THE chief passion of my childhood was riding. I well remember the time
when my father used to put me in the saddle in front of him and we
would ride out to bathe in the Voronka. I have several interesting
recollections connected with these rides.
One day as we were going to bathe, papa turned round and said to me:
"Do you know, Ilyusha, I am very pleased with myself to-day. I have been
bothered with her for three whole days, and could not manage to make
her go into the house; try as I would, it was impossible. It never would
come right. But to-day I remembered that there is a mirror in every
hall, and that every lady wears a bonnet.
"As soon as I remembered that, she went where I wanted her to, and did
everything she had to. You would think a bonnet is a small affair, but
everything depended on that bonnet."
As I recall this conversation, I feel sure that my father was talking
about that scene in "Anna Karenina" where ANNA went to see her son.
Although in the final form of the novel nothing is said in this scene
either about a bonnet or a mirror,--nothing is mentioned but a thick
black veil,--still, I imagine that in its original form, when he was
working on the passage, my father may have brought Anna up to the
mirror, and made her straighten her bonnet or take it off.
I can remember the interest with which he told me this, and it now
seems strange that he should have talked about such subtle artistic
experiences to a boy of seven who was hardly capable of understanding
him at the time. However, that was often the case with him.
I once heard from him a very interesting description of what a writer
needs for his work:
"You cannot imagine how important one's mood is," he said. "Sometimes
you get up in the morning, fresh and vigorous, with your head clear, and
you begin to write. Everything is sensible and consistent. You read it
over next day, and have to throw the whole thing away, because, good
as it is, it misses the main thing. There is no imagination in it,
no subtlety, none of the necessary something, none of that only just
without which all your cleverness is worth nothing. Another day you
get up after a bad night, with your nerves all on edge, and you think,
'To-day I shall write well, at any rate.' And as a matter of fact, what
you write is beautiful, picturesque, with any amount of imagination. You
look it through again; it is no good, because it is written stupidly.
There is plenty of color, but not enough intelligence.
"One's writing is good only when the intelligence and the imagination
are in equilibrium. As soon as one of them overbalances the other, it's
all up; you may as well throw it away and begin afresh."
As a matter of fact, there was no end to the rewriting in my father's
works. His industry in this particular was truly marvelous.
We were always devoted to sport from our earliest childhood. I can
remember as well as I remember myself my father's favorite dog in those
days, an Irish setter called Dora. They would bring round the cart, with
a very quiet horse between the shafts, and we would drive out to the
marsh, to Degatna or to Malakhov. My father and sometimes my mother or a
coachman sat on the seat, while I and Dora lay on the floor.
When we got to the marsh, my father used to get out, stand his gun on
the ground, and, holding it with his left hand, load it.
Dora meanwhile fidgeted about, whining impatiently and wagging her thick
tail.
While my father splashed through the marsh, we drove round the bank
somewhat behind him, and eagerly followed the ranging of the dog, the
getting up of the snipe, and the shooting. My father sometimes shot
fairly well, though he often lost his head, and missed frantically.
But our favorite sport was coursing with greyhounds. What a pleasure
it was when the footman Sergei Petrovitch came in and woke us up before
dawn, with a candle in his hand!
We jumped up full of energy and happiness, trembling all over in the
morning cold; threw on our clothes as quickly as we could, and ran out
into the zala, where the samovar was boiling and papa was waiting for
us.
Sometimes mama came in in her dressing-gown, and made us put on all
sorts of extra woolen stockings, and sweaters and gloves.
"What are you going to wear, Lyovotchka?" she would say to papa. "It's
very cold to-day, and there is a wind. Only the Kuzminsky overcoat again
today? You must put on something underneath, if only for my sake."
Papa would make a face, but give in at last, and buckle on his short
gray overcoat under the other and sally forth. It would then be growing
light. Our horses were brought round, we got on, and rode first to "the
other house," or to the kennels to get the dogs.
Agafya Mikhailovna would be anxiously waiting us on the steps. Despite
the coldness of the morning, she would be bareheaded and lightly clad,
with her black jacket open, showing her withered, old bosom. She carried
the dog-collars in her lean, knotted hands.
"Have you gone and fed them again?" asks my father, severely, looking at
the dogs' bulging stomachs.
"Fed them? Not a bit; only just a crust of bread apiece."
"Then what are they licking their chops for?"
"There was a bit of yesterday's oatmeal left over."
"I thought as much! All the hares will get away again. It really is too
bad! Do you do it to spite me?"
"You can't have the dogs running all day on empty stomachs, Lyoff
Nikolaievich," she grunted, going angrily to put on the dogs' collars.
At last the dogs were got together, some of them on leashes, others
running free; and we would ride out at a brisk trot past Bitter Wells
and the grove into the open country.
My father would give the word of command, "Line out!" and point out the
direction in which we were to go, and we spread out over the stubble
fields and meadows, whistling and winding about along the lee side of
the steep balks, [8] beating all the bushes with our hunting-crops, and
gazing keenly at every spot or mark on the earth.
Something white would appear ahead. We stared hard at it, gathered
up the reins, examined the leash, scarcely believing the good luck of
having come on a hare at last. Then riding up closer and closer, with
our eyes on the white thing, it would turn out to be not a hare at all,
but a horse's skull. How annoying!
We would look at papa and Seryozha, thinking, "I wonder if they saw that
I took that skull for a hare." But papa would be sitting keen and alert
on his English saddle, with the wooden stirrups, smoking a cigarette,
while Seryozha would perhaps have got his leash entangled and could not
get it straight.
"Thank heaven!" we would exclaim, "nobody saw me! What a fool I should
have felt!" So we would ride on.
The horse's even pace would begin to rock us to sleep, feeling rather
bored at nothing getting up; when all of a sudden, just at the moment we
least expected it, right in front of us, twenty paces away, would jump
up a gray hare as if from the bowels of the earth.
The dogs had seen it before we had, and had started forward already
in full pursuit. We began to bawl, "Tally-ho! tally-ho!" like madmen,
flogging our horses with all our might, and flying after them.
The dogs would come up with the hare, turn it, then turn it again, the
young and fiery Sultan and Darling running over it, catching up again,
and running over again; and at last the old and experienced Winger,
who had been galloping on one side all the time, would seize her
opportunity, and spring in. The hare would give a helpless cry like a
baby, and the dogs, burying their fangs in it, in a star-shaped group,
would begin to tug in different directions.
"Let go! Let go!"
We would come galloping up, finish off the hare, and give the dogs
the tracks, [9] tearing them off toe by toe, and throwing them to our
favorites, who would catch them in the air. Then papa would teach us how
to strap the hare on the back of the saddle.
After the run we would all be in better spirits, and get to better
places near Yasenki and Retinka. Gray hares would get up oftener. Each
of us would have his spoils in the saddle-straps now, and we would begin
to hope for a fox.
Not many foxes would turn up. If they did, it was generally Tumashka,
who was old and staid, who distinguished himself. He was sick of hares,
and made no great effort to run after them; but with a fox he would
gallop at full speed, and it was almost always he who killed.
It would be late, often dark, when we got back home.
"ANNA KARENINA"
I REMEMBER my father writing his alphabet and reading-book in 1871 and
1872, but I cannot at all remember his beginning "Anna Karenina." I
probably knew nothing about it at the time. What did it matter to a boy
of seven what his father was writing? It was only later, when one kept
hearing the name again and again, and bundles of proofs kept arriving,
and were sent off almost every day, that I understood that "Anna
Karenina" was the name of the novel on which my father and mother were
both at work.
My mother's work seemed much harder than my father's, because we
actually saw her at it, and she worked much longer hours than he
did. She used to sit in the sitting-room off the zala, at her little
writing-table, and spend all her free time writing.
Leaning over the manuscript and trying to decipher my father's scrawl
with her short-sighted eyes, she used to spend whole evenings over it,
and often sat up late at night after everybody else had gone to bed.
Sometimes, when anything was written quite illegibly, she would go to
my father's study and ask him what it meant. But this was very rare,
because my mother did not like to disturb him.
When it happened, my father used to take the manuscript in his hand, and
ask with some annoyance, "What on earth is the difficulty?" and would
begin to read it out aloud. When he came to the difficult place he would
mumble and hesitate, and sometimes had the greatest difficulty in making
out, or, rather, in guessing, what he had written. He had a very bad
handwriting, and a terrible habit of writing in whole sentences between
the lines, or in the corners of the page, or sometimes right across it.
My mother often discovered gross grammatical errors, and pointed them
out to my father, and corrected them.
When "Anna Karenina" began to come out in the "Russky Vyestnik," [10]
long galley-proofs were posted to my father, and he looked them through
and corrected them.
At first the margins would be marked with the ordinary typographical
signs, letters omitted, marks of punctuation, etc.; then individual
words would be changed, and then whole sentences, till in the end the
proof-sheet would be reduced to a mass of patches quite black in places,
and it was quite impossible to send it back as it stood, because no
one but my mother could make head or tail of the tangle of conventional
signs, transpositions, and erasures.
My mother would sit up all night copying the whole thing out afresh.
In the morning there would lie the pages on her table, neatly piled
together, covered all over with her fine, clear handwriting, and
everything ready so that when "Lyovotchka" got up he could send the
proof-sheets off by post.
My father carried them off to his study to have "just one last look,"
and by the evening it would be just as bad again, the whole thing having
been rewritten and messed up.
"Sonya my dear, I am very sorry, but I've spoiled all your work again; I
promise I won't do it any more," he would say, showing her the passages
he had inked over with a guilty air. "We'll send them off to-morrow
without fail." But this to-morrow was often put off day by day for weeks
or months together.
"There's just one bit I want to look through again," my father would
say; but he would get carried away and recast the whole thing afresh.
There were even occasions when, after posting the proofs, he would
remember some particular words next day, and correct them by telegraph.
Several times, in consequence of these rewritings, the printing of the
novel in the "Russky Vyestnik" was interrupted, and sometimes it did not
come out for months together.
In the last part of "Anna Karenina" my father, in describing the end of
VRONSKY'S career, showed his disapproval of the volunteer movement and
the Panslavonic committees, and this led to a quarrel with Katkof.
I can remember how angry my father was when Katkof refused to print
those chapters as they stood, and asked him either to leave out part of
them or to soften them down, and finally returned the manuscript, and
printed a short note in his paper to say that after the death of the
heroine the novel was strictly speaking at an end; but that the author
had added an epilogue of two printed sheets, in which he related such
and such facts, and he would very likely "develop these chapters for the
separate edition of his novel."
In concluding, I wish to say a few words about my father's own opinion
of "Anna Karenina."
In 1875 he wrote to N. N. Strakhof:
"I must confess that I was delighted by the success of the last piece
of 'Anna Karenina.' I had by no means expected it, and to tell you the
truth, I am surprised that people are so pleased with such ordinary and
EMPTY stuff."
The same year he wrote to Fet:
"It is two months since I have defiled my hands with ink or my heart
with thoughts. But now I am setting to work again on my TEDIOUS, VULGAR
'ANNA KARENINA,' with only one wish, to clear it out of the way as
soon as possible and give myself leisure for other occupations, but not
schoolmastering, which I am fond of, but wish to give up; it takes up
too much time."
In 1878, when the novel was nearing its end, he wrote again to Strakhof:
"I am frightened by the feeling that I am getting into my summer mood
again. I LOATHE what I have written. The proof-sheets for the April
number [of "Anna Karenina" in the "Russky Vyestnik"] now lie on my
table, and I am afraid that I have not the heart to correct them.
EVERYTHING in them is BEASTLY, and the whole thing ought to be
rewritten,--all that has been printed, too,--scrapped and melted down,
thrown away, renounced. I ought to say, 'I am sorry; I will not do
it any more,' and try to write something fresh instead of all this
incoherent, neither-fish-nor-flesh-nor-fowlish stuff."
That was how my father felt toward his novel while he was writing it.
Afterward I often heard him say much harsher things about it.
"What difficulty is there in writing about how an officer fell in love
with a married woman?" he used to say. "There's no difficulty in it, and
above all no good in it."
I am quite convinced that if my father could have done so, he long ago
would have destroyed this novel, which he never liked and always wanted
to disown.
(To be continued)