Jules incoherently, as he probably compared husband and wife
in his mind. Herzen had heard that Bakunin had married the
daughter of a Polish clerk in Siberia. ‘Surely she has not
turned up?’ he thought. Making himself a little tidier, he went
into the drawing-room, where he saw a fair, very young and
handsome woman in deep mourning.
‘I am Bakunin’s wife; where is he?’ she said. ‘And you are
Herzen?’
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Your husband is not in London.’
‘Where is he?’ she repeated.
‘I have no right to tell you that.’
‘What, not me, his wife!’ she said in a tone of offence, and
she turned crimson.
‘We had better talk about the Bakunins. When did you leave his
brothers and sisters? What on earth is the name of their place?
You have stayed in the country with them—what are the names of
his brothers and sisters? I have forgotten and mixed them all
up....’
Madame Bakunin gave the name of the country place, and answered
all the questions correctly. The Bakunins had helped her to
obtain a passport and had provided the money for her journey....
At last Herzen was convinced that she really was Bakunin’s
wife, and suggested that she should stay in our house and for
the time occupy my room. Calling my maid, Herzen told her to
look after Madame Bakunin, which was rather difficult, simply
because the latter did not know one word of English.
But all the same Herzen did not tell her where Bakunin was,
which offended her very much, and left a shade of dislike for
him in her heart.
By the time I came back from Osborne she had moved into
lodgings, where she remained till she left London. We were
very good friends, but she got on best of all with Varvara
Timofyevna Kelsiev.[11] She told the latter a great deal
about her life and her marriage. ‘I liked a young doctor much
better,’ she said, ‘and I believe he was attracted by me, but I
preferred to marry Bakunin because he is a hero and has always
been for Poland. Though I was born and grew up in Siberia, I
love my fatherland; I wear mourning for it and always shall.’
There was a great deal that was childish and naïve in her,
but at the same time much that was sweet and sincere. Then
a telegram came from Bakunin addressed to me: ‘Natalya
Alexyevna, I commend my wife to you, take care of her.’ Soon
afterwards, however, he sent for her to Sweden, and a great
many of us went to the station with her to see her off to
Dover. Before she left London, Madame Bakunin invited us all
to dinner and regaled us with Polish dainties, which were
very nice and greatly delighted our Polish friends, Czernecki
and Tchorszewski. The latter, however, was such an admirer of
female beauty that, however bad the dinner, he would have been
in raptures if the hostess were handsome.”
“One summer we spent at Torquay. Malwide von Meysenbug came
from Italy with Olga, and I went down from London with Natasha
and my baby, Liza. Ogaryov and Herzen could only come for
visits, for they had to be in London to look after the Russian
Free Press, and to receive the Russians who used to come to
interview the editors of the _Bell_, bringing a great deal
of material for publication. That summer Tatyana Petrovna
Passek decided to visit Herzen. She arrived in London and
telegraphed to him; he hurried back from Torquay and met her
at the station. We were all delighted to see her; she had the
gift of winning people by her gentleness and typically Russian
good-nature. Unluckily, she only paid us a brief visit. Soon
Malwide went back to Italy with both Herzen’s daughters; on the
way they visited Nice, where the girls’ mother was buried....
In 1862, or 1863, we decided to leave London, as Herzen
thought it would be cheaper and more comfortable to live in a
suburb. There was, only fifteen minutes by rail from London,
a little place called Teddington, consisting of a long street
with country houses in large luxuriant gardens, and several
smaller houses, with little shops of various sorts.... There
Herzen found a fairly roomy house with a big garden, and we all
moved into it, taking with us Varvara Timofyevna Kelsiev and
her little girl, Marusya. The printing-press was moved to a
little house not ten minutes’ walk from us. There Czernecki was
installed with the companion of his life, Marianna; they had no
children.
Our new house had only one drawback: behind it there was a
factory from which often came a smell of burnt tallow. But the
doctor assured us that this would do the children no harm, and
so we meekly put up with the unpleasantness of it. The only one
of our intimate circle left in London was Tchorszewski, and he
came to Teddington at least once a week, partly on business,
and partly from affection for the family, of which he was like
an indispensable member. His devotion to Herzen and all of us
was beyond all bounds, and he proved it indeed after Herzen’s
death.”
[At Elmfield House, Teddington, they were visited, as described in volume
v. p. 111, etc., by Gonchar, who took Madame Kelsiev and her little girl
Marusya with him to Tulcea, the colony of Russian raskolniks to which
Kelsiev had previously gone, and there the mother and child died. (See
volume v. p. 115.) Soon afterwards Garibaldi’s visit took place, as
described in volume v.]
“After being a year in Teddington we spent a summer by the
sea at Bournemouth. Malwide von Meysenbug joined us there
with Herzen’s daughters. This was the last time we were all
together in England; but I will say nothing of that stay, as
nothing of general interest occurred. After living in Italy
neither Malwide nor the girls were willing to hear of a change.
Sometimes Herzen spent a month or two with them in Italy....
On our return to London Herzen began to make plans for
transferring the printing-press to Geneva. From the time of the
Polish rebellion the circulation of the _Bell_ had dropped;
fewer manuscripts were sent us from Russia than before. This
was obviously a grief to Herzen. ‘We are old,’ he used to say;
‘the Nihilists look upon us as reactionaries; it is time to
retire, it is time to set to work on some big job.’ But Ogaryov
did not lose heart. He thought that in Switzerland there would
be more people coming fresh from Russia, and that the Free
Press would begin to flourish again.
While Herzen and Ogaryov were settling things up and preparing
to go, I went to Paris with my children, thinking that it would
be easier for my relations to come there from Russia to see me.
Then a calamity befell me from which I could not recover; for
several years afterwards I moved about from place to place and
could nowhere find peace.”
[In 1864, in Paris, Natalya Alexyevna’s two younger children, the twins,
died of diphtheria.]
“At midnight, on the 15th of December 1864, Herzen and Ogaryov,
accompanied by some other persons, whom I did not notice at
the time, put me with my daughter Liza into the train for
Montpelier. Some of the company commended us to the care of the
guard, others gave us letters of recommendation to doctors and
various other persons.
Yielding to necessity, I set off with a heavy heart on this
long journey alone with my child; but I knew Herzen could
not take us. He promised to join us shortly at Montpelier.
The doctors insisted that we should leave Paris as soon as
possible, for diphtheria was raging there. The well-known
writer and journalist, Emile Girardin, had just lost from this
epidemic his only daughter, a child of my Liza’s age.
Herzen did in fact arrive in Montpelier soon afterwards. Doctor
Coste, who was attending us, beamed all over with enthusiasm
when he saw him. A few days later he took Herzen in the evening
to the ‘Cercle Démocratique’; there many people were eager to
make his acquaintance, warmly shook his hand, and talked of his
writings. Herzen was much moved when, on his return, he told me
of the warm welcome given him; indeed, he was extremely popular
at that time in France, north and south alike, with all classes
of the population.
From Montpelier Herzen went to Geneva, and there meeting his
son brought him to Montpelier. Alexandr Alexandrovitch spent
two days with me and then went back to Florence.
At the end of the winter we went to Cannes, and from there
again to Nice. In Cannes we made the acquaintance of Dr.
Bernacki;[12] he was recommended to us in the hotel when my
daughter had some trifling ailment. Bernacki turned out to be a
great admirer of Herzen; he was a Polish _émigré_, an elderly
man whose patriotism was as keen as ever, though he had lived
in France since 1830. He had married a widow, who died, leaving
him her son. Herzen saw all Bernacki’s surroundings; life is
hard for the rich Slav temperament in the narrow, petty life of
the French bourgeois. Bernacki brought up and at last married
this son who was not his own, and all his love was centred on
the latter’s children.
In the spring of 1865 we moved from Nice to a villa, Château de
la Boissière, near Geneva.”
[Here the whole group, including Malwide, Herzen’s two elder daughters,
and Ogaryov, were for some time together again.]
“Prince Dolgorukov left London soon after we did, and he too
settled in Geneva.... He was an intelligent man, but had a
great deal of _amour-propre_, and, as I have said already,
his views were absolutely different from Herzen’s, yet he
seemed drawn to the latter by a strange, inexplicable, and
irresistible attraction. The prince’s harsh, hasty, and
despotic temper caused him continual difficulties abroad.
At the Château de la Boissière there was rather a curious
incident with Prince Dolgorukov. I was not in the house at the
time, but I well remember Herzen’s humorous account of the
quarrel between Prince Dolgorukov and our servant, Jules.
Dolgorukov, Vyrubov, and some other guests were dining at the
house. When they got up from the table, Dolgorukov went out of
the dining-room meaning to give some order to our cook. He had
to go down some steps to reach the kitchen; there he halted,
listening to a conversation in which he caught his own name;
Jules in a loud voice was complaining of the prince, saying
that he gave the servants far more trouble than all the rest of
the visitors. Instead of calling Jules and pretending to have
heard nothing, Dolgorukov pushed open the door and, drawing
the blade out of his swordstick, began waving it in the air
while he scolded and shouted at Jules. The latter gave him back
as good as he got and raised his fist to strike Dolgorukov.
Hearing a great uproar below-stairs, and knowing the prince’s
troublesome temper, Herzen, calling Vyrubov to follow him,
hurried down to the kitchen.... He seized Dolgorukov’s arms,
and asked Vyrubov to hold Jules; the prince was led away to
the dining-room, where, frantic with rage, he snatched up a
decanter and smashed it into splinters on the table, then
seized a chair and threw it on the floor so that it was broken
to pieces. Herzen gazed at him in mute amazement. The prince,
choking with fury, at last articulated: ‘Never again will I set
foot in your house,’ and went off.
But he could not do without seeing Herzen; and a week later
wrote asking him to dismiss Jules for his impertinence. Only on
this condition, said the prince, could he visit Château de la
Boissière again.
To this missive Herzen replied that he was very sorry for
what had occurred, but that it was against his principles to
dismiss a servant simply for impertinence, the more so as
he ‘considered the prince more to blame than Jules, since
the latter could not be compared with Dolgorukov as regards
culture and education, and, moreover, the prince had begun
the quarrel.’ ‘We sometimes perhaps complain of servants in
their absence,’ wrote Herzen, ‘though we have many interests,
and our relations with our servants do not take the most
prominent place in them; but as for them, they may well pour
out their indignation with us pretty often to relieve all the
unpleasantness of their lot in life.’
By degrees the prince began to calm down. He told his cook to
meet Jules in the market and to ask the latter to come to him.
Jules was buying provisions in the market when the prince’s man
went up to him with this message. Jules followed the man, set
down his basket in the hall, and not without surprise walked
into Dolgorukov’s study. The latter, on his entrance, stood up
and came to meet him. In response to our cook’s bow, the prince
held out his hand.
‘Je veux, Jules, me réconcilier avec vous, voulez-vous?’ said
the prince.
‘Je veux bien, je veux bien, monsieur le prince,’ Jules
answered good-humouredly, ‘il ne faut pas se fâcher toujours.’
‘Alors buvons à notre réconciliation,’ said the prince, filling
two glasses with some good red wine and offering one to Jules.
They clinked their glasses, and drained them.
From that time forward Prince Dolgorukov took to visiting
Herzen again, and never referred to the past.
When we settled in Geneva there were a great many Russians
there; almost all of them were Nihilists. They took up an
extremely hostile attitude to Herzen.
The greater number of them lived either in the Russian hotel
or in a boarding-house kept by Madame X., a Russian who had
several years before visited Herzen in London, accompanied by
her husband and the writer Mihailov. Since then there had been
many changes in her life; her husband had long before returned
to Russia, lived somewhere in the wilds, and wrote constantly
for the reviews. Mihailov had been exiled. A year or two after
parting with Mihailov, she had succeeded not only in forgetting
him, but in replacing him by the younger Serno-Solovyovitch.
I permit myself to speak of the relations of Madame X. with
Mihailov and Alexandr Serno-Solovyovitch, because every one
knew of them at the time, and she made no secret of them....
Serno-Solovyovitch was younger than she was: hasty, jealous,
and hot-tempered, he had stormy scenes with Madame X., and she
began to be afraid of him. When a son was born, to put an end
to all relations with him she made up her mind to send the baby
off to her husband X. to be brought up. Two other Russians
assisted her in this, to my thinking, inhuman action: I cannot
see what right a mother has to rob a father of his child,
unless she keeps the child herself. Serno-Solovyovitch was
beside himself at the child’s being sent away, he threatened
to murder Madame X., broke into her room, and really did become
alarming, ‘You have taken everything from me,’ he said with
despair, ‘now I have nothing I care for.’ I do not know how
Madame X. managed it, but for the sake of her own peace and
comfort she got Serno-Solovyovitch put into a lunatic asylum.
Probably his friends helped her. O Pushkin! how right you were!
it is easier to defend oneself from foes than from friends!
One evening Herzen, Ogaryov, and I were sitting in the
dining-room; suddenly the door was thrown open, and a man with
a face of despair ran in, looked about him, then fell on his
knees before Herzen. It was Serno-Solovyovitch; I recognised
him.
‘Get up, get up, how can you!’ said Alexandr Ivanovitch in a
voice full of emotion.
‘No, no, I won’t get up. I have wronged you, Alexandr
Ivanovitch, I have slandered you, I have slandered you even in
print ... and yet it is from you I ask help. Protect me from
my friends, they will shut me up again that _her_ mind may be
at rest. You see I have run away from the madhouse and come
straight to you, my enemy.’
Herzen and Ogaryov raised him up, shook his hand, assured him
that they harboured no malice against him, and kept him in the
house, but earnestly begged him not to go where he would be
irritated (namely, to Madame X.’s).
They looked on him with all-forgiving compassion, and as I
watched them I thought that the first Christians must have
loved and forgiven like them.
Serno-Solovyovitch was fond of children; he liked to walk about
the garden and play with my little girl Liza. Malwide and
Olga had not yet arrived, and Natasha was with her brother in
Berne at Marya Kashparovna Reihel’s. Suddenly we received from
Malwide a telegram:
‘We will stay on longer as Serno-Solovyovitch is with you.’
Herzen answered by telegram:
‘As you like; Natalie is not afraid of him; he is playing with
Liza in the garden.’
On the morning after the first night that Serno-Solovyovitch
slept at the Château de la Boissière we all got up early and
met in the dining-room; we hoped that he was still peacefully
reposing in freedom, and yet we were a little uneasy. Suddenly
Jules came in with the coffee and said:
‘You told me to keep an eye on our visitor, but really no
one could do that. He was there all the time,’ he went on
anxiously, ‘but now the room is empty, he’s not there, M.
Herzen,’ he said in despair.
After waiting some time we began breakfast, but Herzen was
gloomy. ‘He will murder her,’ he said, ‘and I shall never
forgive myself for not keeping watch over him myself!’
All at once we caught the sound of footsteps coming nearer and
nearer, and Serno-Solovyovitch walked into the dining-room,
looking almost cheerful. He apologised, and told Herzen in a
low voice that he had gone out to buy a paper collar and cuffs,
as he felt uncomfortable at sitting down to table in a lady’s
company without. We felt as though a weight had been lifted off
us when he came in.
But not long afterwards Serno-Solovyovitch’s self-control gave
way, he went where he was irritated to frenzy, and he was taken
back again to the asylum.
Later on he was discharged, and then he joined a society of
working-class Socialists; but his success with them did not
fully satisfy him. He felt that he was severed from his own
country and grew more and more gloomy. He wrote a great deal
about socialism, but was dull and depressed, and held aloof
from every one.... He ended by suicide—and what a terrible
end! He sought death in three ways: he poisoned himself, cut
his veins, and stifled himself with charcoal fumes. He had
suffered enough, and so escaped to freedom.
While we lived near Geneva, Madame X. was only twice in our
house, and then not as an acquaintance but on business. I found
her very unattractive, and could not understand how it was
she had so much influence over undoubtedly good men. Various
persons came to see us from her boarding-house, chiefly men,
though I remember one very handsome young woman, who had
married a very young Prince Golitsyn in order to go abroad to
study. She saw him for the first time in church and never saw
him again. Such marriages were a fashion at that time and were
treated as a joke, but later on, so it was said, this reckless
marriage was the cause of great sorrow to Golitsyn: he fell in
love, and could not marry the girl he loved!
Herzen did not like living in Geneva; the _émigrés_ were in too
close proximity; having nothing to do, they had plenty of time
for gossip and tittle-tattle; their antagonism to Herzen, an
antagonism for which envy of his material resources was chiefly
responsible, irritated him extremely, and his irritability was
increased by the state of his health, which began to fail from
the year 1864.
The Château de la Boissière was abandoned; I sought solitude in
Montreux with my little girl and her governess, Miss Turner.
Malwide went back to Italy with Olga. Herzen remained with only
Natasha in Geneva; he moved into lodgings on the Quai du Mont
Blanc, while Ogaryov settled at Lancy, almost outside the town.
Living at Geneva was not a success; little good work was done,
and we had not what the English call a _home_.
I was drawn to Nice again, to the newly-dug graves.[13] Herzen
was fond of the scenery of the south; besides, he had in Nice
many precious memories, and his wife’s grave, which he never
forgot. Sending Natasha to Italy, he accompanied us to Nice,
and stayed there for a time himself.
Whether I wanted to or not, I had to make some acquaintances
for my daughter’s sake; a gloomy environment is bad for a
child. She used to play in the public gardens every day with
some children; she soon made friends with them, and so I came
to be acquainted with two or three families. I arranged with
a dancing-mistress to form a class, and had no difficulty in
finding some among my little girl’s friends who were glad to
join it. And so the children came to us twice a week. Among
others, we made the acquaintance of the family of Garibaldi (a
cousin of the celebrated Garibaldi), whose amiable wife and
children were in friendly relations with us till I went back to
Russia for good.
At that time Herzen was still in Nice. He wrote a great deal
in Nice—there was no one to hinder him; then he used to go and
read the papers at Visconte’s; after dinner he liked to go a
walk alone with Liza; sometimes he took her to the theatre, and
enjoyed her sallies, her apt remarks, and intelligence. He was
then writing for the _Week_ the series of articles entitled ‘To
Pass the Time.’ It was a comfort to him to be writing and being
printed in Russia. He was fond of reading aloud what he had
written before sending it off.”
[Ogaryov was now settled with Mary and their two children, Henry and
‘Toots,’ in Geneva.]
“... While Herzen was in Nice, a telegram arrived from
Tchorszewski, telling him that Ogaryov had broken his leg, and
begging him to come to Geneva as soon as possible. I was not
in the house at the time, and on returning home I found Herzen
sitting on a chair in the hall in a dazed condition; I was
astounded at his being there and looking so overwhelmed. He
handed me the telegram without a word. Glancing at it, I said:
‘Well, Herzen, you must make haste and go; let us look at the
time-table and pack up your things; you must not delay.’
But Herzen sat mute as though he did not hear what I said. ‘I
feel,’ he said at last, ‘that I shall never see him again.’
However, I managed to pack what was needed, and to see Herzen
off at the station; I felt that if anything could relieve
his mind it would be seeing Ogaryov. Such an accident was a
serious thing at his age. Herzen wrote afterwards, describing
with what terror and anxiety he travelled to Geneva; how,
meeting Tchorszewski at the station, he had not courage to ask
‘Is Ogaryov alive?’ At last Tchorszewski, of his own accord,
said that he thought that there was no ground for anxiety in
Ogaryov’s condition. Doctor Meyer had set the bone and put
the leg in a splint. Ogaryov had borne the operation with the
greatest fortitude.
I have searched in vain for the letter in which Herzen
described this unfortunate accident. I remember that he wrote
that Ogaryov was taking an evening stroll in the outskirts of
Geneva, when he had one of the fits to which he was subject. On
recovering consciousness, he got up and tried to go on, but,
as it was by then dark, he did not see the ditch, stumbled,
broke his leg, and was sick from the pain; after lying there
for a while, he tried again to get up, but could not. Then
he began to call to passers-by, but nobody came to him. As
ill-luck would have it, he was lying in a pool just outside the
lunatic asylum, and this was why everybody hurried away when
he shouted, supposing him to be a lunatic.
Seeing that no one would come, Ogaryov, with great presence of
mind, took a knife and a pipe out of his pocket, cut off his
boot, then lit his pipe, and lay there, I believe, till next
day. Early in the morning an Italian who knew Ogaryov passed
by, and, though the latter was lying at some distance from the
road, the Italian noticed him, and began looking more closely;
then Ogaryov called to him. The Italian went up, said he would
fetch a carriage, and took him home, Ogaryov suffering great
pain when moved.”
[Some months later—Natalya Alexyevna rarely gives dates—when Ogaryov was
able to hobble about, and the accident was almost forgotten, there was a
family gathering again.]
“Tchorszewski took an old château called ‘Prangius,’ about an
hour and a half’s drive from Geneva; here, for the last time,
the whole family were together again; Liza and I, Malwide and
Olga and Natasha.... Rather later Ogaryov joined us with little
‘Toots.’ Last of all, Alexandr (Herzen’s son) arrived with his
young wife. They were only just married, and Teresina did not
yet speak French, so we all had to talk Italian to her, which
curtailed conversation a good deal. Teresina liked going for
walks, sometimes with Herzen, sometimes with me.”
[At the end of the summer.]