Kelsiev had hardly passed out of our door when fresh people, driven out
by the chill blasts of 1863, were knocking at it. These came not from the
training-schools of the coming upheaval but from the devastated stage
on which they had already played their parts. They were taking refuge
from the storm without and seeking nothing within; all they needed was
a temporary haven until the weather improved, until a chance presented
itself to return to the fray. These men, while still very young, had done
with ideas, with culture; theoretical questions did not interest them,
partly because they had not yet arisen among them, partly because they
were concerned with putting them into practice. Though they had been
defeated, they had given proofs of their reckless daring. They had furled
their flag, and their task was to preserve its honour. Hence their dry,
_cassant_, _raide_, abrupt and rather elevated tone. Hence their martial,
impatient aversion for prolonged deliberation, for criticism, their
somewhat elaborate contempt for all intellectual superfluities, among
which they put Art in the foreground. What need of music? What need of
poetry? ‘The fatherland is in danger, _aux armes, citoyens_!’ In certain
cases they were theoretically right, but they did not take into account
the complex, intricate process of balancing the ideal with the actual,
and, I need hardly say, assumed that their views and theories were the
views and theories of all Russia. To blame our young pilots of the coming
storm for this would be unjust. It is the common characteristic of youth;
a year ago a Frenchman, a follower of Comte, assured me that Catholicism
no longer existed in France, that it had _complètement perdu le terrain_,
and pointed to the medical profession, to the professors and students who
were not merely not Catholics but not even Deists. ‘Well, but that part
of France,’ I observed, ‘which neither gives nor hears medical lectures?’
‘It, of course, keeps to religion and its rites—but more from habit and
ignorance.’
‘Very true, but what will you do with it?’
‘What did they do in 1792?’
‘A little: at first the Revolution closed the churches, but afterwards
opened them again. Do you remember Augereau’s answer to Napoleon when
they were celebrating the Concordat? “Do you like the ceremony?” the
consul asked as they came out of Notre-Dame. The Jacobin general
answered: “Very much. I am only sorry that the two hundred thousand
men who have gone to their graves to abolish such ceremonies are not
present!”’
‘_Ah bah_, we have grown wiser, and we shall not open the church doors—or
rather we shall not close them at all, but shall turn the temples of
idolatry into schools.’
‘_L’infâme sera écrasée_,’ I wound up, laughing.
‘Yes, no doubt of it; that is certain!’
‘But that you and I will not see it—that is even more certain.’
It is to this looking at the surrounding world through a prism coloured
by personal sympathies that half the revolutionary failures are due. The
life of young people, spent as a rule in a noisy and limited seclusion
of a sort, remote from the everyday and wholesale struggle for personal
interests, though it grasps universal truths clearly, is almost always
doomed to a false understanding of their application to the needs of the
day.
At first our new visitors cheered us with accounts of the movement in
Petersburg, of the wild pranks of the full-fledged reaction, of the
trials and persecutions, of university and literary parties. Then,
when all this had been told with the rapidity with which in such cases
men hasten to tell all they know, a pause, a hiatus would follow; our
conversations became dull and monotonous.
‘Can this really be,’ I thought, ‘old age divorcing two generations? Is
it the chill induced by years, by weariness, by experience?’
Whatever it might be due to, I felt that our horizon was not widened, but
narrowed, by the arrival of these new men. The scope of our conversations
was more limited. Sometimes we had nothing to say to one another. They
were occupied with the details of their circles, beyond which nothing
interested them. Having once related everything of interest about them,
there was nothing to do but to repeat it, and they did repeat it. They
took little interest in learning or in public affairs; they even read
little, and did not follow the newspapers regularly. Absorbed in memories
and anticipations, they did not care to step forth into other spheres;
while we had not air to breathe in that exhausted atmosphere. We, spoiled
by wider horizons, were stifled.
Moreover, even if they did know a certain section of Petersburg, they
did not know Russia at all, and, though sincerely desirous of coming
into contact with the people, they only approached them bookishly and
theoretically.
What we had in common was too general. Advance together, _serve_, as
the French say, take action together we might, but it was hard to stand
still with hands folded and live together. It was useless to dream of a
serious influence on them. A morbid and very unceremonious vanity had
long ago got the upper hand.[34] Sometimes, it is true, they did ask for
a programme, for guidance, but for all their sincerity there was no
reality about that. They expected us to formulate their own opinions, and
only assented when what we said did not contradict them in the least.
They looked upon us as respectable veterans, as something past and over,
and were naïvely surprised that we were not yet so very much behind
themselves.
I have always and in everything dreaded ‘above all sorrows’
_mésalliances_; I have always endured them, partly through humanity,
partly through carelessness, and have always suffered from them.
It was not hard to foresee that our new connections would not last long,
that sooner or later they would be broken, and that, considering the
churlish character of our new friends, this rupture would not come off
without disagreeable consequences.
The subject upon which our unstable relations came to grief was that old
subject upon which acquaintances tacked together with rotten threads
usually come to grief. I mean money. Knowing absolutely nothing of my
resources nor of my sacrifices, they made demands upon me which I did not
think it right to satisfy. That I had been able through bad times without
the slightest assistance to maintain the Russian propaganda for fifteen
years was only because I had put a careful limit to my other expenses.
My new acquaintances considered that all I was doing was not enough, and
looked with indignation at a man who pretended to be a Socialist and did
not distribute his property in equal shares among people who wanted money
without working. Obviously they had not advanced beyond the impractical
point of view of Christian charity and voluntary poverty, and mistook
that for practical Socialism.
The efforts to collect a ‘Common Fund’ yielded no results of importance.
Russians are not fond of giving money to any common cause, unless it
includes the building of a church, and a banquet, a drinking-party, and
the approval of the higher authorities.
When the impecuniosity of the exiles was at its height, a rumour
circulated among them that I had a sum of money entrusted to me for
purposes of propaganda.
It seemed perfectly right to the young people to relieve me of it.
To make the position clear, I must describe a strange incident that
occurred in the year 1858. One morning I received a very brief note from
an unknown Russian; he wrote to me that he ‘urgently desired to see me,’
and asked me to fix an hour.
I happened to be going to London at the time, and so instead of answering
I went myself to the Sablonnière Hotel and inquired for him. He was at
home. He was a young man who looked like a cadet, shy, very depressed,
and with the peculiar rather rough-hewn appearance of the seventh or
eighth son of a Steppe landowner. Very uncommunicative, he was almost
completely silent; it was evident that he had something on his mind, but
he could not come to the point of putting it into words.
I went away, inviting him to dinner two or three days later. Before that
date I met him in the street. ‘May I walk with you?’ he asked.
‘Of course; there is no risk for me in being seen with you, though there
is for you in being seen with me. But London is a big place.’
‘I am not afraid’—and then all at once, taking the bit between his teeth,
he hurriedly burst out: ‘I shall never go back to Russia—no, no, I shall
certainly never go back to Russia....’
‘Upon my word, and you so young?’
‘I love Russia—I love her dearly; but there the people ... I cannot live
there. I want to found a colony on completely socialistic principles; I
have thought it all over, and now I am going straight there.’
‘Straight where?’
‘To the Marquesas Islands.’