During this stay at Paris I made my first acquaintance with Turguéneff.
He had expressed to our common friend, P. L. Lavróff, the desire to see
me, and, as a true Russian, to celebrate my escape by a small friendly
dinner. It was with almost a feeling of worship that I crossed the
threshold of his room. If by his ‘Sportsman’s Notebook’ he rendered
to Russia the immense service of throwing odium upon serfdom (I did
not know at that time that he took a leading part in Hérzen’s powerful
‘Bell’), he has rendered no less service through his later novels. He
has shown what the Russian woman is, what treasuries of mind and heart
she possesses, what she may be as an inspirer of men; and he has taught
us how men who have a real claim to superiority look upon women, how
they love. Upon me, and upon thousands of my contemporaries, this part
of his teaching made an indelible impression, far more powerful than
the best articles upon women’s rights.
His appearance is well known. Tall, strongly built, the head covered
with soft and thick grey hair, he was certainly beautiful; his eyes
gleamed with intelligence, not devoid of a touch of humour, and his
whole manner testified to that simplicity and absence of affectation
which are characteristic of the best Russian writers. His fine head
revealed a vast development of brain power, and when he died, and Paul
Bert, with Paul Reclus (the surgeon), weighed his brain, it so much
surpassed the heaviest brain then known--that of Cuvier--reaching
something over two thousand grammes, that they would not trust to their
scales, but got new ones, to repeat the weighing.
His talk was especially remarkable. He spoke, as he wrote, in images.
When he wanted to develop an idea, he did not resort to arguments,
although he was a master in philosophical discussions; he illustrated
his idea by a scene presented in a form as beautiful as if it had been
taken out of one of his novels.
‘You must have had a great deal of experience in your life amongst
Frenchmen, Germans, and other peoples,’ he said to me once. ‘Have you
not remarked that there is a deep, unfathomable chasm between many of
their conceptions and the views which we Russians hold on the same
subjects--points upon which we can never agree?’