SIX MODERN WOMEN
SIX
MODERN WOMEN
Psychological Sketches
BY
LAURA MARHOLM HANSSON
Translated from the German
BY
HERMIONE RAMSDEN
BOSTON
ROBERTS BROTHERS
1896
_Copyright, 1896_,
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
PREFACE
It is not my purpose to contribute to the study of woman’s intellectual
life, or to discuss her capacity for artistic production, although
these six women are in a manner representative of woman’s intellect and
woman’s creative faculty. I have little to do with Marie Bashkirtseff’s
pictures in the Luxembourg, Sonia Kovalevsky’s doctor’s degree and
_Prix Bordin_, Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler’s stories and social
dramas, Eleonora Duse’s success as a tragedian in both worlds, and
with all that has made their names famous and is publicly known about
them. There is only one point which I should like to emphasize in
these six types of modern womanhood, and that is the manifestation of
their womanly feelings. I want to show how it asserts itself in spite
of everything,--in spite of the theories on which they built up their
lives, in spite of the opinions of which they were the teachers,
and in spite of the success which crowned their efforts, and bound
them by stronger chains than might have been the case had their lives
been passed in obscurity. They were out of harmony with themselves,
suffering from a conflict which made its first appearance in the world
when the “woman question” came to the fore, causing an unnatural breach
between the needs of the intellect and the requirements of their
womanly nature. Most of them succumbed in the struggle.
A woman who seeks freedom by means of the modern method of independence
is generally one who desires to escape from a woman’s sufferings. She
is anxious to avoid subjection, also motherhood, and the dependence
and impersonality of an ordinary woman’s life; but in doing so
she unconsciously deprives herself of her womanliness. For them
all--for Marie Bashkirtseff as much as Sonia Kovalevsky and A. C.
Edgren-Leffler--the day came when they found themselves standing
at the door of the heart’s innermost sanctuary, and realized that
they were excluded. Some of them burst open the door, entered, and
became man’s once more. Others remained outside and died there. They
were all individualistic, these six women. It was this fact that
moulded their destiny; but Eleonora Duse was the only one of them who
was individualistic enough. None of them were able to stand alone,
as more than one had believed that she could. The women of our day
are difficult in the choice of a husband, and the men are slow and
mistrustful in their search for a wife.
There are some hidden peculiarities in woman’s soul which I have traced
in the lives of these six representative women, and I have written
them down for the benefit of those who have not had the opportunity of
discovering them for themselves.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xi
I. THE LEARNED WOMAN: SONIA KOVALEVSKY 3
II. NEUROTIC KEYNOTES: GEORGE EGERTON 61
III. THE MODERN WOMAN ON THE STAGE: ELEONORA DUSE 97
IV. THE WOMAN NATURALIST: AMALIE SKRAM 131
V. A YOUNG GIRL’S TRAGEDY: MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF 147
VI. THE WOMAN’S RIGHTS WOMAN: A. CH. EDGREN-LEFFLER 185
INTRODUCTION
The subjects of these six psychological sketches are well known to
English readers, with the exception of Amalie Skram, the Norwegian
novelist, and Fru Leffler, who is known only as the biographer of Sonia
Kovalevsky.
Laura Marholm, the writer of this book, is a German authoress of
Norwegian extraction, who is celebrated for her literary criticisms and
the beauty of her style. In September, 1889, she married Ola Hansson,
the Swedish author of “Sensitiva Amorosa,” “Young Scandinavia,” and a
novel called “Fru Esther Bruce,” in which the heroine is said to bear
a strong resemblance to Eleonora Duse. He has also published a volume
of prose poems, called “Ofeg’s Ditties,” which has been translated by
George Egerton, whose vivid style and powerful descriptions have gained
a place for her among the foremost women writers of the day.
Laura Marholm was the first to introduce her husband to the German
public by means of two articles in the _Neue Freie Presse_. The first,
called “A Swedish Love Poet,” appeared May 24th, 1888, before they
had met, and was written in praise of his early work, “Sensitiva
Amorosa.” The second article was a criticism on “Pariahs,” and it is an
interesting fact that in it she compares him to Gottfried Keller.
In all her writings, Laura Marholm looks at life through the spectacles
of a happy marriage; she believes that matured thought and widened
views can--in a woman’s case--be only the direct result of marriage;
and consequently she considers marriage to be absolutely indispensable
to every woman, and that without it she is both mentally and morally
undeveloped. She has little sympathy with the Woman’s Rights movement,
judged either from the social, political, or educational point
of view; with regard to the latter, she has not had a university
education herself, and she is not at all impressed by those who have.
She considers that a woman’s individuality is of greater importance
than her actions; she upholds woman’s influence _as woman_, and has
no sympathy with the advanced thinkers, who, with Stuart Mill at
their head, would fain have women exert their influence as thinking,
reasoning human beings, believing all other influence to be unworthy
the dignity of the modern woman. Laura Marholm has the intuitive
faculty, and this enables her to gauge the feelings of those women who
spend a long youth in waiting--who are taught to believe, and who do
believe, that their youth is nothing more than a transition period
between childhood and marriage,--women who grow old in waiting, and
awake to reality to find behind them nothing but a wasted youth, and
in the future--an empty old age. But these are not modern women, they
are the women of the _ancien régime_, who have missed their vocation,
and failed to attain their sole object in life,--viz., marriage. On
the one hand we are confronted with the old-fashioned girl, on the
other by the new woman. Of the two, we prefer the new woman; and while
recognizing her mistakes, and lamenting her exaggerated views, Laura
Marholm acknowledges that she is formed of the best material of the
age, and prophesies for her a brighter future. But her views differ
greatly from those of Ibsen and Björnson. According to Ibsen, a woman
is first of all a human being, and then a woman; she places the woman
first, the human being last. Björnson believes that an intellectually
developed woman with a life-work can get on very well by herself; Laura
Marholm maintains that, apart from man, a woman is nothing. According
to her, woman is a creature of instinct, and this instinct is her most
precious possession, and of far greater value than the intellect. Of
all the studies in this book, Fru Leffler is probably the one with whom
she is least in sympathy. Fru Leffler was essentially intellectual,
possessed of a somewhat cold and critical temperament, and in writing
the biography of Sonia Kovalevsky she was often unable to appreciate
the latter’s very complicated character. Sonia was a rare combination
of the mystic and the scientist; she was not only a mathematician, but
also, in every important crisis of her life, a dreamer of prophetic
dreams. The biography was intended to be the continuation of Sonia’s
own story of her childhood, and the two should be read together. As
a child, Sonia suffered from a painful conviction that in her family
she was not the favorite, and it is probable that her unaccountable
shyness, her want of self-confidence, and her inability to attract love
in after life, were due to the fact of her having passed an unhappy and
unloved childhood.
Fru Leffler’s writings are remarkable for the simplicity and directness
of her style, her keen observation, and love of truth. Her talents were
by no means confined to her pen; she held a salon,--the resort of the
intellectual world of Stockholm,--and attained great popularity by her
tactfulness and social gifts. She did not, however, shine in society
to the same extent as Sonia Kovalevsky. Her conversation was not as
brilliant and witty as the latter’s, but it was always interesting, and
it was of the kind that is remembered long afterwards. “When she told
a story, analyzed a psychological problem, or recounted the contents
of a book, she always succeeded in setting forth its real character
in a clear and decided manner.” Sonia, on the other hand, was ever
ready with an original remark. Ellen Key tells how one day, when the
conversation turned upon love, Sonia exclaimed: “These amiable young
men are always writing books about love, and they do not even know that
some people have a genius for loving, just as others have a genius
for music and mechanics, and that for these erotic geniuses love is a
matter of life and death, whereas for others it is only an episode.”
Fru Leffler travelled a great deal, and made many friends in the
countries that she visited. She took great interest in socialism,
anarchism, and all religious and educational movements. In London she
attended lectures given by Mrs. Marx-Aveling, Bradlaugh, and Mrs.
Besant. Theosophy, positivism, spiritualism, and atheism,--there was
nothing which did not interest her. The more she saw the more she
doubted the possibility of attaining to absolute truth in matters
either social or religious, and the more attracted she became by the
doctrine of evolution.
From this authoress, who was the chief exponent of woman’s rights in
Sweden, we turn to a very different but no less interesting type.
Eleonora Duse, the great Italian actress, has visited London during
the past few years, acting in such a natural, and at the same time in
such a simple and life-like manner, that a knowledge of the language
was not absolutely indispensable to the enjoyment of the piece. Besides
most of the pieces mentioned here, she acted in _La Femme de Claude_,
_Cleopatra_, and _Martha_; but she attained her greatest triumph in
Goldoni’s comedy, _La Locandiera_.
In all these typical women, Fru L. Marholm Hansson traces a likeness
which proves that they have something in common. Numerous and
conflicting as are the various opinions on the so-called “woman
question,” the best, and perhaps the only, way of elucidating it is
by doing as she has done in giving us these sketches. We have here
six modern women belonging to five nationalities, three of whom are
authoresses, and the other three--mathematician, actress, and artist,
portrayed and criticised by one who is herself a modern woman and an
authoress.
H. R.
I
_The Learned Woman_
I
It sometimes happens that a hidden characteristic of the age is
disclosed, not through any acuteness on the part of the spectator,
nor as the result of critical research, but of itself, as it were,
and spontaneously. A worn face rises before us, bearing the marks of
death, and never again may we gaze into the eyes which reveal the deep
psychological life of the soul. It is the dead who greet us, the dead
who survive us, and who will come to life again and again in future
generations, long after we have ceased to be; those dead who will
become the living, only to suffer and to die again.
These self-revelations have always existed amongst men, but among women
they were unknown until now, when this tired century is drawing to its
close. It is one of the strangest signs of the coming age that woman
has attained to the intellectual consciousness of herself as woman, and
can say what she is, what she wishes, and what she longs for. But she
pays for this knowledge with her death.
Marie Bashkirtseff’s Journal was just such a self-revelation as this;
the moment it appeared it was carried throughout the whole of Europe,
and further than Europe, on far-reaching waves of human sympathy.
Wherever it went it threw a firebrand into the women’s hearts, which
set them burning without most of them knowing what this burning
betokened. They read the book with a strange and painful emotion,
for as they turned over these pages so full of ardent energy, tears,
and yearning, they beheld their own selves, strange, beautiful, and
exalted, but still themselves, though few of them could have explained
why or wherefore.
It was no bitter struggle with the outer world to which Marie
Bashkirtseff succumbed at the age of four-and-twenty; it was not the
struggle of a girl of the middle classes for her daily bread, for which
she sacrifices her youth and spirits; she met with no obstacles beyond
the traditional customs which had become to her a second nature, no
obstruction greater than the atmosphere of the age in which she lived,
which bounded her own horizon, although in her inmost soul she rebelled
against it. She had everything that the world can give to assist the
unhindered development of the inner life,--mental, spiritual, and
physical; everything that hundreds of thousands of women, whose narrow
lives need expanding, have not got,--and yet she did not live her life.
On every one of the six hundred pages of her journal (written, as it
is, in her penetrating Russian-French style) we meet the despairing
cry that she had nothing, that she was ever alone in the midst of an
everlasting void, hungering at the table of life, spread for every one
except herself, standing with hands outstretched as the days passed by
and gave her nothing; youth and health were fading fast, the grave was
yawning, just a little chink, then wider and wider, and she must go
down without having had anything but work,--constant work,--trouble and
striving, and the empty fame which gives a stone in the place of bread.
* * * * *
The tired and discontented women of the time recognized themselves on
every page, and for many of them Marie Bashkirtseff’s Journal became a
kind of secret Bible in which they read a few sentences every morning,
or at night before going to sleep.
A few years later there appeared another confession by a woman; this
time it was not an autobiography, like the last one, but it was
written by a friend, who was a European celebrity, with a name as
lasting as her own. This book was called “Sonia Kovalevsky: Our Mutual
Experiences, and the things she told me about herself.” The writer was
Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, Duchess of Cajanello, who had been her
daily companion during years of friendship.
There was a curious likeness between Marie Bashkirtseff’s Journal and
Sonia Kovalevsky’s confessions, something in their innermost, personal
experiences which proves an identity of temperament as well as of
fortune, something which was not only due to the unconscious manner in
which they criticised life, but to life itself, life as they moulded
it, and as each was destined to live it. Marie Bashkirtseff and Sonia
Kovalevsky were both Russians,[1] both descended from rich and noble
families, both women of genius, and from their earliest childhood
they were both in a position to obtain all the advantages of a good
education. They were both born rulers, true children of nature, full
of originality, proud and independent. In all respects they were the
favorites of fortune, and yet--and yet neither of these extraordinary
women was satisfied, and they died because they could not be satisfied.
Is not this a sign of the times?
II
The story of Sonia Kovalevsky’s life reads like an exciting novel,
which is, if anything, too richly furnished with strange events. Such
is life. It comes with hands full to its chosen ones, but it also takes
away gifts more priceless than it gave.
At the age of eighteen Sonia Kovalevsky was already the mistress of
her own fate. She had married the husband of her choice, and he had
accompanied her to Heidelberg, where they both matriculated at the
university. From thence he took her to Berlin, where she lived with a
girl friend, who was a student like herself, and studied mathematics
at Weierstrass’s for the space of four years, only meeting her husband
occasionally in the course of her walks. Her marriage with Valdemar
Kovalevsky, afterwards Professor of Paleontology at the university
of Moscow, was a mere formality, and this extraordinary circumstance
brings us face to face with one of the chief characteristics of her
nature.
Sonia Kovalevsky did not love her husband; there was, in fact, nothing
in her early youth to which she was less disposed than love. She was
possessed of an immense undefined thirst, which was something more
than a thirst for study, albeit that was the form which it took. Her
inexperienced, child-like nature was weighed down beneath the burden of
an exceptional talent.
Sonia Krukovsky was the daughter of General Krukovsky of Palibino,
a French Grand-seigneur of old family; and when she was no more
than sixteen, she had in her the making of a great mathematician
and a great authoress. She was fully aware of the first, but of the
latter she knew nothing, for a woman’s literary talent nearly always
dates its origin from her experience of life. She was high-spirited
and enterprising,--qualities which are more often found among the
Sclavonic women than any other race of Europeans; she had that peculiar
consciousness of the shortness of life, the same which drove Marie
Bashkirtseff to accomplish more in the course of a few years than most
people would have achieved during the course of their whole existence.
Sonia Kovalevsky’s girlhood was spent in Russia, during those years
of feverish excitement when the outbreaks of the Nihilists bore
witness to the working of a subterranean volcano, and the hearts and
intellects of the young glowed with an enthusiasm which led to the
self-annihilating deeds of fanaticism. A few winter months spent at
St. Petersburg decided the fate of Sonia and her elder sister, Anjuta.
The strict, old-fashioned notions of their family allowed them very
little liberty, and they longed for independence. In order to escape
from parental authority, a formal marriage was at this time a very
favorite expedient among young girls in Russia. A silent but widespread
antagonism reigned in all circles between the old and young; the latter
treated one another as secret allies, who by a look or pressure of the
hand could make themselves understood. It was not at all uncommon for
a girl to propose a formal marriage to a young man, generally with the
purpose of studying abroad, as this was the only means by which they
could obtain the consent of their unsuspecting parents to undertake the
journey. When they were abroad, they generally released each other from
all claims and separated, in order to study apart. Sonia’s sister was
anxious to escape in this way, as she possessed a remarkable literary
talent which her father had forbidden her to exercise. She accordingly
made the proposal in question to a young student of good family, named
Valdemar Kovalevsky; he, however, preferred Sonia, and this gave rise
to further complications, as their father refused to allow the younger
sister to marry before the elder.
Sonia resorted to a stratagem, and one evening, when her parents were
giving a reception, she went secretly to Valdemar, and as soon as her
absence was discovered she sent a note to her father, with these words:
“I am with Valdemar; do not oppose our marriage any longer.” There
remained no alternative for General Krukovsky but to fetch his daughter
home as speedily as possible, and to announce her engagement.
They were accompanied on their honeymoon by a girl friend, who was
equally imbued with the desire to study, and soon afterwards Anjuta
joined them. The first thing that Sonia and Valdemar did was to visit
George Eliot in London; after which Valdemar went to Jena and Munich,
while Sonia, with her sister and friend, studied at Heidelberg, where
they remained during two terms before going to Berlin. The sister went
secretly to Paris by herself.
Arrived at Berlin, Sonia buried herself in her work. She saw no one
except Professor Weierstrass, who expressed the greatest admiration for
her quickness at mathematics, and did all in his power to assist her
by means of private lessons. If we are honest enough to call it by
its true name, we must confess that the life led by these two girls,
during eight terms, was the life of a dog. Sonia scarcely ever went out
of doors unless Valdemar fetched her for a walk, which was not often,
as he lived in another part of the town, and was constantly away. She
was tormented with a vague fear of exposing herself. Inexperienced as
both these friends were, they lived poorly, and ate little, allowing
themselves no pleasure of any sort, added to which they were tyrannized
over and cheated by their maid-servant. Sonia sat all day long at her
writing-table, hard at work with her mathematical exercises; and when
she took a short rest, it was only to run up and down the room, talking
aloud to herself, with her brains as busy as ever. She had never been
accustomed to do anything for herself; she had always been waited
upon, and it was impossible to persuade her even to buy a dress when
necessary, unless Valdemar accompanied her. But Valdemar soon tired of
rendering these unrequited services, and he often absented himself in
other towns for the completion of his own studies; and as they both
received an abundant supply of money from their respective homes, they
were in no way dependent upon each other.
The year 1870 came and went; for Sonia it had been a year of study, and
nothing more. Her sleep had become shorter and more broken, and she
neither knew nor cared what she ate, when suddenly, in the spring of
the following year, she was sent for by her sister in Paris. Anjuta had
fallen passionately in love with a young Parisian, who was a member of
the Commune; he had just been arrested, and was in danger of losing his
life. Sonia and Valdemar succeeded in penetrating through the line of
troops, found Anjuta, and wrote to their father. General Krukovsky came
at once, and it was only then that he discovered what his daughters
were doing abroad, and learned for the first time that his eldest
daughter had been living alone in Paris, for Anjuta had always been
careful to send her letters through Sonia, with the Berlin postmark.
Anjuta showed great spirit, and after an interview with Thiers they
succeeded in helping this very undesirable son-in-law to escape.
Throughout the whole affair their father’s behavior is a rare proof of
the nobility of the race from which Sonia sprang. This stern man not
only forgave--he also admired his daughters for what they had done.
The cold manner and grandfatherly authority with which he had hitherto
treated them was superseded by a cordial sympathy such as would have
been impossible before. He was much impressed by Anjuta’s passion, but
Sonia’s platonic marriage distressed him greatly.
In the year 1874 Sonia took the degree of doctor at Göttingen, as the
result of three mathematical treatises, of which one especially, her
thesis “On the Theory of Partial Differential Equations,” is reckoned
one of her most prominent works. Immediately after this, the whole
family assembled on the old estate of Palibino. Sonia was completely
worn out, and it was a long time before she was able to resume any
severe brain work. Her holiday was cut short by her father’s death a
few months later, and the following winter was spent with her family
at St. Petersburg. Until now Sonia’s brain was the only part of her
which was thoroughly awakened. She had been entirely absorbed in her
studies, and had worked with the obstinate tenacity of auto-suggestion,
more commonly found in women, especially girls, than in men. Marie
Bashkirtseff had done the same, year in, year out; she had worked
breathlessly, feverishly, with an incomprehensible, unwearied power of
production,--while failing health was announcing the approach of death
in her frail young body. Suddenly the end came.
Thousands of girls in middle-class families work themselves to death
in the same way. Badly paid to begin with, they lower the prices
still more by competing with one another. Others, placed in better
circumstances, work with the same insistency at useless handicrafts,
while a large number of women of the poorer classes work because they
are driven to it by dire necessity. The result is the same in all
cases; they lose the power of enjoyment, and forget what happiness
means.
Sonia’s stay in St. Petersburg was the occasion of the first great
change which took place in her, to be followed later on by many like
changes. Mathematics were thrust aside; she did not want to hear any
more about them, she wanted to forget them.
Mind and body were undergoing a healing process, struggling to attain
an even balance in her fresh young nature. She felt the need of change,
she required companionship, and she threw herself into the midst of all
social and intellectual pursuits. It was then that the woman awoke in
her.
During the period of nervous excitement and sorrow which followed
after the death of her beloved father, she had become the wife of
her husband, after having been nominally married for nearly seven
years. Since then they had drawn closer to one another; and now that
her fortune, as long as her mother lived, was not sufficient for her
support, she and Valdemar invested their money in various speculations.
With true Russian enthusiasm they set to work building houses,
establishing watering-places, and starting newspapers, besides lending
their aid to every imaginable kind of new invention. The first year all
went well, and in 1878 a daughter was born. After that came the crash.
Kovalevsky was bitten with the rage for speculation, and although he
was nominated Professor of Paleontology at Moscow in 1880, and in spite
of all that his wife could do to dissuade him, he took shares in a
company connected with petroleum springs in the south of Russia. The
company was a swindle, the undertaking proved a failure, and he shot
himself.
Sonia had left him some time before. She knew what was coming, having
been warned by bad dreams and presentiments, and as she had lost
her influence over him, and was anxious to provide for her own and
her child’s future, she left him and went to Paris. Just as she was
recovering from the nervous fever to which she succumbed on hearing the
news of her husband’s sudden death, she received the summons to go to
Stockholm.
The invitation had been sent by the representatives of a Woman’s
Rights movement which was then in full swing. It was an exceedingly
narrow society of the genuine _bourgeois_ kind, and as it was to them
that she owed her appointment, they were anxious to bind her firmly
to their cause. Sonia soon won their hearts by the sociability of her
Russian nature, but as one term after the other passed by, she grew
more and more weary of it, and whenever her course of lectures was
over she hurried away as quickly as possible to Russia, Italy, France,
England,--no matter where, if only she could escape out of Sweden into
a freer atmosphere. She never looked upon her stay there as anything
more than an episode in her life, and she longed to be back in Paris;
but the years passed by, and she received no other appointment.
Her lectures at the university began to pall upon her; it gave her no
pleasure to be forever teaching the students the same thing in a dreary
routine. She needed an incentive in the shape of some highly gifted
individual whom she could respect, and whose presence would call forth
her highest faculties; but even the esteem in which she held some few
people was not of long duration.
Her friendship with Fru Edgren-Leffler dates from this period. It
was this lady’s renown as an authoress which roused Sonia’s talent
for writing, for her life had been rich in experiences, and never
wanting in variety until now, when, in a period of comparative
leisure, she allowed her thoughts to dwell upon the past. She began
by persuading Fru Edgren-Leffler to dramatize the sketches which she
gave her, and “The Struggle for Happiness” was the first result of this
collaboration. But Sonia soon realized that the honest, simple-minded
Swede was not in sympathy with this department of literature; so she
wrote a story on her own account, entitled “The Sisters Rajevsky,”
which was a sketch of her own youth, followed by an excellent novel
called “Vera Barantzova;” after which she began another novel called
“Vae Victis,” which was never finished.
III
Up till now we have followed this remarkable woman’s life along a
clear, though somewhat agitated course; but from henceforward there
is something uncomfortable, something strange and distorted about it.
It is very difficult for us to ascertain the cause of her increasing
distraction of mind, and early death, and the difficulty is intensified
by the fact that the material contributed by Fru Leffler is poor and
contradictory, and also because her work is disfigured by the peculiar
inferences which she draws.
I have seen four portraits of Sonia Kovalevsky, and they are all so
entirely different that no one would imagine that they were intended
to represent the same person. She had none of the fascinating, though
irregular beauty of Marie Bashkirtseff, who carried on an artistic
cult with her own person. Sonia’s powerful head, with the short hair,
massive forehead, and short-sighted eyes of the color of “green
gooseberries in syrup,” was placed on a delicate child-like body.
Her chief charm lay in her extraordinary liveliness and habit of
giving herself up entirely to the interest of the moment; but she was
completely unversed in the art of dress, and did not know how to appear
at her best; she never gave any thought to the subject at all until
she was thirty; and although she paid more attention to it then, she
never learned the secret. She aged early, and a celebrated poet has
described her to me as being a withered little old woman at the age of
thirty. These external circumstances stood more in her way in Sweden,
among a tall, fair people, than would have been possible either in
Russia or in Paris. Between herself and the Swedish type there was a
wide gulf fixed, which allowed no encouragement to the finer erotic
emotions to which she was very strongly disposed; she felt crushed, and
her impressionable, unattractive nature suffered acutely from being so
unlike the ordinary victorious type of beauty. The picture of her when
she was eighteen bears a strong resemblance to the late King Louis II.
of Bavaria; not only are her features like his, but also the expression
in the eyes and the curve of the lips. The second picture dates from
the year 1887. It has something wearied and disillusioned about it, and
she seems to be making an effort to appear amiable. It was taken at the
time when she was struggling to accustom herself to the stiff, prudish,
and somewhat pretentious ways of Stockholm society. The third portrait
was taken at the time when she won the _Prix Bordin_ in Paris, and it
is a regular Russian face, with a much more cheerful expression than
the former ones. But in the last picture, taken in the year 1890, which
was, to a certain extent, official and very much touched up, how ill
she looks; how disappointed and how weary! These four portraits are,
to my mind, four different women; they show us what Sonia was once,
and what she became after living for several years in an uncongenial
atmosphere.
Sonia Kovalevsky was a true Russian genius, with an elastic nature.
She was lavish and careless in her ways, and she thrived best upon
a torn sofa in an atmosphere of tea, cigarettes, and profusion of
all kinds,--intellectual, spiritual, and pecuniary; she needed to be
surrounded by people like herself, who were in sympathy with her,
and the inhabitants of Stockholm were never that. She had been torn
away from the Russian surroundings in which she had lived in Berlin.
She, who never could endure solitude, found herself alone among
strangers, who forced themselves upon her,--hard, angular, women’s
rights women, who expected her to be their leader, and to fulfil a
mission. She seldom rebelled against the duties which were constantly
held before her eyes, partly because her vanity was flattered by the
public position which she occupied, and also because her livelihood
depended upon it, now that her private means were not sufficient for
her support, and for the numerous journeys which she undertook.
A great deal of her time was spent in travelling to and fro between
Stockholm and St. Petersburg, where she went to visit Anjuta, whose
marriage had turned out most unhappily, and who was suffering from a
severe illness, of which she afterwards died. After her sister’s death
Sonia took a great interest in the study of Northern literature, which
was then just beginning to attract attention. She also wrote books,
and solved some mathematical problems. Every time that she returned
to Stockholm, after spending her holidays in Russia or the South, she
had almost entirely forgotten her Swedish, and every year that passed
by called forth fresh lamentations over her exile. The tone of society
in Stockholm was unendurable to her; but she was of too disciplined
a character, and too gentle, too submissive in her loneliness, to
rebel against it. Her life became monotonous, which it had never been
before, and her courage began to give way. She yearned for sympathy,
for excitement, for her native land,--for everything, in fact, which
was denied her.
She also longed for something else, which was the very thing that she
could not have. She was seized with an eager, nervous longing to be
loved. She wanted to be a woman, to possess a woman’s charm. She had
lived like a widow for years during her husband’s lifetime, and for
years after his death as well. As long as her mathematical studies
produced a tension in her mind, she asked for nothing better, but
buried herself in her work, and was perfectly contented. When she
started being an authoress, a change came over her character. The
development of the imagination created a need for love, and because
this devouring need could not be satisfied, she became exacting,
discontented, and mistrustful of the amount of affection which was
accorded her. In her younger days she had asked for nothing more than
that curious kind of mystic love, known only to Russians, which had run
its course in mutual enthusiasm of a purely intellectual and spiritual
character. It was otherwise now. She lamented her lost youth, and the
time wasted in study; she regretted the unfortunate talent which had
deprived her womanhood of its attractiveness. She wanted to be a woman,
and to enjoy life as a woman.
She had also another wish, just as passionate in its way and as
difficult of fulfilment as the former one, and this was her wish to
receive an appointment in Paris. It was to a certain extent fulfilled
when she was awarded the _Prix Bordin_ on Christmas Eve, 1888, on the
occasion of a solemn session of the French Academy of Science, in an
assembly which was largely composed of learned men. It was the highest
scientific distinction which had ever been accorded to a woman, and
from henceforth she was an European celebrity, with a place in history.
But it gave her no pleasure. She was as completely knocked up as she
had been after receiving her doctor’s degree. She had worked day and
night for days beforehand, and during the weeks that followed she took
part in the social functions which were given in her honor. She left no
pleasure untasted, and yet she was not satisfied, for by this time her
yearning for love had reached its highest pitch.
A short time before, Sonia had made the acquaintance of a cousin of
her late husband’s, “fat M.,” as she called him. The companionship of
a sympathetic fellow-countryman put her in the height of good humor,
and she soon found it so indispensable that she wanted to have him
always at her side, and was never happy except when he was there. M. K.
did not return this strong affection; he was, however, quite willing
to marry her, and the result was that a most unfortunate relationship
sprang up between them. Sonia could not exist without him, so they
travelled from Stockholm to Russia, and from Russia to Paris or Italy,
in order to spend a few weeks together, and then separated, because
by that time they were mutually tired of each other. It was on one
of these journeys, when Sonia had come out of the sunshine of Italy
into the winter of Sweden, that she caught cold, and no sooner had she
arrived at Stockholm than she did everything to make her condition
worse. In a desperate mood of indifference she immediately commenced
her lectures, and went to all the social entertainments that were
given. Dark presentiments and dreams, in which she always believed, had
foretold that this year would be fatal to her. Longing for death, yet
fearing it, she died suddenly in the beginning of the year 1891.
IV
Those who know something about Russian women, without having any very
detailed knowledge, divide them into two types, and a superficial
observer would class Sonia Kovalevsky as belonging to one or the other
of these. The first type consists of luxurious, languishing, idle,
fascinating women, with passionate black eyes, or playful gray ones,
a soft skin, and a delicate mouth, which is admirably adapted for
laughing and eating. These women have a most seductive charm; their
movements suggest that they are wont to recline on soft pillows,
dressed _en négligé_, and their power of chattering is unlimited, and
varies in tone from the most enchanting flattery to the worst temper
imaginable. They are, in fact, the most womanly of women, as little to
be depended upon in their amiability as in their anger; they are quick
to fall in love, and men are as quickly enthralled by them. But Sonia
Kovalevsky was not one of these.
The women of the second type present the greatest contrast that it
is possible to imagine. They are honest and straightforward, and
essentially what is called “a good fellow,” plain, sensible, brave,
energetic, as strong in soul as in body,--thinking heads, flat
figures; they have none of that grace of form which is peculiar to a
large number of Russian women. Their faces are generally sallow, and
their skin is clammy, but thoroughly Russian in spite of it. There is
something lacking in them, which for want of a better expression I
shall call a want of sweetness. There is a curious neutrality about
them; it takes one some time to realize that they are women. And
they themselves are but dimly conscious of it, and then only on rare
occasions. They are generally people with a mission,--working people,
people with ideas.
It is these women who have furnished the largest contingent to the
ranks of the Nihilists. It is they who chose to lead the lives of
hunted wild beasts, and who found ample compensation in mental
excitement for all that they had renounced as women and as persons
of refinement. But although this last is a genuine Russian type, it
is by no means confined to Russia. It is a type peculiar to the age.
The class of women who become Nihilists in Russia are the champions
for women’s rights in Sweden, and it is they who agitate for women’s
franchise in England, who start women’s clubs in America, and become
governesses in Germany.
The type is universal, but it is left to circumstances to decide which
special form of mania it is to take,--a form of mania which calls
itself “a vocation in life.” In Russia the woman, in whom sex lay
dormant, felt it her calling to become a murderess, and that merely
from a general desire to promote the popular welfare; in Germany this
philanthropic spirit took the form of wishing to prune little human
plants in the Kindergarten. But this is a long chapter, which I cannot
pursue any further at present, and which, like many others on the
characteristics of the woman of to-day, I shall keep for a separate
book. We must include Sonia Kovalevsky in this latter type: she
considered herself as belonging to it, and the whole course of her life
is in itself sufficient to prove that she was one of them. The nature
of her friendships with men furnishes us with yet another proof. She
had a large circle of acquaintances, amongst whom were some of the best
known and most talented men of Russia, Scandinavia, England, Germany,
France, and Italy,--all of whom enjoyed her society, although not one
of them fell in love with her, and not one among those thousands said
to her, “I cannot exist without you.”
She belonged to the class of women with brains, and she was numbered
amongst them. She was their triumphant banner, the emblem of their
greatest victory, and their appointed Professor. “She did not need the
lower pleasures; her science was her chief delight.” She stood on the
platform and taught men, and believed it to be her vocation. Was it not
for this that she had toiled during long years of overwork and study,
whilst concealing her real purpose under the threadbare cloak of a
feigned marriage?
She was a woman of genius with a man’s brain, who had come into the
world as an example and a leader of all sister brains.
She was, and she was not! Sometimes she felt that she was, and then
again she did not. In her latter years she disclaimed the whole of
her former life, and silence reigned among the aggrieved sisterhood
whenever her name was mentioned; if these latter years had never been,
they would have sent the hat round in order to erect a monument in her
memory. But that became impossible; silence was best.
She was a woman. She was a woman in spite of all--in spite of a feigned
marriage which lasted nearly ten years, in spite of a widowhood
which lasted just as long, in spite of her Doctor’s degree and the
Professorship of Mathematics and the _Prix Bordin_--she was a woman
still; not merely a lady, but an unhappy, injured little woman, running
through the woods with a wailing cry for her husband.
She was far more of a woman than those luxurious, prattling,
sweatmeat-eating young ladies whose languid movements lead us to
suppose that they have only just got out of bed; she was more of a
woman than the great majority of wives, whose sole occupation it is to
increase the world, and to obliterate themselves in so doing.
She, who never charmed any man, was more of a woman than the charmers
who turn love into a vocation. She was a new kind of woman, understood
by no one, because she was new; she did not even understand herself,
and made mistakes for which she was less to blame than the spirit of
the age, by whose lash she was driven. And when she became free at
last, it was too late to map out a future of her own.
Who knows whether it would have been better for her had she been free
from the first? A woman has no destiny of her own; she cannot have
one, because she cannot exist alone. Neither can she become a destiny,
except indirectly, and through the man. The more womanly she is, and
the more richly endowed, all the more surely will her destiny be shaped
by the man who takes her to be his wife. If then, even in the case of
the average woman, everything depends upon the man whom she marries,
how much more true must this be in the case of the woman of genius, in
whom not only her womanhood, but also her genius, needs calling to life
by the embrace of a man. And if even the average woman cannot attain
to the full consciousness of her womanhood without man, how much less
can the woman of genius, in whom sex is the actual root of her being,
and the source from whence she derives her talent and her _ego_. If
her womanhood remains unawakened, then however promising the beginning
may be, her life will be nothing more than a gradual decay, and the
stronger her vitality, the more terrible will the death-struggle be.
That was Sonia’s life. No man took her in his arms and awoke the whole
harmony of her being. She became a mother and also a wife, but she
never learned what it is to love and be loved again.
V
As I write, the air is filled with a sweet penetrating fragrance, which
comes from a tuberose, placed near me on the window-sill. The narrow
stalk seems scarcely strong enough to support its thick, knob-like head
with the withered buds and sickly, onion-shaped leaves. A tuberose is a
poor unshapely thing at the best of times, but this plant is unhealthy
because it has lived too long as an ornament in a dark corner of the
room under the chandeliers, among albums and photographs. It was dying
visibly, decaying at the roots, and there was no help for it. Of course
it was a rare flower, but it grew uglier from day to day.
They put it on the window-sill, where there was just room for one plant
more, and a pot of mignonette was fetched out of the kitchen garden,
attired in an artistic ruffle of green silk paper, and placed under
the chandelier in its stead. It fulfilled its duty well, and seemed to
thrive admirably among the albums, visiting-cards, and photographs.
Nobody looked after the tuberose on the window-sill until it suddenly
reminded them of its existence by a strong smell, and even then they
only cast a hasty glance and noticed how sickly it looked. When I
examined it more closely, I discovered three blossoms in full flower,
and quite healthy; the stem was bent forward, and the blossoms were
pressing against the window-pane, doing their best to catch the rays
of the sun as long as the short autumn day lasted. It thrust forth its
dying blossoms and renewed itself now that the great warmer of life was
shining on, and embracing it.
To me this flower is an emblem of Sonia Kovalevsky.
She was a rare, strange being in this world of mignonette pots and
trivialities. Everything about her was out of proportion, from her
thin little body, with its large head, to the sweet fragrance of her
genius. She, too, stood in the place of honor under the chandelier,
among fashionable poets and thinkers who wrote and thought in
accordance with the spirit of the age; and she, too, sickened, as
though she desired something better, and the nervous blossoms which her
mind thrust forth grew more and more withered, and the thin stem which
carried her stretched more and more towards the greater warmer of life,
which shines upon and embraces the just and the unjust,--only not her,
only not her!
What was the reason? Why did she get none of that love which is rained
down upon the most insignificant women in so lavish a manner by
impetuous mankind?
“She was not in the least pretty, that is it,” reply her several women
admirers.
But we women know well that it is not the prettiest women who are the
most loved, and that, on the contrary, the most ardent love always
falls to the share of those in whom men have something to excuse.
Barbey d’Aurevilly, the greatest women’s poet, has told us so in his
immortal lines.
“She was too old,--that is to say, she aged too early,”--say her women
admirers, still anxious to find an explanation.
But that is ridiculous. Sonia Kovalevsky died at the age of forty, and
that is the age when a Parisian _grande mondaine_ is at the height of
her popularity; and as for aging early--! A woman of genius does not
grow old as quickly as a teacher in a girl’s school, and the fading
tuberose which thrusts forth fresh blossoms has a far sweeter and more
penetrating fragrance than her white knob-headed sisters.
“She asked too much,” asserts Fru Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler,
Duchess of Cajanello, who was of the same age as Sonia, and married at
the time when she died; and her entire book on Sonia is founded on the
one argument, that she asked too much of love.
But how is it possible? Does not experience teach us that it is
just the women who ask most who receive most? Always make fresh
claims,--that is the motto of the majority of ladies in society, and
with this solid principle to start from they have none of them failed.
“She had everything that a human being can desire,” said that worthy
writer, Jonas Lie, in an after-dinner speech. “She had genius, fame,
position, liberty, and she took the lead in the education of humanity.
But when she had all this it seemed to her as nothing; she stretched
out her hand like a little girl, and said, ‘Oh, do but give me also
this orange.’”