showed his profound knowledge of
my father’s character.
He would borrow 500 _roubles_ for two months, and two days before
payment was due, he would present himself at our house, carrying a
currant-loaf on a dish and 500 _roubles_ on the top of the loaf. My
father took the money, and the borrower bowed low and begged, though
unsuccessfully, to kiss his benefactor’s hand. But Slepushkin would turn
up again a week later and ask for a loan of 1,500 _roubles_. He got it
and again paid his debt on the nail; and my father considered him a
pattern of honesty. A week later, Slepushkin would borrow a still larger
sum. Thus in the course of a year he secured 5,000 _roubles_ in ready
money to use in his business; and for this he paid, by way of interest,
a couple of currant-loaves, a few pounds of figs and walnuts, and
perhaps a hundred oranges and Crimean apples.
§6
I shall end this subject by relating how my father lost nearly a
thousand acres of valuable timber on one of the estates which had come
to him from his brother, the Senator.
In the forties Count Orlóv, wishing to buy land for his sons, offered a
price for this estate, which was in the Government of Tver. The parties
came to terms, and it seemed that the transaction was complete. But when
the Count went to examine his purchase, he wrote to my father that a
forest marked upon the plan of the estate had simply disappeared.
“There!” said my father, “Orlóv is a clever man of course; he was
involved in the conspiracy too.[39] He has written a book on finance;
but when it comes to business, he is clearly no good. Necker[40] over
again! I shall send a friend of my own to look at the place, not a
conspirator but an honest man who understands business.”
Footnote 39:
See p. 207.
Footnote 40:
Jacques Necker (1732-1804), Minister of Finance under Louis XVI; the
husband of Gibbon’s first love, and the father of Mme. de Staël.
But alas! the honest man came back and reported that the forest had
disappeared; all that remained was a fringe of trees, which made it
impossible to detect the truth from the high road or from the
manor-house. After the division between the brothers, my uncle had paid
five visits to the place, but had seen nothing!
§7
That our way of life may be thoroughly understood, I shall describe a
whole day from the beginning. They were all alike, and this very
monotony was the most killing part of it all. Our life went on like an
English clock with the regulator put back—with a slow and steady
movement and a loud tick for each second.
At ten in the morning, the valet who sat in the room next the bedroom,
informed Vyéra Artamónovna, formerly my nurse, that the master was
getting up; and she went off to prepare coffee, which my father drank
alone in his study. The house now assumed a different aspect: the
servants began to clean the rooms or at least to make a pretence of
doing something. The servants’ hall, empty till then, began to fill up;
and even Macbeth, the big Newfoundland dog, sat down before the stove
and stared unwinkingly at the fire.
Over his coffee my father read the _Moscow Gazette_ and the _Journal de
St. Petersburg_. It may be worth mentioning that the newspapers were
warmed to save his hands from contact with the damp sheets, and that he
read the political news in the French version, finding it clearer than
the Russian. For some time he took in the _Hamburg Gazette_, but could
not pardon the Germans for using German print; he often pointed out to
me the difference between French and German type, and said that the
curly tails of the Gothic letters tried his eyes. Then he ordered the
_Journal de Francfort_ for a time, but finally contented himself with
the native product.
When he had read the newspaper, he noticed for the first time the
presence of Sonnenberg in the room. When Niko reached the age of
fifteen, Sonnenberg professed to start a shop; but having nothing to
sell and no customers, he gave it up, when he had spent such savings as
he had in this useful form of commerce; yet he still called himself “a
commercial agent.” He was then much over forty, and at that pleasant age
he lived like the fowls of the air or a boy of fourteen; he never knew
to-day where he would sleep or how he would secure a dinner to-morrow.
He enjoyed my father’s favour to a certain extent: what that amounted
to, we shall see presently.
§8
In 1840 my father bought the house next to ours, a larger and better
house, with a garden, which had belonged to Countess Rostopchín, wife of
the famous governor of Moscow. We moved into it. Then he bought a third
house, for no reason except that it was adjacent. Two of these houses
stood empty; they were never let because tenants would give trouble and
might cause fires—both houses were insured, by the way—and they were
never repaired, so that both were in a fair way to fall down. Sonnenberg
was permitted to lodge in one of these houses, but on conditions: (1) he
must never open the yard-gates after 10 p.m. (as the gates were never
shut, this was an easy condition); (2) he was to provide fire-wood at
his own expense (he did in fact buy it of our coachman); and (3) he was
to serve my father as a kind of private secretary, coming in the morning
to ask for orders, dining with us, and returning in the evening, when
there was no company, to entertain his employer with conversation and
the news.
The duties of his place may seem simple enough; but my father contrived
to make it so bitter that even Sonnenberg could not stand it
continuously, though he was familiar with all the privations that can
befall a man with no money and no sense, with a feeble body, a
pock-marked face, and German nationality. Every two years or so, the
secretary declared that his patience was at an end. He packed up his
traps, got together by purchase or barter some odds and ends of
disputable value and doubtful quality, and started off for the Caucasus.
Misfortune dogged him relentlessly. Either his horse—he drove his own
horse as far as Tiflis and Redut-Kale—came down with him in dangerous
places inhabited by Don Cossacks; or half his wares were stolen; or his
two-wheeled cart broke down and his French scent-bottles wasted their
sweetness on the broken wheel at the foot of Mount Elbruz; he was always
losing something, and when he had nothing else to lose, he lost his
passport. Nearly a year would pass, and then Sonnenberg, older, more
unkempt, and poorer than before, with fewer teeth and less hair than
ever, would turn up humbly at our house, with a stock of Persian powder
against fleas and bugs, faded silk for dressing-gowns, and rusty
Circassian daggers; and down he settled once more in the empty house, to
buy his own fire-wood and run errands by way of rent.
§9
As soon as he noticed Sonnenberg, my father began a little campaign at
once. He acknowledged by a bow enquiries as to his health; then he
thought a little, and asked (this just as an example of his methods),
“Where do you buy your hair-oil?”
I should say that Sonnenberg, though the plainest of men, thought
himself a regular Don Juan: he was careful about his clothes and wore a
curling wig of a golden-yellow colour.
“I buy it of Buis, on the Kuznetsky Bridge,” he answered abruptly,
rather nettled; and then he placed one foot on the other, like a man
prepared to defend himself.
“What do you call that scent?”
“Night-violet,” was the answer.
“The man is cheating you. Violet is a delicate scent, but this stuff is
strong and unpleasant, the sort of thing embalmers use for dead bodies.
In the weak condition of my nerves, it makes me feel ill. Please tell
them to bring me some eau-de-cologne.”
Sonnenberg made off himself to fetch the bottle.
“Oh, no! you’d better call someone. If you come nearer me yourself, I
shall faint.” Sonnenberg, who counted on his hair-oil to captivate the
maids, was deeply injured.
When he had sprinkled the room with eau-de-cologne, my father set about
inventing errands: there was French snuff and English magnesia to be
ordered, and a carriage advertised for sale to be looked at—not that my
father ever bought anything. Then Sonnenberg bowed and disappeared till
dinner-time, heartily glad to get away.
§10
The next to appear on the scene was the cook. Whatever he had bought or
put on the slate, my father always objected to the price.
“Dear, dear! how high prices are! Is nothing coming in from the
country?”
“No, indeed, Sir,” answered the cook; “the roads are very bad just now.”
“Well, you and I must buy less, until they’re mended.”
Next he sat down at his writing table, where he wrote orders for his
bailiff or examined his accounts, and scolded me in the intervals of
business. He consulted his doctor also; but his chief occupation was to
quarrel with his valet, Nikíta. Nikíta was a perfect martyr. He was a
short, red-faced man with a hot temper, and might have been created on
purpose to annoy my father and draw down reproofs upon himself. The
scenes that took place between the two every day might have furnished
material for a comedy, but it was all serious to them. Knowing that the
man was indispensable to him, my father often put up with his rudeness;
yet, in spite of thirty years of complete failure, he still persisted in
lecturing him for his faults. The valet would have found the life
unendurable, if he had not possessed one means of relief: he was
generally tipsy by dinner-time. My father, though this did not escape
him, did not go beyond indirect allusions to the subject: for instance,
he would say that a piece of brown bread and salt prevented a man from
smelling of spirits. When Nikita had taken too much, he shuffled his
feet in a peculiar way while handing the dishes; and my father, on
noticing this, used to invent a message for him at once; for instance,
he would send him to the barber’s to ask if he had changed his address.
Then he would say to me in French: “I know he won’t go; but he’s not
sober; he might drop a soup plate and stain the cloth and give me a
start. Let him take a turn; the fresh air will do him good.”
On these occasions, the valet generally made some reply, or, if not,
muttered to himself as he left the room. Then the master called him back
with unruffled composure, and asked him, “What did you say to me?”
“I said nothing at all to you.”
“Then who are you talking to? Except you and me, there is nobody in this
room or the next.”
“I was talking to myself.”
“A very dangerous thing: madness often begins in that way.”
The valet went off in a fury to his room, which was next to his master’s
bedroom. There he read the _Moscow Gazette_ and made wigs for sale.
Probably to relieve his feelings, he took snuff furiously, and the snuff
was so strong or the membrane of his nose so weak, that he always
sneezed six or seven times after a pinch.
The master’s bell rang and the valet threw down the hair in his hands
and answered the bell.
“Is that you sneezing?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Then, bless you!”—and a motion of the hand dismissed the valet.
§11
On the eve of each Ash Wednesday all the servants came, according to the
old custom, to ask pardon of their master for offences; and on these
solemn occasions my father came into the drawing-room accompanied by his
valet. He always pretended that he could not recognise some of the
people.
“Who is that decent old man, standing in that corner?” he would ask the
valet.
“Danilo, the coachman,” was the impatient answer; for Nikita knew this
was all play-acting.
“Dear, dear! how changed he is! I really believe it is drinking too much
that ages them so fast. What does he do now?”
“He drives fire-wood.”
My father made a face as if he were suffering severe pain. “Drives wood?
What do you mean? Wood is not driven, it is conveyed in a cart. Thirty
years might have taught you to speak better.... Well, Danilo, God in His
mercy has permitted me to meet you yet another year. I pardon you all
your offences throughout the year, your waste of my oats and your
neglect of my horses; and you must pardon me. Go on with your work while
strength lasts; and now that Lent is beginning, I advise you to take
rather less spirits: at our years it is bad for the health, and the
Church forbids it.” This was the kind of way in which he spoke to them
all on this occasion.
§12
We dined at four: the dinner lasted a long time and was very tiresome.
Spiridon was an excellent cook; but his parsimony as well as my father’s
made the meal rather unsatisfying, though there were a number of
courses. My father used to put bits for the dogs in a red jar that stood
beside his place; he also fed them off his fork, a proceeding which was
deeply resented by the servants and therefore by myself also; but I do
not know why.
Visitors, rare in general, were especially rare at dinner. I only
remember one, whose appearance at the table had power at times to
smoothe the frown from my father’s face, General Nikolai Bakhmétyev. He
had given up active service long ago; but he and my father had been gay
young subalterns together in the Guards, in the time of Catherine; and,
while her son was on the throne, both had been court-martialled,
Bakhmétyev for fighting a duel, and my father for acting as a second.
Later, the one had gone off to foreign parts as a tourist, the other to
Ufá as Governor. Bakhmétyev was a big man, healthy and handsome even in
old age: he enjoyed his dinner and his glass of wine, he enjoyed
cheerful conversation, and other things as well. He boasted that in his
day he had eaten a hundred meat patties at a sitting; and, at sixty, he
could eat a dozen buckwheat cakes swimming in a pool of butter, with no
fear of consequences. I witnessed his feats of this kind more than once.
He had some faint influence over my father and could control him to some
extent. When he saw that his friend was in too bad a temper, he would
put on his hat and march away. “I’m off for the present,” he would say;
“you’re not well, and dull to-night. I meant to dine with you but I
can’t stand sour faces at my dinner. _Gehorsamer Diener!_” Then my
father would say to me, by way of explanation: “What life there is in
that old man yet! He may thank God for his good health; he can’t feel
for poor sufferers like me; in this awful frost he rushes about in his
sledge and thinks nothing of it, at this season; but I thank my Creator
every morning for waking up with the breath still in my body. There is
truth in the proverb—it’s ill talking between a full man and a fasting.”
More indulgence than this it was impossible to expect from my father.
Family dinners were given occasionally to near relations, but these
entertainments proceeded rather from deep design than from mere warmth
of heart. Thus my uncle, the Senator, was always invited to a party at
our house for his birthday, February 20, and we were invited by him for
St. John’s Day, June 24, which was my father’s birthday; this
arrangement not only set an edifying example of brotherly love, but also
saved each of them from giving a much larger entertainment at his own
house.
There were some regular guests as well. Sonnenberg appeared at dinner
_ex officio_; he had prepared himself by a bumper of brandy and a
sardine eaten beforehand, and declined the tiny glass of stale brandy
offered him. My last French tutor was an occasional guest—an old miser
and scandal-monger, with an impudent face. M. Thirié constantly made the
mistake of filling his glass with wine instead of beer. My father would
say to him, “If you remember that the wine is on your right, you will
not make the mistake in future”: and Thirié crammed a great pinch of
snuff into his large and crooked nose, and spilt the snuff over his
plate.
§13
One of these visitors was an exceedingly comic figure, a short, bald old
man, who always wore a short, tight tail-coat, and a waistcoat which
ended where a modern waistcoat begins. His name was Dmitri Pimyónov, and
he always looked twenty years out of date, reminding you of 1810 in
1830, and of 1820 in 1840. He was interested in literature, but his
natural capacity was small, and he had been brought up on the
sentimental phrases of Karamzín, or Marmontel and Marivaux. Dmítriev was
his master in poetry; and he had been tempted to make some experiments
of his own on that slippery track which is trod by Russian authors—his
first publication was a translation of La Rochefoucauld’s _Pensées_, and
his second a treatise on _Female Beauty and Charm_. But his chief
distinction was, not that he had once published books which nobody ever
read, but that, if he once began to laugh, he could not stop, but went
on till he crowed convulsively like a child with whooping-cough. He was
aware of this, and therefore took his precautions when he felt it coming
on: he pulled out his handkerchief, looked at his watch, buttoned up his
coat, and covered his face with both hands; then, when the paroxysm was
imminent, he got up, turned his face to the wall, and stood in that
position suffering torments, for half an hour or longer; at last, red in
the face and worn out by his exertions, he sat down again and mopped his
bald head; and for a long time an occasional sob heaved his body.
He was a kindly man, but awkward and poor and a man of letters.
Consequently my father attached no importance to him and considered him
as “below the salt” in all respects; but he was well aware of this
tendency to convulsive laughter, and used to make his guest laugh to
such an extent that other people could not help laughing too in an
uncomfortable fashion. Then the author of all this merriment, with a
slight smile on his own lips, used to look at us as a man looks at
puppies when they are rioting.
My father sometimes played dreadful tricks on this unlucky admirer of
_Female Beauty and Charm_.
A Colonel of Engineers was announced by the servant one day. “Bring him
in,” said my father, and then he turned to Pimyónov and said, “Please be
careful before him: he is unfortunate enough to have a very peculiar
stammer”—here he gave a very successful imitation of the Colonel—“I know
you are easily amused, but please restrain yourself.”
That was quite enough: before the officer had spoken three words,
Pimyónov pulled out his handkerchief, made an umbrella out of his hand,
and finally sprang to his feet.
The officer looked on in surprise, while my father said to me with
perfect composure: “What can be the matter with our friend? He is
suffering from spasms of some kind: order a glass of cold water for him
at once, and bring eau-de-cologne.”
But in these cases Pimyónov clutched his hat and vanished. Home he went,
shouting with laughter for a mile or so, stopping at the crossings, and
leaning against the lamp-posts.
For several years he dined at our house every second Sunday, with few
exceptions; and my father was equally vexed, whether he came or failed
to come. He was not kind to Pimyónov, but the worthy man took the long
walk, in spite of that, until he died. There was nothing laughable about
his death: he was a solitary old bachelor, and, when his long illness
was nearing the end, he looked on while his housekeeper robbed him of
the very sheets upon his bed and then left him without attendance.
§14
But the real martyrs of our dinner-table were certain old and feeble
ladies, who held a humble and uncertain position in the household of
Princess Khovanski, my father’s sister. For the sake of change, or to
get information about our domestic affairs—whether the heads of the
family had quarrelled, whether the cook had beaten his wife and been
detected by his master, whether a maid had slipped from the path of
virtue—these old people sometimes came on a saint’s day to spend the
day. I ought to mention that these old widows had known my father forty
or fifty years earlier in the house of the Princess Meshcherski, where
they were brought up for charity. During this interval between their
precarious youth and unsettled old age, they had quarrelled for twenty
years with husbands, tried to keep them sober, nursed them when
paralysed, and buried them. One had fought the battle of life in
Bessarabia with a husband on half-pay and a swarm of children; another,
together with her husband, had been a defendant for years in the
criminal courts; and all these experiences had left on them the traces
of life in provincial towns—a dread of those who have power in this
world, a spirit of humility and also of blind fanaticism.
Their presence often gave rise to astonishing scenes.
“Are you not well, that you are eating nothing, Anna Yakimovna?” my
father would ask.
Then Anna Yakimovna, the widow of some obscure official, an old woman
with a worn faded face and a perpetual smell of camphor, apologised with
eyes and fingers as she answered: “Excuse me, _bátyushka_—I am really
quite ashamed; but, you know, by old custom to-day is a Fast-day.”
“What a nuisance! You are too scrupulous, _mátushka_: ‘not that which
entereth into a man defileth a man but that which cometh out’: whatever
you eat, the end is the same. But we ought to watch ‘what cometh out of
the mouth,’ and that means scandal against our neighbours. I think you
should dine at home on such days. Suppose a Turk were to turn up, he
might want pilaus; but my house is not a hotel where each can order what
he wants.” This terrified the old woman who had intended to ask for some
milk pudding; but she now attacked the _kvass_ and the salad, and made a
pretence of eating enormously.
But if she, or any of them, began to eat meat on a Fast-day, then my
father (who never fasted himself) would shake his head sorrowfully and
say: “Do you really think it worth while, Anna Yakimovna, to give up the
ancient custom, when you have so few years still to live? I, poor
sinner, don’t fast myself, because I have many diseases; but you may
thank God for your health, considering your age, and you have kept the
fasts all your life; and now all of a sudden—think what an example to
_them_—” pointing to the servants. And the poor old woman once more fell
upon the _kvass_ and the salad.
These scenes filled me with disgust, and I sometimes ventured to defend
the victim by pointing out the desire of conformity which he expressed
at other times. Then it was my father’s custom to get up and take off
his velvet skull-cap by the tassel: holding it over his head, he would
thank me for my lecture and beg me to excuse his forgetfulness. Then he
would say to the old lady: “These are terrible times! Little wonder that
you neglect the Fast, when children teach their parents! What are we
coming to? It is an awful prospect; but fortunately you and I will not
live to see it.”
§15
After dinner my father generally lay down for an hour and a half, and
the servants at once made off to the taverns and tea-shops. Tea was
served at seven, and we sometimes had a visitor at that hour, especially
my uncle, the Senator. This was a respite for us; for he generally
brought a budget of news with him and produced it with much vivacity.
Meanwhile my father put on an air of absolute indifference, keeping
perfectly grave over the most comic stories, and questioning the
narrator, as if he could not see the point, when he was told of any
striking fact.
The Senator came off much worse, when he occasionally contradicted or
disagreed with his younger brother, and sometimes even without
contradicting him, if my father happened to be specially out of humour.
In these serio-comic scenes, the most comic feature was the contrast
between my uncle’s natural vehemence and my father’s artificial
composure. “Oh, you’re not well to-day,” my uncle would say at last, and
then snatch his hat and go off in a hurry. One day he was unable in his
anger to open the door. “Damn that door!” he said, and kicked it with
all his might. My father walked slowly up to the door, opened it, and
said with perfect calmness, “The door works perfectly: but it opens
outwards, and you try to open it inwards and get angry with it.” I may
mention that the Senator, being two years older than my father, always
addressed him as “thou,” while my father said “you” as a mark of respect
for seniority.
When my uncle had gone, my father went to his bedroom; but first he
always enquired whether the gates of the court were shut, and expressed
some doubt when he was told they were, though he never took any steps to
ascertain the facts. And now began the long business of undressing: face
and hands were washed, fomentations applied and medicines swallowed; the
valet placed on the table near the bed a whole arsenal of phials,
nightlights, and pill-boxes. For about an hour the old man read memoirs
of some kind, very often Bourrienne’s _Memorial de St. Hélène_. And so
the day ended.
§16
Such was the life I left in 1834, and such I found it in 1840, and such
it remained down to my father’s death in 1846. When I returned from
exile at the age of thirty, I realised that my father was right in many
respects, and that he, to his misfortune, knew the world only too well.
But did I deserve that he should preach even the truth in a manner so
repulsive to the heart of youth? His intelligence, chilled by a long
life spent in a corrupt society, made him suspicious of all the world;
his feelings were not warm and did not crave for reconciliation; and
therefore he remained at enmity with all his fellow-creatures.
In 1839, and still more in 1842, found him feeble and suffering from
symptoms which were not imaginary. My uncle’s death had left him more
solitary than ever; even his old valet had gone, but he was just the
same; his bodily strength had failed him, but his cruel wit and his
memory were unaffected; he still carried on the same petty tyranny, and
the same old Sonnenberg still pitched his camp in our old house and ran
errands as before.
For the first time, I realised the sadness of that life and watched with
an aching heart that solitary deserted existence, fading away in the
parched and stony desert which he had created around him by his own
actions, but was powerless to change. He knew his powerlessness, and he
saw death approaching, and held out jealously and stubbornly. I felt
intense pity for the old man, but I could do nothing—he was
inaccessible.
I sometimes walked past his study and saw him sitting in his deep
armchair, a hard, uncomfortable seat; he had his dogs round him and was
playing with my three-year-old son, just the two together. It seemed to
me that the sight of this child relaxed the clutching fingers and
stiffening nerves of old age, and that, when his dying hand touched the
cradle of infancy, he could rest from the anxiety and irritable strife
in which his whole life had been spent.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI
The Kremlin Offices—Moscow University—The Chemist—The
Cholera—Philaret—Passek.
§1
IN spite of the ominous prognostications of the one-legged general, my
father entered my name for service at the Government offices in the
Kremlin, under Prince Yusúpov. I signed some document, and there the
matter ended. I never heard anything more about my office, except once,
three years later, when a man was sent to our house by Yusúpov, to
inform me that I had gained the first step of official promotion; this
messenger was the court architect, and he always shouted as if he were
standing on the roof of a five-storeyed house and giving orders from
there to workmen in the cellar. I may remark in passing, that all this
hocus-pocus was useless: when I passed my final examination at the
University, this gave me at once the promotion earned by service; and
the loss of a year or two of seniority was not serious. On the other
hand, this pretence of office-work nearly prevented me from
matriculating; for, when the University authorities found that I was
reckoned as a Government clerk, they refused me permission to take the
examination.
For the clerks in public offices there were special afternoon lectures,
of an elementary kind, which gave the right of admission to a special
examination. Rich idlers, young gentlemen whose education had been
neglected, men who wished to avoid military service and to get the rank
of _assessor_ as soon as possible—such were the candidates for this
examination; and it served as a kind of gold-mine to the senior
professors, who gave private instruction at twenty _roubles_ a lesson.
To pass through these Caudine Forks to knowledge was entirely
inconsistent with my views, and I told my father decidedly that unless
he found some other method I should retire from the Civil Service.
He was angry: he said that my wilfulness prevented him from settling my
future, and blamed my teachers for filling my head with this nonsense;
but when he saw that all this had little effect upon me, he determined
to wait on Prince Yusúpov.
The Prince settled the matter in no time; there was no shillyshallying
about his methods. He sent for his secretary and told him to make out
leave of absence for me—for three years. The secretary hummed and hawed
and respectfully submitted to his chief that four months was the longest
period for which leave could be granted without the imperial sanction.
“Rubbish, my friend!” said the Prince; “the thing is perfectly simple:
if he can’t have leave of absence, then say that I order him to go
through the University course and complete his studies.”
The secretary obeyed orders, and next day found me sitting in the
lecture-theatre of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics.
The University of Moscow and the High School of Tsárskoë Seló[41] play
an important part in the history of Russian education and in the life of
the last two generations.
Footnote 41:
Tsárskoë Seló = The Tsar’s Village, near Petersburg. Púshkin was at
this school.
§2
After the year 1812, Moscow University and Moscow itself rose in
importance. Degraded from her position as an imperial capital by Peter
the Great, the city was promoted by Napoleon, partly by his wish but
mainly against it, to be the capital of the Russian nation. The people
discovered the ties of blood that bound them to Moscow by the pain they
felt on hearing of her capture by the enemy. For her it was the
beginning of a new epoch; and her University became more and more the
centre of Russian education, uniting as it did everything to favour its
development—historical importance and geographical position.
There was a vigorous outburst of intellectual activity in Petersburg
after the death of the Emperor Paul; but this died away in the darkness
that followed the fourteenth of December, 1825.
All was reversed, the blood flowed back to the heart, and all activity
was forced to ferment and burrow underground. But Moscow University
stood firm and was the first visible object to emerge from the universal
fog.
The University soon grew in influence. All the youth and strength of
Russia came together there in one common meeting-place, from all parts
of the country and all sections of society; there they cast off the
prejudices they had acquired at home, reached a common level, formed
ties of brotherhood with one another, and then went back to every part
of Russia and penetrated every class.
Down to 1848 the constitution of our universities was purely democratic.
Their doors were open to everyone who could pass the examination,
provided he was not a serf, or a peasant detained by the village
community. The Emperor Nicholas limited the number of freshmen and
increased the charges to pensioners, permitting poor nobles only to
escape from this burden. But all this belongs to the class of measures
that will disappear together with the passport system, religious
intolerance, and so on.
A motley assemblage of young men, from high to low, from North and
South, soon blended into a compact body united by ties of friendship.
Among us social distinctions had none of that offensive influence which
one sees in English schools and regiments—to say nothing of English
universities which exist solely for the rich and well-born. If any
student among us had begun to boast of his family or his money, he would
have been tormented and sent to Coventry by the rest.
The external distinctions among us were not deep and proceeded from
other sources. For instance, the Medical School was across the park and
somewhat removed from the other faculties; besides, most of the medical
students were Germans or came from theological seminaries. The Germans
kept somewhat apart, and the bourgeois spirit of Western Europe was
strong in them. The whole education of the divinity students and all
their ideas were different from ours; we spoke different languages; they
had grown up under the yoke of monastic control and been crammed with
rhetoric and theology; they envied our freedom, and we resented their
Christian humility.
Though I joined the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, I never had any
great turn or much liking for mathematics. Niko and I were taught the
subject by the same teacher, whom we liked because he told us stories;
he was very entertaining, but I doubt if he could have developed a
special passion in any pupil for his branch of science. He knew as far
as Conic Sections, _i.e._, just what was required from schoolboys
entering the University; a true philosopher, he had never had the
curiosity to glance at the “University branches” of mathematics. It was
specially remarkable that he taught for ten years continuously out of a
single book—Francœur’s treatise—and always stopped at the same page,
having no ambition to go beyond the required minimum.
I chose that Faculty, because it included the subject of natural
science, in which I then took a specially strong interest; and this
interest was due to a rather odd meeting.
§3
I have described already the remarkable division of the family property
in 1822. When it was over, my oldest uncle went to live in Petersburg,
and nothing was heard of him for a long time. At last a report got
abroad that he intended to marry. He was then over sixty, and it was
well known that he had other children as well as a grown-up son. He did,
in fact, marry the mother of his eldest son and so made the son
legitimate. He might as well have legitimised the other children; but
the chief object of these proceedings was well known—he wished to
disinherit his brothers; and he fully attained that object by the
acknowledgement of his son. In the famous inundation of 1824, the water
flooded the carriage in which he was driving. The old man caught cold,
took to his bed, and died in the beginning of 1825.
About the son there were strange reports: it was said that he was
unsociable and had no friends; he was interested in chemistry and spent
his life over the microscope; he read even at meals and disliked women’s
society.
His uncles transferred to him the grievance they had felt against his
father. They always called him “The Chemist,” using this as a term of
contempt, and giving it to be understood that chemistry was a quite
impossible occupation for a gentleman.
He had suffered horrible treatment from his father, who kept a harem in
the house and not only insulted him by the spectacle of shameless senile
profligacy but was actually jealous of his son’s rivalry. From this
dishonourable existence The Chemist tried to escape by means of
laudanum; but a friend who worked at chemistry with him saved his life
by a mere chance. This frightened the father, and he treated his son
better afterwards.
When his father died, The Chemist set free the fair captives of the
harem, reduced by half the heavy dues levied by his father on the
peasants, forgave all arrears, and gave away for nothing the exemptions
which his father used to sell, excusing household servants from service
in the Army.
When he came to Moscow eighteen months later, I was anxious to see him;
for I was inclined to like him for his treatment of his peasants, and
also for the dislike which his uncles unjustly felt for him.
He called on my father one morning—a shortish man, with a large nose and
half his hair gone; he wore gold spectacles, and his fingers were
stained with chemicals. My father’s reception was cold and cutting, but
the nephew gave just as good as he got; when they had taken each other’s
measure, they talked on casual topics with a show of indifference and
parted politely, but a strong feeling of dislike was concealed on both
sides. My father saw that his antagonist would never give way.
They never came closer afterwards. The Chemist very rarely visited his
uncles; the last time he and my father met was after the Senator’s
death—he came to ask a loan of 30,000 _roubles_, in order to buy land.
My father refused to lend it; The Chemist was angry, but he rubbed his
nose and said with a smile: “What possible risk is there? My estate is
entailed, and I want the money for improvements. I have no children, so
that you are the heir to my land as I am to yours.”[42] My father, who
was then seventy-five, never forgave his nephew this sally.
Footnote 42:
Herzen himself was excluded from succession by his birth.
§4
I began to visit him from time to time. His was a singular existence. He
had a large house on the Tver Boulevard, where he lived in one very
small room and used another as a laboratory. His old mother occupied
another small room at the end of the passage; and the rest of the house
was unused, and left exactly as it was when his father migrated to
Petersburg. Tarnished chandeliers, valuable furniture, rarities of all
kinds, grandfather’s clocks supposed to have been bought by Peter the
Great in Amsterdam, armchairs supposed to have belonged to Stanislas
Leshchinski,[43] empty frames, and pictures turned to the wall—all
these, in complete disorder, filled three large drawing-rooms which were
neither heated nor lighted. In the outer hall the servants were
generally playing the banjo and smoking—in the very room where formerly
they hardly dared to breathe or say their prayers. One of them lit a
candle and escorted me through the long museum; and he never failed to
advise me to keep on my overcoat, because it was very cold in the
drawing-rooms. Thick layers of dust covered all the projections of the
furniture, and the contents of the rooms were reflected in the carved
mirrors and seemed to move with the candle; straw, left over from
packing, lay comfortably here and there, together with scraps of paper
and bits of string.
Footnote 43:
King of Poland and father-in-law of Louis XV.
After passing through these rooms, you came at last to a curtained door
which led into the study. The heat in this room was terrific; and here
The Chemist was always to be found, wearing a stained dressing-gown
trimmed with squirrel-fur, sitting behind a rampart of books, and
surrounded by bottles, retorts, crucibles, and other apparatus. A few
years earlier, this room had been the scene of shocking vice and
cruelty; now it smelt of chlorine and was ruled by the microscope; and
in this very room I was born! When my father returned from foreign
parts, he had not yet quarrelled with his brother, and spent some months
under his roof. Here too my wife was born in the year 1817. After two
years The Chemist sold the house, and I spent many evenings there,
arguing about Pan-Slavism and losing my temper with Homyakóv,[44] though
nothing could make him lose his. The chief rooms were altered then, but
the outside steps, front hall, and staircase were unchanged; and the
little study was left as before.
Footnote 44:
Alexyéi Homyakóv (1804-1860), poet, theologian, and a leader of the
Slavophile party.
The Chemist’s household arrangements, simple at all times, were even
simpler when his mother went to the country in summer and took the cook
with her. At four in the afternoon, his valet brought a coffee-pot, made
some strong broth in it, and placed it by the fire of the chemical
furnace, where all sorts of poisons were brewing; then he fetched half a
chicken and a loaf from an eating-house; and that was his master’s
dinner. When it was eaten, the valet washed the coffee-pot and restored
it to its proper functions. The man came again in the evening: he
removed from the sofa a heap of books and a tiger-skin which The Chemist
had inherited from his father; and when he had spread out a sheet and
fetched pillows and a coverlet, the study, which had served as kitchen
and drawing-room, was converted just as easily into a bedroom.
§5
At the very beginning of our acquaintance, The Chemist perceived that I
was no mere idler; and he urged me to give up literature and
politics—the former was mere trifling and the latter not only fruitless
but dangerous—and take to natural science. He gave me Cuvier’s _Essay on
Geological Changes_ and _Candolle’s Botanical Geography_, and, seeing
that I profited by the reading, he placed at my disposal his own
excellent collections and preparations, and even offered to direct my
studies himself. On his own ground he was very interesting—exceedingly
learned, acute, and even amiable, within certain limits. As far as the
monkeys, he was at your service: from the inorganic kingdom up to the
orang-outang, nothing came amiss to him; but he did not willingly
venture farther, and philosophy, in particular, he avoided as mere
moonshine. He was no enemy to reform, nor Rip van Winkle: he simply
disbelieved in human nature—he believed that selfishness is the one and
only motive of our actions, and is limited only by stupidity in some
cases and by ignorance in others.
His materialism shocked me. It was quite unlike the superficial and
half-hearted scepticism of a previous generation. His views were
deliberate, consistent, and definite—one thought of Lalande’s famous
answer to Napoleon. “Kant accepts the hypothesis of a deity,” said
Napoleon. “Sir,” answered the astronomer, “in the course of my studies I
have never found it necessary to make use of that hypothesis.”
The Chemist’s scepticism did not refer merely to theology. Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire he called a mystic, and Oken a mere lunatic. He felt for
the works of natural philosophers the contempt my father had expressed
for Karamzín—“They first invent spiritual forces and First Causes, and
then they are surprised that they cannot prove them or understand them.”
In fact, it was my father over again, but differently educated and
belonging to a different generation.
His views on social questions were even more disquieting. He believed
that men are no more responsible for their actions, good or bad, than
beasts: it was all a matter of constitution and circumstances and
depended mainly on the state of the nervous system, from which, as he
said, people expect more than it is able to give. He disliked family
life, spoke with horror of marriage, and confessed frankly that, at
thirty years of age, he had never once been in love. This hard
temperament had, however, one tender side which showed itself in his
conduct towards his mother. Both had suffered much from his father, and
common suffering had united them closely. It was touching to see how he
did what he could to surround her solitary and sickly old age with
security and attention.
He never tried to make converts to his views, except on chemistry: they
came out casually or were elicited by my questions. He was even
unwilling to answer the objections I urged from an idealistic point of
view; his answers were brief, and he smiled as he spoke, showing the
kind of considerateness that an old mastiff will show to a lapdog whom
he allows to snap at him and only pushes gently from him with his paw.
But I resented this more than anything else and returned unwearied to
the attack, though I never gained a single inch of ground. In later
years I often called to mind what The Chemist had said, just as I
recalled my father’s utterances; and, of course, he was right in
three-fourths of the points in dispute. But, all the same, I was right
too. There are truths which, like political rights, cannot be conveyed
from one man to another before a certain age.
§6
It was The Chemist’s influence that made me choose the Faculty of
Mathematics and Physics. Perhaps I should have done better to take up
medicine; but it did me no great harm to acquire a partial knowledge of
differential and integral equations, and then to lose it absolutely.
Without a knowledge of natural science, there is no salvation for the
modern man. This wholesome food, this strict training of the mind by
facts, this proximity to the life that surrounds ours, and this
acknowledgement of its independence—without these there lurks somewhere
in the soul a monastic cell, and this contains a germ of mysticism which
may cover like a dark cloud the whole intellect.
Before I had gone through College, The Chemist had moved to Petersburg,
and I did not meet him again till my return from exile. A few months
after my marriage I paid a half-secret visit of a few days to my father,
who was living near Moscow. He was still displeased at my marriage, and
the purpose of my journey was to make peace between us once for all. I
broke my journey at the village of Perkhushkov, the place where we had
so often stayed in my youth. The Chemist was expecting me there; he even
had dinner ready for me, and two bottles of champagne. Four or five
years had made no change in him, except that he looked a little older.
Before dinner he said to me quite seriously: “Please tell me frankly how
marriage and domestic life strike you. Do you find it to your taste, or
only passable?” I laughed, and he went on: “I am astonished at your
boldness; no man in a normal condition could ever decide on so awful a
step. More than one good match has been suggested to me; but when I
think that a woman would do as she liked in my room, arranging
everything in what she thinks order, forbidding me to smoke possibly,
making a noise and talking nonsense, I feel such terror of the prospect
that I prefer to die in solitude.”
“Shall I stop the night here or go on to my father’s?” I asked him after
dinner.
“There is room enough in the house,” he answered, “but for your own sake
I advise you to go on; you will get there by ten o’clock. Of course you
know he’s still angry with you. Well, old people’s nerves are generally
less active at night, before they get to sleep, and you will probably
get a much better reception to-night than to-morrow morning; by then his
spurs will be sharp for the fray.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” I laughed, “there is my old instructor in physiology and
materialism! You remind me of those blissful days, when I used to come
to you, like Wagner in _Faust_, to bore you with my idealism and to
suffer, with some impatience, the cold water you threw on it.”
He laughed too and replied, “You have lived long enough, since then, to
find out that all human actions depend merely on the nerves and chemical
combination.”
Later, we somehow drifted apart; probably we were both to blame.
Nevertheless, he wrote me a letter in 1846. I had published the first
part of _Whose Fault Is It?_[45] and was beginning to be the fashion. He
wrote that he was sorry to see me wasting my powers on trivial objects.
“I made it up with you because of your letters on the study of Nature,
in which you made me understand (as far as it is intelligible to the
mind of man) the German philosophy. But why, instead of going on with
serious work, do you write fairy tales?” I sent a few friendly words in
reply, and there our relations ended.
Footnote 45:
A novel.
If these lines happen to fall under The Chemist’s eyes, I beg that he
will read them before going to bed, when the nerves are less active; and
I am convinced that he will be able then to pardon this friendly gossip,
and all the more because I cherish a real regard for him.
§7
And so, at last, the doors of my prison were opened, and I was free. The
solitude of my smallish room and the quiet half-secret interviews with
my one friend, Ogaryóv, were now exchanged for a noisy family of six
hundred members. In a fortnight, I was more at home there than I had
ever been, from the day I was born, in my father’s house.
But even here my father’s house pursued me, in the shape of a footman
whom my father sent with me to the University, especially when I walked
there. I spent a whole term in trying to dodge this escort, and was
formally excused from it at last. I say “formally,” because my valet
Peter, who was entrusted with this duty, very soon realised, first, that
I disliked being escorted, and secondly, that he himself would be much
better off in various places of amusement than in the entrance-hall of
my lecture-room, where he had no occupation except to exchange gossip
and pinches of snuff with the two porters. What was the motive of this
precaution? Was it possible that Peter, who had been liable all his life
to drinking-bouts that lasted for days, could keep me straight? I don’t
suppose my father believed that; but, for his own peace of mind, he took
measures—ineffective, indeed, but still measures—much in the way that
freethinkers keep Lent. This is a characteristic feature of the old
system of education in Russia. Till I was seven, I was not allowed to
come downstairs alone—the flight was rather steep; and Vyéra Artamónovna
went on bathing me till I was eleven. It was of a piece with this system
that I should have a servant walking behind me to College, and should
not be allowed, before I was twenty-one, to be out later than half-past
ten. I was never really free and independent till I was banished; but
for that incident, the system would probably have gone on till I was
twenty-five or thirty-five.
§8
Like most energetic boys who have been brought up alone, I rushed into
the arms of my companions with such frank eagerness, made proselytes
with such sublime confidence, and was myself so fond of everyone, that I
could not but kindle a corresponding warmth in my hearers, who were
mostly of the same age as myself. I was then seventeen.
The process of making friends was hastened partly by the advice which
worldly wisdom gave me—to be polite to all and intimate with none, to
confide in nobody; and there was also the belief which we all took with
us to College, the belief that here our dreams would be realised, that
here we should sow the seed of a future harvest and lay the foundations
of a permanent alliance.
The young men of my time were admirable. It was just the time when
ideals were stirring more and more in Russia. The formalism of
theological training and Polish indolence had alike disappeared, and had
not yet given place to German utilitarianism, which applies culture to
the mind, like manure to a field, in the hope of a heavier crop. The
best students had ceased to consider learning as a tiresome but
indispensable byway to official promotion; and the questions which we
discussed had nothing to do with advancement in the Civil Service.
On the other hand, the pursuit of knowledge had not yet become divorced
from realities, and did not distract our attention from the suffering
humanity around us; and this sympathy heightened the _social_ morality
of the students. My friends and I said openly in the lecture-room
whatever came into our heads; copies of forbidden poems were freely
circulated, and forbidden books were read aloud and commented on; and
yet I cannot recall a single instance of information given by a traitor
to the authorities. There were timid spirits who held aloof and shut
their eyes; but even they held their tongues.
One foolish boy made some disclosures to his mother, when she questioned
him, under threat of the rod, about the Málov affair. The fond
mother—she was a Princess and a leader in society—rushed to the Rector
and communicated her son’s disclosures, in order to prove his
repentance. We found this out, and tormented him so, that he left before
his time was up.
But this episode, which led to my confinement within the walls of the
University prison, is worth telling.
§9
Málov, though a professor in the University, was a stupid, rude,
ill-educated man, an object of contempt and derision to the students.
One of them, when asked by a Visitor, how many professors there were in
their department, replied that there were nine, not counting Málov.[46]
And this man, who could be spoken of in this way, began to treat his
class with more and more rudeness, till they determined to turn him out
of the lecture-room. When their plan was made, they sent two spokesmen
to our department, and invited me to bring reinforcements. I raised the
fiery cross against the foe at once, and was joined by some adherents.
When we entered Málov’s lecture-room, he was there and saw us.
Footnote 46:
There is here an untranslatable play on words.
One fear only was depicted on the faces of all the audience—that he
might refrain for once from rude remarks. But that fear soon passed off.
The tightly packed lecture-room was in a fever and gave vent to a low
suppressed noise. Málov made some objection, and a scraping of feet
began. “You are like horses, expressing your thoughts with your feet,”
said the professor, imagining, I suppose, that horses think by gallop
and trot. Then the storm broke, with hisses and yells. “Turn him out!
turn him out! _Pereat!_” Málov turned white as a sheet and made a
desperate effort to control the noise, but failed; the students jumped
up on the benches. Málov slowly left his chair, hunched himself up, and
made his way to the door. The students followed him through the court to
the street outside, and threw his goloshes out after him. The last
detail was important: if once it reached the street, the proceeding
became much more serious; but what lads of seventeen or eighteen would
ever take that into account?
The University Council took fright and induced the Visitor to represent
the affair as settled, and, with that object, to consign the guilty
persons or someone, at least, to the University prison. That was rather
ingenious on their part. Otherwise, it was likely enough that the
Emperor would send an _aide-de-camp_, and that the _aide-de-camp_, in
order to earn a cross, would have magnified the affair into conspiracy
and rebellion; then he would have advised penal servitude for all the
offenders, and the Emperor, in his mercy, would have sent them to the
colours instead. But seeing vice punished and virtue triumphant, the
Emperor merely confirmed the action of the students by dismissing the
professor. Though we drove Málov as far as the University gates, it was
Nicholas who drove him out of them.
So the fat was in the fire. On the following afternoon, one of the
porters hobbled up to me, a white-haired old man who was normally in a
state more drunk than sober, and produced from the lining of his
overcoat a note from the Rector for me: I was ordered to call on him at
seven in the evening. The porter was soon followed by a student, a baron
from the Baltic Provinces, who was one of the unfortunate victims
enticed by me, and had received an invitation similar to mine. He looked
pale and frightened and began by heaping reproaches on me; then he asked
me what I advised him to say.
“Lie desperately,” I answered; “deny everything, except that there was a
row and you were present.”
“But if the Rector asks why I was in the wrong lecture-room?”
“That’s easy. Say of course that our lecturer did not turn up, and that
you, not wishing to waste your time, went to hear someone else.”
“He won’t believe me.”
“That’s his affair.”
When we entered the University yard, I looked at my baron: his plump
cheeks were very pale, and he was obviously feeling uncomfortable.
“Listen to me,” I said; “you may be sure that the Rector will deal with
me first. Say what I say, with variations; you really took no special
part in the affair. But remember one thing: for making a row and for
telling lies about it, they will, at most, put you in the prison; but,
if you are not careful and involve any other student, I shall tell the
rest and we shall poison your existence.” The baron promised, and kept
his word like a gentleman.
§10
The Rector at that time was Dvigubski, a survival and a typical specimen
of the antediluvian professor—but, for flood I should substitute fire,
the Great Fire of 1812.
They are extinct now: the patriarchal epoch of Moscow University ends
with the appointment of Prince Obolenski as Visitor. In those days the
Government left the University alone: the professors lectured or not,
the students attended or not, just as they pleased, and the latter,
instead of the kind of cavalry uniform they have now, wore mufti of
varying degrees of eccentricity, and very small caps which would hardly
stick on over their virgin locks. Of professors there were two classes
or camps, which carried on a bloodless warfare against each other—one
composed exclusively of Germans, the other of non-Germans. The Germans
included some worthy and learned men, such as Loder, Fischer,
Hildebrandt, and Heim; but they were distinguished as a rule for their
ignorance and dislike of the Russian language, their want of sympathy
with the students, their unlimited consumption of tobacco, and the large
number of stars and orders which they always wore. The non-Germans, on
their side, knew no modern language but Russian; they had the
ill-breeding of the theological school and the servile temper of their
nation; they were mostly overworked, and they made up for abstention
from tobacco by an excessive indulgence in strong drinks. Most of the
Germans came from Göttingen, and most of the non-Germans were sons of
priests.
Dvigubski belonged to the latter class. He looked so much the
ecclesiastic that one of the students—he had been brought up at a
priests’ school—asked for his blessing and regularly addressed him as
“Your Reverence” in the course of an examination. But he was also
startlingly like an owl wearing the Order of St. Anne; and as such he
was caricatured by another student who had come less under church
influences. He came occasionally to our lecture-room, and brought with
him the dean, Chumakov, or Kotelnitski, who had charge of a cupboard
labelled _Materia Medica_, and kept, for some unknown reason, in the
mathematical class-room; or Reiss, who had been imported from Germany
because his uncle knew chemistry, and lectured in French with such a
pronunciation that _poisson_ took the place of _poison_ in his mouth,
and some quite innocent words sounded unprintable. When these old
gentlemen appeared, we stared at them: to us they were a party of
“dug-outs,” the Last of the Mohicans, representatives of a different
age, quite remote from ours—of the time when Knyazhnín and Cheraskov
were read, the time of good-natured Professor Dilthey, who had two dogs
which he named _Babil_ and _Bijou_, because one never stopped barking
and the other was always silent.
§11
But Dvigubski was by no means a good-natured professor: his reception of
us was exceedingly abrupt and discourteous; I talked terrible nonsense
and was rude, and the baron played second fiddle to me. Dvigubski was
provoked and ordered us to appear before the Council next morning. The
Council settled our business in half an hour: they questioned,
condemned, and sentenced us, and referred the sentence, for
confirmation, to Prince Golitsyn.
I had hardly had time to give half a dozen performances in the
lecture-room, representing the proceedings of the University Court, when
the beginning of the lecture was interrupted by the appearance of a
party, consisting of our inspector, an army major, a French
dancing-master, and a corporal, who carried an order for my arrest and
incarceration. Some students escorted me, and there were many more in
the court-yard, who waved their hands or caps. Clearly I was not the
first victim. The University police tried in vain to push them back.
I found two captives already immured in the dirty cellar which served as
a prison, and there were two more in another room; six was the total
number of those who suffered for this affair. We were sentenced to a
diet of bread and water, and, though we declined some soup which the
Rector sent us, we did not suffer; for when the College emptied at
nightfall, our friends brought us cheese, game, cigars, wine, and
_liqueurs_. The sentry grumbled and scolded, but he took a small bribe,
and introduced the supplies. After midnight, he moved to some distance
and allowed several of our friends to join us. And so we spent our time,
feasting by night and sleeping by day.
A certain Panin, a brother of the Minister of Justice and employed under
our Visitor, mindful of Army traditions, took it into his head one night
to go the rounds and inspect our cellar-prison. We had just lit a
candle, keeping it under a chair to betray no light, and were attacking
our midnight meal, when a knocking was heard at the outer door, not the
meek sound that begs for admittance and fears to be heard more than not
to be heard, but a knock of power and authority. The sentry turned
rigid, we hid the bottles and our guests in a cupboard, blew out the
light, and dropped on our pallet-beds. Panin came in. “You appear to be
smoking,” he said—the smoke was so thick that Panin and the inspector
who were carrying a lantern were hardly visible. “Where do they get a
light from? From you?” he asked the sentry. The man swore he was
innocent, and we said that we had got tinder of our own. The inspector
promised to take it and our cigars away; and Panin went off, without
ever noticing that there were twice as many caps in the room as heads.
On Saturday evening the inspector appeared and announced that I and one
other might go home; the rest were to stay till Monday. I resented this
proposal and asked him whether I might stay. He fell back a step, looked
at me with that expression of dignified wrath which is worn by
ballet-dancers when representing angry kings or heroes, and said, “By
all means, if you want to!” Then he left us; and this sally on my part
brought down more paternal wrath on me than any other part of the
affair.
Thus the first nights which I spent away from home were spent in prison.
I was soon to experience a prison of another kind, and there I spent,
not eight days, but nine months; and when these had passed, instead of
going home, I went into exile. But much happened before that.
From this time I was a popular hero in the lecture-room. Till then I was
considered “all right” by the rest; but, after the Málov affair, I
became, like the lady in Gógol, all right in the fullest sense of that
term.
§12
But did we learn anything, meanwhile, and was study possible under such
circumstances? I think we did. The instruction was more limited in
quantity and scope than in the forties. But a university is not bound to
complete scientific education: its business is rather to put a man in a
position to walk by himself; it should raise problems and teach a man to
ask questions. And this is exactly what was done by such professors as
Pávlov and Kachenovsky, each in his own way. But the collision of young
minds, the exchange of ideas, and the discussion of books—all this did
more than professors or lectures to develop and ripen the student.
Moscow University was a successful institution; and the professors who
contributed by their lectures to the development of Lérmontov,
Byelínski, Turgénev, Kavélin, and Pirógov, may play cards with an easy
conscience, or, with a still easier conscience, rest in their graves.
And what astonishing people some of them were! There was Chumakov, who
treated the formulae of Poinsot’s _Algebra_ like so many serfs—adding
letters and subtracting them, mixing up square numbers and their roots,
and treating x as the known quantity. There was Myágkov, who, in spite
of his name,[47] lectured on the harshest of sciences, the science of
tactics. The constant study of this noble subject had actually given a
martial air to the professor; and as he stood there buttoned up to the
throat and erect behind his stock, his lectures sounded more like words
of command than mere conversation. “Gentlemen, artillery!” he would cry
out. It sounded like the field of battle, but it only meant that this
was the heading of his next discourse. And there was Reiss, who lectured
on chemistry but never ventured further than hydrogen—Reiss, who was
elected to the Chair for no knowledge of his own but because his uncle
had once studied the science. The latter was invited to come to Russia
towards the end of Catherine’s reign; but the old man did not want to
move, and sent his nephew instead.
Footnote 47:
_Myágki_ is the Russian for “mild.”
My University course lasted four years, the additional year being due to
the fact that a whole session was lost owing to the cholera. The most
remarkable events of that time were the cholera itself, and the visits
of Humboldt and Uvárov.
§13
When Humboldt[48] was on his way back from the Ural Mountains, he was
welcomed to Moscow at a formal meeting of the Society for the Pursuit of
Natural Science, most of whose members were state functionaries of some
kind, not at all interested in science, either natural or unnatural. But
the glory of Humboldt—a Privy Councillor of the Prussian King, a man on
whom the Tsar had graciously conferred the Order of St. Anne, with
instructions that the recipient was to be put to no expense in the
matter—was a fact of which even they were not ignorant; and they were
determined to show themselves to advantage before a man who had climbed
Chimborazo and who lived at Sans-Souci.[49]
Footnote 48:
Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859), born at Berlin, a famous writer on
natural science.
Footnote 49:
The Prussian palace, near Potsdam.
§14
Our attitude towards Europe and Europeans is still that of provincials
towards the dwellers in a capital: we are servile and apologetic, take
every difference for a defect, blush for our peculiarities and try to
hide them, and confess our inferiority by imitation. The fact is that we
are intimidated: we have never got over the sneers of Peter the Great
and his coadjutors, or the superior airs of French tutors and Germans in
our Civil Service. Western nations talk of our duplicity and cunning;
they believe we want to deceive them, when we are only trying to make a
creditable appearance and pass muster. A Russian will express quite
different political views in talking to different persons, without any
ulterior object, and merely from a wish to please: the bump of
complaisance is highly developed in our skulls.
“Prince Dmitri Golitsyn,” said Lord Durham on one occasion, “is a true
Whig, a Whig at heart.” Prince Golitsyn was a worthy Russian gentleman,
but I do not understand in what sense he was a Whig. It is clear enough
that the Prince in his old age wished to be polite to Lord Durham and
put on the Whig for that purpose.
§15
Humboldt’s reception in Moscow and at the University was a tremendous
affair. Everyone came to meet him—the Governor of the city,
functionaries military and civil, and the judges of the Supreme Court;
and the professors were there wearing full uniform and their Orders,
looking most martial with swords and three-cornered hats tucked under
their arms. Unaware of all this, Humboldt arrived in a blue coat with
gilt buttons and was naturally taken aback. His way was barricaded at
every point between the entrance and the great hall: first the Rector
stopped him, then the Dean, now a budding professor, and now a veteran
who was just ending his career and therefore spoke very slowly; each of
them delivered a speech of welcome in Latin or German or French, and all
this went on in those terrible stone funnels miscalled passages, where
you stopped for a minute at the risk of catching cold for a month.
Humboldt listened bare-headed to them all and replied to them all. I
feel convinced that none of the savages, either red-skinned or
copper-coloured, whom he had met in his travels, made him so
uncomfortable as his reception at Moscow.
When he reached the hall at last and could sit down, he had to get up
again. Our Visitor, Pisarev, thought it necessary to set forth in a few
powerful Russian sentences the merits of His Excellency, the famous
traveller; and then a poet, Glinka, in a deep hoarse voice recited a
poem of his own which began—
“Humboldt, Prometheus of our time!”
What Humboldt wanted was to discuss his observations on the magnetic
pole, and to compare the meteorological records he had taken in the Ural
Mountains with those at Moscow; but the Rector preferred to show him
some relic plaited out of the hair of Peter the Great. It was with
difficulty that Ehrenberg and Rose found an opportunity to tell him
something of their discoveries.[50]
Footnote 50:
Odd views were taken in Russia of Humboldt’s travels. There was a
Cossack at Perm who liked describing how he escorted “a mad Prussian
prince called Gumplot.” When asked what Gumplot did, he said: “He was
quite childish, picking grasses and gazing at sand. At one place he
told me through the interpreter to wade into a pool and fish out what
was at the bottom—there was nothing but what there is at the bottom of
every pool. Then he asked if the water at the bottom was very cold.
You won’t catch me that way, thought I; so I saluted and said, ‘The
rules of the service require it, Your Excellency.’” [Author’s Note.]
Even in unofficial circles, we don’t do things much better in Russia.
Liszt was received in just the same way by Moscow society ten years ago.
There was folly enough over him in Germany; but that was quite a
different thing—old-maidish gush and sentimentality and strewing of
roses, whereas in Russia there was servile acknowledgement of power and
prim formality of a strictly official type. And Liszt’s reputation as a
Don Juan was mixed up in an unpleasant way with it all: the ladies
swarmed around him, just as boys in out-of-the-way places swarm round a
traveller when he is changing horses and stare at him or his carriage or
his hat. Every ear was turned to Liszt, every word and every reply was
addressed to him alone. I remember one evening when Homyakóv, in his
disgust with the company, appealed to me to start a dispute with him on
any subject, that Liszt might discover there were some people in the
room who were not exclusively taken up with him. I can only say one
thing to console our ladies—that Englishwomen treated other celebrities,
Kossuth, Garibaldi, and others, in just the same way, crowding and
jostling round the object of worship; but woe to him who seeks to learn
good manners from Englishwomen, or their husbands!
§16
Our other distinguished visitor was also “a Prometheus of our time” in a
certain sense; only, instead of stealing fire from Zeus, he stole it
from mankind. This Prometheus, whose fame was sung, not by Glinka but by
Púshkin himself in his _Epistle to Lucullus_, was Uvárov, the Minister
of Education.[51] He astonished us by the number of languages he spoke
and by the amount of his miscellaneous knowledge; he was a real shopman
behind the counter of learning and kept samples of all the sciences, the
elements chiefly, in his head. In Alexander’s reign, he wrote reform
pamphlets in French; then he had a German correspondence with Goethe on
Greek matters. After becoming minister, he discoursed on Slavonic poetry
of the fourth century, which made Kachenovsky remark to him that our
ancestors were much busier in fighting bears than in hymning their gods
and kings. As a kind of patent of nobility, he carried about in his
pocket a letter from Goethe, in which Goethe paid him a very odd
compliment: “You have no reason to apologise for your style: you have
succeeded in doing what I could never do—forgetting German grammar.”
Footnote 51:
Serghéi Uvárov (1786-1855) was both Minister of Education and
President of the Academy of Sciences. He used his power to tighten the
censorship and suppressed _The Moscow Telegraph_, edited by Polevoi,
which was the most independent of Russian journals; in this way he
“stole fire from mankind.” The reference to Púshkin is malicious: what
Púshkin wrote about Uvárov in that poem was the reverse of
complimentary. “Lucullus” was Count Sheremétyev and Uvárov was his
heir.
This highly placed Admirable Crichton invented a new kind of torture for
our benefit. He gave directions that the best students should be
selected, and that each of them should deliver a lecture in his own
department of study, in place of the professor. The Deans of course
chose the readiest of the students to perform.
These lectures went on for a whole week. The students had to get up all
the branches of their subject, and the Dean drew a lot to determine the
theme and the speaker. Uvárov invited all the rank and fashion of
Moscow. Ecclesiastics and judges, the Governor of the city, and the old
poet, Dmítriev—everyone was there.
§17
It fell to me to lecture on a mineralogical subject. Our professor,
Lovetski,—he is now dead,—was a tall man with a clumsy figure and
awkward gait, a large mouth and a large and entirely expressionless
face. He wore a pea-green overcoat, adorned in the fashion of the First
Consulate with a variety of capes; and while taking off this garment in
the passage outside the lecture-room, he always began in an even and
wooden voice which seemed to suit his subject, “In our last lecture we
dealt fully with silicon dioxide”—then he took his seat and went on, “We
proceed to aluminium ...” In the definition of each metal, he followed
an absolutely identical formula, so that some of them had to be defined
by negatives, in this way: “Crystallisation: this metal does not
crystallise”; “Use: this metal is never used”; “Service to man: this
substance does nothing but harm to the human organism.”
Still he did not avoid poetical illustration or edifying comment:
whenever he showed us counterfeit gems and explained how they were made,
he never failed to add, “Gentlemen, this is dishonest.” When alluding to
farming, he found _moral_ worth in a cock that was fond of crowing and
courting his hens, and blue blood in a ram if he had “bald knees.” He
had also a touching story about some flies which ran over the bark of a
tree on a fine summer day till they were caught in the resin which had
turned to amber; and this always ended with the words, “Gentlemen, these
things are an allegory.”
When I was summoned forth by the Dean, the audience was somewhat weary:
two lectures on mathematics had had a depressing effect upon hearers who
did not understand a word of the subject. Uvárov called for something
more lively and a speaker with a ready tongue; and I was chosen to meet
the situation.
While I was mounting to the desk, Lovetski sat there motionless, with
his hands on his knees, looking like Memnon or Osiris. I whispered to
him, “Never fear! I shan’t give you away!”—and the worthy professor,
without looking at me and hardly moving his lips, formed the words,
“Boast not, when girding on thine armour!” I nearly laughed aloud, but
when I looked in front of me, the whole room swam before my eyes, I felt
that I was losing colour, and my mouth grew strangely dry. It was my
first speech in public; the lecture-room was full of students, who
relied upon me; at a table just below me sat the dignitaries and all the
professors of our faculty. I took the paper and read out in a voice that
sounded strange to myself, “Crystallisation: its conditions, laws, and
forms.”
While I was considering how I should begin, a consoling thought came
into my head—that, if I did make mistakes, the professors might perhaps
detect them but would certainly not speak of them, while the rest of the
audience would be quite in the dark, and the students would be quite
satisfied if I managed not to break down; for I was a favourite with
them. So I delivered my lecture and ended up with some speculative
observations, addressing myself throughout to my companions and not to
the minister. Students and professors shook me by the hand and expressed
their thanks. Uvárov presented me to Prince Golitsyn, who said
something, but I could not understand it, as the Prince used vowels only
and no consonants. Uvárov promised me a book as a souvenir of the
occasion; but I never got it.
My second and third appearances on a public stage were very different.
In 1836 I took a chief part in amateur theatricals before the Governor
and _beau monde_ of Vyatka. Though we had been rehearsing for a month,
my heart beat furiously and my hands trembled; when the overture came to
an end, dead silence followed, and the curtain slowly rose with an awful
twitching. The leading lady and I were in the green-room; and she was so
sorry for me, or so afraid that I would break down and spoil the piece,
that she administered a full bumper of champagne; but even this was
hardly able to restore me to my senses.
This preliminary experience saved me from all nervous symptoms and
self-consciousness when I made my third public appearance, which was at
a Polish meeting held in London and presided over by the ex-Minister
Ledru-Rollin.
§18
But perhaps I have dwelt long enough on College memories. I fear it may
be a sign of senility to linger so long over them; and I shall only add
a few details on the cholera of 1831.
The word “cholera,” so familiar now in Europe and especially in Russia,
was heard in the North for the first time in 1831. The dread contagion
caused general terror, as it spread up the course of the Volga towards
Moscow. Exaggerated rumours filled men’s minds with horror. The epidemic
took a capricious course, sometimes pausing, and sometimes passing over
a district; it was believed that it had gone round Moscow, when suddenly
the terrible tidings spread like wildfire, “The cholera is in the city.”
A student who was taken ill one morning died in the University hospital
on the evening of the next day. We went to look at the body. It was
emaciated as if by long illness, the eyes were sunk in their sockets,
and the features were distorted. Near him lay his attendant who had
caught the infection during the night.
We were told that the University was to be closed. The notice was read
in our faculty by Denísov, the professor of technology; he was depressed
and perhaps frightened; before the end of the next day he too was dead.
All the students collected in the great court of the University. There
was something touching in that crowd of young men forced asunder by the
fear of infection. All were excited, and there were many pale faces;
many were thinking of relations and friends; we said good-bye to the
scholars who were to remain behind in quarantine, and dispersed in small
groups to our homes. There we were greeted by the stench of chloride of
lime and vinegar, and submitted to a diet which, of itself and without
chloride or cholera, was quite enough to cause an illness.
It is a strange fact, but this sad time is more solemn than sad in my
recollection of it.
The aspect of Moscow was entirely changed. The city was animated beyond
its wont by the feeling of a common life. There were fewer carriages in
the streets; crowds stood at the crossings and spoke darkly of
poisoners; ambulances, conveying the sick, moved along at a footpace,
escorted by police; and people turned aside as the hearses went by.
Bulletins were published twice a day. The city was surrounded by troops,
and an unfortunate beadle was shot while trying to cross the river.
These measures caused much excitement, and fear of disease conquered the
fear of authority; the inhabitants protested; and meanwhile tidings
followed tidings—that so-and-so had sickened and so-and-so was dead.
The Archbishop, Philaret, ordained a Day of Humiliation. At the same
hour on the same day all the priests went in procession with banners
round their parishes, while the terrified inhabitants came out of their
houses and fell on their knees, weeping and praying that their sins
might be forgiven; even the priests were moved by the solemnity of the
occasion. Some of them marched to the Kremlin, where the Archbishop,
surrounded by clerical dignitaries, knelt in the open air and prayed,
“May this cup pass from us!”
§19
Philaret carried on a kind of opposition to Government, but why he did
so I never could understand, unless it was to assert his own
personality. He was an able and learned man, and a perfect master of the
Russian language, which he spoke with a happy flavouring of
Church-Slavonic; but all this gave him no right to be in opposition. The
people disliked him and called him a freemason, because he was intimate
with Prince A. N. Golitsyn and preached in Petersburg just when the
Bible Society was in vogue there. The Synod forbade the use of his
Catechism in the schools. But the clergy who were under his rule
trembled before him.
Philaret knew how to put down the secular powers with great ingenuity
and dexterity; his sermons breathed that vague Christian socialism to
which Lacordaire and other far-sighted Roman Catholics owed their
reputation. From the height of his episcopal pulpit, Philaret used to
say that no man could be legally the mere instrument of another, and
that an exchange of services was the only proper relation between human
beings; and this he said in a country where half the population were
slaves.
Speaking to a body of convicts who were leaving Moscow on their way to
Siberia, he said, “Human law has condemned you and driven you forth; but
the Church will not let you go; she wishes to address you once more, to
pray for you once again, and to bless you before your journey.” Then, to
comfort them, he added, “You, by your punishment, have got rid of your
past, and a new life awaits you; but, among others” (and there were
probably no others present except officials) “there are even greater
sinners than you”; and he spoke of the penitent thief at the Crucifixion
as an example for them.
But Philaret’s sermon on the Day of Humiliation left all his previous
utterances in the shade. He took as his text the passage where the angel
suffered David to choose between war, famine, and pestilence as the
punishment for his sin, and David chose the pestilence. The Tsar came to
Moscow in a furious rage, and sent a high Court official to reprove the
Archbishop; he even threatened to send him to Georgia to exercise his
functions there. Philaret submitted meekly to the reproof; and then he
sent round a new rescript to all the churches, explaining that it was a
mistake to suppose that he had meant David to represent the Tsar: we
ourselves were David, sunk like him in the mire of sin. In this way, the
meaning of the original sermon was explained even to those who had
failed to grasp its meaning at first.
Such was the way in which the Archbishop of Moscow played at opposition.
The Day of Humiliation was as ineffectual as the chloride of lime; and
the plague grew worse and worse.
§20
I witnessed the whole course of the frightful epidemic of cholera at
Paris in 1849. The violence of the disease was increased by the hot June
weather; the poor died like flies; of the middle classes some fled to
the country, and the rest locked themselves up in their houses. The
Government, exclusively occupied by the struggle against the
revolutionists, never thought of taking any active steps. Large private
subscriptions failed to meet the requirements of the situation. The
working class were left to take their chance; the hospitals could not
supply all the beds, nor the police all the coffins, that were required;
and corpses remained for forty-eight hours in living-rooms crowded with
a number of different families.
In Moscow things were different.
Prince Dmitri Golitsyn was Governor of the city, not a strong man, but
honourable, cultured, and highly respected. He gave the line to Moscow
society, and everything was arranged by the citizens themselves without
much interference on the part of Government. A committee was formed of
the chief residents—rich landowners and merchants. Each member of the
committee undertook one of the districts of Moscow. In a few days twenty
hospitals were opened, all supported by voluntary contributions and not
costing one penny to the State. The merchants supplied all that was
required in the hospitals—bedding, linen, and warm clothing, and this
last might be kept by convalescents. Young people acted gratuitously as
inspectors in the hospitals, to see that the free-will offerings of the
merchants were not stolen by the orderlies and nurses.
The University too played its part. The whole medical school, both
teachers and students, put themselves at the disposal of the committee.
They were distributed among the hospitals and worked there incessantly
until the infection was over. For three or four months these young men
did fine work in the hospitals, as assistant physicians, dressers,
nurses, or clerks, and all this for no pecuniary reward and at a time
when the fear of infection was intense. I remember one Little Russian
student who was trying to get an _exeat_ on urgent private affairs when
the cholera began. It was difficult to get an _exeat_ in term-time, but
he got it at last and was just preparing to start when the other
students were entering the hospitals. He put his _exeat_ in his pocket
and joined them. When he left the hospital, his leave of absence had
long expired, and he was the first to laugh heartily at the form his
trip had taken.
Moscow has the appearance of being sleepy and slack, of caring for
nothing but gossip and piety and fashionable intelligence; but she
invariably wakes up and rises to the occasion when the hour strikes and
when the thunder-storm breaks over Russia.
She was wedded to Russia in blood in 1612, and she was welded to Russia
in the fire of 1812.
She bent her head before Peter, because he was the wild beast whose paw
contained the whole future of Russia.
Frowning and pouting out his lips, Napoleon sat outside the gates,
waiting for the keys of Moscow; impatiently he pulled at his bridle and
twitched his glove. He was not accustomed to be alone when he entered
foreign capitals.
“But other thoughts had Moscow mine,” as Púshkin wrote, and she set fire
to herself.
The cholera appeared, and once again the people’s capital showed itself
full of feeling and power!
§21
In August of 1830 we went to stay at Vasílevskoë, and broke our journey
as usual at Perkhushkov, where our house looked like a castle in a novel
of Mrs. Radcliffe’s. After taking a meal and feeding the horses, we were
preparing to resume our journey, and Bakai, with a towel round his
waist, was just calling out to the coachman, “All right!” when a mounted
messenger signed to us to stop. This was a groom belonging to my uncle,
the Senator. Covered with dust and sweat, he jumped off his horse and
delivered a packet to my father. The packet contained the _Revolution of
July_! Two pages of the _Journal des Débats_, which he brought with him
as well as a letter, I read over a hundred times till I knew them by
heart; and for the first time I found the country tiresome.
It was a glorious time and events moved quickly. The spare figure of
Charles X had hardly disappeared into the fogs of Holyrood, when Belgium
burst into flame and the throne of the citizen-king began to totter. The
revolutionary spirit began to work in men’s mouths and in literature:
novels, plays, and poetry entered the arena and preached the good cause.
We knew nothing then of the theatrical element which is part of all
revolutionary movements in France, and we believed sincerely in all we
heard.
If anyone wishes to know how powerfully the news of the July revolution
worked on the rising generation, let him read what Heine wrote, when he
heard in Heligoland that “the great Pan, the pagan god, was dead.” There
is no sham enthusiasm there: Heine at thirty was just as much carried
away, just as childishly excited, as we were at eighteen.
We followed every word and every incident with close attention—bold
questions and sharp replies, General Lafayette and General Lamarque. Not
only did we know all about the chief actors—on the radical side, of
course—but we were warmly attached to them, and cherished their
portraits, from Manuel and Benjamin Constant to Dupont de l’Eure and
Armand Carrel.
§22
Our special group consisted of five to begin with, and then we fell in
with a sixth, Vadim Passek.
There was much that was new to us in Vadim. We five had all been brought
up in very much the same way: we knew no places but Moscow and the
surrounding country; we had read the same books and taken lessons from
the same teachers; we had been educated either at home or in the
boarding-school connected with the University. But Vadim was born in
Siberia, during his father’s exile, and had suffered poverty and
privation. His father was his teacher, and he was one of a large family,
who grew up familiar with want but free from all other restraints.
Siberia has a stamp of its own, quite unlike the stamp of provincial
Russia; those who bear it have more health and more elasticity. Compared
to Vadim we were tame. His courage was of a different kind, heroic and
at times overbearing; the high distinction of suffering had developed in
him a special kind of pride, but he had also a generous warmth of heart.
He was bold, and even imprudent to excess; but a man born in Siberia and
belonging to a family of exiles has this advantage over others, that
Siberia has for him no terrors.
As soon as we met, Vadim rushed into our arms. Very soon we became
intimate. It should be said that there was nothing of the nature of
ceremony or prudent precaution in our little coterie of those days.
“Would you like to know Ketcher, of whom you have heard so much?” Vadim
once asked me.
“Of course I should.”
“Well, come at seven to-morrow evening, and don’t be late; he will be at
our house.”
When I arrived, Vadim was out. A tall man with an expressive face was
waiting for him and shot a glance, half good-natured and half
formidable, at me from under his spectacles. I took up a book, and he
followed my example.
“I say,” he began, as he opened the book, “are you Herzen?”
And so conversation began and soon grew fast and furious. Ketcher soon
interrupted me with no ceremony: “Excuse me! I should be obliged if you
would address me as ‘thou.’”
“By all means!” said I. And from that minute—perhaps it was the
beginning of 1831—we were inseparable friends; and from that minute
Ketcher’s friendly laugh or fierce shout became a part of my life at all
its stages.
The acquaintance with Vadim brought a new and gentler element into our
camp.
As before, our chief meeting-place was Ogaryóv’s house. His invalid
father had gone to live in the country, and he lived alone on the
ground-floor of their Moscow house, which was near the University and
had a great attraction for us all. Ogaryóv had that magnetic power which
forms the first point of crystallisation in any medley of disordered
atoms, provided the necessary affinity exists. Though scattered in all
directions, they become imperceptibly the heart of an organism. In his
bright cheerful room with its red and gold wall-paper, amid the
perpetual smell of tobacco and punch and other—I was going to say,
eatables and drinkables, but now I remember that there was seldom
anything to eat but cheese—we often spent the time from dark till dawn
in heated argument and sometimes in noisy merriment. But, side by side
with that hospitable students’ room, there grew more and more dear to us
another house, in which we learned—I might say, for the first
time—respect for family life.
Vadim often deserted our discussions and went off home: when he had not
seen his mother and sisters for some time, he became restless. To us our
little club was the centre of the world, and we thought it strange that
he should prefer the society of his family; were not we a family too?
Then he introduced us to his family. They had lately returned from
Siberia; they were ruined, yet they bore that stamp of dignity which
calamity engraves, not on every sufferer, but on those who have borne
misfortune with courage.
§23
Their father was arrested in Paul’s reign, having been informed against
for revolutionary designs. He was thrown into prison at Schlüsselburg
and then banished to Siberia. When Alexander restored thousands of his
father’s exiles, Passek was _forgotten_. He was a nephew of the Passek
who became Governor of Poland, and might have claimed a share of the
fortune which had now passed into other hands.
While detained at Schlüsselburg, Passek had married the daughter of an
officer of the garrison. The young girl knew that exile would be his
fate, but she was not deterred by that prospect. In Siberia they made a
shift at first to get on, by selling their last belongings, but the
pressure of poverty grew steadily worse and worse, and the process was
hastened by their increasing family. Yet neither destitution nor manual
toil, nor the absence of warm clothing and sometimes of daily
food—nothing prevented them from rearing a whole family of lion-cubs,
who inherited from their father his dauntless pride and self-confidence.
He educated them by his example, and they were taught by their mother’s
self-sacrifice and bitter tears. The girls were not inferior to the boys
in heroic constancy. Why shrink from using the right word?—they were a
family of heroes. No one would believe what they endured and did for one
another; and they held their heads high through it all.
When they were in Siberia, the three sisters had at one time a single
pair of shoes between them; and they kept it to walk out in, in order to
hide their need from the public eye.
At the beginning of the year 1826 Passek was permitted to return to
Russia. It was winter weather, and it was a terrible business for so
large a family to travel from Tobolsk without furs and without money;
but exile becomes most unbearable when it is over, and they were longing
to be gone. They contrived it somehow. The foster-mother of one of the
children, a peasant woman, brought them her poor savings as a
contribution, and only asked that they would take her too; the post-boys
brought them as far as the Russian frontier for little payment or none
at all; the children took turns in driving or walking; and so they
completed the long winter journey from the Ural ridge to Moscow. Moscow
was their dream and their hope; and at Moscow they found starvation
waiting for them.
When the authorities pardoned Passek, they never thought of restoring to
him any part of his property. On his arrival, worn out by exertions and
privations, he fell ill; and the family did not know where they were to
get to-morrow’s dinner.
The father could bear no more; he died. The widow and children got on as
best they could from day to day. The greater the need, the harder the
sons worked; three of them took their degree at the University with
brilliant success. The two eldest, both excellent mathematicians, went
to Petersburg; one served in the Navy and the other in the Engineers,
and both contrived to give lessons in mathematics as well. They
practised strict self-denial and sent home all the money they earned.
I have a vivid recollection of their old mother in her dark jacket and
white cap. Her thin pale face was covered with wrinkles, and she looked
much older than she was; the eyes alone still lived and revealed such a
fund of gentleness and love, and such a past of anxiety and tears. She
was in love with her children; they were wealth and distinction and
youth to her; she used to read us their letters, and spoke of them with
a sacred depth of feeling, while her feeble voice sometimes broke and
trembled with unshed tears.
Sometimes there was a family gathering of them all at Moscow, and then
the mother’s joy was beyond description. When they sat down to their
modest meal, she would move round the table and arrange things, looking
with such joy and pride at her young ones, and sometimes mutely
appealing to me for sympathy and admiration. They were really, in point
of good looks also, an exceptional family. At such times I longed to
kiss her hand and fall upon her neck.
She was happy then; it would have been well if she had died at one of
those meetings.
In the space of two years she lost her three eldest sons. Diomid died
gloriously, honoured by the foe, in the arms of victory, though he laid
down his life in a quarrel that was not his. As a young general, he was
killed in action against Circassians. But laurels cannot mend a mother’s
broken heart. The other two were less fortunate: the weight of Russian
life lay heavy upon them and crushed them at last.
Alas! poor mother!
§24
Vadim died in February of 1843. I was present at his death; it was the
first time I had witnessed the death of one dear to me, and I realised
the unrelieved horror, the senseless irrationality, and the stupid
injustice of the tragedy.
Ten years earlier Vadim had married my cousin Tatyana, and I was best
man at the wedding. Family life and change of conditions parted us to
some extent. He was happy in his quiet life, but outward circumstances
were unfavourable and his enterprises were unsuccessful. Shortly before
I and my friends were arrested, he went to Khárkov, where he had been
promised a professor’s chair in the University. This trip saved him from
prison; but his name had come to the ears of the police, and the
University refused to appoint him. An official admitted to him that a
document had been received forbidding his appointment, because the
Government knew that he was connected with _disaffected persons_.
So Vadim remained without employment, _i.e._ without bread to eat. That
was his form of punishment.
We were banished. Relations with us were dangerous. Black years of want
began for him; for seven years he struggled to earn a bare living,
suffering from contact with rough manners and hard hearts, and unable to
exchange messages with his friends in their distant place of exile; and
the struggle proved too hard even for his powerful frame.
“One day we had spent all our money to the last penny;”—his wife told me
this story later—“I had tried to borrow ten _roubles_ the day before,
but I failed, because I had borrowed already in every possible quarter.
The shops refused to give us any further credit, and our one thought
was—what will the children get to eat to-morrow? Vadim sat in sorrow
near the window; then he got up, took his hat, and said he meant to take
a walk. I saw that he was very low, and I felt frightened; and yet I was
glad that he should have something to divert his thoughts. When he went
out, I threw myself upon the bed and wept bitter tears, and then I began
to think what was to be done. Everything of any value, rings and spoons,
had been pawned long ago. I could see no resource but one—to go to our
relations and beg their cold charity, their bitter alms. Meanwhile Vadim
was walking aimlessly about the streets till he came to the Petrovsky
Boulevard. As he passed a bookseller’s shop there, it occurred to him to
ask whether a single copy of his book had been sold. Five days earlier
he had enquired, with no result; and he was full of apprehension when he
entered the shop. ‘Very glad to see you,’ said the man; ‘I have heard
from my Petersburg agent that he has sold 300 _roubles’_ worth of your
books. Would you like payment now?’ And the man there and then counted
out fifteen gold pieces. Vadim’s joy was so great that he was
bewildered. He hurried to the nearest eating-house, bought food, fruit,
and a bottle of wine, hired a cab, and drove home in triumph. I was
adding water to some remnants of soup, to feed the children, and I meant
to give him a little, pretending that I had eaten something already; and
then suddenly he came in, carrying his parcel and the bottle of wine,
and looking as happy and cheerful as in times past.”
Then she burst out sobbing and could not utter another word.
After my return from banishment I saw him occasionally in Petersburg and
found him much changed. He kept his old convictions, but he kept them as
a warrior, feeling that he is mortally wounded, still grasps his sword.
He was exhausted and depressed, and looked forward without hope. And
such I found him in Moscow in 1842; his circumstances were improved to
some extent, and his works were appreciated, but all this came too late.
Then consumption—that terrible disease which I was fated to watch once
again[52]—declared itself in the autumn of 1842, and Vadim wasted away.
Footnote 52:
Herzen’s wife died of consumption at Nice in 1852.
A month before he died, I noticed with horror that his powers of mind
were failing and growing dim like a flickering candle; the atmosphere of
the sick-room grew darker steadily. Soon it cost him a laborious effort
to find words for incoherent speech, and he confused words of similar
sound; at last, he hardly spoke except to express anxiety about his
medicines and the hours for taking them.
At three o’clock one February morning, his wife sent for me. The sick
man was in distress and asking for me. I went up to his bed and touched
his hand; his wife named me, and he looked long and wearily at me but
failed to recognise me and shut his eyes again. Then the children were
brought, and he looked at them, but I do not think he recognised them
either. His breathing became more difficult; there were intervals of
quiet followed by long gasps. Just then the bells of a neighbouring
church rang out; Vadim listened and then said, “That’s for early Mass,”
and those were his last words. His wife sobbed on her knees beside the
body; a young college friend, who had shown them much kindness during
the last illness, moved about the room, pushing away the table with the
medicine-bottles and drawing up the blinds. I left the house; it was
frosty and bright out of doors, and the rising sun glittered on the
snow, just as if all was right with the world. My errand was to order a
coffin.
When I returned, the silence of death reigned in the little house. In
accordance with Russian custom, the dead man was lying on the table in
the drawing-room, and an artist-friend, seated at a little distance, was
drawing, through his tears, a portrait of the lifeless features. Near
the body stood a tall female figure, with folded arms and an expression
of infinite sorrow; she stood silent, and no sculptor could have carved
a nobler or more impressive embodiment of grief. She was not young, but
still retained the traces of a severe and stately beauty; wrapped up in
a long mantle of black velvet trimmed with ermine, she stood there like
a statue.
I remained standing at the door.
The silence went on for several minutes; but suddenly she bent forward,
pressed a kiss on the cold forehead, and said, “Good-bye, good-bye, dear
Vadim”; then she walked with a steady step into an inner room. The
painter went on with his work; he nodded to me, and I sat down by the
window in silence; we felt no wish to talk.
The lady was Mme. Chertkóv, the sister of Count Zachar Chernyshev, one
of the exiled Decembrists.
Melchizedek, the Abbot of St. Peter’s Monastery, himself offered that
Vadim should be buried within the convent walls. He knew Vadim and
respected him for his researches into the history of Moscow. He had once
been a simple carpenter and a furious dissenter; but he was converted to
Orthodoxy, became a monk, and rose to be Prior and finally Abbot. Yet he
always kept the broad shoulders, fine ruddy face, and simple heart of
the carpenter.
When the body appeared before the monastery gates, Melchizedek and all
his monks came out to meet the martyr’s poor coffin, and escorted it to
the grave, singing the funeral music. Not far from his grave rests the
dust of another who was dear to us, Venevitínov, and his epitaph runs—
“He knew life well but left it soon”—
and Vadim knew it as well.
But Fortune was not content even with his death. Why indeed did his
mother live to be so old? When the period of exile came to an end, and
when she had seen her children in their youth and beauty and fine
promise for the future, life had nothing more to give her. Any man who
values happiness should seek to die young. Permanent happiness is no
more possible than ice that will not melt.
Vadim’s eldest brother died a few months after Diomid, the soldier, fell
in Circassia: a neglected cold proved fatal to his enfeebled
constitution. He was the oldest of the family, and he was hardly forty.
Long and black are the shadows thrown back by these three coffins of
three dear friends; the last months of my youth are veiled from me by
funeral crape and the incense of thuribles.
* * * * *
§25
After dragging on for a year, the affair of Sungurov and our other
friends who had been arrested came to an end. The charge, as in our case
and in that of Petrashev’s group, was that they _intended_ to form a
secret society and had held treasonable conversations. Their punishment
was to be sent to Orenburg, to join the colours.
And now our turn came. Our names were already entered on the black list
of the secret police. The cat dealt her first playful blow at the mouse
in the following way.
When our friends, after their sentence, were starting on their long
march to Orenburg without warm enough clothing, Ogaryóv and Kiréevski
each started a subscription for them, as none of them had money.
Kiréevski took the proceeds to Staal, the commandant, a very
kind-hearted old soldier, of whom more will be said hereafter. Staal
promised to transmit the money, and then said:
“What papers are those you have?”
“The subscribers’ names,” said Kiréevski, “and a list of subscriptions.”
“Do you trust me to pay over the money?” the old man asked.
“Of course I do.”
“And I fancy the subscribers will trust you. Well, then, what’s the use
of our keeping these names?” and Staal threw the list into the fire; and
I need hardly say that was a very kind action.
Ogaryóv took the money he had collected to the prison himself, and no
difficulty was raised. But the prisoners took it into their heads to
send a message of thanks from Orenburg, and asked some functionary who
was travelling to Moscow to take a letter which they dared not trust to
the post. The functionary did not fail to profit by such an excellent
opportunity of proving his loyalty to his country: he laid the letter
before the head of the police at Moscow.
Volkov, who had held this office, had gone mad, his delusion being that
the Poles wished to elect him as their king, and Lisovski had succeeded
to the position. Lisovski was a Pole himself; he was not a cruel man or
a bad man; but he had spent his fortune, thanks to gambling and a French
actress, and, like a true philosopher, he preferred the situation of
chief of the police at Moscow to a situation in the slums of that city.
He summoned Ogaryóv, Ketcher, Satin, Vadim, Obolenski, and others, and
charged them with having relations with political prisoners. Ogaryóv
replied that he had written to none of them and had received no letter;
if one of them had written to him, he could not be responsible for that.
Lisovski then said:
“You raised a subscription for them, which is even worse. The Tsar is
merciful enough to pardon you for once; but I warn you, gentlemen, that
you will be strictly watched, and you had better be careful.”
He looked meaningly at all the party and his eye fell on Ketcher, who
was older and taller than the rest, and was lifting his eyebrows and
looking rather fierce. He added, “I wonder that you, Sir, considering
your position in society, are not ashamed to behave so.” Ketcher was
only a country doctor; but, from Lisovski’s words, he might have been
Chancellor of the imperial Orders of Knighthood.
I was not summoned; it is probable that the letter did not contain my
name.
This threat we regarded as a promotion, a consecration, a powerful
incentive. Lisovski’s warning was oil on the flames; and, as if to make
it easier for the police, we all took to velvet caps of the Karl
Sand[53] fashion and tricolor neckties.
Footnote 53:
The German student who shot Kotzebue.
Colonel Shubinski now climbed up with the velvet tread of a cat into
Lisovski’s place, and soon marked his predecessor’s weakness in dealing
with us: our business was to serve as one of the steps in his official
career, and we did what was wanted.
§26
But first I shall add a few words about the fate of Sungurov and his
companions.
Kolreif returned to Moscow, where he died in the arms of his
grief-stricken father.
Kostenetski and Antonovitch both distinguished themselves as private
soldiers in the Caucasus and received commissions.
The fate of the unhappy Sungurov was far more tragic. On reaching the
first stage of their journey from Moscow, he asked permission of the
officer, a young man of twenty, to leave the stifling cottage crammed
with convicts for the fresh air. The officer walked out with him.
Sungurov watched for an opportunity, sprang off the road, and
disappeared. He must have known the district well, for he eluded the
officer; but the police got upon his tracks next day. When he saw that
escape was impossible, he cut his throat. He was carried back to Moscow,
unconscious and bleeding profusely. The unlucky officer was deprived of
his commission.
Sungurov did not die. He was tried again, not for a political offence
but for trying to escape. Half his head was shaved; and to this outward
ignominy the court added a _single stroke_ of the whip to be inflicted
inside the prison. Whether this was actually carried out, I do not know.
He was then sent off to work in the mines at Nerchinsk.
His name came to my ears just once again and then vanished for ever.
When I was at Vyatka, I happened to meet in the street a young doctor, a
college friend; and we spoke about old times and common acquaintances.
“Good God!” said the doctor, “do you know whom I saw on my way here? I
was waiting at a post-house for fresh horses. The weather was
abominable. An officer in command of a party of convicts came in to warm
himself. We began to talk; and hearing that I was a doctor, he asked me
to take a look at one of the prisoners on march; I could tell him
whether the man was shamming or really very bad. I consented: of course,
I intended in any case to back up the convict. There were eighteen
convicts, as well as women and children, in one smallish barrack-room;
some of the men had their heads shaved, and some had not; but they were
all fettered. They opened out to let the officer pass; and we saw a
figure wrapped in a convict’s overcoat and lying on some straw in a
corner of the dirty room.
“‘There’s your patient,’ said the officer. No fibs on my part were
necessary: the man was in a high fever. He was a horrible sight: he was
thin and worn out by prison and marching; half his head was shaved, and
his beard was growing; he was rolling his eyes in delirium and
constantly calling for water.
“‘Are you feeling bad, my man?’ I said to the patient, and then I told
the officer that he was quite unable to march.
“The man fixed his eyes on me and then muttered, ‘Is that you?’ He
addressed me by name and added, in a voice that went through me like a
knife, ‘You won’t know me again.’
“‘Excuse me,’ I said; ‘I have forgotten your name,’ and I took his hot
dry hand in my own.
“‘I am Sungurov,’ he answered. Poor fellow!” repeated the doctor,
shaking his head.
“Well, did they leave him there?” I asked.
“No: a cart was got for him.”
After writing the preceding narrative, I learned that Sungurov died at
Nerchinsk.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII
End of College Life—The “Schiller” Stage—Youth—The Artistic
Life—Saint-Simonianism and N. Polevói—Polezháev.
§1
THE storm had not yet burst over our heads when my college course came
to an end. My experience of the final stage of education was exactly
like that of everyone else—constant worry and sleepless nights for the
sake of a painful and useless test of the memory, superficial cramming,
and all real interest in learning crowded out by the nightmare of
examination. I wrote an astronomical dissertation for the gold medal,
and the silver medal was awarded me. I am sure that I should not be able
now to understand what I wrote then, and that it was worth its
weight—_in silver_.
I have sometimes dreamt since that I was a student preparing for
examination; I thought with horror how much I had forgotten and how
certain I was to fail, and then I woke up, to rejoice with all my heart
that the sea and much else lay between me and my University, and that no
one would ever examine me again or venture to place me at the bottom of
the list. My professors would really be astonished, if they could
discover how much I have gone backward in the interval.
When the examinations were over, the professors shut themselves up to
count the marks, and we walked up and down the passage and the
vestibule, the prey of hopes and fears. Whenever anyone left the
meeting, we rushed to him, eager to learn our fate; but the decision
took a long time. At last Heiman came out and said to me, “I
congratulate you; you have passed.” “Who else? who else?” I asked; and
some names were mentioned. I felt both sad and pleased. As I walked out
of the college gates, I felt that I was leaving the place otherwise than
yesterday or ever before, and becoming a stranger to that great family
party in which I had spent four years of youth and happiness. On the
other hand, I was pleased by the feeling that I was now admittedly grown
up, and also—I may as well confess it—by the fact that I had got my
degree at the first time of asking.
I owe so much to my _Alma Mater_ and I continued so long after my degree
to live her life and near her, that I cannot recall the place without
love and reverence. She will not accuse me of ingratitude. In this case
at least it is easy to be grateful; for gratitude is inseparable from
love and bright memories of youthful development. Writing in a distant
foreign land, I send her my blessing!
§2
The year which we spent after leaving College formed a triumphant
conclusion to the first period of our youth. It was one long festival of
friendship, of high spirits, of inspiration and exchange of ideas.
We were a small group of college friends who kept together after our
course was over, and continued to share the same views and the same
ideals. Not one of us thought of his future career or financial
position. I should not praise this attitude in grown-up people, but I
value it highly in a young man. Except where it is dried up by the
corrupting influence of vulgar respectability, youth is everywhere
unpractical, and is especially bound to be so in a young country which
has many ideals and has realised few of them. Besides, the unpractical
sphere is not always a fool’s paradise: every aspiration for the future
involves some degree of imagination; and, but for unpractical people,
practical life would never get beyond a tiresome repetition of the old
routine.
Enthusiasm of some kind is a better safeguard against real degradation
than any sermon. I can remember youthful follies, when high spirits
carried us sometimes into excesses; but I do not remember a single
disgraceful incident among our set, nothing that a man need be really
ashamed of or seek to forget and cover up. Bad things are done in
secret; and there was nothing secret in our way of life. Half our
thoughts—more than half—were not directed towards that region where idle
sensuality and morbid selfishness are concentrated on impure designs and
make vice thrice as vicious.
§3
I have a sincere pity for any nation where old heads grow on young
shoulders; youth is a matter, not only of years, but of temperament. The
German student, in the height of his eccentricity, is a hundred times
better than the young Frenchman or Englishman with his dull grown-up
airs; as to American boys who are men at fifteen—I find them simply
repulsive.
In old France the young nobles were really young and fine; and later,
such men as Saint Just and Hoche, Marceau and Desmoulins, heroic
children reared on Rousseau’s dark gospel, were young too, in the true
sense of the word. The Revolution was the work of young men: neither
Danton nor Robespierre, nor Louis XVI himself survived his thirty-fifth
year. Under Napoleon, the young men all became subalterns; the
Restoration, the “resurrection of old age,” had no use for young men;
and everybody became grown-up, business-like, and dull.
The last really young Frenchmen were the followers of Saint Simon.[54] A
few exceptions only prove the fact that their young men have no
liveliness or poetry in their disposition. Escousse and Lebras blew
their brains out, just because they were young men in a society where
all were old. Others struggled like fish jerked out of the water upon a
muddy bank, till some of them got caught on the barricades and others on
the Jesuits’ hook.
Footnote 54:
Claude Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), founded at Paris a
society which was called by his name. His views were socialistic.
Still youth must assert itself somehow, and therefore most young
Frenchmen go through an “artistic” period: that is, those who have no
money spend their time in humble cafés of the Latin quarter with humble
grisettes, and those who have money resort to large cafés and more
expensive ladies. They have no “Schiller” stage; but they have what may
be called a “Paul de Kock” stage, which soon consumes in poor enough
fashion all the strength and vigour of youth, and turns out a man quite
fit to be a commercial traveller. The “artistic” stage leaves at the
bottom of the soul one passion only—the thirst for money, which excludes
all other interests and determines all the rest of life; these practical
men laugh at abstract questions and despise women—this is the result of
repeated conquests over those whose profession it is to be defeated.
Most young men, when going through this stage, find a guide and
philosopher in some hoary sinner, an extinct celebrity who lives by
sponging on his young friends—an actor who has lost his voice, or an
artist whose hand has begun to shake. Telemachus imitates his Mentor’s
pronunciation and his drinks, and especially his contempt for social
problems and profound knowledge of gastronomy.
In England this stage takes a different form. There young men go through
a stormy period of amiable eccentricity, which consists in silly
practical jokes, absurd extravagance, heavy pleasantries, systematic but
carefully concealed profligacy, and useless expeditions to the ends of
the earth. Then there are horses, dogs, races, dull dinners; next comes
the wife with an incredible number of fat, red-cheeked babies, business
in the City, the _Times_, parliament, and old port which finally clips
the Englishman’s wings.
We too did foolish things and were riotous at times, but the prevailing
tone was different and the atmosphere purer. Folly and noise were never
an object in themselves. We believed in our mission; and though we may
have made mistakes, yet we respected ourselves and one another as the
instruments of a common purpose.
§4
But what were these revels of ours like? It would suddenly occur to one
of us that this was the fourth of December and that the sixth was St.
Nicholas’ Day. Many of us were named after the Saint, Ogaryóv himself
and at least three more. “Well, who shall give a dinner on the day?” “I
will—I will.” “I’ll give one on the seventh.” “Pooh! what’s the seventh?
We must contribute and all give it together; and that will be a grand
feed.”
“All right. Where shall we meet?”
“So-and-so is ill. Clearly we must go to him.”
Then followed plans and calculations which gave a surprising amount of
occupation to both hosts and guests at the coming banquet. One Nikolai
went off to a restaurant to order the supper, another elsewhere to order
cheese and savouries; our wine invariably came from the famous shop of
Deprez. We were no connoisseurs and never soared above champagne;
indeed, our youthful palates deserted even champagne in favour of a
brand called _Rivesaltes Mousseux_. I once noticed this name on the card
of a Paris restaurant, and called for a bottle of it, in memory of 1833.
But alas! not even sentiment could induce me to swallow more than one
glass.
The wine had to be tasted before the feast, and as the samples evidently
gave great satisfaction, it was necessary to send more than one mission
for this purpose.
§5
In this connexion I cannot refrain from recording something that
happened to our friend Sokolovski. He could never keep money and spent
at once whatever he got. A year before his arrest, he paid a visit to
Moscow. As he had been successful in selling the manuscript of a poem,
he determined to give a dinner and to ask not only us but such bigwigs
as Polevói, Maximovitch, and others. On the day before, he went out with
Polezháev, who was in Moscow with his regiment, to make his purchases;
he bought all kinds of needless things, cups and even a _samovár_, and
finally wine and eatables, such as stuffed turkeys, patties, and so on.
Five of us went that evening to his rooms, and he proposed to open a
single bottle for our benefit. A second followed, and at the end of the
evening, or rather, at dawn of the next day, it appeared that the wine
was all drunk and that Sokolovski had no more money. After paying some
small debts, he had spent all his money on the dinner. He was much
distressed, but, after long reflexion, plucked up courage and wrote to
all the bigwigs that he was seriously ill and must put off his party.
§6
For our “feast of the four birthdays” I wrote out a regular programme,
which was honoured by the special attention of Golitsyn, one of the
Commissioners at our trial, who asked me if the programme had been
carried out exactly.
“_À la lettre!_” I replied. He shrugged his shoulders, as if his own
life had been a succession of Good Fridays spent in a monastery.
Our suppers were generally followed by a lively discussion over a
question of the first importance, which was this—how ought the punch to
be made? Up to this point, the eating and drinking went on usually in
perfect harmony, like a bill in parliament which is carried _nem. con._
But over the punch everyone had his own view; and the previous meal
enlivened the discussion. Was the punch to be set on fire now, or to be
set on fire later? How was it to be set on fire? Was champagne or
sauterne to be used to put it out? Was the pineapple to be put in while
it was still alight, or not?
“While it’s burning, of course! Then all the flavour will pass into the
punch.”
“Nonsense! The pineapple floats and will get burnt. That will simply
spoil it.”
“That is all rubbish,” cries Ketcher, high above the rest; “but I’ll
tell you what does matter—we must put out the candles.”
When the candles were out, all faces looked blue in the flickering light
of the punch. The room was not large, and the burning rum soon raised
the temperature to a tropical height. All were thirsty, but the punch
was not ready. But Joseph, a French waiter sent from the restaurant,
rose to the occasion: he brewed a kind of antithesis to the punch—an
iced drink compounded of various wines with a foundation of brandy; and
as he poured in the French wine, he explained, like a true son of the
_grande nation_, that the wine owed its excellence to having twice
crossed the equator—“_Oui, oui, messieurs, deux fois l’équateur,
messieurs!_”
Joseph’s cup was as cold as the North Pole. When it was finished, there
was no need of any further liquid; but Ketcher now called out, “Time to
put out the punch!” He was stirring a fiery lake in a soup-tureen, while
the last lumps of sugar hissed and bubbled as they melted.
In goes the champagne, and the flame turns red and careers over the
surface of the punch, looking somehow angry and menacing.
Then a desperate shout: “My good man, are you mad? The wax is dropping
straight off the bottle into the punch!”
“Well, just you try yourself, in this heat, to hold the bottle so that
the wax won’t melt!”
“You should knock it off first, of course,” continues the critic.
“The cups, the cups—have we enough to go round? How many are we—ten,
twelve, fourteen? That’s right.”
“We’ve not got fourteen cups.”
“Then the rest must take glasses.”
“The glasses will crack.”
“Not a bit of it, if you put the spoon in.”
The candles are re-lit, the last little tongue of flame darts to the
centre of the bowl, twirls round, and disappears.
And all admit that the punch is a success, a splendid success.
§7
Next day I awake with a headache, clearly due to the punch. That comes
of mixing liquors. Punch is poison; I vow never to touch it in future.
My servant, Peter, comes in. “You came in last night, Sir, wearing
someone else’s hat, not so good a hat as your own.”
“The deuce take my hat!”
“Perhaps I had better go where you dined last night and enquire?”
“Do you suppose, my good man, that one of the party went home
bare-headed?”
“It can do no harm—just in case.”
Now it dawns upon me that the hat is a pretext, and that Peter has been
invited to the scene of last night’s revelry.
“All right, you can go. But first tell the cook to send me up some
pickled cabbage.”
“I suppose, Sir, the birthday party went off well last night?”
“I should rather think so! There never was such a party in all my time
at College.”
“I suppose you won’t want me to go to the University with you to-day?”
I feel remorse and make no reply.
“Your papa asked me why you were not up yet. But I was a match for him.
‘He has a headache,’ I said, ‘and complained when I called him; so I
left the blinds down.’ And your papa said I was right.”
“For goodness sake, let me go to sleep! You wanted to go, so be off with
you!”
“In a minute, Sir; I’ll just order the cabbage first.”
Heavy sleep again seals my eyelids, and I wake in two hours’ time,
feeling a good deal fresher. I wonder what my friends are doing. Ketcher
and Ogaryóv were to spend the night where we dined. I must admit that
the punch was very good; but its effect on the head is annoying. To
drink it out of a tumbler is a mistake; I am quite determined in future
to drink it always out of a _liqueur_-glass.
Meanwhile my father has read the papers and interviewed the cook as
usual.
“Have you a headache to-day?” he asks.
“Yes, a bad one.”
“Perhaps you’ve been working too hard.”
But the way he asked the question showed he did not believe that.
“Oh, I forgot: you were dining with your friends last night, eh?”
“Yes, I was.”
“A birthday party? And they treated you handsomely, I’ve no doubt. Did
you have soup made with Madeira? That sort of thing is not to my taste.
I know one of your young friends is too often at the bottle; but I can’t
imagine where he gets the taste from. His poor father used to give a
dinner on his birthday, the twenty-ninth of June, and ask all his
relations; but it was always a very modest, decent affair. But this
modern fashion of champagne and sardines _à l’huile_—I don’t like to see
it. Your other friend, that unfortunate young Ogaryóv, is even worse.
Here he is, left to himself in Moscow, with his pockets full of money.
He is constantly sending his coachman, Jeremy, for wine; and the
coachman has no objection, because the dealer gives him a present.”
“Well, I did have lunch with Ogaryóv. But I don’t think my headache can
be due to that. I think I will take a turn in the open air; that always
does me good.”
“By all means, but I hope you will dine at home.”
“Certainly; I shan’t be long.”
§8
But I must explain the allusion to Madeira in the soup. A year or more
before the grand birthday party, I went out for a walk with Ogaryóv one
day in Easter week, and, in order to escape dinner at home, I said that
I had been invited to dine at their house by Ogaryóv’s father.
My father did not care for my friends in general and used to call them
by wrong names, though he always made the same mistake in addressing any
of them; and Ogaryóv was less of a favourite than any, both because he
wore his hair long and because he smoked without being asked to do so.
But on the other hand, my father could hardly mutilate his own
grandnephew’s surname; and also Ogaryóv’s father, both by birth and
fortune, belonged to the select circle of people whom my father
recognised. Hence he was pleased to see me going often to their house,
but he would have been still better pleased if the house had contained
no son.
He thought it proper therefore for me to accept the invitation. But
Ogaryóv and I did not repair to his father’s respectable dining-room. We
went first to Price’s place of entertainment. Price was an acrobat, whom
I was delighted to meet later with his accomplished family in both
Geneva and London. He had a little daughter, whom we admired greatly and
had christened Mignon.[55] When we had seen Mignon perform and decided
to come back for the evening performance, we went to dine at the best
restaurant in Moscow. I had one gold piece in my pocket, and Ogaryóv had
about the same sum. At that time we had no experience in ordering
dinners. After long consultation we ordered fish-soup made with
champagne, a bottle of Rhine wine, and a tiny portion of game. The
result was that we paid a terrific bill and left the restaurant feeling
exceedingly hungry. Then we went back to see Mignon a second time.
Footnote 55:
After the character in Goethe’s _Wilhelm Meister_. The Prices were
evidently English.
When I was saying good-night to my father, he said, “Surely you smell of
wine.”
“That is probably because there was Madeira in the soup at dinner,” I
replied.
“Madeira? That must be a notion of M. Ogaryóv’s son-in-law; no one but a
guardsman would think of such a thing.”
And from that time until my banishment, whenever my father thought that
I had been drinking wine and that my face was flushed, he invariably
attributed it to Madeira in the soup I had taken.
§9
On the present occasion, I hurried off to the scene of our revelry and
found Ogaryóv and Ketcher still there. The latter looked rather the
worse for wear; he was finding fault with some of last night’s
arrangements and was severely critical. Ogaryóv was trying a hair of the
dog that bit him, though there was little left to drink after the party,
and that little was now diminished by the descent of my man Peter, who
was by this time in full glory, singing a song and drumming on the
kitchen table downstairs.
§10
When I recall those days, I cannot remember a single incident among our
set such as might weigh upon a man’s conscience and cause shame in
recollection; and this is true of every one of the group without a
single exception.
Of course, there were Platonic lovers among us, and disenchanted youths
of sixteen. Vadim even wrote a play, in order to set forth the “terrible
experience of a broken heart.” The play began thus—_A garden, with a
house in the distance; there are lights in the windows. The stage is
empty. A storm is blowing. The garden gate clinks and bangs in the
wind._
“Are the garden and the gate your only _dramatis personae_?” I asked
him. He was rather offended. “What nonsense you talk!” he said; “it is
no joking matter but an actual experience. But if you take it so, I
won’t read any more.” But he did, none the less.
There were also love affairs which were by no means Platonic, but there
were none of those low intrigues which ruin the woman concerned and
debase the man; there were no “kept mistresses”; that disgusting phrase
did not even exist. Cool, safe, prosaic profligacy of the bourgeois
fashion, profligacy by contract, was unknown to our group.
If it is said that I approve of the worst form of profligacy, in which a
woman sells herself for the occasion, I say that it is you, not I, who
approve of it—not you in particular but people in general. That custom
rests so securely on the present constitution of society that it needs
no patronage of mine.
Our interest in general questions and our social ideals saved us; and a
keen interest in scientific and artistic matters helped us too. These
preoccupations had a purifying effect, just as lighted paper makes
grease-spots vanish. I have kept some of Ogaryóv’s letters written at
that time; and they give a good idea of what was mostly in our minds.
For example, he writes to me on June 7, 1833:
“I think we know one another well enough to speak frankly. You won’t
show my letter to anyone. Well, for some time past I have been so
filled—crushed, I might say—with feelings and ideas, that I think—but
‘think’ is too weak: I have an indelible impression—that I was born to
be a poet, whether writer of verse or composer of music, never mind
which. I feel it impossible to part from this belief; I have a kind of
intuition that I am a poet. Granting that I still write badly, still
this inward fire and this abundance of feeling make me hope that some
day I shall write decently—please excuse the triviality of the phrase.
Tell me, my dear friend, whether I can believe in my vocation. Perhaps
you know better than I do myself, and you will not be misled.”
He writes again on August 18:
“So you answer that I am a poet, a true poet. Is it possible that you
understand the full significance of your words? If you are right, my
feelings do not deceive me, and the object and aspiration of my whole
life is not a mere dream. Are you right, I wonder? I feel sure that I am
not merely raving. No one knows me better than you do—of that I am sure.
Yes! that high vocation is not mere raving, no mere illusion; it is too
high for deception, it is real, I live by virtue of it and cannot
imagine a different life for myself. If only I could compose, what a
symphony would take wing from my brain just now! First a majestic
_adagio_; but it has not power to express all; I need a _presto_, a wild
stormy _presto_. _Adagio_ and _presto_ are the two extremes. A fig for
your _andante_ and _allegro moderato_! They are mere mediocrities who
can only lisp, incapable alike of strong speech or strong feeling.”
To us this strain of youthful enthusiasm sounds strange, from long
disuse; but these few lines of a youth under twenty show clearly enough
that the writer is insured against commonplace vice and commonplace
virtue, and that, though he may stumble into the mire, he will come out
of it undefiled.
There is no want of self-confidence in the letter; but the believer has
doubts and a passionate desire for confirmation and a word of sympathy,
though that hardly needed to be spoken. It is the restlessness of
creative activity, the uneasy looking about of a pregnant soul.
“As yet,” he writes in the same letter, “I can’t catch the sounds that
my brain hears; a physical incapacity limits my fancy. But never mind! A
poet I am, and poetry whispers to me truth which I could never have
discovered by cold logic. Such is my theory of revelation.”
Thus ends the first part of our youth, and the second begins with
prison. But before starting on that episode, I must record the ideas
towards which we were tending when the prison-doors closed on us.
§11
The period that followed the suppression of the Polish revolt in 1830
was a period of rapid enlightenment. We soon perceived with inward
horror that things were going badly in Europe and especially in
France—France to which we looked for a political creed and a banner; and
we began to distrust our own theories.
The simple liberalism of 1826, which by degrees took, in France, the
form sung by Béranger and preached by men like La Fayette and Benjamin
Constant, lost its magic power over us after the destruction of Poland.
It was then that some young Russians, including Vadim, took refuge in
the profound study of Russian history, while others took to German
philosophy.
But Ogaryóv and I did not join either of these groups. Certain ideals
had become so much a part of us that we could not lightly give them up.
Our belief in the sort of dinner-table revolution dear to Béranger was
shaken; but we sought something different, which we could not find
either in Nestor’s _Chronicle_[56] or in the transcendentalism of
Schelling.
Footnote 56:
The earliest piece of literature in Russian.
§12
During this period of ferment and surmise and endeavour to understand
the doubts that frightened us, there came into our hands the pamphlets
and sermons of the Saint-Simonians, and the report of their trial. We
were much impressed by them.
Superficial and unsuperficial critics alike have had their laugh at _Le
Père Enfantin_[57] and his apostles; but a time is coming when a
different reception will be given to those forerunners of socialism.
Footnote 57:
Barthèlemy Enfantin (1796-1864) carried on the work of Saint-Simon in
Paris.
Though these young enthusiasts wore long beards and high waistcoats, yet
their appearance in a prosaic world was both romantic and serious. They
proclaimed a new belief, they had something to say—a principle by virtue
of which they summoned before their judgement-seat the old order of
things, which wished to try them by the _code Napoléon_ and the religion
of the House of Orleans.
First, they proclaimed the emancipation of women—summoning them to a
common task, giving them control of their own destiny, and making an
alliance with them on terms of equality.
Their second dogma was the restoration of the body to credit—_la
réhabilitation de la chair_.
These mighty watchwords comprise a whole world of new relations between
human beings—a world of health and spirit and beauty, a world of natural
and therefore pure morality. Many mocked at the “freedom of women” and
the “recognition of the rights of the flesh,” attributing a low and
unclean meaning to these phrases; for our minds, corrupted by
monasticism, fear the flesh and fear women. A religion of life had come
to replace the religion of death, a religion of beauty to replace the
religion of penance and emaciation, of fasting and prayer. The crucified
body had risen in its turn and was no longer abashed. Man had reached a
harmonious unity: he had discovered that he is a single being, not made,
like a pendulum, of two different metals that check each other; he
realised that the foe in his members had ceased to exist.
It required no little courage to preach such a message to all France,
and to attack those beliefs which are so strongly held by all Frenchmen
and so entirely powerless to influence their conduct.
To the old world, mocked by Voltaire and shattered by the Revolution,
and then patched and cobbled for their own use by the middle classes,
this was an entirely new experience. It tried to judge these dissenters,
but its own hypocritical pretences were brought to light by them in open
court. When the Saint-Simonians were charged with religious apostasy,
they pointed to the crucifix in the court which had been veiled since
the revolution of 1830; and when they were accused of justifying
sensuality, they asked their judge if he himself led a chaste life.
A new world was knocking at the door, and our hearts and minds flew open
to welcome it. The socialism of Saint Simon became the foundation of our
beliefs and has remained an essential part of them.
With the impressibility and frankness of youth, we were easily caught up
by the mighty stream and early passed across that Jordan, before which
whole armies of mankind stop short, fold their arms, and either march
backwards or hunt about for a ford; but there is no ford over Jordan!
We did not all cross. Socialism and rationalism are to this day the
touchstones of humanity, the rocks which lie in the course of revolution
and science. Groups of swimmers, driven by reflexion or the waves of
circumstance against these rocks, break up at once into two camps,
which, under different disguises, remain the same throughout all
history, and may be distinguished either in a great political party or
in a group of a dozen young men. One represents logic; the other,
history: one stands for dialectics; the other for evolution. Truth is
the main object of the former, and feasibility of the latter. There is
no question of choice between them: thought is harder to tame than any
passion and pulls with irresistible force. Some may be able to put on
the drag and stop themselves by means of feeling or dreams or fear of
consequences; but not all can do this. If thought once masters a man, he
ceases to discuss whether the thing is practicable, and whether the
enterprise is hard or easy: he seeks truth alone and carries out his
principles with inexorable impartiality, as the Saint-Simonians did in
their day and as Proudhon[58] does still.
Footnote 58:
Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1863), a French publicist and socialist.
Our group grew smaller and smaller. As early as 1833, the “liberals”
looked askance at us as backsliders. Just before we were imprisoned,
Saint-Simonianism raised a barrier between me and Polevói. He had an
extraordinarily active and adroit mind, which could rapidly assimilate
any food; he was a born journalist, the very man to chronicle successes
and discoveries and the battles of politicians or men of science. I made
his acquaintance towards the end of my college course and saw a good
deal of him and his brother, Xenophon. He was then at the height of his
reputation; it was shortly before the suppression of his newspaper, the
_Telegraph_.
To Polevói the latest discovery, the freshest novelty either of incident
or theory, was the breath of his nostrils, and he was changeable as a
chameleon. Yet, for all his lively intelligence, he could never
understand the Saint-Simonian doctrine. What was to us a revelation was
to him insanity, a mere Utopia and a hindrance to social progress. I
might declaim and expound and argue as much as I pleased—Polevói was
deaf, grew angry and even bitter. He especially resented opposition on
the part of a student; for he valued his influence over the young, and
these disputes showed him that it was slipping out of his grasp.
One day I was hurt by the absurdity of his criticisms and told him that
he was just as benighted as the foes against whom he had been fighting
all his life. Stung to the quick by my taunt he said, “Your time will
come too, when, in recompense for a lifetime of labour and effort, some
young man with a smile on his face will call you a back number and bid
you get out of his way.” I felt sorry for him and ashamed of having hurt
his feelings; and yet I felt also that this complaint, more suitable to
a worn-out gladiator than a tough fighter, contained his own
condemnation. I was sure then that he would never go forward, and also
that his active mind would prevent him from remaining where he was, in a
position of unstable equilibrium.
His subsequent history is well known: he wrote _Parasha, the Siberian
Girl_.
If a man cannot pass off the stage when his hour has struck and cannot
adopt a new rôle, he had better die. That is what I felt when I looked
at Polevói, and at Pius the Ninth, and at how many others!
§13
To complete my chronicle of that sad time, I should record here some
details about Polezháev.
Even at College he became known for his remarkable powers as a poet. One
of his productions was a humorous poem called _Sashka_, a parody of
Púshkin’s _Onégin_; he trod on many corns in the pretty and playful
verse, and the poem, never intended for print, allowed itself the
fullest liberty of expression.
When the Tsar Nicholas came to Moscow for his coronation in the autumn
of 1826, the secret police furnished him with a copy of the poem.
So, at three one morning, Polezháev was wakened by the Vice-Chancellor
and told to put on his uniform and appear at the office. The Visitor of
the University was waiting for him there: he looked to see that
Polezháev’s uniform had no button missing and no button too many, and
then carried him off in his own carriage, without offering any
explanation.
They drove to the house of the Minister of Education. The Minister of
Education also gave Polezháev a seat in his carriage, and this time they
drove to the Palace itself.
Prince Liven proceeded to an inner room, leaving Polezháev in a
reception room, where, in spite of the early hour—it was 6 a.m.—several
courtiers and other high functionaries were waiting. They supposed that
the young man had distinguished himself in some way and began a
conversation with him at once; one of them proposed to engage him as
tutor to his son.
He was soon sent for. The Tsar was standing, leaning on a desk and
talking to Liven. He held a manuscript in his hand and darted an
enquiring glance at Polezháev as he entered the room. “Did you write
these verses?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Polezháev.
“Well, Prince,” the Tsar went on, “I shall give you a specimen of
University education; I shall show you what the young men learn there.”
Then he turned to Polezháev and added, “Read this manuscript aloud.”
Polezháev’s agitation was such that he could not read it; and he said
so.
“Read it at once!”
The loud voice restored his strength to Polezháev, and he opened the
manuscript. He said afterwards that he had never seen _Sashka_ so well
copied or on such fine paper.
At first he read with difficulty, but by degrees he took courage and
read the poem to the end in a loud lively tone. At the most risky
passages the Tsar waved his hand to the Minister and the Minister closed
his eyes in horror.
“What do you say, Prince?” asked Nicholas, when the reading was over. “I
mean to put a stop to this profligacy. These are surviving relics of the
old mischief,[59] but I shall root them out. What character does he
bear?”
Footnote 59:
_I.e._, the Decembrist conspiracy.
Of course the Minister knew nothing about his character; but some humane
instinct awoke in him, and he said, “He bears an excellent character,
Your Majesty.”
“You may be grateful for that testimony. But you must be punished as an
example to others. Do you wish to enter the Army?”
Polezháev was silent.
“I offer you this means of purification. Will you take it?”
“I must obey when you command,” said Polezháev. The Tsar came close up
to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He said: “Your fate depends upon
yourself. If I forget about you, you may write to me.” Then he kissed
Polezháev on the forehead.
This last detail seemed to me so improbable that I made Polezháev repeat
it a dozen times; he swore that it was true.
From the presence of the Tsar, Polezháev was taken to Count Diebitch,
who had rooms in the Palace. Diebitch was roused out of his sleep and
came in yawning. He read through the document and asked the
_aide-de-camp_, “Is this the man?” “Yes,” was the reply.
“Well, good luck to you in the service! I was in it myself and worked my
way up, as you see; perhaps you will be a field-marshal yourself some
day.” That was Diebitch’s kiss—a stupid, ill-timed, German joke.
Polezháev was taken to camp and made to serve with the colours.
When three years had passed, Polezháev recalled what the Tsar had said
and wrote him a letter. No answer came. After a few months he wrote
again with the same result. Feeling sure that his letters were not
delivered, he deserted, his object being to present a petition in
person. But he behaved foolishly: he hunted up some college friends in
Moscow and was entertained by them, and of course further secrecy was
impossible. He was arrested at Tver and sent back to his regiment as a
deserter; he had to march all the way in fetters. A court-martial
sentenced him to run the gauntlet, and the sentence was forwarded to the
Tsar for confirmation.
Polezháev determined to commit suicide before the time of his
punishment. For long he searched in the prison for some sharp
instrument, and at last he confided in an old soldier who was attached
to him. The soldier understood and sympathised with his wish; and when
he heard that the reply had come, he brought a bayonet and said with
tears in his eyes as he gave it to Polezháev, “I sharpened it with my
own hands.”
But the Tsar ordered that Polezháev should not be flogged.
It was at this time that he wrote that excellent poem which begins—
“No consolation
Came when I fell;
In jubilation
Laughed fiends of Hell.”
He was sent to the Caucasus, where he distinguished himself and was
promoted corporal. Years passed, and the tedium and hopelessness of his
position were too much for him. For him it was impossible to become a
poet at the service of the police, and that was the only way to get rid
of the knapsack.
There was, indeed, one other way, and he preferred it: he drank, in
order to forget. There is one terrible poem of his—_To Whiskey_.
He got himself transferred to a regiment of carabineers quartered at
Moscow. This was a material improvement in his circumstances, but cruel
consumption had already fastened on his lungs. It was at this time I
made his acquaintance, about 1833. He dragged on for four years more and
died in the military hospital.
When one of his friends went to ask for the body, to bury it, no one
knew where it was. The military hospital carries on a trade in dead
bodies, selling them to the University and medical schools,
manufacturing skeletons, and so on. Polezháev’s body was found at last
in a cellar; there were other corpses on the top of it, and the rats had
gnawed one of the feet.
His poems were published after his death, and it was intended to add a
portrait of him in his private’s uniform. But the censor objected to
this, and the unhappy victim appears with the epaulettes of an
officer—he was promoted while in the hospital.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PART II
PRISON AND EXILE
(1834-1838)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I
A Prophecy—Ogaryóv’s Arrest—The Fires—A Moscow Liberal—Mihail Orlóv—The
Churchyard.
§1
ONE morning in the spring of 1834 I went to Vadim’s house. Though
neither he nor any of his brothers or sisters were at home, I went
upstairs to his little room, sat down, and began to write.
The door opened softly, and Vadim’s mother came in. Her tread was
scarcely audible; looking tired and ill, she went to an armchair and sat
down. “Go on writing,” she said; “I just looked in to see if Vadya had
come home. The children have gone out for a walk, and the downstairs
rooms are so empty and depressing that I felt sad and frightened. I
shall sit here for a little, but don’t let me interfere with what you
are doing.”
She looked thoughtful, and her face showed more clearly than usual the
shadow of past suffering, and that suspicious fear of the future and
distrust of life which is the invariable result of great calamities when
they last long and are often repeated.
We began to talk. She told me something of their life in Siberia. “I
have come through much already,” she said, shaking her head, “and there
is more to come: my heart forebodes evil.”
I remembered how, sometimes, when listening to our free talk on
political subjects, she would turn pale and heave a gentle sigh; and
then she would go away to another room and remain silent for a long
time.
“You and your friends,” she went on, “are on the road that leads to
certain ruin—ruin to Vadya and yourself and all of you. You know I love
you like a son”—and a tear rolled down her worn face.
I said nothing. She took my hand, tried to smile, and went on: “Don’t be
vexed with me; my nerves are upset. I quite understand. You must go your
own way; for you there is no other; if there were, you would be
different people. I know this, but I cannot conquer my fears; I have
borne so much misfortune that I have no strength for more. Please don’t
say a word of this to Vadya, or he will be vexed and argue with me. But
here he is!”—and she hastily wiped away her tears and once more begged
me by a look to keep her secret.
Unhappy mother! Saint and heroine! Corneille’s _qu’il mourût_[60] was
not a nobler utterance than yours.
Footnote 60:
Said of his son by the father in Corneille’s play, _Horace_.
Her prophecy was soon fulfilled. Though the storm passed harmless this
time over the heads of her sons, yet the poor lady had much grief and
fear to suffer.
§2
“Arrested him?” I called out, springing out of bed, and pinching myself,
to find out if I was asleep or awake.
“Two hours after you left our house, the police and a party of Cossacks
came and arrested my master and seized his papers.”
The speaker was Ogaryóv’s valet. Of late all had been quiet, and I could
not imagine what pretext the police had invented. Ogaryóv had only come
to Moscow the day before. And why had they arrested him, and not me?
To do nothing was impossible. I dressed and went out without any
definite purpose. It was my first experience of misfortune. I felt
wretched and furious at my own impotence.
I wandered about the streets till at last I thought of a friend whose
social position made it possible for him to learn the state of the case,
and, perhaps, to mend matters. But he was then living terribly far off,
at a house in a distant suburb. I called the first cab I saw and hurried
off at top speed. It was then seven o’clock in the morning.
§3
Eighteen months before this time we had made the acquaintance of this
man, who was a kind of a celebrity in Moscow. Educated in Paris, he was
rich, intelligent, well-informed, witty, and independent in his ideas.
For complicity in the Decembrist plot he had been imprisoned in a
fortress till he and some others were released; and though he had not
been exiled, he wore a halo. He was in the public service and had great
influence with Prince Dmitri Golitsyn, the Governor of Moscow, who liked
people with independent views, especially if they could express them in
good French; for the Governor was not strong in Russian.
V.—as I shall call him—was ten years our senior and surprised us by his
sensible comments on current events, his knowledge of political affairs,
his eloquent French, and the ardour of his liberalism. He knew so much
and so thoroughly; he was so pleasant and easy in conversation; his
views were so clearly defined; he had a reply to every question and a
solution of every problem. He read everything—new novels, pamphlets,
newspapers, poetry, and was working seriously at zoology as well; he
drew up reports for the Governor and was organising a series of
school-books.
His liberalism was of the purest tricolour hue, the liberalism of the
Left, midway between Mauguin and General Lamarque.[61]
Footnote 61:
French politicians prominent about 1830.
The walls of his study in Moscow were covered with portraits of famous
revolutionaries, from John Hampden and Bailly to Fieschi and Armand
Carrel,[62] and a whole library of prohibited books was ranged beneath
these patron saints. A skeleton, with a few stuffed birds and scientific
preparations, gave an air of study and concentration to the room and
toned down its revolutionary appearance.
Footnote 62:
Bailly, Mayor of Paris, was guillotined in 1793. Fieschi was executed
in 1836 for an attempt on the life of Louis Philippe. Armand Carrel
was a French publicist and journalist who fell in a duel in 1836.
We envied his experience and knowledge of the world; his subtle irony in
argument impressed us greatly. We thought of him as a practical reformer
and rising statesman.
§4
V. was not at home. He had gone to Moscow the evening before, for an
interview with the Governor; his valet said that he would certainly
return within two hours. I waited for him.
The country-house which he occupied was charming. The study where I
waited was a high spacious room on the ground-floor, with a large door
leading to a terrace and garden. It was a hot day; the scent of trees
and flowers came from the garden; and some children were playing in
front of the house and laughing loudly. Wealth, ease, space, sun and
shade, flowers and verdure—what a contrast to the confinement and close
air and darkness of a prison! I don’t know how long I sat there,
absorbed in bitter thoughts; but suddenly the valet who was on the
terrace called out to me with an odd kind of excitement.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Please come here and look.”
Not wishing to annoy the man, I walked out to the terrace, and stood
still in horror. All round a number of houses were burning; it seemed as
if they had all caught fire at once. The fire was spreading with
incredible speed.
I stayed on the terrace. The man watched the fire with a kind of uneasy
satisfaction, and he said, “It’s spreading grandly; that house on the
right is certain to be burnt.”
There is something revolutionary about a fire: fire mocks at property
and equalises fortunes. The valet felt this instinctively.
Within half an hour, a whole quarter of the sky was covered with smoke,
red below and greyish black above. It was the beginning of those fires
which went on for five months, and of which we shall hear more in the
sequel.
At last V. arrived. He was in good spirits, very cordial and friendly,
talking of the fires past which he had come and of the common report
that they were due to arson. Then he added, half in jest: “It’s
Pugatchóv[63] over again. Just look out, or you and I will be caught by
the rebels and impaled.”
Footnote 63:
The leader of a famous rebellion in Catherine’s reign. Many nobles
were murdered with brutal cruelty.
“I am more afraid that the authorities will lay us by the heels,” I
answered. “Do you know that Ogaryóv was arrested last night by the
police?”
“The police! Good heavens!”
“That is why I came. Something must be done. You must go to the Governor
and find out what the charge is; and you must ask leave for me to see
him.”
No answer came, and I looked at V. I saw a face that might have belonged
to his elder brother—the pleasant colour and features were changed; he
groaned aloud and was obviously disturbed.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“You know I told you, I always told you, how it would end. Yes, yes, it
was bound to happen. It’s likely enough they will shut me up too, though
I am perfectly innocent. I know what the inside of a fortress is like,
and it’s no joke, I can tell you.”
“Will you go to the Governor?”
“My dear fellow, what good would it do? Let me give you a piece of
friendly advice: don’t say a word about Ogaryóv; keep as quiet as you
can, or harm will come of it. You don’t know how dangerous affairs like
this are. I frankly advise you to keep out of it. Make what stir you
like, you will do Ogaryóv no good and you will get caught yourself. That
is what autocracy means—Russian subjects have no rights and no means of
defence, no advocates and no judges.”
But his brave words and trenchant criticisms had no attractions for me
on this occasion: I took my hat and departed.
§5
I found a general commotion going on at home. My father was angry with
me because Ogaryóv had been arrested; my uncle, the Senator, was already
on the scene, rummaging among my books and picking out those which he
thought dangerous; he was very uneasy.
On my table I found an invitation to dine that day with Count Orlóv.
Possibly he might be able to do something? Though I had learned a lesson
by my first experiment, it could do no harm to try.
Mihail Orlóv was one of the founders of the famous Society of
Welfare;[64] and if he missed Siberia, he was less to blame for that
than his brother, who was the first to gallop up with his squadron of
the Guards to the defence of the Winter Palace, on December 14, 1825.
Orlóv was confined at first to his own estates, and allowed to settle in
Moscow a few years later. During his solitary life in the country he
studied political economy and chemistry. The first time I met him he
spoke of a new method of naming chemical compounds. Able men who take up
some science late in life often show a tendency to rearrange the
furniture, so to speak, to suit their own ideas. Orlóv’s system was more
complicated than the French system, which is generally accepted. As I
wished to attract his attention, I argued in a friendly way that, though
his system was good, it was not as good as the old one.
Footnote 64:
An imitation of the _Tugenbund_ formed by German students in 1808. In
Russia the society became identified with the Decembrists.
He contested the point, but ended by agreeing with me.
My little trick was successful, and we became intimate. He saw in me a
rising possibility, and I saw in him a man who had fought for our
ideals, an intimate friend of our heroes, and a shining light amid
surrounding darkness.
Poor Orlóv was like a caged lion. He beat against the bars of his cage
at every turn; nowhere could he find elbow-room or occupation, and he
was devoured by a passion for activity.
More than once since the collapse of France[65] I have met men of this
type, men to whom political activity was an absolute necessity, who
never could find rest within the four walls of their study or in family
life. To them solitude is intolerable: it makes them fanciful and
unreasonable; they quarrel with their few remaining friends, and are
constantly discovering plots against themselves, or else they make plots
of their own, in order to unmask the imaginary schemes of their enemies.
Footnote 65:
_I.e._, after December 2, 1851.
A theatre of action and spectators are as vital to these men as the air
they breathe, and they are capable of real heroism under such
conditions. Noise and publicity are essential to them; they must be
making speeches and hearing the objections of their opponents; they love
the excitement of contest and the fever of danger, and, if deprived of
these stimulants, they grow depressed and spiritless, run to seed, lose
their heads, and make mistakes. Ledru-Roilin[66] is a man of this type;
and he, by the way, especially since he has grown a beard, has a
personal resemblance to Orlóv.
Footnote 66:
Alexandre Ledru-Rollin (1807-1874), a French liberal politician and
advocate of universal suffrage.
Orlóv was a very fine-looking man. His tall figure, dignified bearing,
handsome manly features, and entirely bald scalp seemed to suit one
another perfectly, and lent an irresistible attraction to his outward
appearance. His head would make a good contrast with the head of General
Yermólov, that tough old warrior, whose square frowning forehead,
penthouse of grey hair, and penetrating glance gave him the kind of
beauty which fascinated Marya Kochubéi in the poem.[67]
Footnote 67:
See Púshkin’s _Poltáva_. Marya, who was young and beautiful, fell in
love with Mazeppa, who was old and war-worn and her father’s enemy.
Orlóv was at his wits’ end for occupation. He started a factory for
stained-glass windows of medieval patterns and spent more in producing
them than he got by selling them. Then he tried to write a book on
“Credit,” but that proved uncongenial, though it was his only outlet.
The lion was condemned to saunter about Moscow with nothing to do, and
not daring even to use his tongue freely.
Orlóv’s struggles to turn himself into a philosopher and man of science
were most painful to watch. His intellect, though clear and showy, was
not at all suited to abstract thought, and he confused himself over the
application of newly devised methods to familiar subjects, as in the
case of chemistry. Though speculation was decidedly not his forte, he
studied metaphysics with immense perseverance.
Being imprudent and careless in his talk, he was constantly making
slips; he was carried away by his instincts, which were always
chivalrous and generous, and then he suddenly remembered his position
and checked himself in mid-course. In these diplomatic withdrawals he
was even less successful than in metaphysics or scientific terminology:
in trying to clear himself of one indiscretion, he often slipped into
two or three more. He got blamed for this; people are so superficial and
unobservant that they think more of words than actions, and attach more
importance to particular mistakes than to a man’s general character. It
was unfair to expect of him a high standard of consistency; he was less
to blame than the sphere in which he lived, where every honourable
feeling had to be hidden, like smuggled goods, up your sleeve, and
uttered behind closed doors. If you spoke above your breath, you would
spend the whole day in wondering whether the police would soon be down
upon you.
§6
It was a large dinner. I happened to sit next General Raevski, Orlóv’s
brother-in-law. Raevski also had been in disgrace since the famous
fourteenth of December. As a boy of fourteen he had served under his
distinguished father at the battle of Borodino; and he died eventually
of wounds received in the Caucasus. I told him about Ogaryóv and asked
whether Orlóv would be able and willing to take any steps.
Raevski’s face clouded over, but it did not express that querulous
anxiety for personal safety which I had seen earlier in the day; he
evidently felt disgust mixed with bitter memories.
“Of willingness there can be no question in such a case,” he said; “but
I doubt if Orlóv has the power to do much. Pass through to the study
after dinner, and I will bring him to you there.” He was silent for a
moment and then added, “So your turn has come too; those depths will
drown you all.”
Orlóv questioned me and then wrote to the Governor, asking for an
interview. “The Prince is a gentleman,” he said; “if he does nothing, at
least he will tell us the truth.”
I went next day to hear the answer. Prince Dmitri Golitsyn had replied
that Ogaryóv had been arrested by order of the Tsar, that a commission
of enquiry had been appointed, and that the charge turned chiefly on a
dinner given on June 24, at which seditious songs had been sung. I was
utterly puzzled. That day was my father’s birthday; I had spent the
whole day at home, and Ogaryóv was there too.
My heart was heavy when I left Orlóv. He too was unhappy: when I held
out my hand at parting, he got up and embraced me, pressed me tight to
his broad chest and kissed me. It was just as if he felt that we should
not soon meet again.
§7
I only saw him once more, just six years later. He was then near death;
I was struck by the signs of illness and depression on his face, and the
marked angularity of his features was a shock to me. He felt that he was
breaking up, and knew that his affairs were in hopeless disorder. Two
months later he died, of a clot of blood in the arteries.
At Lucerne there is a wonderful monument carved by Thorwaldsen in the
natural rock—a niche containing the figure of a dying lion. The great
beast is mortally wounded; blood is pouring from the wound, and a broken
arrow sticks up out of it The grand head rests on the paw; the animal
moans and his look expresses agony. That is all; the place is shut off
by hills and trees and bushes; passers-by would never guess that the
king of beasts lies there dying.
I sat there one day for a long time and looked at this image of
suffering, and all at once I remembered my last visit to Orlóv.
§8
As I drove home from Orlóv’s house, I passed the office of General
Tsinski, chief of the police; and it occurred to me to make a direct
application to him for leave to see Ogaryóv.
Never in my life had I paid a visit to any person connected with the
police. I had to wait a long time; but at last the Chief Commissioner
appeared. My request surprised him.
“What reason have you for asking this permission?”
“Ogaryóv and I are cousins.”
“Cousins?” he asked, looking me straight in the face.
I said nothing, but returned His Excellency’s look exactly.
“I can’t give you leave,” he said; “your kinsman is in solitary
confinement. I am very sorry.”
My ignorance and helplessness were torture to me. Hardly any of my
intimate friends were in Moscow; it was quite impossible to find out
anything. The police seemed to have forgotten me or to ignore me. I was
utterly weary and wretched. But when all the sky was covered with gloomy
clouds and the long night of exile and prison was coming close, just
then a radiant sunbeam fell upon me.
§9
A few words of deep sympathy, spoken by a girl[68] of sixteen, whom I
regarded as a child, put new life in me.
Footnote 68:
This was Natálya Zakhárin, Herzen’s cousin, who afterwards became his
wife.
This is the first time that a woman figures in my narrative; and it is
practically true that only one woman figures in my life.
My young heart had been set beating before by fleeting fancies of youth;
but these vanished like the shapes of cloudland before this figure, and
no new fancies ever came.
Our meeting was in a churchyard. She leant on a grave-stone and spoke of
Ogaryóv, till my sorrow grew calm.
“We shall meet to-morrow,” she said, and gave me her hand, smiling
through her tears.
“To-morrow,” I repeated, and looked long after her retreating figure.
The date was July 19, 1834.
------------------------------------------------------------------------